Hari Kolam

“I began to realize that, at its core, it was a data problem and that’s how it should be approached,” Hari Kolam said in 2024, recalling how hard it was to hire at his last company. He is co-founder and CEO of Findem, a Redwood City, California talent intelligence platform for sourcing, applicant review, and AI hiring agents.

Engineer First

Kolam describes himself as an engineer before he was an entrepreneur. He was co-founder and CTO of Instart, where he led the company's technical vision, and he holds more than 50 technology patents. Both careers, he said, started with the urge to tackle the hardest problem with the largest impact.

Hiring in High-Growth Mode

Findem grew out of a problem he hit at Instart, where the company had to build and scale its team quickly. Hiring usually came down to brute force, he said. He began asking whether deep learning could connect public data about people and companies over time, an idea that became a passion project and then Findem in 2019.

Attributes Over Keywords

Findem searches for people by attributes, such as whether someone has seen a company through a successful exit, instead of matching keywords. “If you want product marketing managers who worked at Google, you don’t want an intern at an agency on a Google account,” Kolam said. Findem has since agreed to acquire Glider AI, which it says will help deliver hire-ready candidates.