Apr 2026
The best job opportunities don’t come from applications. For decades, only a small group of people - athletes, movie stars, executives - had agents managing their careers: finding their next role and negotiating on their behalf. Think Ari Gold from Entourage. But AI has changed that. What used to be scarce is becoming abundant. Now, every worker can have a talent agent in their pocket.
Enter Clera. Clera is an AI-first agent for job seekers. Candidates text Clera, which learns their preferences and actively scouts opportunities across hundreds of startups. Instead of submitting resumes into a black hole, Clera introduces candidates directly to hiring managers, with context on why the match makes sense. Many candidates land their first interview within hours of signing up. In just a few months, Clera has already placed dozens of candidates in roles at fast growing startups like Traba, Mandolin and Opal Security.
The core primitive of hiring - applications - is broken. Job boards have become saturated. And on top of that, the best candidates rarely apply to jobs. They get pulled into them through networks and introductions. Most great hires we’ve seen in our portfolio came from a warm introduction - not a cold application. Clera is productizing that insight and that’s why we at 1984 Ventures are thrilled to have led their $3M pre-seed round.
What impressed us from the early days was the founding team: three Germans who landed in San Francisco just a few months ago, hungry to make it big. CEO Seb Scott is a 3x marketplace founder who was a child chess prodigy. CTO Dan Wintermeyer has been coding since he was 12 and was previously the head of engineering at a scale-up. And COO Alex Farr was previously a Chief of Staff and ran recruiting at a startup that grew to 8 figures ARR. But credentials aside, the team impressed us with their energy, ideas and passion. The more time we spent with them, the more compelled we were by their answers.
Clera is re-architecting how the staffing industry works
The $200B staffing industry exists because matching talent was, until recently, hugely labor-intensive. Recruiters manually source, screen, and broker introductions. Clera flips this model. By automating sourcing, screening, and matchmaking, Clera operates at a fundamentally different cost structure. The result for employers is faster, higher-quality and lower-cost hires.
Clera’s 10 person team can already carry out 10x more conversations with candidates (and employers) than any staffing agency. When we first met in October 2025, they had 6,000 candidates and 100 startups. Today, they have 75,000 candidates and 600 startups across SF and NYC. This only works now because AI can finally understand candidate intent, which makes it possible to build a true talent agent instead of another recruiting tool.
If you are looking for your next startup role, you should text Clera to kickstart your search.
By Samit Kalra on behalf of 1984 Ventures