Refer charges job seekers 20% of first-month salary — only if they land the job

An AI 'reverse recruiter' for tech workers: candidates pay when hired, employers pay nothing

$2.5M earlier round plus a previously unannounced $7.5M seed

Andre Hamra, 29, had helped people find jobs since his teens in Brazil; at Stanford's business school he put up flyers offering job help, and the demand became Refer, founded in mid-2024. Early user Hansheng Liu, an Illinois computer science grad, was rejected the first time he tried it and hired after returning with a stronger resume.

Users answer questions on experience, desired salary, location, company size and visa needs, and can request up to five introductions a day; employers have three business days to respond, and rejected matches feed back into recommendations. More than half of users secure an interview within 24 hours of an introduction, per Hamra, and the platform expanded beyond Stanford and other top universities to US tech workers broadly.

Recruiting's economics paid the middleman on the employer side, leaving candidates with spray-and-pray applications and ghosting

AI-generated resumes made applications indistinguishable, so a curated, mutual-interest introduction became the scarce thing

A success fee charged to hires self-selects intentional candidates, which is exactly what employers on the platform want

Employers accepting referrals for chosen roles keeps the supply of jobs relevant instead of scraping postings

Charging the candidate only on success aligns the platform with the weaker side of the market — and the fee doubles as the filter that keeps introductions intentional.

As of July 2026 Refer planned to use the new funding to bring more companies onto the platform, having just widened its focus from software engineers at Stanford and other top universities to US tech workers at large.