Welcome to another episode of Category Visionaries — the show that explores GTM stories from tech's most innovative B2B founders. In today's episode, we're speaking with Mike Fitzsimmons, CEO & Co-Founder at Crosschq, an AI-driven hiring intelligence platform that has raised over $35 Million in funding.

Here are the most interesting points from our conversation:

• Origins of Crosschq: Mike was inspired to start Crosschq after experiencing crucial hiring mistakes in his previous company. This led him to explore solutions in the HR tech space, despite not having a background in talent acquisition.
• Defining Hiring Intelligence: Crosschq aims to transform the hiring process by providing a data-driven platform that helps companies make better hiring decisions, reducing the traditionally high fail rate of new hires.
• Challenges of Industry Entry: Entering an unfamiliar industry posed significant challenges in understanding the ecosystem and building the necessary networks to effectively market and sell the new platform.
• Product Market Fit: Mike emphasizes the difficulty and importance of achieving product-market fit, particularly in a field as complex as HR tech, where understanding customer needs is paramount.
• Impact of Previous Ventures: Drawing from his experience in building businesses, Mike discusses how past ventures influence his approach at Crosschq, particularly in terms of scaling and dealing with investors.
• Future Vision for Crosschq: Looking ahead, Mike envisions Crosschq playing a critical role in standardizing hiring intelligence, much like how Salesforce standardized CRM systems, ultimately reducing the failure rate in hiring decisions across industries.