EUVC Matthew Wilson (Jack & Jill) & Peter Specht (Creandum): AI Recruiting Agents, a $20M Seed & the New GTM Playbook
This week on the EUVC Podcast, Andreas Munk Holm sits down with Matthew Wilson, co-founder of Jack & Jill, and Peter Specht, General Partner at Creandum. Fresh off a $20M seed to take their AI recruiting agents global, they dig into how conviction is built in Europe, from founding insight to investor belief, and what it now takes to scale an agent-native company with speed, precision, and craft.
Jack helps candidates find and optimize their careers. Jill helps companies hire brilliantly. Together, the two agents form a high-signal, two-sided network that aims to become the world’s most networked AI-powered recruitment agency — without the classical incentive conflicts of human middlemen.
Here’s what’s covered:
02:35 | Why Creandum leaned in, conviction on voice-based interfaces and why recruiting is a massive, broken vertical for agent AI
03:38 | The founding moment: leaving Omnipresent, 18 months in the wilderness, and the February insight that agents make talent marketplaces finally viable
07:07 | Recruiting is broken (and AI made it worse): why first-principles thinking is needed to avoid “more noise, not more signal.”
09:15 | Investor conviction: founder/market fit, why this moment is different, and the defensibility of a two-sided agentic marketplace
12:22 | The user experience: the “coffee chat” with an AI recruiter: deep voice conversation → matching, prep, coaching, introductions
16:30 | Solving the incentives trap: why Jack works 100% for candidates and Jill works 100% for companies (fixing agency conflicts)
19:10 | Coaching as core: how AI unlocks career guidance, interview prep, and hands-on support that humans rarely get today
22:47 | Building fast in the AI era: talent density, global expansion, and why a 20M seed makes sense for a dual-product marketplace
26:35 | Two companies in one: scaling Jack (consumer) + Jill (B2B) simultaneously, across markets, with AI leverage
34:02 | The GTM playbook: engineering-led marketing, AI-driven creative testing, instant value, and rethinking B2B buying entirely
37:47 | The new AI go-to-market: speed, PLG dominance, virality-by-design, and why distribution now matters more than ever
43:52 | Two GTM worlds: viral AI products vs. slow, enterprise-heavy AI deployments (and why both will coexist)
47:15 | The “productization” of marketing — why engineering now powers growth, not headcount-heavy marketing orgs
50:29 | Final advice (VC POV) — start with a unique insight, not a trend; think in 5–10 year arcs, not quick ARR bumps