Latest news with #Exa
Business Wire
4 days ago
- Business
- Business Wire
Exa Capital Named to the 2025 Inc. 5000 List of America's Fastest-Growing Private Companies
DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Exa Capital, the holding company dedicated to long-term stewardship of founder-led software businesses, is proud to announce its inclusion on the 2025 Inc. 5000 list – Inc. Magazine's annual ranking of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the United States. This milestone reflects Exa's strong momentum, disciplined growth, and distinctive approach to business ownership that prioritizes preservation, performance, and people. Being named to the Inc. 5000 validates our belief that long-term stewardship is not only good business, but also sustainable, scalable, and deeply rewarding. Share The Inc. 5000 list is one of the most prestigious honors for entrepreneurial success in America, spotlighting companies that demonstrate exceptional growth, innovation, and resilience. Alumni of this list include household names like Patagonia, Microsoft, and Intuit, demonstrating the caliber of companies recognized by Inc. historically. To earn a place on this year's list, companies must demonstrate not only rapid revenue growth but also the ability to scale sustainably in a challenging economic landscape. Founded with a clear mission to build enduring value rather than chasing short-term exits, Exa has quickly established itself as a standout player in the investment and business stewardship space. Unlike traditional private equity, Exa doesn't flip companies, it partners with founders to preserve what they've built, offering operational support and strategic resources to help businesses grow with integrity. Over the past few years, Exa has expanded its portfolio, deepened its bench of experienced operators, and scaled its team – all while staying true to its founder-friendly principles. 'Our growth is a direct result of the trust placed in us by founders and the hard work of our exceptional team,' said Omer Sajid, CEO of Exa Capital. 'Being named to the Inc. 5000 validates our belief that long-term stewardship is not only good business, but also sustainable, scalable, and deeply rewarding.' With this recognition, Exa Capital joins a dynamic community of pioneers reshaping the future of vertical software companies. As Exa continues to grow, it remains committed to delivering value without compromise, and to standing by the founders who choose to build a legacy, not just an exit. About Exa Founded in 2020, Exa Capital focuses on a buy-and-hold strategy for enterprise software companies. Exa Capital's permanent hold model aligns with founders' vision of legacy protection and the long-term sustainable growth of their businesses.
Forbes
15-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
AI Bias In Hiring Is An HR Problem, Not A Tech Issue
Stacey Tara leads People & Ops at Exa (AI search startup in SF). She writes about hiring, ops, culture, and decision frameworks. AI tools have quickly changed how companies hire. They speed up decisions, reduce admin work and promise objectivity. But that promise doesn't always hold. AI systems rely heavily on past hiring data, so if a company historically favored certain demographics—consciously or unconsciously—those biases get encoded into the algorithms. A prominent example is when Amazon discontinued its AI recruiting tool after discovering it consistently favored male candidates. Too often, HR teams assume AI bias is a technical problem. It's not. Engineers might build the tools, but AI will learn from existing data and replace its patterns. That means it's up to HR to set the standards and clarify what success looks like. Otherwise, history will repeat itself. HR Is Responsible For Addressing AI Bias As a hiring leader, you won't see AI bias emerge because of something like a massive system failure. It's often as simple as a qualified candidate getting filtered out because they went to a nontraditional school, took a career break or used different phrasing on a resume. These aren't red flags; they're signals of diverse experience. But without clear guidance, AI tools often penalize them. Over time, this narrows the talent pool and can reinforce homogeneity across teams. Bias in hiring doesn't just raise ethical issues. It also directly impacts business performance. Diverse, inclusive corporations are more likely to outperform their competitors. Teams also experience fewer knowledge gaps and improve decision making when they have diverse perspectives. Furthermore, biased hiring can erode trust internally. Employees notice when diversity efforts are performative or ineffective, which can damage culture, morale and, eventually, the company's external reputation. It's clear that unbiased hiring processes are a strategic necessity. And only you and your hiring team can teach AI tools what that means. 4 Steps HR Leaders Can Take To Mitigate AI Bias Unfortunately, there's a critical gap when it comes to companies' AI governance. According to McKinsey's recent Global Survey on the State of AI, only 13% of respondents said their company employs AI compliance specialists. Even fewer have dedicated AI ethics teams. When it comes to AI-powered hiring, HR can fill the leadership vacuum by taking these actions. 1. Audit the tools regularly. Checking on your AI tools' effectiveness should be routine. Don't just ask if they're working properly; check who they work for. For example, are certain groups being screened out more often? 2. Get the data right. Work with the technical team to ensure training data includes diverse, representative profiles. If the data is biased, the AI will be too. 3. Be transparent with candidates. To build trust during the hiring process, let candidates know if AI is part of decision making. Provide context for how applications are evaluated, and make it clear that the company is thinking critically about fairness. 4. Keep humans in the loop. Don't let AI make the final call. Human reviewers are vital because they can spot nuance and context that algorithms miss. Final Thought AI bias in hiring isn't a bug for engineers to patch. It's a systemic risk that HR must own. Hiring teams are in the best position to drive change by making the hiring process fair, accountable and human-first—even when machines are involved. Forbes Human Resources Council is an invitation-only organization for HR executives across all industries. Do I qualify?
Forbes
10-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
What Do Hiring Managers Really Want? 14 Résumé And Cover Letter Tips
When sorting through dozens—or hundreds—of résumés and cover letters, certain patterns start to wear thin fast. Whether it's vague bullet points, inconsistent formatting or overused buzzwords, small details can undermine otherwise qualified candidates. Expectations vary widely depending on the role, industry and even company, but understanding what hiring pros actually value can help you stand out. Below, 14 Human Resources Council members each share their biggest résumé pet peeves, their stance on cover letters and what you can do to make your application rise to the top. 1. Be Specific And Skip The Fluff My biggest pet peeve is when résumés are full of generic or overly polished language but don't say anything concrete. Especially for technical roles, we want to see real projects, tools used and the kinds of problems someone solved. As for cover letters, they're helpful if they're personal and specific, not super formal ChatGPT-generated fluff. - Stanislava Tarasiuk, Exa 2. Show Effort Through Accuracy And Role-Relevant Customization I'm still surprised by the misspellings within résumés. If a candidate is trying to make an excellent first impression, this is a huge strike against them. I appreciate a résumé that is tailored to the position being applied for. What experience does the candidate have that makes them best suited for this role? This shows great effort and not merely a standard list of education, jobs and so on. - Beth Latchana, Lockton Companies 3. Cut Through Buzzwords; Prioritize Achievement-Driven Content When I interview, my biggest pet peeve is seeing buzzwords with no real substance. I want to see achievements, not just duties. Tailored, clean and relevant résumés stand out. As for cover letters, they only matter if they add value like context for a career switch or why they would be a great fit; preferably, it should be personal, specific and concise. Quality over fluff, always. - Sheena Minhas, ST Microelectronics 4. Avoid Vagueness By Highlighting Results And Your Personal Story My top pet peeve in terms of résumés is vague résumés that lack tangible impact or results-oriented language, thereby showing only duties rather than results. Cover letters may still provide value if they connect the candidate's story with that role; however, generic ones should not be necessary. - Sherri Reese, Michigan State University 5. Fix Formatting To Keep Attention On Your Experience Issues like cramped spacing, small fonts and no context on the company or role can make a résumé hard to follow. Formatting must be clean, readable and spacious. Candidates should spend time distilling their experiences. A cover letter goes even further: why this company and this role are right for them. A strong cover letter can help a candidate stand out, even if they don't meet every requirement. - Soni Basi, Pop HR Forbes Human Resources Council is an invitation-only organization for HR executives across all industries. Do I qualify? 6. Include Location Details To Support Practical Hiring Needs Some candidates are not sharing their specific location on LinkedIn or résumés, which is a pet peeve. Business owners and hiring managers need to understand the state where the person is located to file specific payroll tax details, and there is also a company culture piece to consider, even if the company is hybrid or remote. - Jennifer Morehead, Flex HR 7. Use Cover Letters To Demonstrate Thinking, Not Just Writing The cover letter is more important than ever. In a world where AI can polish grammar and formatting, I use the cover letter to assess what can't be automated: critical thinking, systems thinking and clarity of purpose. A great cover letter shows me how a candidate connects their experience to the needs of our company. It paints a picture of impact. - Ximena Gates, BuildWithin 8. Inject Authenticity Into AI-Shaped Résumés Résumés have increasingly become homogeneous due to AI tools. While the content may be well-structured and detailed, many résumés sound the same: polished but lacking personality. They often feel templated, with little sense of the individual behind the words. I appreciate résumés that feel authentic, where someone has taken the time to tell their unique story, not just say what I want to hear. - Dr. Timothy J. Giardino, 9. Rethink The Cover Letter's Role In A Template-Driven Era My biggest pet peeve is the cover letter itself. In the age of AI and templates, it rarely reflects genuine motivation or communication skills. It often feels like a forced exercise in flattery that adds little value and may even discourage candidates from applying. We should rethink its role in a fair, modern and predictive hiring process. - Shiran Danoch, Informed Decisions 10. Move Beyond The Past By Showing Future-Focused Value Traditional résumés and cover letters are outdated. My biggest pet peeve is when candidates only list past roles without showing relevance for the future. Today's applicants should use modern tools—video, voice and digital portfolios—to demonstrate how they'll add value tomorrow, not just what they did yesterday. Show potential, not just history. - Prithvi Singh Shergill, Tomorrow @entomo 11. Tell A Cohesive Story Instead Of Listing Disconnected Wins My top pet peeve: a tsunami of honorable but small accomplishments, crowded into a single page in six-point type, that don't coalesce into an arc—a story of you. I don't need to know every task you ever tackled, but I do care where you think you're headed and how my company figures in. A cover letter is a huge add when it proves you're familiar with us—a strike when it's cut-and-paste generic. - John Kannapell, CYPHER Learning 12. Emphasize Outcomes To Signal Strategic Fit And Readiness Résumés that list activity without impact are a red flag. I don't need tasks—I need outcomes. A well-written cover letter, tailored to the role, signals strategic fit, clarity of thought and readiness. In a data-saturated market, it's still one of the best ways to see how a candidate thinks—and whether they understand value. - Apryl Evans, USA for UNHCR 13. Explore Hiring Models That Go Beyond Résumés And Letters It's entirely possible to hire without résumés or cover letters, and there are companies that have successfully implemented this strategy. Rather than relying on these traditional methods, recruiters should assess candidates based on their inherent skills and abilities at the screening stage and move from there. - Caitlin MacGregor, Plum 14. Proof Carefully To Show Professionalism And Attention To Detail What gets my negative attention are résumés with careless errors—typos, missing words and inconsistent formatting. These errors matter because they signal how candidates approach their work and whether they value making a strong first impression. Cover letters absolutely add value when they're crafted for a specific role and company, explaining your interest and qualifications rather than generic enthusiasm. - Lynne Marie Finn, Broadleaf Results
Daily Maverick
05-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Maverick
Why Bitcoin's growing pains are exactly what it needs
Bitcoin breaking free of traditional finance gravity is supposed to be hard, but Donald Trump trying to hitch a ride on the crypto rocket to the moon is adding unnecessary drag. If you go back to the founding principles — which is totally on libertarian trend, BTW — Satoshi Nakamoto always meant for Bitcoin to be hard to come by. 'To compensate for increasing hardware speed and varying interest in running nodes over time, the proof-of-work difficulty is determined by a moving average targeting an average number of blocks per hour,' Nakamoto wrote in the cryptocurrency founding texts. 'If they're generated too fast, the difficulty increases.' Nakamoto didn't just invent a digital currency — he designed an economic game of chess with physics. Bitcoin's proof-of-work system requires miners to solve computational puzzles to add new blocks to the chain. As Nakamoto wrote, 'the proof-of-work also solves the problem of determining representation in majority decision making', essentially making computing power (and electricity costs) — not central bank decree — the backbone of consensus. Despite the current market panic about the mass miner exit, one truth remains: every 2,016 blocks, the network assesses how quickly miners are working. If blocks are being mined faster than the 10-minute target, the system ramps up the difficulty. This adaptive model ensures that as more miners enter the arena — or as machines get faster — the Bitcoin protocol doesn't flood the market with new coins. In other words, scarcity is coded into its DNA. More power Picture this: late in 2024, the total computing power dedicated by miners worldwide to running the Bitcoin network (what is known as the 'hashrate') surged dramatically. It hit levels around 785 EH/s — that's a truly massive amount of processing power equating to a quintillion (Exa) hash attempts being made across the entire Bitcoin network every single second, and a jump of nearly 50% from the end of 2023. Bitcoin's difficulty — basically, how hard the system makes the cryptographic puzzle that miners need to solve to add blocks to the chain — automatically increased right alongside the hashrate. It didn't break; it scaled up exactly as designed. This isn't a bug; it's a core feature ensuring new Bitcoin is created at a steady, predictable pace, preventing a flood of new coins just because more computers are trying to mine them. It's a way of keeping the supply controlled and predictable, just like when OPEC+ decides to decrease oil production to stabilise the barrel price. Energy is the price of trustless money There is, however, a real-world miner exodus driven by power. Bitcoin miners were burning 19.6GW globally in early 2024, up from 12.1GW a year prior. The Russia-Ukraine war and Trump-era tariff instability have driven up electricity prices across markets, further compounding mining costs. According to the CoinShares blog that caused the current panic, it now costs about 40% more than the value of Bitcoin to mine it. That might sound like an environmental catastrophe. But viewed through a macroeconomic lens, it's a feature, not a flaw. Just like gold mining consumes resources to mine and mint coins that hold their value, Bitcoin relies on energy to validate transactions and secure the network. Without cost, there's no skin in the game. Without skin in the game, there's no trustless consensus. The result is a digital asset with a built-in economic stability mechanism, and the added benefit of no labour disputes that could drive up the cost of production (looking at you, gold). No central bank adjusts Bitcoin's difficulty — it happens automatically through consensus among network participants. This makes Bitcoin uniquely resistant to manipulation by any single entity, whether corporate or governmental. The Trump card Here's where it gets murky. A recent push in the US to create a sovereign wealth fund backed partly by a crypto reserve has spooked Bitcoin purists. Why? Because it threatens to turn the decentralised ethos of digital currency on its head. Although a Trump executive order explicitly avoided buying Bitcoin directly, an old legislative zombie — the Bitcoin Act — could change that. If passed, it would allow the US Treasury to revalue its gold holdings and use that accounting manoeuvre to acquire one million bitcoins — all without technically increasing the national debt. It's a clever bit of accounting that is also potentially catastrophic. If the US government becomes the biggest whale in Bitcoin, it shifts the narrative from 'freedom from fiat' to 'crypto co-opted by the state'. Bitcoin's original appeal — a hedge against central banks, inflation, and institutional overreach — loses its punch if the same institutions become its majority stakeholders. What this means for you: Here's the takeaway for local hodlers (holding-on-for-dear-lifers) and miners: Bitcoin's increasing mining difficulty is good for long-term value. Energy costs are up, but South Africa's renewable potential is a sleeper advantage. The US government's potential entry into large-scale Bitcoin ownership is a threat to decentralisation — not a bullish stamp of approval. Dollar-backed stablecoins are not a safe reserve — they're a derivative of fiat, not a replacement. In the era of weaponised monetary policy, surveillance banking, and digital ID creep, Bitcoin still stands alone as a decentralised, global, censorship-resistant form of money. The stability paradox Layered on top of this Bitcoin play is a sovereign wealth fund proposal to back the US dollar with dollar-based stablecoins — a concept that creates a circular economic problem: you're backing fiat currency with an IOU of the same currency — a financial ouroboros that eats its own credibility. Reserve stablecoins like USDT and USDC may function as digital dollars, but they introduce counterparty risk and centralisation — the very problems Bitcoin was designed to escape. If the US uses stablecoins to shore up its monetary policy, it's a house of cards propped up by another house of cards. Digital uncertainty Trump's flawed economic model is why many cryptocurrency advocates favour Bitcoin's transparent, self-regulating difficulty mechanism over stablecoins for long-term value preservation. All the US president's crypto moves have been varying shades of grifts, but these dollar-based stablecoins derive their value entirely from the dollar itself, creating no independent value, just a shell game that increases systemic risk rather than reducing it. What remains clear is that Satoshi Nakamoto was not just creating a digital currency, but designing an economic system with built-in stability mechanisms that operate independently of human intervention. Whether this design can withstand the weight of government interest may prove to be Bitcoin's ultimate test. DM
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
My AI startup tried 'nerd-sniping' by posting math puzzles with a hidden message all over San Francisco. It worked.
Felicia Tang is chief of staff at AI search engine startup Exa. After finding LinkedIn reach-outs lacking for recruiting, she went IRL, posting math questions all over San Francisco. She said she heard from interested Apple and Google employees, puzzle enthusiasts, and even a would-be suitor. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Felicia Tang, chief of staff at startup Exa. It has been edited for length and clarity. San Francisco is a super competitive job market, especially for machine learning engineers and high-quality backend and full-stack engineers. For us, outbound hiring usually means our cofounders tapping into their Harvard networks, or us identifying companies we think have good engineers and manually sending personalized messages on LinkedIn. But this takes a lot of time, it's extremely monotonous, and it doesn't yield such great returns. So we were thinking, how do we get people who are already interested to come to us? I got to thinking about nerd-sniping, which is essentially where really smart or curious people see a problem and they can't just walk away — they have to solve it. That's the type of person we want. So, what if we did a treasure hunt, or put up posters in the city? That's where the idea of math questions came up. I asked our engineers to come up with math problems that equal exa, which is a prefix meaning 10^18. Then I added a slug to our website for people who solved the problem. It says dinner's on us; if you're interested, email Felicia. Our CEO, Will, and I put up around 100 posters of five different problems. We started on foot but it was insanely inefficient so we scootered the rest of the way. There's a map online with locations of all of the tech offices, and they're concentrated in this line, so we postered there. We also hit Hayes Valley because there's a lot of foot traffic there and ended at Dolores Park and just handed posters out to people there. Initially, we felt a little bit down about it. We were like, "Nobody's going to look at these posters. What are we doing?" Handing out the posters to people was also kind of daunting. I'm an introvert, so I was like, "We're going to go up to people and give them math questions?" But it actually worked out. I got over 100 emails. I also posted on LinkedIn about our posters, and my connection requests went from like 100 to almost 600. Some people who emailed just said, "I love puzzles. If you have more puzzles, give them to me." Other said they were interested in our open jobs and sent me their résumés. We got people from Google, Apple, Retool, a ton of machine learning Ph.D. candidates. Some people were just asking for Uber Eats credits. They were like, "You said dinner's on us." One person even asked me out. Our signs were also reposted on different blogs. Somebody put it up on Hacker News. They roasted it for being too brute-force of a problem and wanted fewer mechanical problems. We thought this was really funny. For me, I see it as a win; if you have haters on Hacker News, you're doing something right. I've had intro chats with probably around 30 people from our posters, and I have more on my calendar. We haven't extended any offers yet, but people are going through the pipeline. We're looking for curious, fun people through this experiment. If you see a problem like this, are you interested in solving it? It's insanely important for people to have that spark in their eye. We're around 25 people now, so we're a lean team. That means one right hire can change the trajectory in an amazing way, and one wrong hire can change the trajectory in a pretty detrimental way. We're a startup, so we work really long hours. Without using LLMs or so on, can you brute force your way through a problem and solve it? If you can do that for a 5-minute problem, then maybe you're willing to do that for a much bigger problem. There are more software engineers than ever now but, at the same time, we have an extremely high hiring bar. We're also a startup, so it's an entirely different culture from the rest of the tech industry, especially Big Tech. One of my colleagues came from a quant firm and I asked him if any one of his friends wants to work here. He said, "Well, they just have different goals in life. They don't really want to grind at a startup. They want to, like, get better at volleyball." In the future, I think we can definitely still have puzzles as one form of inbound hiring, and it's also a really good filter. We might make an insanely hard puzzle and take it very seriously as inbound. I feel like San Francisco sometimes is seen as a very introverted or siloed type of city. Post-COVID, especially in San Francisco, I feel like there's been less of a person-to-person culture; you don't really see strangers talk to each other that much. But everyone was super receptive, even if they didn't know how to solve the puzzle or didn't want to. You can just put stuff out there, and people will respond to it and engage with it. Do you have a story to share on recruiting methods or job-searching? Reach out to this reporter at sjackson@ Read the original article on Business Insider
