Talential
Private · Strategic Round · April 2026

Hiring forgets.
We built the record.

Direct. Local. Peer-validated. A behavioral ledger that travels with the talent — forever. We are raising now. We want the right people around the table.

01 — The Opportunity

Get in early.
Be part of the movement.

The recruitment industry hasn't changed in 30 years. We're building the infrastructure that replaces it — and we're raising now.

650 million workers in ASEAN. 72% of SMEs say hiring is their #1 operational bottleneck. A $28B market where every tool was built for Corporate using recruiters, not SME's

$10K
Minimum ticket
$350K
Strategic round
currently open
$4M
Post-money
valuation

We are not pitching a concept. We have businesses on the ground, universities in discussion, and a product live. We are raising to accelerate what is already moving.

02 — Problem / Solution

Four acts.
One broken system.

This is the story of hiring — and why it's never worked.

01
Hiring never worked

The resume is a self-written list of claims. Every real observation a recruiter ever made about someone — it stayed with them. Never passed on. The next employer started from zero. This has happened a billion times. Nobody built anything to stop it.

02
AI made it worse

Job description: written by AI. Resume: written by AI. Matching: done by AI. A machine talks to a machine. The actual human — trying to find work, trying to build a team — is invisible. Hiring is not broken. It is frozen.

03
Locally, you're on your own

You need a marketer. Lives nearby. Available next week. Knows your industry. Your options: a job board (6–8 weeks), a recruiter (2 months' salary), or Facebook — where you get no context, no validation, no signal. The local talent market is not just broken. It doesn't exist.

04
Never built for the talent

Every hiring tool was built by large companies, for large companies. LinkedIn serves senior professionals in established careers. The sales rep, the marketer, the developer, the event coordinator, the ops person — anyone building a career outside a corporate ladder has no tool designed for them. They apply. Wait. Hear nothing. Start over. Every time.

A local talent network.
Built around the talent.

Direct connection — no middleman, no recruiter, no job board, no AI writing both sides of the same conversation.

Hyper-local, real-time — like Google Maps for talent. The people near you, available now, visible for the first time.

Peer-to-peer validation — not what talent claims about themselves. What the community says about them. Real observations, from real businesses.

Potential over Credential

"Talential connects businesses directly with nearby people based on peer-validated strengths — not AI-written resumes."

03 — Where We Are

On the ground.
In motion.

We're not pitching a concept. We're already working.

Round structure
$400K total
Two tranches - currently in discussion with VCs and Angels
VC & Angel investors
$350K
Several investors currently reviewing terms
In progress
Friends circle — Nano Angels
$50K
$5K minimum · 10 slots reserved
in Progress
10+
Businesses in Saigon
already working with us
→ 20 by end of April · 50 by end of May
5
Universities in active
discussion
On-campus activation in Saigon
MVP
Product is ready
Design complete · Testing live
The Team
Gwen
Gwen
CEO
LinkedIn ↗
Andrew
Andrew
CTO · AI Researcher
LinkedIn ↗
Nath
Nath
Ops Lead
LinkedIn ↗
Rebecca
Rebecca
CFO
LinkedIn ↗
Quynh
Quynh
Operations
LinkedIn ↗
Uyen
Uyen
Product Design
Phuc
Phuc
B2C & University
LinkedIn ↗
Alex
Alex
B2B Activation
LinkedIn ↗
04 — The Product

MVP is ready.
See it yourself.

Not a mockup. Not a concept. A product that businesses in Saigon are already using.

Product Design
View preliminary design on Figma
Investor Deck
Full presentation — strategy, financials, roadmap
Company Filing
Incorporated in Singapore · ACRA registration document
05 — How We Make Money

Simple pricing.
Massive market.

The model is built for SMEs — the most underserved segment in hiring. Most don't even have an HR department.

Today — Job Board
You do all the work

Post a listing. Collect resumes. Screen manually. Interview. Repeat. Weeks of work. No guarantee of quality.

Unpaid labour
Today — Agency
You pay someone else

Hand it off to a recruiter. Wait 2 months. Pay up to 2 months' salary as commission. No refund if it doesn't work out.

2× salary fee
Talential
Pre-evaluated. Pre-screened. Ready to meet.

For $8, a business gets a candidate already validated by other businesses — through real interviews, real probations, real behavioral tags. We cut sourcing time by 80%. No agency. No noise.

$8 per job description
Revenue Phases
Phase 1 — Now
Per-job pricing

$8 per job description. SMEs pay for speed and quality. No subscription needed to get started.

Phase 2 — After MVP
Monthly subscription

Once we have enough behavioral data, we expand beyond sourcing into onboarding and training — and move to recurring revenue.

2,000
Active F&B job ads in Saigon right now
$15K
Monthly opportunity — Saigon F&B alone
$250K
Monthly revenue target — within 12 months
80%
Reduction in sourcing time for businesses
06 — Roadmap

Where we're going.
Step by step.

We start focused, expand fast, and go regional. Every phase builds on the network effect of the one before.

Phase 1
Now →
Sept 2026
F&B, Events & Hospitality — Saigon

The entry market. High turnover, constant demand, zero digital infrastructure. We build the network density that makes everything else possible.

500 businesses
Phase 2
End of
2026
Digital & Tech Workers — Saigon

Social media, content & video, e-commerce, web dev, automation (Zapier, Make, n8n), AI pipelines, full-stack & back-end dev, no-code operators. The entire digital workforce — high demand, zero peer validation layer today.

50,000 talent
Phase 3
Post Lunar
New Year
2027
All Job Types, All Levels — Ho Chi Minh City

Tết triggers the largest job turnover of the year. We use that moment to expand beyond our entry categories — every type of hire, every level, still in Saigon. Deep before wide.

Full category coverage · HCMC
Phase 4
Mid 2027
Tier 1 City Expansion — Bangkok, Hanoi, Singapore

Same playbook, new cities. Each shares the same structural gap: no local, peer-validated talent layer. We bring the network to the next tier of ASEAN.

3 new cities
Phase 5
End of
2027
Visible to All of GenZ ASEAN

Every young professional in Southeast Asia with a skill to offer and a reputation to build knows Talential. Not a job board. The network.

ASEAN footprint
07 — The Bigger Picture

A new category.
Not a better job board.

Airbnb didn't fix hotels. They built something else entirely. Nobody thought it should exist — until it did, and then it was obvious.

Airbnb didn't fix
Hotels
→
They built
A new category
Talential doesn't fix
Recruitment
→
We're building
The alternative

Direct. Local. Peer-validated. No machinery in the way. It sounds like it shouldn't exist yet. That's exactly where the opportunity is.

"The talent who's proven themselves across five real placements has more credible signal than any CV could ever produce."