Zopa AI

Nina Alexuri spent 18 years running a recruiting and hiring business, scaling it to nearly $20 million in revenue by around 2017. Though trained as an electronics engineer, she fell in love with the business of people. But the hiring process itself frustrated her—it was relentlessly subjective, manual, and full of waste. "The process waste is one of the biggest problems in hiring," she explains. "And the bias, which makes you hire the wrong people or lose the right people. And both of them are dramatic." In 2017, at the height of her recruiting business's success, she made a bold—maybe foolish—decision: she would disrupt her own business with technology.

Zopa AI launched as a DIY hiring tool that gives large companies and startups back control of their hiring process. The platform uses artificial intelligence to automate away the process waste: automated sourcing to find candidates worldwide, automated interview scheduling, even automated interviewing. The company achieved something rare—becoming the only HR tech company on the planet to earn AI Verified status for being responsible, ethical, and explainable in its AI systems. They hold patents on their approach.

Nina built a leadership team of battle-hardened veterans from large tech companies. Her CTO came from eBay (initially reluctant to leave California for Hyderabad, India). She discovered these experienced leaders were eager to leave corporate life but needed to be convinced the startup was worth the risk. In 2019, she hired her first sales head with no prior sales team in place. She gave him full transparency: base salary, upside potential, and crucially, no cap—he could double or triple his earnings if he hit targets.

Nina realized early that incentive structures made or broke team retention. By their second year (2018), she implemented an ESOP plan covering 10% of the company's cap table, with every single employee eligible regardless of department. Initially managed in messy Excel spreadsheets, she switched to S-Vested (a Singapore-based platform) to automate and visualize ESOPs. This was transformational. Employees could now log in and see exactly what their options would be worth at Series A, Series B, and Series C. The company set a company-wide ARR target of $5 million for the year. Sales reps were incentivized on their individual ARR with 50% threshold payouts; non-sales staff were incentivized on company ARR. Monthly payouts, no caps. "You cannot do sales without delivery," she stresses. "You cannot do sales without product development. So it's really critical you get the entire team focused."

By December 2023, Zopa AI closed their Series A at a $22 million valuation. Nina's husband was the first angel investor (though she warns: he quickly changes hats at dinner asking about ARR). The team is now spread across three locations—Nina in the UK, the rest in Singapore, India, and UAE. Every employee has equity visibility, a written culture code with five core values, and clear paths to financial upside. "People join you for the visible benefits," Nina says, "but they stay with you for the intangible—culture, empowerment, and growth."