About Refery
A recruiting network built for the hires that shape the company.
Refery is a startup recruiting network for VC-backed Seed to Series B companies hiring Engineering, AI, and GTM talent. It combines specialist independent recruiters with referrals from founders, operators, and investors. Companies pay 15% to 25% of first-year base salary only when they hire, with no retainer, no exclusivity, and a 90-day guarantee.
Why Refery exists
Early-stage companies do not need more résumés.
They need people who can own an uncertain problem, make good decisions with incomplete information, and build momentum. Those people are rarely captured by a title filter alone.
Refery was built by operators and investors who had seen the same pattern across company building and hiring: the best introductions came with context. A former colleague could explain what someone actually owned. A specialist recruiter knew the market. An investor or founder knew who was ready for the next chapter.
One search, two sources of signal
Specialist recruiters and people who know the work.
Refery brings both networks behind one brief, screens the resulting introductions, and gives the hiring company one accountable point of contact.
Specialist independent recruiters
Market knowledge, active search work, and role-specific judgment. They know who is actually good at the job, not who describes it well.
Founders, operators, and investors
They refer people whose work they know firsthand, with the context a job description leaves out: what the person owned, how they decide, and why they would move.
What the network does in practice
The network helps clarify the role, not only source candidates.
How Refery turned an evolving engineering brief into concrete hiring decisions.
Refery used example profiles to make the hiring bar concrete, with candidate interest explicitly unconfirmed. Later recommendations included relevant work, motivation, practical fit, and the questions still worth testing in interview.
Read the search story →How feedback from a recruiting partner helped a founder separate essential requirements from an over-constrained role.
A recruiting partner noticed that a brief combined two skill sets that did not need to sit in the same hire. Refery took that feedback to the founder, got agreement on a broader profile, and returned the answer to the partner.
Read the search story →Who Refery serves
Three audiences, one standard of evidence.
Hiring managers
VC-backed Seed to Series B companies hiring Engineering, AI, and GTM talent. One brief, one accountable contact, a small screened shortlist.
How a search runs →Recruiting partners
Specialist independent recruiters, operator scouts, and TA partners who earn 70% of the collected placement fee on eligible hires they originate.
How the network works →Candidates
Experienced engineers, AI builders, and GTM operators who want context on a role before anyone shares their profile. Free for candidates, always.
For candidates →The model is success-based: 15% to 25% of first-year base salary, no retainer, no exclusivity, and a 90-day guarantee under the client agreement.
Start a search
Tell us what this person needs to own.
Share the role, the outcome, and the constraints. Refery replies with how the search would run and what the shortlist should prove.
Or email hello@refery.io.