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Sam Nadler:
This has been a labor of love that's taken us quite a long time to build, but it’s having a big impact on our organization.
Jordan Metzner:
At Ryz Labs, we do thousands of interviews a year. Since we've launched Entrevista, we've done thousands of interviews. It's been an incredible use case, and I think we'll dive into it a little bit more.
Sam Nadler:
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Built This Week, the podcast where we share what we're building, how we're building it, and what it means for the world of AI and startups. I'm Sam Nadler, co-founder of Ryz Labs, and I'm joined by my friend, business partner and co-host, Jordan Metzner.
What's up, Jordan?
Jordan Metzner:
Hey Sam, how's it going? Happy to be back.
Sam Nadler:
Doing great. I'm especially excited about today's episode. Like always, we're covering a tool we’ve built. However, this tool is not some small internal tool we built over a short period of time. This has been a labor of love that's taken us quite a long time to build, but it’s having a big impact on our organization.
We're going to dive deep into that tool. I'm going to let you present it, and then we're going to do some quick, really hot news topics. As always, AI is crazy. There were lots of earnings these past couple days. The market's on fire — lots to talk about today.
Jordan Metzner:
So much to talk about. Again, another hot summer week with incredible earnings across the board with AI just driving it all. Complete market frenzy. So yeah, lots to talk about and super excited to jump into our product of the week as well.
Sam Nadler:
And before we jump into our product — everyone who's listening, please don’t forget to like and subscribe to Built This Week. New episodes every Friday where we cover what we’re building and what we think about what’s going on in AI.
So let me cue you up really quick. We have a pretty big product launch that is literally launching today as this episode comes out. The product name is Entrevista — which most people probably don’t know what that means — but why don’t you kind of give us the background? How it was built? We’ll have a series of questions. Hopefully it’s interesting to the audience. Let’s kick it off and dive in.
Jordan Metzner:
Yes. So Entrevista is a super interesting product. It started as an internal project here at Ryz Labs, and we've now gone on to launch it as an external product for other customers to use.
Like many of the products we build, it started with our own internal problems and trying to find some solutions for them. I think by the time this episode’s out, Entrevista will be on Product Hunt as well as a few other places online. So if you find Entrevista on Product Hunt, please give us an upvote.
Just to give a quick background on the problem case and why we built it — at Ryz Labs, we do thousands of interviews a year. I looked at the numbers and realized that every interview is incredibly expensive for us. If we interview someone and hire them — great, that’s a success. If not, maybe we’ve wasted time.
Interviews take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, and you constantly spend time in interviews where, you know, possibly the candidate may not be great. Yet you’ve dedicated that time out of respect.
As AI has been growing across our business, I think it was obvious that AI and interviewing were going to be a critical piece. Once we built the Rise Score app — which I think we talked about on a previous episode — scoring resumes automatically was a huge time-saver. But we realized that the big time suck is interviewing.
Jordan Metzner (cont'd):
So it started with the idea: how can we use AI and AI avatars to help us interview? Since we’ve launched Entrevista, we’ve done thousands of interviews. It’s been an incredible use case.
It has some great advantages over humans — unlimited availability, scalability, high reduction in bias. The scoring is fair and consistent. It has expertise across many subjects. The interviewer — an avatar named Carolina — is an expert in every subject she interviews for. The interviews are dynamic, not just fixed questions. It’s conversational, realistic, multilingual, shareable, and repeatable.
It’s had a big impact on our business, and I think it’s a great tool for large organizations that are hiring.
We’ll get into this — but even for candidates, it might be better than the historical human solution.
Sam Nadler:
Yeah, we’ve gotten a lot of feedback from candidates that they really enjoyed the experience. They know it’s an avatar. While it’s a bit unique or awkward at first, they adapt quickly. Carolina is patient, calm, and helpful.
The transparency of the scoring helps too. After an interview, candidates receive an email with their score. That drives more buy-in and ownership.
To find the best people, you need a wide top of funnel — and that means more interviews. AI is really the only way to scale that top of funnel in a meaningful way.
Jordan Metzner:
And for large hiring organizations — like we said, this is easier to define — why is it so helpful? I run a staffing company. Speed is critical. The number of candidates moving through the funnel is also critical.
Since we adopted Entrevista, the top of the funnel moves so much faster. From Rise Score directly into an interview, candidates can be assessed within minutes — no more waiting three days to schedule an interview.
Also, we get immediate feedback and scoring. You can prioritize candidates faster.
Sam Nadler:
Anything else from the organizational POV that makes this a unique tool?
Jordan Metzner:
Your feedback is probably useful here. Entrevista is an alternative to recruiters doing interviews. Has it replaced recruiters? Or given them superpowers?
Sam Nadler:
We still do human-based interviews. So it hasn’t replaced recruiters — it’s just accelerated the top of the funnel.
Recruiters still manage open roles, engage people, and handle outbound efforts. But now we can scale up capacity significantly without scaling up the team.
We’re not reducing recruiters — we’re expanding their productivity. In fact, we’ve hired more recruiters since implementing Entrevista.
Jordan Metzner:
Let’s jump into the product a bit.
Sam Nadler:
Yeah, would love to see a quick demo. We’ll block PII, of course. Entrevista works across all interview types.
In this case, we have a dermatologist interviewing for an RLA chief role. The candidate is fantastic — she scored 89.5 overall, 90 technical, 85 soft skills.
We ask background, interests, hobbies — in this case, Sarah plays tennis. We take a headshot, highlight strengths and weaknesses, and offer full video playback.
You can jump to chapters, get transcripts, subtitle support in multiple languages, and adjust playback speed. There’s also whiteboard analysis — in this case, a workflow diagram to standardize annotation. It’s all there.
Jordan Metzner:
And it doesn’t hide that it’s an avatar, but it feels normal. Latency is fine — not as fast as two humans, but not awkward either.
And it’s dynamic. The avatar follows up based on your answers.
Sam Nadler:
Yeah, it feels natural. You saw that with Sarah. And we can compare scores across dermatologists. If you post a job, within a day or two you can have scores and full interviews from five candidates — no time wasted.
But how does Carolina know to ask dermatology or legal questions vs. something off-topic?
Jordan Metzner:
We’ve done a lot of prompt engineering to keep Carolina tight, friendly, and professional. We’ve tested edge cases — inappropriate prompts, etc. — and she holds up well.
Candidates also want jobs, so they tend to act professionally. The feedback loop is solid — both recruiters and candidates give us great input.
Sam Nadler:
Cool. Can you show how an assessment is created?
Jordan Metzner:
Sure. Most of our team uses Entrevista via direct ATS integration. We use Lever, but Entrevista integrates with Greenhouse, Ashby, Workday, Salesforce, etc.
You can upload job descriptions manually or import from ATS. You can add job name, description, topics, questions, and toggle whiteboard mode. Then create the assessment and start sending it to candidates.
If something feels off, you can edit it. Otherwise, just ship it.
Sam Nadler:
It’s got user management, dashboards, analytics — maybe too boring for a podcast — but it’s a full product.
Jordan Metzner:
And it wasn’t coded in a few days. As new tech rolls out, we make improvements.
We use ChatGPT and other AI for scoring, translation, feedback. We use TTS, STT, avatar gen, video streaming and editing.
There’s a lot of tech under the hood — but it’s all built for a smooth, natural interview experience.
Sam Nadler:
Anything else to cover?
Jordan Metzner:
Yeah — right now AI interviews might seem novel. But this will become the norm.
At Amazon, I had to be trained to interview. You had debriefs with 4–5 people. But with more information and more consistency, AI interviewing levels the playing field. The cream rises.
Better candidates come through the door. Less bias.
Sam Nadler:
Amazing. It’s been a huge game-changer for us. The team was hesitant at first, but now they love it.
We've increased recruiting capacity by 25% in just 30 days. It’s done the opposite of what people fear with AI — it created jobs.
Jordan Metzner:
It’s been a great journey. And it’s just getting started. As new tools like GPT-5 come out, we’ll keep improving.
Sam Nadler:
Okay, let’s hit the news. Microsoft entered the $4 trillion club with Nvidia. What are your thoughts?
Jordan Metzner:
Microsoft was considered old-school, but they’ve adapted incredibly. Their OpenAI partnership, data centers — it’s created massive business.
Cloud demand isn’t slowing. Chip demand from Nvidia keeps rising. Microsoft’s shares jumped.
The old guard — Microsoft, Oracle — are now the AI innovators.
Sam Nadler:
Let’s move to Figma?
Jordan Metzner:
Figma IPO’d today. We talked about it before. Was supposed to list at $28 — opened at $85, now trading at $102.
It’s a great product.
The Adobe deal was for $20B, it fell through. Now they’re trading at $41B. Might’ve been better with a direct listing, but still — huge success.
We use Figma. Maybe less now with AI, but still a great story.
Sam Nadler:
2025’s been a great year for IPOs. Who’s next?
Jordan Metzner:
I don’t know. Hopefully Stripe. Now’s the time. Hope more tech companies go public. It’s good for the industry.
Sam Nadler:
Alright. Another crazy week in AI and tech. Microsoft, Figma — so much happening. Thanks for walking me through Entrevista.
Any final thoughts?
Jordan Metzner:
Great episode 6. Loved talking AI and Entrevista, Microsoft, Meta, Figma. So much happening.
GPT-5 might be next week — if that hits, it’s going to turn everything upside down.
AI’s not slowing down. We’re in for another wild week. Looking forward to it.
Sam Nadler:
This week. Breaking it down. We show you how fresh a clever tweet you liked — what did you build this week?
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