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Your first customers for an AI recruiting tool are recruiters, talent acquisition leads and founders who are hiring without a recruiter. Many of them spend time in a handful of Slack and Discord groups, asking each other for tool advice. Here is where to go, what each group allows, and how to earn conversations instead of getting banned.

All guidesFor founders of an AI recruiting tool

1. RecOps Collective (Slack)

This is a community of recruiting operations people: the folks who choose and configure ATS tools, sourcing tools and automations. Find the join link on their site, then read the channel list and any pinned rules before posting, since vendor pitches are usually restricted to specific channels. Search the workspace for "screening", "sourcing tool" and "Greenhouse integration" to find people describing the exact pain you solve. Reply with a useful answer first, and only mention your tool if someone asks what you would use.

2. Rands Leadership Slack (hiring channels)

Rands Leadership Slack is a large free community of engineering managers and leaders, and it has channels about hiring and interviewing. These people hire engineers and often have no recruiter or a slow one. Search for threads like "how do you screen 300 applicants" or "take-home vs live interview" and share how you would handle it. An example reply: "We stopped reading every resume and scored them against 5 must-haves first. Happy to share the rubric if useful."

3. Recruiting Brainfood community (Hung Lee)

Recruiting Brainfood is a long-running weekly newsletter for recruiters, with live sessions and a community around it. Subscribe and read a few issues to learn the vocabulary recruiters actually use about AI, such as candidate experience, bias and compliance. Join the live sessions or community spaces linked from the newsletter and ask real questions, for example: "For those using AI screening, what made you trust it or drop it?" The answers become your positioning and your list of people to follow up with.

4. Founder Slacks with a hiring channel

Seed and Series A founders who hire their first 5 to 20 people are great early buyers because they decide fast. Look for founder communities you can already join, such as an accelerator alumni Slack, a local startup Slack, or a newsletter community you subscribe to, and find the #hiring or #recruiting channel. Watch for posts like "Anyone know a good contract recruiter?" and reply with a concrete offer: "I am building an AI screener. I will run your open role through it for free and send you a shortlist this week."

5. AI builder Discords

Discord servers for AI tool users and builders, like the ones tied to model providers or popular AI podcasts and frameworks, are full of small teams hiring engineers. Most have a #showcase or #show-and-tell channel where demos are allowed, and strict rules everywhere else. Post a short demo there showing one job description going in and a ranked shortlist coming out, and ask a specific question instead of asking people to sign up. Read the rules channel first, because self-promotion outside showcase channels is a common ban reason.

6. Sourcing and recruiter Discord or Slack groups

Sourcers and agency recruiters run smaller groups on Slack and Discord, often linked from SourceCon content, recruiter newsletters or LinkedIn creator profiles. Search LinkedIn for "sourcing Slack" or "recruiter Discord" and look in the bios of recruiters who post about Boolean search and sourcing. Join, introduce yourself honestly as a founder building a tool, and offer to test candidate search on a real hard-to-fill role. A good intro: "Founder here, building AI sourcing. Looking for 3 recruiters with a tough req who want a free second pair of eyes."

7. Turn threads into DMs and calls

Keep a simple sheet of every person who described a real problem: name, community, role, and what they said. DM them within a day and refer back to the thread: "Saw your post about 400 applicants for one role. I built something for that. Want me to run that role through it and send you the top 20?" Aim for 5 of these DMs a day. Hulby, an AI cofounder, can find these threads and draft the follow-ups for you each day.

Mistakes to skip

  • Dropping a product link in your first message in a community.
  • Posting the same pitch in every channel at once.
  • Ignoring recruiter concerns about bias, privacy and compliance instead of answering them.
  • Talking about AI features instead of time saved on one specific role.

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Questions

Who should I target first, recruiters or founders?

Founders hiring without a recruiter decide fastest. Recruiters and RecOps people give better product feedback. Talk to both, and sell to founders first.

Can I post my tool directly in these communities?

Only in channels the rules allow, like showcase or promo channels. Everywhere else, answer questions and wait to be asked.

How long before this brings a customer?

If you send real offers like a free shortlist for an open role, you can get your first trial users within a couple of weeks. Paying customers usually follow from those trials.

What should I offer for free?

Run one real open role through your tool and send back a ranked shortlist with reasons. It shows value on their own data and starts a sales conversation.