Reinventing The Power Of Recruitment, A Founder’s Story with Gergo Vari

I am Gergo Vari, I have one mission: to revolutionize job search for companies and professionals. A founder by nature, I first tasted entrepreneurship as a child selling fruit from my grandfather’s orchard. My journey through founding, funding, and exiting successful startups has taught me a valuable lesson: the hiring process is broken. And so is the way we look for jobs and develop our careers. That’s why I created Lensa, a start-up that offers a technological solution to the crisis of the career marketplace.

Tell us about your childhood and where you grew up

In Hungary, which at the time was just recovering from the soviet union curtain. Thus, modernism was just the beginning. I was spending my time between my father's orchard outside of Pest and in the capital city of Budapest. When I was young due to my parents' work I had the opportunity to move to the US where I was immediately interested in being part of that market.

How did you get started as an entrepreneur?

In 2001, Just after I graduated college and in my parent's garage, me and 3 friends funded and launched Profession.hu. We only had one computer at the time so we will take turns in coding. It later became Hungary’s leading recruitment platform. In just 4 years, we reached an extraordinary market share of 75%. When SanomaMedia purchased the company in 2005, the transaction was the largest of its kind in Hungary up to that time. My passion for startups led me on to found and head e-Ventures, and later, in 2008, to the launch and sale of AffilateMedia, Network.hu, and Replise. These ventures opened my eyes to the need for recruiting and human resources technology that puts people first. Then in 2015, I decided to launch Lensa a platform that uses Big Data and Ai to match employees with recruiters based on patterns and previous analyze of recruitment trends.

What is one business lesson you would tell a startup founder?

The difference between a successful project and a good project is the commitment level you put into it