What We Learned From Taking Hector the Headhunter to HR Week Lisbon

After a couple of days of fully being in pitching mode, we finally sat down to share our story about this event as a startup. But first, let me introduce our mighty hedgehog. Hector is an AI headhunter. He matches talents and companies, but in a very different way. He doesn't look at CVs, because he is more into conversations. He believes a CV is a reduction of a person's full potential. In those conversations, he takes the time to truly understand the job requirements and the candidate profile, strenghts and skills. And when his nose twitches, he makes a warm introduction. The kind that actually goes somewhere. That's who we brought to HR Week Europe in Lisbon on the 28th and 29th of April. A stand, a pitch, and a hedgehog in a suit. And here's what we actually took home. 1. Your message needs to land in 10 seconds. People at conferences walk fast and they're overstimulated. They've been in conference rooms all day, and when they finally step out for a break, they're immediately being pitched again, just think about that for a second. You have approximately the length of a glance to make them slow down. "CVs lie. ATS is not helping." did that for us. We didn't open with what Hector does or how it works. The banner said what every HR professional in that room already felt, and they stopped because they recognized themselves in it. Hector started the conversation before we even opened our mouths. If your message requires explanation before it creates interest, it simply isn't ready yet. 2. The room already knows the problem. HR professionals at an event like this aren't people who need convincing that the current hiring system isn't working anymore. They are living inside that broken system every single day. Hundreds of applications, none of them right, ATS filtering out the candidates worth talking to, hiring managers frustrated and timelines slipping. They don't need you to explain the problem. They need to see the door out. That shift of moving from "let me tell you why this matters" to "you already know why this matters, here's what we built" changed the quality of every conversation, because people actually leaned in instead of nodding politely. 3. Speaking on stage changes the dynamic completely. A stand gets you conversations with the people who walk past. A stage gets you conversations with the whole room. If you have the opportunity to showcase your startup on a stage, take it. It will really make the difference. The conversations that follow are different in quality, because people come to you already warmed up, already interested, already with a specific question in mind. A stand is where people find you. A stage is where people remember you. 4. The conversations that matter happen at the edges. Not always at the stand, not always during the keynotes, but often in the corridor, at the coffee station, in the five minutes before a session starts. Some of the most useful conversations we had at HR Week happened when we weren't in full pitch mode, when it was just two people talking about something they genuinely found interesting, with no agenda and no QR code being pushed. Build margin into your schedule at events like this and leave room for the unplanned conversations, because those are often the ones that actually go somewhere. 5. Startups belong in these rooms. There's something that happens when founders are at the stand themselves, not sales reps, not hired staff, but the people who built the thing and lose sleep over it. People feel it, and the conversations go deeper faster. The questions get more interesting. You don't need the biggest stand or the largest team. You need a clear message, a product that solves a real problem, and the willingness to have the same conversation fifty times until you've sharpened it into something that really lands. The market is ready. HR professionals aren't waiting to be convinced that the current hiring process is broken. They are actively looking for something better, and that's exactly the room you want to be in. We're just getting started. 🦔