AI talent platform Dex has appointed Secret Escapes co-founder Tom Valentine as chief operating officer and Progression co-founder Jonny Burch as head of design.
Dex matches fast-growing tech firms with software engineers. Its founder Paddy Lambros said early-stage tech businesses should turn to former founders when it comes to hiring, with AI changing how companies fundamentally go from zero to one.
As AI agents expand what leaner and more experienced teams can achieve, Dex believes that new recruits with sound human judgement to find the solutions to complex problems, the initiative to take action, and the willingness to take responsibility for outcomes, have increasingly become the most valuable skills in the hunt for top talent.
Valentine co-founded luxury travel marketplace Secret Escapes, and subsequently served as executive chairman and COO at AI executive assistant startup Fyxer AI.
Burch co-founded and led career development platform Progression, which was backed by the likes of LocalGlobe, Connect Ventures, and Village Global before being acquired by Careerminds in 2024.
Dex is focused on matching engineers with opportunities that fit a person’s skills, experience, ambitions, and motivations. It uses AI to develop a deeper understanding of candidates beyond merely their suitability for a certain vacancy, with the ultimate goal of supporting job seekers throughout their careers. Its talent agent is built on a mix of AI models from Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI.
Lambros, who previously led the early-stage talent functions at Atomico and Improbable before founding Dex, has interviewed 10,000+ people over the course of his career. He believes that hiring former founders is the most practical response to meet the relentless demands of building in the AI age.
“AI agents are expanding what leaner teams can achieve at a staggering rate,” he said. “This means that the ability to decide what needs doing, get it moving quickly, and take responsibility for the result, makes human agency all the more valuable in today’s workplace. Former founders have spent years working this way.
“Tom and Jonny have built businesses around problems that matter deeply to Dex, namely, how to scale a marketplace and how to help people build better careers. They’re joining our already world class team to tackle those challenges head on with us.”
Valentine said: “Hiring engineers has been the hardest part of my job for about 20 years. In that time, I’ve seen all sorts of propositions to improve the experience for candidates and companies come and go.
“AI now makes it possible to understand a candidate beyond a specific role in a way that just wasn’t previously possible. This is where the opportunity to build a truly candidate-centric recruitment business lies.”
Burch added: “At Progression, I wanted to give employees a ‘career passport’ – i.e. something that helped them understand and communicate where they could go next. I have unfinished business with that idea, and I think Dex is best placed to deliver it.
“Although I’m a designer, I’m still a founder at heart. I love early-stage teams, difficult problems, and the autonomy to solve them. I want us to build a product so good that candidates recommend it because of the experience itself, regardless of whether we place them in a job.”