The Founder Before the Startup

Victor Eduoh founded Laand after experiencing the hiring problem from both sides.

Before Laand, he built VEC Studio, a product-led storytelling consultancy serving B2B SaaS and VC companies globally.

At its peak, the business reached significant figures in monthly recurring revenue in some months.

Hiring for that company exposed one problem.

Applications could be very plentiful for a single opening but resumes often revealed more about someone’s ability to present themselves than their ability to perform the work.

Then he experienced the same system from the other side.

While trying to develop his own Go-To-Market skills, he applied for roles he believed he could perform easily, only to be automatically rejected because employers were evaluating the resume rather than the person.

However, instead of applying conventionally in subsequent occasions, he researched companies, identified problems he could solve and contacted decision-makers directly.

This approach worked.

That became the product insight behind Laand.

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The Core Problems

For decades, recruitment has been built around a familiar sequence: write a job description, collect applications, screen CVs, interview candidates, assign tests, and eventually make a decision.

AI has made parts of that process faster. It can write resumes, optimise applications, rank candidates and surface profiles.

But the fundamental problem remains.

The hiring system is still optimised for proving that someone looks qualified but not that they can actually do the work.

That observation sits at the centre of Laand, which the founder describes as

High-agency proof-of-work infrastructure.

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The Strategic Decision Layer

One of the most important decisions the founder made was not simply to build another AI recruitment product.

It was to change the unit of evaluation from the candidate’s credentials to the company’s problem.

For talent, Laand analyses a role beyond its title, researches the company and its current position, compares that context against the candidate’s profile and produces a fit score.

Where gaps exist, it can provide a roadmap involving micro-projects, certifications and tools the candidate should develop before applying.

The B2B proposition takes the idea further.

Instead of simply uploading a conventional job description, a company can communicate its next business milestone.

Laand then breaks that milestone into tasks and ultimately into micro-projects that candidates can execute.

The company can therefore reach a small group of candidates who have already demonstrated their ability to solve relevant problems.

Laand is also deliberately not trying to replace existing ATS infrastructure immediately.

The strategy is to integrate with existing systems first, gain adoption and eventually position Laand as a more complete hiring system.

That is a more pragmatic entry strategy than attacking the recruitment stack head-on.

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The Ecosystem Context

Laand is entering one of the most mature software categories in existence: recruitment.

Its competitive environment includes:

• Traditional recruitment agencies and headhunters
  
• Applicant Tracking Systems
  
• AI-powered recruiting platforms
  
• Talent marketplaces
  
• Skills-assessment platforms
  
• Passive-candidate databases
  

The distinction Laand is attempting to establish is that these systems generally optimise parts of the hiring process.

Hence, Laand is trying to connect those functions around a more specific question:

Can this person solve the problem this company needs solved next?

There is also a broader labour-market context.

The proliferation of AI-generated applications means that simply increasing the volume of applications may become progressively less useful.

If both sides of the market can automate their existing behaviour, the value may shift toward evidence of capability.

That creates a potentially important opening for proof-of-work infrastructure.

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Observed Signals

1. The founder is building from lived operational pain

Laand was not born from an abstract observation about recruitment.

The founder experienced the problem as a hiring manager at VEC Studio and later as a candidate himself.

That gives the product an unusually direct problem-origin story.

2. User feedback is materially changing the product

The founder says he speaks with users, particularly paying users, to understand why they purchased and uses those conversations to shape the product.

For instance, one customer, a product manager with previous experience at a well-known company, helped reinforce the idea that the real opportunity could be on the employer side: even large talent platforms can struggle to surface the people companies actually need.

The B2B proposition emerged partly from that feedback.

3. Early distribution appears stronger on the talent side.

Laand was approaching around 1,500 users at the time of the interview, while its B2B product had only two pilot customers onboarding their first roles.

Interestingly, when those companies posted roles through Laand, the platform saw more than 100 new users in a single day, compared with a normal weekly acquisition level of roughly 100–150 users.

That suggests an important marketplace dynamic:

Employer-side supply may itself become a distribution mechanism for talent.

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Open Variables

Laand has evidence that users are getting interviews and landing roles they did not expect to reach.

But the founder openly acknowledges that it does not yet have sufficient longitudinal data showing whether people hired through Laand subsequently become successful employees.

The two B2B pilots were still onboarding their first roles at this stage of Laands development.

On the onther hand, most recruiters and hiring managers already have workflows and the ATS system.

Convincing an employer to introduce micro-projects, assessments and a different candidate journey may create behavioural friction.

The founder recognises this and this is making integration rather than immediate replacement a central to his go-to-market strategy.

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Why This Matters

For investors, Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) and employers, Laand is tackling a fundamental weakness in the labour market which is the difficulty of distinguishing between people who can present themselves well and people who can actually do the work.

By shifting hiring toward demonstrated capability and real-world problem solving, Laand could make talent discovery more efficient while reducing the uncertainty and cost of hiring.

For the longer-term opportunity is particularly interesting.

If Laand can build reliable data linking how someone performs during its assessment process to their eventual career outcomes, it could become more than a hiring platform.

It could become a talent intelligence layer, providing insight into skills, capability and employability across emerging markets.

That has implications not only for recruitment, but also for workforce development, investment decisions and employment programmes.

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Final Strategic Takeaway

Laand is not fundamentally trying to make job applications easier.

It is trying to make them more effective, efficient and meaningful.

Its bet is that the future of hiring will depend less on how convincingly someone can present their experience and more on whether they can demonstrate the ability to solve the actual problem sitting in front of an employer.

For talent, that means moving from reactive applicant to high-agency candidate.

For companies, it means moving from resume screening to demonstrated capability.

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This article is drawn from an in-depth founder interview conducted by Afriq IQ with Victor Eduoh, Founder of Laand. Selected insights and observations are published here.