Superposition vs Wellfound
One fills your inbox with applicants. The other finds the people who were never going to apply.
Inbound and outbound solve different halves of the problem
- Waiting for the right applicant.
- Reading 300 CVs.
- Match scores with no reasoning.
- Roles that go quiet after week two.
Wellfound is where startup candidates go to look. You post a role, your company profile does the selling, and people who are actively job hunting apply. Their AI matching and autopilot products sit on top of that pool. It is genuinely good at the top of the funnel, and for some roles that pool is enough.
The person you most want is usually not in it. They are three years into building something, not browsing job boards, and the only way you reach them is if somebody writes to them personally about the thing they are working on. That is an outbound search, and it is what the agent does.
The tell is the quality curve. Inbound gives you volume on day one that thins out fast. Outbound is slower to start and keeps producing, because the pool is everyone who could do the job rather than everyone currently looking.
How they fit together
Keep the job post
Nothing about running an agent stops you posting on Wellfound or anywhere else. Applicants can flow into the same pipeline and get read the same way.
The agent works the other 95 percent
It reads personal sites, GitHub, papers and talks to find people with the specific experience you asked for, then writes to each one about their own work.
Every candidate gets a written reason
Not a match score. A paragraph on why this person fits your requirements, with the evidence, so you can argue with it.
The same agent handles what comes back
Replies answered in context, your screening questions asked, interviews booked and recorded. Inbound applicants get the same treatment.
Side-by-side
Compare the workflow, not just the feature list.
Pricing and features checked 21 September 2026. Tell us if something is out of date.
Questions.
Answered.
No. Keep the post running. Inbound is cheap and occasionally excellent. The agent covers the people who would never see it.
Yes. Applicants are read against the same requirements and get the same screening and scheduling as sourced candidates.
No. Each message is written from something the person actually did, and the agent answers whatever comes back rather than dropping them into a sequence.
The agent starts reading the same day as intake, and the first written candidate reads usually land within a few days.
A Wellfound alternative for startups
When the applicant pool is not the problem you have.
Superposition vs. LinkedIn Recruiter
LinkedIn Recruiter gives you access to the obvious database. Superposition does the work of finding and engaging the non-obvious candidates.
Hire a Founding Engineer
Your first engineering hire will define your technical culture. Get it right.
Reach the ones who never applied.
Tell us the role and we will show you three people the agent would write to first.