Yakov Filippenko, Founder and CEO of Intch – Interview Series

Yakov Filippenko, founder and CEO of Intch, has built a career at the intersection of technology, product innovation, and global business growth. After starting his career as a business analyst and product manager at Prime TASS and advancing to project leadership roles at Yandex, he transitioned into senior tech leadership as CTO at LinguaLeo, where he guided rapid expansion into international markets and scaling of products to millions of users. Yakov went on to co-found SailPlay, growing it into a global marketing automation platform before its acquisition, then served as Chief Technology Officer at AltaIR Capital, and in 2021 founded Intch, Inc, a platform connecting businesses with top part-time professionals worldwide, overseeing product development, go-to-market strategy, and international growth while earning recognition such as #1 Product Hunt and Google Labs support.

Intch is a professional networking and hiring platform designed to reimagine how businesses and professionals connect for flexible part-time roles, using AI to match talent with companies seeking expertise and enabling users to bypass traditional recruiting barriers while fostering meaningful professional relationships; the service aims to help employers access skilled, remote professionals cost-effectively and supports talent in finding relevant opportunities through direct connections and AI-driven introductions.

Before founding Intch, you spent more than a decade building and scaling software products as a founder, CTO, and product leader across marketing automation, edtech, and large-scale consumer platforms, often taking companies from early stage to global scale. What specific lessons or pain points from that journey led you to start Intch, and how did those experiences shape your decision to focus on intent-based, part-time hiring for SMBs rather than traditional job marketplaces?

If I had to name the single most important lesson I’ve learned, it’s that whenever we say “we’re competing with other startups/firms,” what we really mean is: “Our team is competing with their team.”

This means that your ability as a founder to hire and engage top-tier professionals is your most critical skill. It’s not about how smart you are or how many hours you work; it’s about who you bring into the fold.

From a practical standpoint, the best talent is hired through trusted contacts, not job boards. I experienced this pain firsthand when I moved to the U.S. with my first startup. When you hire through job boards, you are competing against thousands of massive corporations. As a relatively small startup, you usually can’t match their benefits or scale, which puts you in a weak position.

Having built two startups (one acquired, one currently growing), one lesson remains constant: early-stage teams cannot afford a bloated headcount or inefficient hiring cycles. With tightening U.S. immigration policies and global uncertainty, the need for a new hiring model has become obvious, especially for SMBs.

That is why I designed my second startup, Intch, to bridge this gap. We moved away from traditional marketplaces and “job-title” filters to focus on specific intent. 

On Intch, companies don’t just post job listings; they post actual business challenges — whether it’s launching a GTM strategy or securing investor introductions. Our AI then identifies professionals who have already solved those exact problems. Because we built it with community mechanics, hiring managers can easily approach ex-colleagues and gather authentic feedback.

Intch has grown rapidly while staying profitable, scaling to hundreds of thousands of users across more than 140 countries. What were the earliest signals that validated your intent-based approach to connecting professionals and SMBs?

Our earliest validation came from a tight circle. We started with my personal network and our team’s collective connections to test the core value proposition. What we observed, almost immediately, was that users were naturally shifting away from ‘casual networking’ and gravitating toward high-stakes outcomes like hiring and sales. 

To confirm this, we ran aggressive one-to-two-week ad sprints to identify exactly which features people were willing to pay for. This eliminated guesswork and allowed us to start building around real intent instead of assumptions, creating the foundation for our global expansion.

One of the clearest signals was our own success story. Before the market widely embraced the fractional C-level trend, we had already used Intch to bring on a part-time CMO. This was the game-changer: using our own platform to access top-tier expertise allowed us to stay lean and unlock 50x growth in just 12 months. It reinforced our core belief: access to the right expertise at the right moment matters more than accumulating headcount. 

The hiring market today is overwhelmed by ghost jobs, mass applications, and AI-generated noise. From your perspective, where did traditional hiring platforms break down, and how does focusing on real goals instead of job titles change the dynamics?

It’s more marketing than reality. These “AI fairy tales” are simply stories told to appease both external and internal audiences. Global crises and AI hype have become convenient tools for CEOs to clear the skeletons out of their closets and blame the fallout on “innovation.” Let’s be clear: these layoffs aren’t about innovation; they are purely economic.

Any company attempting to fully replace humans with AI is heading toward a dead end. Too often, organizations treat people as interchangeable inputs, optimizing for short-term efficiency at the expense of human judgment.

AI has enormous potential to improve hiring, but only if it is used as a tool rather than a substitute. It should function like a calculator — removing the friction of routine tasks so humans can focus on complex, high-stakes decisions. You can still solve equations by hand, but that isn’t the best use of your time. Routine screening, formatting, and coordination can be delegated to AI, but selecting the person you will build with for years requires human intuition. In fact, one of my best hires would never have made it past a standard automated tracking system.

While many platforms are shifting from job-title filters to skill-based matching, we need to go further. We must focus on demonstrated outcomes: Has this person already solved the specific problem you’re facing today? This shift aligns with how the modern workforce actually thinks. After waves of layoffs, many professionals realize that true security comes from a diversified portfolio of projects rather than reliance on a single employer. Fractional work hasn’t accelerated because it’s trendy; it’s accelerated because it reflects economic reality. For Gen Z in particular, freedom is the priority. Flexibility isn’t a “perk” to them — it’s the baseline expectation.

You’ve spoken about restoring trust in hiring, particularly around exploitative “spec work” and scam-like test assignments. What are the most damaging trust failures you’re seeing right now, and how can platforms realistically fix them?

We once had someone we’d never met give an interview to a magazine claiming to be our CTO. That’s how absurd and distorted things have become.

As we know, AI-generated avatars can now join remote interviews, faking competence while hiding the actual person behind the screen. When everything is being spoofed and trust erodes at that level, managers naturally retreat to the one thing they can rely on: word-of-mouth referrals. 

This is why, at Intch, we double down on network credibility and user verification. And as for ‘spec work,’ our model completely protects candidates from that trap by removing incentives entirely. Instead, it encourages them to showcase a strong portfolio, which is what actually drives up our market value. Reputation and verified outcomes replace unpaid trial labor.

As U.S. immigration policies tighten and uncertainty around visas, remote work eligibility, and long-term residency increases, many skilled immigrants appear to be reassessing whether the United States is still the best place to build their careers. Based on what you’re seeing on Intch, how are immigrant professionals responding to these signals, and which countries or regions are emerging as preferred alternatives to the U.S. for high-skilled talent?

For decades, the American Dream has functioned as a global North Star for ambitious professionals. Today, we’re watching the U.S. transform from a high-speed launchpad into a bureaucratic bottleneck. With skyrocketing visa fees and residency backlogs, the life of a world-class pro has turned into a high-stakes survival game. 

At Intch, we’re tracking a massive pivot: top-tier experts are no longer willing to play the ‘patience game’ or settle for subpar wages just to keep a sponsor. Talent is mobile, and the anxiety of a fragile status is now outweighing the fading allure of the U.S. market.

Instead of chasing one symbolic destination, professionals are now evaluating ecosystems more pragmatically. Where is the regulatory environment predictable? Where is it easy to build? Where can families feel secure?

Personally, I don’t feel comfortable going somewhere where I am not welcome. At the end of the day, why bother if there are other places where we are wanted and there is a great vibe? 

While the U.S. increases administrative complexity, regions like the UAE and Saudi Arabia are rolling out the red carpet with Golden Visas. Singapore is onboarding innovators in weeks, and China is aggressively poaching deep-tech talent with dedicated programs. Our users are increasingly choosing Dubai, Shenzhen, or Lisbon, hubs where they aren’t just tolerated as immigrants, but actively recruited.

Intch reached significant scale with a relatively small team and minimal external funding. How did your background as both a technical and product leader influence decisions around growth, hiring, and capital efficiency?

My background in product and technology taught me early that vanity metrics are fragile. The market reality is now catching up to that. For years, founders chased the investor-friendly allure of raw user growth, but in today’s hyper-volatile landscape, fundamentals such as revenue and long-term sustainability matter more than ever. The margin for error has vanished. You either decode your users’ needs in real-time or you disappear. To stay competitive, you must be ready to validate hypotheses in days while leveraging on-demand talent to keep your burn rate lean and your pivot speed high. In fact, Intch reached nearly its current scale, hitting $1M in monthly revenue, with just two developers.

Having built and exited two successful startups and handled every people-related challenge without an HR department gives me a unique edge. It allows me to see that the current crisis in HR is fundamentally about control. Employers are obsessed with oversight, while talent is demanding autonomy and freedom from the fear of layoffs. 

I’m building Intch to bridge this gap. I believe the most critical thing for any founder is to stay laser-focused on the core problem their customers are facing. Internally, we practice what we preach by constantly relying on fractional hiring ourselves.

AI is often framed as a threat to transparency in hiring, yet Intch uses AI as a core differentiator. Where do you think AI genuinely improves talent matching, and where does it risk making the hiring experience worse?

The way companies deploy AI in hiring today reminds me of the early days of Microsoft Word. Before Word, managers dictated drafts to assistants, reviewed edits, and focused on decisions. When Word arrived, many began editing everything themselves in the name of efficiency. What changed, though, was not productivity, but the fact that leaders actually forgot how to delegate.

We’re seeing a similar pattern in HR. AI now handles documentation, formatting, screening tests, and scheduling. That’s appropriate.

What remains should be judgment, communication, and contextual thinking. Few candidates want to feel evaluated exclusively by a machine. When a company cannot dedicate even a short conversation to a prospective hire, it signals something about how that relationship will be valued. 

All in all, AI should enhance human discernment, not replace it. The responsibility lies with leadership to decide what deserves automation and what requires presence. 

Intch has also introduced tools beyond hiring, including Aura PR Copilot. What problem does Aura solve for users, and how does it connect to Intch’s broader product direction?

Aura PR Copilot solves the same core problem as our main product, removing the barriers between a great idea and its execution by replacing routine with a smart tool. 

For early-stage founders, traditional PR is far too slow and expensive. Aura addresses this by simply joining your calls on Meet, Teams, or Zoom to record your thoughts like a standard notetaker. Then, it generates ready-to-publish content in the appropriate format. 

Research shows that while 60% of recruiters trust public expertise more than a traditional CV, most people, especially in today’s volatile job market, simply don’t have the time to work on their personal brand. With Aura, the human provides substance-filled insights while our PR copilot handles the structuring and formatting. That combination allows experts to become visible.

Looking ahead, what does success for Intch look like over the next few years, and more broadly, what would need to change for the global hiring market to feel functional again for both businesses and professionals?

Success for Intch means becoming the core infrastructure for the fractional economy. We want to reach a point where any business challenge, regardless of its complexity, can be solved by matching it with a proven expert in minutes. 

For the global hiring market to become functional again, we need to kill the obsession with control and oversight. The old model of buying a person’s entire life for forty hours a week is broken and inefficient. Instead, hiring needs to evolve toward precision, trust, and outcome-based collaboration. We are effectively pioneering that.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit Intch.