Free Agency offers personal representation and career management for mid- to C-level tech candidates, arranging interviews and negotiating compensation on behalf of clients. The firm charges candidates 5%–10% of their first year’s salary and offers a free employer subscription that shares up to five candidates per week. To date it says it has arranged roughly 4,700 interviews and negotiated $200,000,000 in total salary offers, including a senior director placement worth more than $900,000 in total compensation. The company highlights a hands-off candidate experience—arranging interviews without clients submitting applications—and is building a Career Operating System for job search, performance reviews and compensation benchmarking. Free Agency acknowledges gaps in roster diversity (talent agents are 60% female and 20% from underrepresented groups) and plans to deploy resources for sales, customer acquisition and go-to-market programs to improve this. Free Agency, founded last year by Sherveen Mashayekhi and Alex Rothberg, provides career coaching, interview preparation, and salary-negotiation services to tech workers and takes 5–10% of a client’s first-year salary as its fee. The company is positioned as an agent-like career partner, aiming to manage careers long-term by helping talent develop skills, brands, and networks and by finding new opportunities. Free Agency is early-stage with about 11 employees and has reached 100 “Free Agents” on its platform. The founders and CEO frame the model as incentive-aligned with candidates and attractive to employers because better-paid, satisfied hires stay longer. The startup draws a parallel to income-share agreements in edtech and sees its service expanding beyond the job-search inflection point into multi-year career management and ancillary revenue opportunities.

Total raised

$15M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Series A

Latest activity

Feb 2022