Founder turns personal frustration into AI recruiting startup

This article is a part of Startup Spotlight, a series that features young, up-and-coming startups.

Photo credit: Timmy Loen

Boring outreach work pushed Ikhwan Iqbal to build Boring AI. He kept losing time manually searching for the right professional contacts on LinkedIn. Recruiters around him faced the same grind, so he began automating the search and the write-up.

😟 Problem

Recruiters and BD teams burn hours skimming LinkedIn, job boards, and social feeds for candidates and sales leads. Independent recruiters and SMEs in Southeast Asia feel this most. Speed decides who closes. Manual search slows outreach and weakens conversion.

💡 Solution

Boring AI automates people search, profiling, and outreach.

• AI People Search for targeted queries such as “sales manager in Jakarta with tech background”
• Deep Research that parses public posts and company updates for interests, travel, and outreach timing
• Outreach Generator that drafts tailored messages for faster replies

Image credit: Boring AI

📊 Market size

• Most of the 30,000 to 40,000 recruiting agencies and HR teams in Southeast Asia still lean on manual workflows
• Initial target of 3,000 to 5,000 recruiters in Indonesia
• Boring AI estimates US$10,000 lifetime value per customer and US$30 million revenue at 10% regional penetration

🤝 Team

• Ikhwan Iqbal CEO and founder. AI researcher and manager at Lenovo Japan with projects across Japan, Taiwan, and Indonesia

🚀 Traction

• MVP launched mid-2025 with 200-300 active users
• Paying users on People Search
• Pilots with Telkom Indonesia, East Bridge, and ITS Surabaya
• Reported 70% cut in manual search time
• Early users noted higher deal conversion after adopting the workflow

🏆 Competition

Global tools include Apollo.io, ZoomInfo, and HireEZ. Regional platforms include Glints and Ekrut. Many emphasize static contact databases or job posts, while Boring AI focuses on relevance and timing through profile insights and auto-generated outreach in a single workflow.

💰 Financials

Software as a service subscriptions drive revenue. Pro plan sits near US$19 per user per month. Team and enterprise plans range from US$300 to US$500 per month, depending on seats and data limits. The company bootstrapped about US$30,000 in funding. A pre-seed raise is planned for late 2025.

This piece was written with AI. A human editor reviews it before publishing. All information is provided by the startup.