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David Windley

CEO & Executive Chairman, HootRecruit · 1 appearance on the record.

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executivefounderoperatorhootrecruit.com ↗

David Windley is an executive and entrepreneur who served as President and CEO of IQTalent Partners and now leads HootRecruit. He previously served as Chief Human Resources Officer at Yahoo! and Fusion-io, held HR leadership roles at Microsoft and Intuit, and was Board Chair for SHRM.

12statements → 6claims → 3claims resolved → 100%fully supported → 3.92/5average certainty → 1.75/5average debate potential →

3 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 3 not checkable as stated how the 6 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 5 assertions · 5 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 6 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how David argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Windley: Traditional search firms charge a 33.3% fee per search
“And what you've pointed out is my theory of why there hasn't been as much change in this industry as in others, because it's such a good model for the hydrogen struggles, for the corn fairies, charging 33 and a third percent. Per search, right?”
David Windley Nov 25, 2025 ▶ 9:30 He Built a Mutual Fund Out of 200 Recruiting Clients and Hit $50M

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of David Windley on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything David Windley said on We Live to Build that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Windley: Internal Executive Recruiting Teams Are More Efficient Than External Search
“All my tech companies that I worked for, we hired internal staff, even at executive recruiting, because it was just a more efficient, better model”
David Windley Nov 25, 2025 ▶ 6:50 He Built a Mutual Fund Out of 200 Recruiting Clients and Hit $50M
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Windley: AI sourcing will eventually match or exceed human recruiting quality
“As AI gets better and better I think there will be a time where you can say that AI will be as good and maybe even better in quality.”
David Windley Nov 25, 2025 ▶ 19:34 He Built a Mutual Fund Out of 200 Recruiting Clients and Hit $50M
Assertion Supported
Windley: Traditional search firms charge a 33.3% fee per search
“And what you've pointed out is my theory of why there hasn't been as much change in this industry as in others, because it's such a good model for the hydrogen struggles, for the corn fairies, charging 33 and a third percent. Per search, right?”
David Windley Nov 25, 2025 ▶ 9:30 He Built a Mutual Fund Out of 200 Recruiting Clients and Hit $50M
Insight
Windley: Building a software startup inside a services firm drains P&L
“Because we were investing in a software startup within a. Professional services company, and it's a drain on the P and L right.”
David Windley Nov 25, 2025 ▶ 16:04 He Built a Mutual Fund Out of 200 Recruiting Clients and Hit $50M
Insight
Windley: Human-in-the-loop is the optimal AI agent architecture today
“We've designed our application to make sure the human is still in the loop, so the recruiter or the user, because of, for qualitative checks, right, and judgment calls, we believe that's the best state of design for AI applications and AI agents today”
David Windley Nov 25, 2025 ▶ 19:49 He Built a Mutual Fund Out of 200 Recruiting Clients and Hit $50M
Insight
Windley: Judgment-based processes will be the last AI agents automate
“Those processes where you still need human judgment will be the last ones that the AI agents will take over.”
David Windley Nov 25, 2025 ▶ 25:22 He Built a Mutual Fund Out of 200 Recruiting Clients and Hit $50M
Insight
Windley: Character, not competence, is the differentiator in executive hiring
“When you're hiring executives at one of these big companies, someone's going to be competent at all the things you need, right? You're hiring a CMO, you're hiring a chief technical, you're hiring a sales leader. They're going to be good at what they do. And th…”
David Windley Nov 25, 2025 ▶ 28:01 He Built a Mutual Fund Out of 200 Recruiting Clients and Hit $50M
Disclosure
Windley's recruiting business lost 75% of revenue at COVID-19 onset
“We dropped. 75% of the business. I put people on furlough, which was ended up being a good move instead of laying them off completely.”
David Windley Nov 25, 2025 ▶ 2:06 He Built a Mutual Fund Out of 200 Recruiting Clients and Hit $50M
Assertion Supported
Windley: Recruiting firm peaked at about $50M in revenue
“We peaked at about fifty million dollars in revenue.”
David Windley Nov 25, 2025 ▶ 2:42 He Built a Mutual Fund Out of 200 Recruiting Clients and Hit $50M
Assertion Supported
Windley: Recruiting firm sustained 30% CAGR from under $1M base
“We were growing at 30% a year. Kager was, you know, we started less than a million, like I said, and grew it, you know, from 20 14 through the teens.”
David Windley Nov 25, 2025 ▶ 3:09 He Built a Mutual Fund Out of 200 Recruiting Clients and Hit $50M
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Windley: Largest client never exceeded 10% of recruiting revenue
“Over those 10 years, our largest customer never got over 10% of our total revenue, and so we would run like a 182 hundred customers live at a time, right?”
David Windley Nov 25, 2025 ▶ 12:01 He Built a Mutual Fund Out of 200 Recruiting Clients and Hit $50M
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Windley: Firm billed $115-$125/hr for recruiting and $75-$80/hr for sourcing
“We would charge about 125, 115 dollars an hour for recruiting, about 75, 80 dollars an hour for sourcing, right?”
David Windley Nov 25, 2025 ▶ 12:50 He Built a Mutual Fund Out of 200 Recruiting Clients and Hit $50M

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
He Built a Mutual Fund Out of 200 Recruiting Clients and Hit $50M Nov 25, 2025 20m
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