The Problem We Couldn't Name

👋🏻 I'm Alison. I'm writing this because I'm the wordsmith. Nilima is dyslexic and self-identified as "allergic to words." Our different skills are kind of the whole point of our story.

Introve started on a Zoom call, though we didn't know that at the time. I was helping Nilima with her resume, and she was talking through her experience at a previous role. She mentioned, almost in passing, how her team and a parallel team had been beefing– terrible working relationships, the kind that make collaboration impossible. So she built them a dashboard. Not because it was her job, but because she realized it could smooth the work and start healing the rift between the teams.

Then she moved on to the next bullet point.

I stopped her. "Wait. Say more about that."

She stared back through the screen. "Why? Anyone could do that."

"No," I said. "Not everyone could. And even if they could, not everyone would."

She paused. "I'll believe you but I still don't see it."

I didn't understand how she couldn't see it. She didn't just "build a dashboard" like she casually said. She read the human dynamics between two warring teams, identified what was actually preventing them from communicating, then took the initiative to build a solution despite it being adjacent to her work at best. And she still couldn't see the value in what she'd done.

Recognizing Our Blind Spots

Turns out, I had the same blindness. I'd always thought the way I processed problems was just... normal. Systems thinking always came naturally and felt obvious. How could you not trace things through to their logical conclusions? But coworkers and managers kept asking "how did you figure that out?" and I'd be genuinely confused by the question. In my mind, what I'd designed or done wasn't impressive. It just made sense.

We started noticing this pattern everywhere. In our job search groups (that's how we met). In Rhize, the community we were both part of and now partner with. Across TikTok, where our feeds were filled with people saying the same things we were saying to each other. People were systematically unable to see what made them valuable. And the tools meant to help them– the AI resume ‘optimizers’, the auto-apply bots– were making it worse, pushing everyone to contort themselves into some algorithm-friendly shape.

Could We Recreate It?

We needed a project. Neither of us could sit still without jobs. So we started building a prototype to see if we could recreate that discovery experience at scale– the one where someone helps you see what you can't see in yourself. We sent out a survey, but we didn't ask people to self-assess their skills. Nilima and I had both thought we understood our own strengths until someone else showed us otherwise, so we figured asking people to rate themselves wouldn't tell us much. Instead, we asked how well their resumes reflected their potential and how important finding the right role was to them.

Most people felt poorly represented. Most people said finding the right role was incredibly important.

We kept building. We tested with friends, former coworkers, and most importantly, strangers. People started skeptical– which was fair. But by the end, they were amazed. "Wait, that's a good question." "I wouldn't have come up with those words but that's exactly it." "This is so cool." Some people cried. They said they felt seen, that talking to Mirra gave them back confidence the hiring process had stripped away.

When people tear up testing your prototype, you know you're onto something real.

What We’re Really After

Here's the thing: Mirra helps individuals discover and capture their value. But Introve is trying to fix the whole damn system.

Hiring has become an AI arms race. One side gets a tool, the other side builds something to neutralize it. It's a race to the bottom. Meanwhile, hiring managers have more impact on someone's wellbeing than their spouse does. People spend most of their lives at work. The corporate world talks about "talent" like interchangeable machine parts, but the reality is every person changes a team– for good or bad.

Looking for work shouldn't be a full-time job. Hiring teams deserve confidence they're not being catfished. Candidates deserve confidence they're not being baited and switched.

When people feel unstable, they make worse decisions. When they make worse decisions at work, they burn out fast.

Both sides should make strategic decisions, not desperate ones.

We might be delusional about the scope of change we're trying to make. But someone needs to center the value of humans in a system that's forgotten they matter. Hiring and career growth should be intentional, transparent, and strategic. As AI matures, the human qualities Mirra captures become even more important.

That's what Introve is building toward. A world where people feel confident in their value, where hiring is honest, and where careers are paths to impact rather than sources of burnout.

We're Alison and Nilima. We started this because we couldn't see our own value, and we're building it for everyone else who can't either.