---
type: podcast-episode
slug: 03-henri-nordstrom-jobilla
number: 3
title: Betting the Company on Agents
guestName: Henri Nordström
guestTitle: Chief Product Officer
guestLinkedin: 'https://www.linkedin.com/in/henri-nordstrom'
guestCompany: Jobilla
guestCompanyUrl: 'https://www.jobilla.com/'
guestBio: >
  Henri Nordström is the Chief Product Officer and former CEO of Jobilla, a
  Finnish recruitment SaaS company. He co-founded Jobilla in 2016 and grew it
  into one of Finland's top 15 fastest-growing companies by 2023. He then guided
  the company through a wholesale AI transformation — pivoting from tech-enabled
  services to an AI-native platform where autonomous agents handle digital
  headhunting and candidate acquisition — and stepped down as CEO to focus
  entirely on that product vision.
hosts:
  - slug: tapio-haaja
  - slug: joni-juup
summary: >-
  What started as a tech-enabled digital headhunting service is now a true SaaS
  platform powered by agents. Henri shares how Jobilla transitioned to an
  AI-first company during a tough market, why 75% of their code is now written
  by AI, and why he stepped down as CEO to focus entirely on the product's
  vision.
hook: >-
  Most SaaS leaders retrofit AI into what they already have. Henri Nordström
  rebuilt Jobilla from scratch and stepped down as CEO to make it work.
youtubeId: sNvFxzkW6qc
spotifyUrl: 'https://open.spotify.com/episode/3EUAplu61HNVwjieI2Ohn4'
appleUrl: >-
  https://podcasts.apple.com/fi/podcast/3-henri-nordstr%C3%B6m-betting-the-company-on-agents/id1886740996?i=1000767931266
duration: '47:10'
publishedAt: '2026-06-08'
updatedAt: '2026-06-08'
chapters:
  - time: '01:43'
    label: What broke in the 2023 recruitment market
  - time: '03:01'
    label: Henri's AI aha moment with GPT-2
  - time: '07:38'
    label: Building the AI Recruiter
  - time: '16:16'
    label: Betting the company's existence on agents
  - time: '28:26'
    label: Writing code and defining a machine's job
  - time: '31:09'
    label: Changing roles from CEO to CPO
  - time: '43:08'
    label: Personal AI use cases (and doing taxes with Claude)
---

Jobilla hit a wall in 2023. Henri Nordström bet the entire company on AI and shipped an AI recruiter that revived their hyper-growth — customers went from 42 at year-end to 360 by April.

What started as a tech-enabled digital headhunting service is now a true SaaS platform powered by agents. Henri shares how Jobilla transitioned to an AI-first company during a tough market, why 75% of their code is now written by AI, and why he stepped down as CEO to focus entirely on the product's vision.

## What we cover

- **The tipping point.** How the tight market of 2022 forced Jobilla to abandon their existing software and invest millions into a brand new, AI-driven platform.
- **Codifying best practices.** How Jobilla trained their AI Recruiter on data from over 40,000 manual campaigns to automate candidate sourcing and targeted Meta advertising.
- **Human vs. machine.** The philosophy of "never send a human to do a machine's job," and why AI writing 75% of the codebase makes human software architects more valuable than ever.
- **From CEO to CPO.** Why Henri handed over the CEO reins to focus entirely on the AI transformation, taking a page from Steve Jobs's approach to visionary design.
- **The future of hiring.** Why the entire recruitment screening process should be automated, leaving humans to do what they do best: making the final call on the top few candidates.