Carl Hoffmann has spent his career at the frontier of HR technology: founding, scaling, and exiting companies in the space before spotting the next gap. With Ahron, he's building the operational layer that makes AI deployment in HR possible at scale. Most companies that try to deploy AI in HR fail because their systems are disconnected and their data isn't clean. So, Ahron's mission is to fix the foundation first: connecting existing HR stacks, making processes visible, and giving AI agents the context they need to operate reliably and under full company control.
When it came to structuring his first funding round, Carl brought the same deliberate thinking to his cap table, and found in Roundtable a partner that matched his standards for speed and simplicity. He wanted a curated group of angels (all of them senior HR operators and HR tech entrepreneurs) who could act as market multipliers, without the cap table complexity that usually comes with that. Roundtable delivered: a single SPV, a streamlined and intuitive platform, and a hands-on team that kept things moving. The angel side closed in under a week.
Key takeaways:
- Ahron sits above a company's existing HR stack as an operational layer, connecting systems, making processes visible, and letting AI agents handle the administrative work, so that HR teams can focus on people.
- Having been through funding rounds before, Carl Hoffmann was deliberate about keeping the cap table clean from the start; Roundtable made it straightforward to pool ten strategic business angels from the HR tech industry into a single SPV, alongside a VC lead.
- With senior executives as investors, collecting documents and signatures on time was a real challenge; the Roundtable team stepped in with hands-on, pragmatic support, ensuring the entire process was smooth from start to finish.
- Roundtable's platform also benefits the angels themselves: beyond an easy onboarding experience, the SPV structure gives them flexibility going forward, including the ability to participate in secondaries in future rounds.
Roundtable: Can you introduce Ahron to our readers?
Carl Hoffmann: Ahron is an operating system for AI agents in HR. HR processes involve a lot of administrative work, and large companies often rely on over 100 different HR systems simultaneously. What we provide is a digital twin of the entire HR process, and within that, we allow AI agents to operate, effectively removing the administrative burden from the HR function. That means handling things like interview scheduling, candidate pre-screening, and other admin-heavy tasks that AI agents can take over from human teams.
Roundtable: What makes your approach different, compared to your competitors?
Carl Hoffmann: Many companies today want to launch AI agents, but their systems aren't well connected. That makes it very difficult to deploy AI successfully, because when systems are siloed and data isn't clean, the agent operates without the right context. It's essentially blind. That's the core insight behind Ahron: before you can launch AI effectively, you need a solid foundation where you can actually see how your HR processes run, and identify where AI can generate a real return on investment.
We work with best-in-class partners rather than rebuilding what already exists. For system connectivity and data context, we use Celonis and have built an HR data model on top of it, leveraging their process mining capabilities so that AI agents have very specific, accurate context to work with.
We've also developed a context and control layer called Nexus, which provides AI agents with the right HR policies and guardrails. It gives companies full visibility and control over what the AI is doing, which is especially critical when operating at a global scale, where different legislations and regulations apply. Our agents work with deterministic policies to handle that complexity.
Roundtable: What's your background, and what led you to found this company?
Carl Hoffmann: I've founded other HR tech companies in the past; most recently, I built Talentry, a talent acquisition platform focused on all the activities that happen before a candidate actually applies, combining sourcing channels, career sites, employee referrals, and so on.
I then sold Talentry four years ago to a French company called CleverConnect, where I served as COO for three years before deciding to start fresh. Having lived through the evolution of HR tech firsthand, I could see exactly where the next gap was.
Roundtable: With that foundation in place, how did you approach your first funding round, and how did Roundtable come into it?
Carl Hoffmann: We had a VC leading the round, and wanted to bring in a curated group of angels alongside them, without the cap table complexity that usually comes with it. One of our angel investors recommended Roundtable as a way to pool them cleanly.
Roundtable allowed us to do exactly that: keep the VC on the cap table directly, and pool all the angels through an SPV.
Roundtable: Did you consider other options before choosing Roundtable?
Carl Hoffmann: In fact, yes, we considered managing an SPV ourselves or simply putting everyone on the cap table individually, but once we looked at Roundtable, the simplicity of it made the decision easy. Everything from onboarding to closing was very straightforward, and the team stepped in whenever we needed them.
Roundtable: Who were the angels you brought in?
Carl Hoffmann: We focused on people who could act as multipliers in the market: a mix of senior HR operators and HR tech entrepreneurs. That included the former CHRO of Mercedes-Benz, as well as Stefan Menden and Jens Bender from the HR tech space (co-founders of WorkTech Angels). These were the kinds of profiles who not only bring capital but open doors, which was essential for us.
Roundtable: Once you decided to go with Roundtable, how did the process unfold?
Carl Hoffmann: Very smoothly, and very fast: we closed the angel side within a week. What I appreciated most wasn't just the technology, it was the service. Our investors are busy people, and sometimes they push back on filling out long forms or submitting documents.
The Roundtable team was pragmatic and hands-on, and fully committed to making sure everything worked out for us. We were actually still collecting signatures during the notary meeting; the last one came in ten minutes before it ended. But that's the point: Roundtable just made it work.
Roundtable: Can you share some details about the round itself?
Carl Hoffmann: It was a 7-digit Seed round, with the angels pooled through the SPV alongside our VC lead. We were oversubscribed, which was a great position to be in, and Roundtable's platform made it easy to manage that, because you can see in real time who has committed and then select accordingly. Everything downstream is handled automatically from there.
Roundtable: And from the angels' perspective, what does being part of an SPV mean for them?
Carl Hoffmann: It's genuinely good for them, too. One thing I appreciate is the flexibility it creates going forward: angels can participate in secondaries in future rounds, for instance. That optionality matters, because it's not just a convenience for us, it's a better structure for everyone involved.
Roundtable: Where is Ahron today, and what's next?
Carl Hoffmann: The round happened just three months after we founded the company, so it was very early, when we were fully focused on building the foundations, recruiting the right team, and investing in the product.
We've been co-innovating with our first customers, including DHL and Celonis, in Germany. But we're already seeing international demand: we've closed our first customer in the US, and we expect that to grow.
Roundtable: What advice would you give to other founders structuring an early funding round?
Carl Hoffmann: I'd advise them two things:
- First, don't dilute too much too early; protect your ownership stake from the start.
- Second, think carefully about how you structure your round to avoid creating an administrative burden down the line.
When you have ten different angels on your cap table individually, managing them becomes a distraction from building your product and growing sales. Pooling them through an SPV, and using a platform like Roundtable, solves that. I'd been through funding rounds before, so I knew the pitfalls, and that's exactly why I made these choices deliberately this time.
Roundtable: Would you recommend Roundtable to other founders?
Carl Hoffmann: Absolutely. The platform itself is very intuitive and easy to use, but what made the biggest difference for us was the team, and how involved and responsive they were.
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