Founders Day 2026 · University of Minnesota
Our
Journey
From skill assessments to real hiring workflows — a year-long experiment in building better ways to evaluate early-career talent.
Entrepreneurship in Action · May 2026
Overview
Artifact began with a simple belief: early-career hiring should measure what people can actually do, not just how well they present themselves on a resume.
Over the past year, we built, tested, pivoted, and rebuilt Artifact through four major phases. Each phase taught us something different about hiring, assessment design, recruiter behavior, and what it actually takes to build a product people will use.
The Journey
October – November 2025
Building Our Own Skill Assessments
Built modular product management assessments across five core skill areas: Analytical Thinking, Problem Solving, Product Sense, Go-To-Market Thinking, and Business Acumen. Designed to be combinable for different role profiles.
What we learned
"A test is only valuable if employers trust what it measures."
December 2025 – January 2026
Moving to Voice AI and Case Interviews
Pivoted from static assessments to AI-led voice case interviews, using familiar PM and consulting hiring formats. Students completed structured business problem walkthroughs and built a record of demonstrated performance.
What we learned
"Using familiar hiring formats made Artifact easier for recruiters to understand."
February – March 2026
Testing the B2B Hiring Angle
Shifted toward a B2B model, reaching out to product teams and recruiters still hiring. Discovered that smaller companies did not hire enough PMs to justify a dedicated tool — the pain was real, but the volume was too low.
What we learned
"A painful problem is not always a frequent enough problem to support a business."
Late March – April 2026
Client-Specific Hiring Workflows
Rebuilt Artifact around client-specific workflows — first for accounting hiring, then GTM roles. A YC company expressed interest worth ~$8,000 in pipeline, validating that specificity was the key. This became our first real client opportunity.
What we learned
"Artifact worked best when it solved a specific hiring workflow, not a universal platform."
Where We Landed
Artifact showed us that hiring is broken — but also that fixing it takes more than a clever assessment tool.
Recruiters need trust. Companies need workflow fit. Candidates need a reason to engage. And a product like this needs enough hiring volume to become repeatable.
By the end of the year, it became clear that Artifact would take more time to reach a steady revenue base than we had available as students preparing for graduation, full-time roles, and the next stage of our careers. So we made the decision to sunset Artifact as an active company.
But Artifact was not a failed experiment. It was an intense, full-year build cycle that taught us how to move fast, talk to customers, rebuild based on feedback, and stay close to the real problem.
By the Numbers
100+
Recruiter Interviews
80+
PM Interviews
350+
Student Sessions
30K+
Social Views
4
Major Pivots
1
First Client Opportunity
1 Year
Full Build Cycle
~$8K
Pipeline Validated
The Final Lesson
"Artifact worked best when we stopped trying to build 'the future of hiring' in the abstract and started solving specific hiring workflows for real companies."
Artifact · Entrepreneurship in Action · May 2026