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Most founders don't spend three years building a product, only to scrap everything and start again. But Richie Wan isn't afraid of hard resets—not when they're necessary to get things right.
As the founder of Seeker, Richie has learned what many tech founders discover the hard way: what makes perfect sense in your head might make no sense to the market. His journey from recruitment headhunter to AI platform founder reveals a crucial truth about building startups—sometimes the biggest breakthroughs come not from building faster, but from stopping to listen.
The Polite Rejection Problem
With 14 years of recruitment experience, Richie knew the startup hiring problem intimately. His original concept was clever: a Pinterest-style board where users could mimic a headhunter's workflow without recruitment theory getting in the way.
The MVP worked. The response was positive. But something fundamental wasn't clicking.
"It took a very specific person to want to get involved and play the game we created," Richie explains. "It felt like more people were saying yes to be polite and then not doing it, rather than saying, 'No, it's not for me.'"
That's the worst kind of feedback for any founder—the polite smile that masks indifference.
The Accidental Pivot
The breakthrough came accidentally. Through networking, senior contractors kept approaching Richie: "I'm a CMO coming to the end of a contract. Have you got anything?"
Rather than wait for his platform to be ready, Richie started funnelling them into a LinkedIn group called The Fractional Collective, co-run with Victoria Ross from Scottish Enterprise. Within the first month, they onboarded 220 fractional contractors across the UK—all organic growth.
Then came the 24-hour test. A founder needed a CFO. Richie reached out to the pool and within 24 hours had four qualified CFOs, all with startup backgrounds. In another case, he made an introduction at 9am that reached the offer stage by mid-morning.
"I thought, 'Okay, this is it,'" Richie remembers.
The Power of Founder-to-Founder Support
Another turning point came through conversations with experienced founders who’d been there before. One of the most valuable came from a founder in HR/recruitment tech—technically, competition.
"Initially I was guarded: if I say too much, what stops them copying it?" Richie explains. "But after understanding each other as founders, with professional courtesy and respect, it was a huge learning moment."
That founder showed him how to transition from manual placements to a SaaS model. Their advice was direct: “You’re trying to automate too soon. What you’re automating only makes sense to you as the founder.”
"Without that conversation, I wouldn't have the experience to do what we're doing.” Richie reflects. “We're at the same table helping each other."
It's the kind of collaborative dynamic that defines Scotland's startup ecosystem. "It's a lonely journey," notes Richie, "and that helps."
Manual First, Automate Second
The advice was clear but counterintuitive: run your business model manually first. Do actual placements. Prove the concept works. Then think about automation.
"In theory we knew our business model, but we couldn't automate it straight away," Richie says. "We needed stepping stones."
The difference now? The manual process feeds directly into the tech build. "Before, we were building two different things and communicating two different things. Now everything aligns."
With a validated process, Richie could finally see where AI added genuine value—training it to scan CVs like a headhunter would, looking beyond keywords to understand experience depth and startup context. The AI now produces recruiter-level analysis and generates bespoke interview questions, but crucially doesn't replace human judgment.
"We're not removing the decision-making," he explains. "It's still up to the founders to find the human connection."
From Scotland to Hong Kong
Then came the game-changer: winning IPHatch Asia, which connected Seeker with Nokia as a partner and led to two US patents. The programme saw funded startups across Asia lacking talent pools—exactly what Seeker solves.
By coincidence, Richie's Hong Kong ID was expiring just as Seeker won IPHatch. His family is from Hong Kong, so he renewed it. "While in Hong Kong in October, I found out we'd won. It was surreal."
Now Seeker is scaling in Hong Kong first, entering accelerators and awaiting news about Hong Kong Science and Technology Park. It's a remarkable trajectory from struggling to get UK traction.
The Founder Reality Check
What Richie wants other founders to understand is what happens beneath the surface.
The challenges are constant: learning startup fundamentals while remembering business basics, understanding valuations, building financial foundations while maintaining vision, and knowing when to stop building and start listening.
"We've been building Seeker for about three years. A core chunk was learning the startup mentality, process, hurdles. You have to learn it. It shows it's not overnight. Cliché but true."
What's Next
Seeker now operates as a vetted talent pool prioritising quality over quantity—200 carefully selected contractors rather than 1,000 loosely verified ones. With Scottish Enterprise backing through High Growth Ventures, grant funding, and the IPHatch/Nokia partnership, the pieces are finally aligned.
Perhaps most telling: they're hiring Heads of Marketing and Sales next year. After three years of learning, pivoting, and rebuilding, they're ready to scale.
For founders navigating similar uncertainty, Richie's advice is clear: find people who've walked the path before, be willing to hear hard truths, and remember that manual validation beats premature automation every time.
And when someone offers to share what they've learned—even if they're technically competition—listen. In Scotland's ecosystem, at least, there's room for everyone to succeed.
Richie Wan is the founder of Seeker, an AI-powered talent platform connecting startups with vetted fractional contractors. Seeker is part of the Techscaler community supporting founders across Scotland. Sign up for free today.
