How Idilio TV Cut Interviews by 80% and Hired Their First Engineer in Just One Month

Hiring your first engineer is one of the hardest moves an early-stage startup makes. You need someone who can build quickly, thrive in ambiguity, and help define the culture. But most early teams don't have the luxury of running a long, multi-round process. Every hour spent interviewing is an hour not spent building.

That was exactly the situation for Idilio TV, an a16z speedrun-backed entertainment startup focused on Latin America. When they opened a founding engineer role in October 2025, they were flooded with over 300 applicants.

CTO Esteban Ramirez handled the initial resume screen, but even after removing clear mismatches he still had dozens of “good-on-paper” candidates. His challenge wasn't finding applicants, it was finding the right person without slowing the company down.

Too Many Applicants, Not Enough Signal

Two months prior to opening this position, Esteban ran a hiring cycle where he performed over 40 initial technical screens, and when he finally did hire someone, it wound up not being a good fit. He faced problems familiar to almost every early-stage CTO:

• Resumes told him almost nothing about how candidates performed on real engineering work
• Traditional take-homes showed only the final result, not the thinking process behind it
• Live technical screens would take months and pull him away from shipping code

He needed a way to see how candidates actually work before committing hours to interviews.

Using Aptora to Replace Initial Technical Screens

This time around, instead of moving directly into live interviews, Esteban invited the 30 most promising candidates to complete a technical assessment in Aptora. Candidates were given 60 minutes to build the backend for a simple Spotify clone. They worked through the challenge with support from an AI agent, and Aptora's grading system evaluated how they operated.

This gave Idilio a clear picture of each candidate's abilities, including:

• Their approach to handling open-ended problems
• Their debugging process
• Their ability to effectively utilize & collaborate with AI tools
• Their decision making under time constraints

Candidates also responded well to the format, with a mean rating of 4.5 stars.

An 80% Reduction in Interview Hours

Aptora made the selection process simple. Candidates that received a 7/10 or higher on the assessment were invited for an interview.

Here's what happened:

1. Over 300 people applied, of which 30 were sent Aptora assessments
2. The top 6 candidates earned a live interview, and all of them passed it
3. After another technical round, 2 finalists earned an interview with the CEO

The entire search, from job post to final decision, took less than 5 weeks. We'll do the math for you. That means:

Why This Worked So Well for Idilio TV

• Higher-quality interviews: Only people who had demonstrated real problem-solving abilities were invited for an interview.
• A faster, more rigorous process: Cutting interviews didn't lower the bar, it raised it earlier.
• A modern, candidate-friendly experience: Aptora gave them a chance to work the way they normally would, making the process smooth and fair.

The Takeaway

For early-stage teams, Aptora delivers what traditional hiring funnels can't: deep, human-level insight into how engineers think, without draining precious engineering time.