AI founder took a chance on a 20-year-old with no experience. It became his best hiring decision

Sometimes, the best hires do not come from polished resumes but from unexpected messages.

Tanay Kothari, founder of Wisprflow.ai, said hiring a 20-year-old engineer with no prior experience turned out to be “one of the best decisions” his company has made, highlighting how execution can matter more than credentials in early-stage startups.

“We hired a 20-year-old engineer with no experience. It sounds insane. But it was one of the best decisions we made,” Kothari said in a post on X.

we hired a 20-year-old engineer with no experience. it sounds insane. but it was one of the best decisions we made.

we get inbound from staff engineers at uber. principal scientists from meta. ten, twenty years of experience.

then this kid dm'd me on twitter. said he loved… pic.twitter.com/RtHCKt1VAr

— Tanay Kothari (@tankots) April 8, 2026

He said the company regularly receives inbound interest from highly experienced professionals, including staff engineers at Uber and principal scientists from Meta, with 10 to 20 years of experience. But this particular candidate stood out for a different reason.

According to Kothari, the young candidate reached out directly on X and said he loved Wisprflow’s product and wanted to work with the team.

“It was 10 AM on a Saturday. I was in the office. I replied, ‘Come by in two hours,’” Kothari said.

The response was immediate.

“He said, ‘I’ll start now,’” Kothari recalled.

By Sunday morning, the candidate had already delivered.

“He texted me: ‘Tanay, I just pulled an all-nighter. It’s done,’” Kothari said, adding that the engineer had written thousands of lines of code and built a fully functioning feature.

Since then, the young hire has grown into one of the company’s highest-performing engineers, earning the respect of the entire team, Kothari said.

He added that many founders tend to optimise for credentials such as educational background or past employers because it is an easy filter. However, he believes that approach can miss out on high-potential talent.

“But the best hires aren’t the ones with the perfect resume. They’re the ones who do more than what’s asked,” Kothari said.