Ashby One Recap: Insights, Experts, and Feature Launches

Ashby One last Thursday in San Francisco was a refreshing change from spending days inside conference halls in Vegas.

The venue itself, a converted warehouse-style space with auditoriums, breakout rooms, open courtyards, and a really thoughtful mix of indoor/outdoor experiences, gave the event an energy that felt more like a festival than a traditional HR tech conference.

And honestly, that vibe matched the community Ashby is building.

What stood out most to me wasn’t just the product announcements or roadmap updates. It was seeing founders and leadership walking the floors, talking directly with customers, listening to feedback, and engaging in real conversations about where hiring and people operations are headed.

Benjamin Encz’s keynote centered around building a generational company, a rarity in HR Tech these days, and the overall tone of the event reflected that ambition. Ashby feels like it’s evolving beyond an ATS into a broader AI-native people operating system spanning recruiting, onboarding, workflow intelligence, and HR operations...

One of the best parts of the event was reconnecting with great friends and colleagues across the industry...

Kudos to Ashby for building such an incredible community and creating an event experience that actually felt human, connected, and energizing.

I’ve never left a conference feeling this energized.

#AshbyOne2026 wasn’t just feature announcements. It was packed with sessions, conversations, and even a build-a-thon centered around what AI-native recruiting workflows can actually look like when built thoughtfully.

What stood out most was the openness of the people there. Recruiters and talent leaders were openly sharing best practices, challenges, wins, and even AI prompts. That kind of collaboration is rare, and it made the event feel that much more fun. Coming from an open source founded company, it also made my heart so happy.

The biggest takeaway for me: Ashby is building AI into the workflow, not around it.

Less “another recruiting tool” and more a connected system designed to help TA teams do their best work.

Huge credit to the Ashby team for creating a space that felt thoughtful, collaborative, and future-focused.

Now… time to bring the ideas back to Supabase and keep building 🤓

I want to give a huge shoutout to Ashby for putting on such a great and genuinely informative conference. I’m sure most people who attended left just as filled with ideas and perspective as I did.

It was great meeting so many people in Talent, Recruiting, Operations, and Engineering leadership.

One of the biggest things I took away was reassurance. A lot of the conversations I had around scaling, recruiting infrastructure, hiring quality, AI enablement, and operational efficiency aligned heavily with the direction I’m already thinking about internally at Xona. It was refreshing hearing leaders at the VP and Head of Talent level speak about many of the same challenges and opportunities we’re actively working through.

Big thank you to Ashby's CEO Benjamin Encz who shared some really valuable insight around growth, hiring strategy, and building long term systems that actually scale. Definitely a conversation I’ll be thinking about and applying moving forward...

And honestly, thank you to everyone else who took the time to connect, chat, share insight, and bring great energy throughout the event.

Conferences are always better when the people attending are willing to openly exchange ideas and experiences.

Looking forward to applying a lot of what I learned here at Xona.

My first Ashby One was 12/10.

I’ve never felt more clearheaded or energized about where recruiting is headed as AI evolves the future of work. They announced no less than 17 exciting new product developments that made me wish I was a recruiter again, and every session that followed showed exactly how they augment the teams using them.

If you've ever experienced an Ashby event, you know there’s always magic in the air, they don't miss a single detail.

But the real secret to the magic is the community they've built. I'm so honored to be a part of it.

Ashby One, year two -- still the best run conference I've been to. Great content, smart people, and somehow they pulled off the rare trick of making a vendor event feel like something you'd actually choose to fly across the country for!

Huge kudos to all the folks behind the scenes who pulled that off. That takes a ton of work and I hope you all feel seen 👏🏼

A big congrats to Benjamin Encz and the entire Ashby team for pulling off another phonomenal AshbyONE conference yesterday. I did my part to support by donning my Ashby socks and purple jumpsuit.💜

Highlights:
- “case studies with case” (Casey Firey and Anita Chandrasekhar were the dynamic duo we needed and I continue to be so impressed with Zapier’s in-house AI mentality)
- making a new friend in Emily Orlansky who pulled me out of a crowd as a fellow singleton in need a lunch mate
- Juliet Peniston’s descriptions of the anaplan-workday-Ashby loop (making me surprisingly nostlagic of my workforce planning days) and her team adopting a sales mentality to forecast commits and being measured against them
- seeing the AI workflows for headcount plan updates and intakes Michelle C. has already built at Replit in her first month and getting introduced to her circle from Uber
- meeting one of the women behind the Ashby branding, Sarah Kern, and learning how they’re introducing more lifestyle elements into their company strategy. Still wondering if I should have taken the umbrella and why I am this enthusiastic about an ATS…☔️
- seeing old friends like Lucy R. and Jesse Freese!

Inspired to build + get off of the waitlist for all these upcoming products at Ashby.

Spent yesterday in SF at AshbyOne and left more stoked on the product than I came in (which I didn’t think was possible!!) 💜

The sessions were incredibly insightful, but more than anything, it cemented why Ashby‘s growth across startups, mid-market, and enterprise is pretty unmatched right now 🚀. It’s rare to see a team building with this much clarity, speed, and customer obsession 🤝🏼 while also being such a fun and passionate group of humans 🎤😉 (iykyk).

Excited to see what’s next from the team building what, in my opinion, is the best talent system in the business. Thank you Ashby!

I spoke at Ashby One in San Francisco yesterday. First ever speaking engagement. Somehow survived...

To everyone at Ashby and everyone I managed to speak with on the day, thank you. The whole room was warm, engaged, and made a first-time speaker feel like they'd done something right. That genuinely meant a lot.

Bravo Ashby.

AshbyOne was a masterclass on how to throw an event aimed at the enablement of users. It was meticulously planned and clearly a labor of love for the whole org. My team had a wonderful time meeting other customers and listening to a carefully curated group of speakers that had a myriad of unique problems and solutions they were able to use Ashby for.

Thank you to Benjamin Encz, Abhik Pramanik, Willem Wijnans, Micah Konzen, Corrina Stempky, Max Rodewald, Devon Parikh, and so many more I can't remember right at this moment. Your team is clearly a cut above.

I'm ecstatic and chomping at the bit to get home and start tweaking custom agents, plan out my own personal agentic workflows, and prepare my own special project for the upcoming MCP release.

Grateful to have been welcome with open arms by such a cool bunch of unique individuals that have meshed into a super team.

Had a blast at the Ashby One conference yesterday!

This was exactly the kind of energy I needed right now.✨ Being in a room full of Talent professionals is its own kind of fuel, and I left with a head full of ideas I’m already putting into action...

Already looking forward to the next one! #ashbyone

My face anytime someone says, “Hey can you chat about Ashby?” 🤓

So many mic drop releases at the Ashby One conference yesterday, and had a blast talking about candidate fraud prevention in the keynote video!

That’s a wrap! 👏✨

Beyond all of the incredible insights shared throughout the conference, one thing is clear: Ashby knows how to create an experience that sticks with you long after it’s over.

So grateful for the conversations, ideas, and connections made yesterday.

Still riding the high from #AshbyONE SF yesterday 🙌

600+ TA and RecOps professionals in one room; the energy was unreal. If you were there, you know...

Beyond the launches, the conversations around Quality of Hire, headcount planning, and talent density were exactly what the industry needs to be talking about right now. Grateful to have been in the room for it.

See you again in 2027 Ashby! I intend to be the 1st Ashby One registrant again 🥇 Great product- and feature conversations w/ Benjamin Encz, Abhik Pramanik and Christian Novicki! Willem Wijnans stole the show with the Ai agent Build-a-thon! Thank you for great insights and connections, Ashby One!

Huge kudos to Ashby's team for Ashby One 2026 in San Francisco!

Like every other TA person, I already love the product but I have to say, I admire the people behind it even more. It’s rare to see a team combine such great product taste with such real care for their customers and community 💜