HR Tech: One of the Great Opportunities in Software Today

The average salesperson hears “HR Tech” and imagines slow-moving buyers, small budgets, and software that is functional but boring. That's the myth. 

Thankfully, the reality is much more interesting: HR tech is a massive, fragmented, increasingly technical market being reshaped by AI. For the right salesperson, it is one of the most compelling enterprise software opportunities of the next decade for a number of reasons:

1. The market is bigger than it looks.

2. Fragmentation creates room for a full-suite winner. 

3. The category already produces enormous companies.

4. AI expands the opportunity beyond software budgets.

5. “Less sexy” can be a competitive advantage.

6. The buyers are better than the stereotype.

7. It's a technical enterprise sale.

The market is bigger than it looks

Every company has employees. Nearly every company hires. And as they grow, they need systems to recruit, schedule, assess, onboard, pay, develop, and retain those employees.

That creates a market with unusual breadth. HR software is not a niche product category serving a narrow set of specialists; it sits underneath one of the most important operating processes in every business: building the team.

Market estimates vary depending on what is included, but one recent estimate puts the global HR technology market at more than $40 billion today, growing toward more than $85 billion over the next several years.

Fragmentation creates room for a full-suite winner

The overall HR, talent, and people market is also remarkably fragmented. Many companies run recruiting on an ATS, sourcing in another tool, scheduling somewhere else, analytics in spreadsheets, and AI workflows across a growing collection of point solutions. Around those products sits an even larger services ecosystem helping customers configure, integrate, and operate the stack.

Fragmentation creates pain, but it also creates leverage. A platform that can consolidate several products can create more value than any point solution. Customers get fewer vendors, less context switching, better data, and workflows that actually connect end to end. In return, the platform provider earns a much stickier, stronger relationship and the ability to expand and scale with their customers.

That is the opportunity behind Ashby’s full-suite approach. We are not trying to win one isolated feature at a time. We are building a platform for how modern companies hire — and then expand into adjacent parts of the employee lifecycle, like People Workflows for onboarding, and beyond. We’ve seen this proven scaling strategy deployed with great success in other SaaS verticals. 

The category already produces enormous companies

This is not a market where the upside is theoretical. Rippling, founded in 2016, reached a private valuation of $16.8 billion in 2025. Deel, founded in 2018, reached a $17.3 billion valuation that same year. Both companies were launched within the last decade, and both built businesses by solving important, complex problems for employers.

Even more recently, Silver Lake was reported to be in talks to take Workday private in a transaction that could exceed $50 billion. If completed, it would rank among the largest software buyouts in history. The fact that a major private-equity firm is considering that size of check for an HR and Financials company is itself a powerful signal about the value and durability of deeply embedded systems of record, even in an AI era. HR Tech can produce companies at the very top end of enterprise software.

AI expands the opportunity beyond software budgets

Historically, recruiting and HR processes relied heavily on human work. Recruiters manually sourced candidates, coordinated interviews, sent follow-ups, screened applications, assembled reports, and moved information between disconnected systems.

Software mostly helped people organize that work. But, AI changes the equation. The opportunity is no longer just to make a recruiter 10% more efficient; it is to let software perform meaningful parts of the end-to-end workflow itself. Ashby’s AI interviewer takes screening calls for high volume roles, saving organizations on headcount while improving recruiting outcomes.

A recent a16z essay argues that HR is one of the last large enterprise categories without a serious AI-native challenger. The next generation of HR systems can be built around agents, open data, permissions, and workflows — not forms and approvals. That is not just a product opportunity; it is a market-reset opportunity. Workday’s installed base proves how much value is concentrated in the system of record, while the limitations of legacy architecture show how much room there is for a better one.

When software replaces labor, it unlocks budgets that historically went to headcount, agencies, and outsourced services — not just the relatively small software line item. The biggest opportunities will come from platforms that combine a system of record with automation and intelligence.

“Less sexy” can be a competitive advantage

There is another second-order benefit: fewer ambitious companies and founders are attacking HR tech than are attacking categories like developer tools, fintech, or consumer AI.

That does not mean the market is easy to move. But, the bar is somewhat lower for a great company to stand out. A product that is genuinely better, faster, more thoughtful, and more loved by customers can build meaningful separation in a category where many incumbents have been protected by inertia.

In other words, the lack of glamour is not necessarily a weakness. It may be a systemic source of underinvestment — and therefore opportunity.

The buyers are better than the stereotype

HR leaders are sometimes described as indecisive buyers with limited budgets. That has not been my experience.

People and Talent leaders tend to be transparent, engaging, thoughtful, and highly motivated by outcomes. They care deeply about the quality of the process and the experience of the people moving through it. They are often more collaborative (and more fun to work with) than the stereotypical IT or Engineering buyer.

The best HR tech conversations are not about an administrative tool and recruiting efficiency. They are about helping a leadership team win the best talent, drive revenue and product velocity, and ultimately build a stronger, more competitive company.

It's a technical enterprise sale

Finally, don't confuse a friendly buyer with a simple sale.

A modern ATS is at least as complex as a CRM, ERP or ITSM platform. It manages workflows, permissions, integrations, analytics, communications, scheduling, data quality, compliance, and increasingly AI-powered automation. It touches recruiters, hiring managers, executives, Finance, IT, Legal, and candidates. It becomes a mission-critical system of record.

Selling it requires discovery, technical fluency, business acumen, project management, and the ability to build consensus across a complex buying group.

The contrarian conclusion

If you want to sell something that everyone already agrees is exciting, HR tech may not be for you.

But if you like second-order thinking, complex products, large markets, kind and ambitious buyers, and the chance to help define a category before it is fully formed, HR tech is a remarkable place to build a career.

The market is enormous, fragmented, technically deep, increasingly powered by AI, and still early in its transformation.

That makes it an attractive market to sell into, and an ideal market in which to build a generational company.

Join us in building by exploring our open careers.