A reflection from the co-founder of Bitlayer: After helping 600 people find jobs in 15 years, I've decided to stop recruiting.

Author: Kevin He, co-founder of Bitlayer

1. A programmer's 15 years with "recruiting"

I'm Kevin, an AI × Crypto entrepreneur and co-founder of Bitlayer. I previously worked at Huobi and graduated from Peking University.

From programmer to technical manager, and then to entrepreneur, I've changed industries several times in 15 years, but I've always been passionate about recruitment-related work.

Over the past 15 years, I have helped more than 600 people successfully land jobs. Some were formal recruitments, but most were helping friends find work or refer employees.

There are two stories I've always remembered.

The first thing I did was help a guy in his 30s find a job. He has two kids and is under a lot of pressure. When he told me he got the offer, I was even more excited than he was.

The second project was helping a startup team quickly build their R&D team. From scratch to operational status, it took less than two months. Watching the product launch, I felt like I had participated in its creation.

This is why I love this: to match resources and truly help people.

But recently, I've started to rethink the premise of this matter.

2. COCO 1.0: From Enthusiasm to Doubt

In June 2025, with the support of all parties, I assembled a small team and launched the incubation of COCO AI .

Our initial goal is simple: to use AI to become a career consultant and employment intermediary, making recruitment more efficient and helping more people find good jobs.

The product has iterated continuously: resume optimization → AI job matching → AI enterprise recruitment.

We made two products:

Job search platform: job.coco.xyz
Enterprise side: company.coco.xyz

We invested a lot in technology, and the product was successfully developed.

But GTM didn't go as smoothly as expected.

I started to review the situation and discovered a few realities:

Companies are reducing their hiring needs: due to the economic environment and improved organizational efficiency, many companies are no longer hiring on a large scale as before.
There is a gap between job seekers' skills and company requirements: AI can help with the matching, but the gap itself will not disappear.
Job seekers' skills themselves need to be updated: many people's abilities have fallen behind in a rapidly changing market.

I started to doubt myself.

Is it a product problem? A market problem? Or—is the direction itself flawed?

I didn't have an answer at the time.

3. Dramatic changes in the external world

In the second half of 2025, the outside world will have changed.

Claude Code is beginning to be widely adopted across various industries. It's not just about writing code, but about actually accomplishing complex tasks. More and more people around me are discussing the term: digital employee.

In December, we built an internal system called zylos to try to let AI handle daily tasks.

The tasks include:

Daily data reports
Social media management
Code writing and testing
Data processing
etc.

The result shocked me.

What used to require multiple people with different jobs can now be accomplished simply by assigning tasks.

For a concrete example: social media operations.

Previously, it required a dedicated person who would spend an hour each day finding materials, writing copy, formatting, publishing, and replying to comments.

Now? Just tell zylos, "Post one message every day at 12:30, with content revolving around the theme of XX. Please confirm with me before posting," and it's done in a few minutes.

From requiring dedicated personnel to no longer needing them, from one hour a day to just a few minutes.

The feeling was complex. Shock, excitement, but also a touch of unease—what did this mean for the business I was doing?

At the same time, another piece of news came: Manus was acquired by Meta for billions of dollars .

Manus' annual revenue has surpassed $100 million. This is not a concept, not a demo; it's real business success.

I listened to Ji Yichao's final podcast interview before the sale. One sentence he said really stuck with me:

Digital employees are not replacements for people, but rather enable one person to do the work of a team.

This statement perfectly matches our experience with zylos testing.

4. Cognitive Update

"One-person company" is not a new concept.

I'd heard about it before and thought it made sense. But it always felt so far removed from my own life, too idealistic.

Until I saw zylos handle a large number of tasks with my own eyes.

It didn't replace any one person, but rather gave me the ability to run a small team all by myself.

In that moment, I decided to pivot.

I rethink what I've done over the past 15 years.

The old perception was that talent is a scarce resource, and finding talent for a company is valuable.
The new understanding is that capability enhancement is more important than talent matching. Helping individuals acquire organizational-level capabilities is of greater value.

This is not a denial of the past 15 years. Those moments of helping people find jobs are still real and meaningful.

But I saw a new possibility:

Old paradigm: Individuals are dependent on organizations, and organizations acquire capabilities through employment.
New paradigm: Individuals gain organizational-level capabilities through AI, becoming independent creative units.

The future trend is the era of one-person companies, rather than being employed by others .

5. COCO 2.0: Digital Collaboration

After thinking it through, COCO 2.0 changed its direction.

It's not about helping you recruit people, it's about helping you not need to recruit people.

We don't help you find a job, we help you create jobs.

What we are building is "Digital Co-creation"—your AI co-founder.

It has several core features:

Self-learning evolution: not a fixed tool, but a partner that can continuously evolve according to your needs.
Secure and controllable: Your data and your business logic are all under your control.
What truly gets things done: not chatbots, but digital employees capable of performing complex tasks.

The specific product design is still being refined, but the direction is already clear.

6. An ongoing story

At the time of writing this article, the transformation was still in progress.

Startups rarely disclose their pivot points. This is because of uncertainty, fear of being questioned, and the lack of proven success.

But I think the process itself is worth sharing.

How will employment relationships evolve when technology empowers individuals to organize?

This is the question I'm currently pondering, and it's also the direction I'm taking in practice.

If you're thinking about these things too:

If you don't need to hire anyone, what can you do?
If you didn't need to look for a job, what would you want to do?
Can one person become a company?

This is an ongoing story.

I don't know how it will ultimately turn out. But I do know one thing: don't do things that go against the tide of the times.

For 15 years, I helped people find jobs. Next, I'll help people become companies.