nycto

/nik-toh/ • verb

  1. To strip away the darkness; to expose.
  2. [Tech] To cross-reference a candidate's digital footprint against their resume to instantly flag inconsistencies.
"The GitHub looked clean, but we decided to nycto the candidate just to be safe."

DATE: DECEMBER 13, 2025

CATEGORY: VERTICAL AI / HR TECH / TRUST INFRASTRUCTURE

The forensic engine for the post-resume economy.

Coming Q1 2026. Limited beta.

1. Executive Summary

Nycto is the forensic verification engine for the post-resume economy.

As the global workforce shifts to remote "tele-migration" and AI tools commoditize the hiring application process, the signal-to-noise ratio in recruitment has collapsed.

Employers are drowning in AI-generated resumes and face a staggering 34% rate of "candidate fraud" (fake skills, inflated titles, dual employment).

Nycto solves this by moving beyond passive background checks (Checkr) and standardized tests (HackerRank).

We build Autonomous Forensic Agents that verify a candidate's competence and identity through active interrogation—cross-referencing their digital footprint (GitHub, public records) and conducting real-time, forensic interviews via chat.

The Thesis: In a world of infinite AI-generated noise, Trust becomes the scarcest and most valuable asset. Nycto builds the infrastructure to verify that trust at scale.

2. Market Context: The "Perfect Storm"

Three macro-trends have converged in late 2025 to create an immediate, desperate need for Nycto:

  1. The "AI Spam" Crisis: Generative AI allows candidates to apply to 1,000 jobs instantly with perfectly tailored (but often fabricated) resumes. Traditional ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems) cannot distinguish between a high-potential human and a high-quality bot.
  2. The H1B "Hydraulic Press": Tightening US visa regulations (H1B/L1) is forcing US companies to stop importing talent and start exporting jobs. The demand for remote talent in hubs like India and LATAM is exploding, but the "Trust Deficit" remains the primary bottleneck to hiring.
  3. The Death of the Resume: The static PDF resume is no longer a proxy for competence. Employers are seeking "Proof of Work," but manual verification of portfolios/GitHubs is unscalable.

3. The Problem: The "Lemon Market" in Talent

Remote hiring currently suffers from extreme Information Asymmetry:

Current Solution Failure:

  • ✖ Checkr/Background Checks: Only verify criminal records (past legal status), not competence.
  • ✖ Mercor/Toptal: Act as expensive middlemen (taking 20-40% of salary), restricting supply to their own walled gardens.
  • ✖ Manual Screening: Too slow and expensive for high-volume hiring.

4. The Solution: Nycto's Forensic Engine

Nycto is an API-first platform that acts as an Automated Forensic Auditor. It does not just "read" claims; it "investigates" them.

Layer 1: The Digital Dragnet (Passive Forensics)

  • Mechanism: Nycto ingests the candidate's digital identity (LinkedIn, GitHub, Portfolio).
  • Analysis: It performs cross-referencing to flag anomalies.
  • Example: "Candidate claims to have led 'Project X' in 2023, but their GitHub contribution graph shows zero commits during that window."
  • Example: "Timeline Discrepancy: Candidate claims overlapping full-time roles at two competing firms (Moonlighting risk)."

Layer 2: The "Interrogator" Agent (Active Forensics)

  • Mechanism: A conversational AI agent engages the candidate in a 10-15 minute chat.
  • Methodology: The agent generates unique, non-generic questions based on the specific claims in the resume.
  • Prompt: "You mentioned scaling Redis architecture. Please walk me through the specific sharding strategy you used. I will verify your answer against technical best practices."
  • Benefit: This acts as a scalable "Technical Screen" that is harder to game than multiple-choice tests because it requires deep context reasoning.

Layer 3: The "Network" Check (Reputation Forensics)

  • Mechanism: Automated, asynchronous verification with references via WhatsApp/Email.
  • Innovation: Nycto analyzes the metadata of the reference to detect fraud (e.g., Is the reference's email from a corporate domain or a generic Gmail? Does the reference's IP address match the candidate's?).

5. Business Model & Go-To-Market

Revenue Model: Transactional SaaS

  • Standard Check: $29 - $49 per verification. (High velocity, credit-card swipe pricing).
  • Enterprise License: $499/month for staffing agencies and high-volume recruiters (includes API access).
  • Unit Economics: Gross margins are ~90%+. Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) is limited to LLM inference costs and search API calls (~$2.00 per report).

Go-To-Market Strategy: The "Supply-Side" Wedge

  • Initial Wedge: IIT Bombay & Top Universities.
  • Deploy Nycto as the official "Verification Partner" for placement cells.
  • Value: Students get a "Verified Badge" to stand out; Universities protect their reputation.
  • Result: Immediate acquisition of 1,000+ high-quality, pre-verified profiles.
  • Demand Generation: Leverage the "Verified Supply" to attract US buyers.
  • Pitch: "Access a list of 500 forensic-verified engineers from India's top institute."

6. Competitive Landscape

Feature Nycto Checkr Mercor / Turing HackerRank
Core Function Forensic Verification Criminal/Legal Check Staffing / Headhunting Standardized Testing
Verification Depth High (Contextual) Low (Binary Database) High (Human + AI) Medium (Scripted)
Cost Model Flat Fee ($49) Flat Fee ($30) % of Salary (Expensive) Subscription
Open/Closed Open (Verify anyone) Open Closed (Walled Garden) Open
Primary Risk "Liar Detection" Compliance Placement Speed Cheating

The Blue Ocean: Nycto occupies the empty space between "Low-Cost Data Checks" (Checkr) and "High-Cost Headhunters" (Mercor).

7. Market Size (TAM/SAM/SOM)

Total Addressable Market (TAM): $335 Billion. (Global Pre-Employment Screening + Technical Assessment Market).

Serviceable Available Market (SAM): $18 Billion. (Cross-Border / Remote Hiring segment). Focusing on the US-India and US-LATAM corridors where "Trust Deficit" is highest.

Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM): $100 Million in the first 36 months. Targeting the top 5% of "High-Velocity" remote startups and agencies.

8. Why Now? (The Timing)

  1. Technological Readiness: The "Agentic" reasoning required to cross-reference disparate data points (e.g., comparing a Resume PDF to a GitHub repo) was effectively impossible before GPT-4o/Gemini 1.5 (2024/2025). The tech stack finally supports the product vision.
  2. Market Desperation: The explosion of "Auto-Apply" bots in 2025 has broken the traditional recruitment funnel. Recruiters are actively seeking a "filter" solution.

9. The Founder Advantage

Founder: [Your Name]

Background: Undergraduate, IIT Bombay (BS Economics).

The "Right to Win":

  • Proximity to Supply: Situated at the epicenter of the world's largest remote talent pool (India). Direct access to the highest-signal talent (IITs) to seed the network.
  • Technical/Economic Hybrid: A rare combination of technical capability (building the agents) and economic understanding (analyzing the "Lemon Market" and incentive structures of hiring).
  • Agility: Unencumbered by the "Compliance First" mindset of incumbents like LinkedIn, allowing for rapid iteration on "Subjective Verification" features.

10. Conclusion

Nycto is not just a tool; it is the Protocol of Trust for the remote economy. We are entering a decade where "Human Verification" will command a premium. By automating the forensic diligence process, Nycto unblocks the flow of capital from the Global North to the Global South, creating massive economic value while capturing a high-margin slice of every hire.

We are building the "Visa for the Internet."

Coming Q1 2026. Limited beta.