Mocktalk

The Story

My CTO, Nicholas Stoneking, and I founded Mocktalk during finals week of our junior year. We were juggling exams, student jobs, and tech recruiting, and realized we had almost no time to prepare for interviews. Mock interviews, research, and studying structures on our own was not scalable, so we built an AI mock interviewer to help us practice independently.

We first launched a general interview prep tool, but early user feedback pushed us to pivot into SWE mock interviewing, where the need was clearer and the value was immediate. Our goal was to build an AI that could research roles, simulate realistic interview scenarios, ask targeted questions, and give actionable feedback.

We poured everything into it to give ourselves an edge and soon realized we could help other tech job seekers do the same. Since then, we have been focused on empowering candidates with fast, realistic, accessible interview practice.

Timeline

September 2023 - We launched our first MVP and acquired our first couple of users (11 active users within the first month).

October 2023 - Accepted into Buildspace's 6-Week Accelerator for the Fall 2023 batch and presented at their demo day in SF.

November 2023 - We launched a dynamic interview format selection feature called Sandbox, allowing users to practice for any job role by pasting a job description.

March 2024 - Accepted into SDSU's ZIP Launchpad Startup Incubator for the Spring 2024 batch. Completed a 3-month track focused on customer discovery, which helped us reach 151 registered users and logged over 500 interview sessions.

January 2024 - We ended up closing Mocktalk after realizing we weren’t as passionate or obsessed with the vision as we needed to be but we took everything we learned and carried it forward into new ideas we're excited to explore. You live and you learn. :)

See our progression as a startup here!