Ashby × Talent Crunch: A Case Study — From 3 Years of Community Work to a Full-Year Partnership

How it started

In 2023, Talent Crunch Berlin (TC) ran its first event on pizzas and drinks provided by Wayfair, where I was working at the time. Ashby became one of our first sponsors that year, taking a chance on a brand new community.

By 2024, we'd run two more events together with 322 registrations. By 2025, the events had 455 registrations. Then in September 2025, they committed to a full twelve-month partnership for 2026.

This is about why a sophisticated HR tech company kept showing up to a community that refuses to play the usual sponsorship games.

What we actually did together

2024: Testing the ground

April — Talent Intelligence Meetup (hosted by OLX Group, 160 registered). Dr Magdalena Masluk-Meller presented actual talent intelligence work. The data. The uncomfortable questions about what companies track versus what they should track. Ashby shared a real client implementation. What worked, what didn't.

October — AI Application Review (hosted by MOIA, 162 registered). Eva, a consultant who'd just migrated a client to Ashby, talked about recruiter reluctance, hiring manager pushback, job security. We ran a panel with an Engineering Director, a DEI leader, and a neuroscientist turned TA leader. They didn't agree on everything. That was the point.

2025: Two different approaches

We split the format: large practitioner-focused events, and small senior-leader experiences.

• February 17 — The Art of Talent (Café Botanico). Tufting workshop, then farm-to-table dinner. No panels. No keynotes. Just close conversation with leaders from our community.

• February 19 — Quality of Hire (hosted at Taxfix, 112 in-person attendees). Community members took the stage for the first time. Two practitioners spoke about measuring quality of hire — what we call The Community Stage. Then Ashby presented their 2024 Recruiter Productivity Report with a Q&A that went deeper than usual.

• June 2 — The Talent Flow Cruise (Spree River). CPOs, Heads and VPs of Talent. Sunset dinner on a boat. No agenda.

• June 3 — The Executive Tasting Table (The Piano Room). Coffee cupping competitions. Zero-alcohol wine tasting. Optional headshots. Breakfast before 11am.

• October 15 — Real AI Recruiting Tech in Action (hosted at Wolt). Sam Wright from Ashby showed how he would use AI to rethink candidate outreach. Then we ran a live interview on stage whilst Ashby's AI notetaker captured everything. We compared what humans caught, what AI caught, and what AI missed. PaintNow led a collaborative canvas throughout the evening.

Why we moved to a full-year partnership

By mid-2025, we'd learned how each other worked. Ashby understood that our community comes first. We understood what they needed from a partnership. But the event-by-event approach created difficulties for both of us.

I was constantly juggling sponsor conversations, balancing calendars, managing last-minute changes when speakers couldn't travel or venues fell through. Ashby had no visibility into when they'd have access to the community, which made their planning difficult.

The full-year structure solved this. We agreed on six events upfront (four Community Gatherings, two Executive Experiences), secured priority scheduling, and added comprehensive social media amplification across LinkedIn, our newsletter, Instagram, and Slack. They committed for the year. We committed to clean calendars, advance planning, and quarterly check-ins.

More importantly, we formalised what had been working informally: we keep full control over content and protect community interests even when it means pushing back on their requests.

"Amazing work on the event as always! Great content that was super insightful and practical, and the networking before and after was great too! Thanks so much for bringing the TA community together 🙏"

We don't fake neutrality

Ashby sponsors our events. Everyone knows it. But sponsorship doesn't mean we hand over the mic. Content serves the community first. Ashby gets mentioned on all socials, they present, their logo is everywhere, they help us bring speakers. But they don't control the narrative.

My agreement with Ashby is that we always keep community interest at the forefront. We build educational events and workshops where people leave with things they can actually do in their work, regardless of whether they use Ashby or not.

1. We mix business leaders with talent leaders

We bring Engineering Directors, COOs, DEI specialists, neuroscientists and TA professionals on stage together. TA was never a vacuum exercise — and this works for Ashby too, since the product is used by more than just the recruitment team.

2. We show tools doing real work

Live demos. Working sessions. Tools that sometimes work with us, sometimes we need to make them work for us. At the October event, we demonstrated Ashby's AI notetaker having a hard time catching nuance. Then we talked about why that matters. That's the kind of honesty that builds trust.

Nobody is here to set anyone else up for failure, but we present things as they are, not what we wish they would be.

3. We create safe spaces where senior leaders can talk

When you're making carpets or competing in a coffee game, you're not in "Head of TA" mode. People talk about what truly drives their teams — and what's perhaps a hindrance.

4. We actually organise well

Events start on time. Food is good. Venues are accessible. People keep coming back because we respect their time and we care. Ashby does too — they don't impose, they stay away from the hard sell, and they bring real use cases. Our common goal is to educate and support.

Some numbers

Attendance. Average attendance rate: 73.6% (industry standard is often 50%).

Community reach.

• 5,700+ Talent Crunch members

• 24,000+ professional network reach

• Average 25 Slack mentions of Ashby per quarter (organic, not prompted)

Senior leader engagement. 30+ senior decision-makers attended executive experiences — CPOs, VPs of Talent, Heads of TA from major DACH companies.

Quality indicators.

• 81.3 average NPS across all events (most corporate events hover around 20–30)

• Consistent waiting lists for every gathering

• Organic referrals from community members to their networks

Why Ashby stays

The community is relevant. Senior leaders and practitioners alike show up with real problems. The organisation is solid and they never have to hold our hand. We share similar values and we show up authentically. As do they.

They didn't say we delivered X pipeline or Y conversions. They said the partnership felt natural, not transactional. That Talent Crunch created spaces where their technology could be understood in context, not pitched.

When I asked Willem, Ashby's Community Lead who supported our 2026 agreement, what made them commit to a full year, he pointed to trust and shared values — trust that we'd protect the community's interests even when it meant pushing back on their requests as sponsors.

What this means for future partners

Talent Crunch Berlin isn't a lead generation engine. We won't put your logo on everything and call it thought leadership.

But if you're building something that genuinely solves problems in talent acquisition, and you're willing to show it honestly (including where it falls short), we'll create the conditions for real conversations.

Some of the things you get:

• Integration into events where talent folks of all seniority levels actually want to be.

• Co-branded marketing across LinkedIn, Newsletter, Slack, Instagram.

• GDPR-compliant attendee lists and curated introductions.

What you don't get:

• Control over content.

• Guaranteed pipeline metrics.

What we need from you:

• Understanding of how communities work. Trust builds slowly.

• Honesty. If your tool has limitations, we'll talk about them.

• Respect for the community.

Ashby committed to partnership because they understood that influence in hiring doesn't happen in a single transaction. It happens in Slack messages three weeks after an event. In coffee conversations where someone says, "you should talk to Ashby, they get it."

That's what we build.