MarketThe opening, in numbers

Career advice does not scale. The AI to fix it does.

Two structural problems made every career-tools company before this one too small or too generic. The AI inflection point removes both. Dilly is the operating system that fits in the gap.

Problem 1 · Advisory does not scale

A college student gets ~6 minutes of advisor time per year.

Career centers are understaffed by an order of magnitude. Working professionals usually have nobody at all. The result: people make career decisions with worse information than they make any other major financial decision.

1 : 2,263

Average ratio of career advisors to undergraduates at U.S. four-year colleges.

Source: NACAC, 2019 State of College Admission

~6 sec

Average recruiter eye-gaze on a single resume before yes / no.

Source: TheLadders Eye-Tracking Study (2018)

Working professionals with on-demand career guidance unless their employer pays for it.

Industry observation

Problem 2 · AI is rewriting the value of every role

A meaningful share of work in most fields is exposed to generative AI.

Different sources put the number in different places. Goldman estimates ~25% of current US tasks could be automated by generative AI. McKinsey's upper-bound scenario puts task-level exposure on the order of 30%+ for many fields by 2030. Either number is enough to make people reasonably anxious about the next move and the move after that. They want a system that tracks the disruption, not a one-shot resume rewrite.

Generative AI exposure

~25%

Of current US work tasks could be automated by generative AI.

Source: Goldman Sachs, March 2023

Task-level shift by 2030

30%+

Estimated task-level activity shift across many roles in McKinsey's mid-to-upper scenarios.

Source: McKinsey, 2025 The State of AI

Mid-career anxiety

Acute

The Holder field in the app, employed users tracking AI risk, is the fastest-growing user segment in early the App Store. They want a recurring read, not a one-shot tool.

Internal · early the App Store

TAM · two layers

Consumer first. B2B underneath.

Dilly Core is consumer software priced like consumer software. Underneath it, a verified-candidate API and a Blind-Audition recruiter product address a multi-billion-dollar staffing layer. Same profile spine, two billing engines.

Consumer · directly addressableU.S. career-tools spend (resume / coaching / job-search SaaS) · ~$3B and growing
College / parent layerU.S. test prep + college / career advisory · ~$2B annual spend
Underlying B2B · staffingGlobal staffing industry: ~$650B per Staffing Industry Analysts; AI-mediated placement is the addressable slice

Why now

Three things have to be true at once. They finally are.

1 · Model quality

Haiku-tier models are good enough

A grounded fit narrative with profile context costs cents now, not dollars. The unit economics work.

2 · Distribution

App Store + .edu = direct reach

You can ship to a college student tomorrow, with student pricing, without a campus partnership.

3 · Pain

AI is making people anxious about every role

Holders, the previously underserved field, now have a clear ongoing reason to use a career tool, not a one-time reason.