💵 Industry
AI / Fintech
💰 Savings
$575,000/Year
👩💻 Positions Hired
EA, Ops Manager, Engineer, Outbound Sales
📍 Location
New York 🇺🇸
Elayne is an AI-powered estate settlement platform that helps families navigate the nightmare that comes after a funeral.
The legal filings, the account closures, the probate process, the financial decisions nobody prepares you for. Elayne turns all of that into a structured workflow with AI plus expert review — so grieving families aren’t drowning in paperwork on top of everything else.
When founder Adria Ferrier’s mother passed away in 2021, she learned how difficult the process of handling an estate was.
“I was just shocked by how difficult it was,” Adria said. “I had to learn how to fax, and I had to mail things, and everything was manual. I thought — this has to be updated.”
So she built Elayne.
3 Agencies Deep Before HireUA
Adria didn’t find us first.
She went through three other international hiring companies before landing on HireUA.
“We had tried other companies to help us hire internationally, and the quality wasn’t quite there,” Adria said. “I think you really take the time to understand exactly what we need, and the caliber of person that we need.”
The first agency was cookie-cutter. Standardized training, standardized assistants, mediocre results. She went through three people before pulling the plug.
The second focused on a region that the engineering and development hires wasn’t at the level they needed.
The third never got past an intro call.
Here’s the thing:
Adria’s family comes from Eastern Europe. She knows what the talent pool looks like in the region. She knows the math and science education system. She knew that’s where she wanted to hire — she just couldn’t find an agency that could actually deliver the caliber from that region.
4 Hires. One Company. Every Department.
Elayne has hired four people through HireUA — and they span the entire operation:
Outbound Sales — Cold email. The person running outbound email campaigns to get Elayne in front of HR teams and benefits managers who need estate settlement support for their employees.
Operations Manager — More on her in a second. She’s the one building SOPs, creating processes, and yes — still faxing things in 2026.
Engineer — Software development for the AI platform itself.
Executive Assistant — Working directly with Adria. Inbox management, scheduling, the operational backbone of the CEO’s day.
Four positions. Four departments. All sourced from Eastern Europe through HireUA.
And here’s what that math looks like in New York:
Adria put the number at $800K all-in to hire this caliber of team locally. That’s not hypothetical. That’s what a YC-backed startup in Manhattan would pay for an Engineer, an EA, an Ops Manager, and a Head of Sales-esque position.
Through HireUA, they’re saving over 72% annually on their hiring costs.
Over half a million dollars. For a startup, that’s not a rounding error. That’s a huge difference in how much runway they have.
A Touching Story
Here’s the moment that tells you everything about the kind of people Elayne hired through us.
The Operations Manager — sent holiday gifts to Elayne’s clients. On her own. No instruction. No prompt. Just did it.
Think about what that means for a second.
Elayne’s clients are people who just lost someone. The holidays hit different when you’re grieving. And this team member — working remotely — recognized that, thought about it, and sent gifts.
“The thing that brings me joy is when they get really into the mission,” Adria said. “Our ops manager sent gifts to some of our clients because it was the holidays and a hard time, and they were so grateful. It was her idea. Her initiative.”
The clients didn’t just say thank you for the gift. They said thank you for the support.
That’s not task completion. That’s not “I followed the SOP.” That’s someone who understands why the company exists and acts accordingly — without being told.
You can’t train that.
You can’t put it in a job description.
You either hire someone who gets it, or you don’t.
She’s also the one who built out Elayne’s entire SOP library — including the faxing process, because in estate settlement, you’re still dealing with institutions that require faxed documents in 2026 (unbelievable, isn’t it…).
The person we placed figured out how to do it electronically and documented the whole thing.
The Inbox That Was a Disaster
Adria’s EA tackled the other end of the problem.
“My inbox was a disaster,” Adria said. “She helped me create folders and a process, and I’m getting back to emails a little bit faster now.”
For a YC founder, that’s not a small thing. You’re busy. When your inbox is the bottleneck, everything downstream slows down…
- Investor updates
- Client responses
- Team coordination
- All of it stacks up.
The EA created a folder structure, built a triage system, and gave Adria a process where she could actually get through her inbox instead of drowning in it.
“Just having people there that I can trust, that I know do an amazing job,” Adria said. “There’s learning and direction up front, but then they can operate on their own. And that’s really helpful and important to be able to scale.”
That last part matters:
They can operate on their own.
Nobody running a YC-backed startup has time to micromanage.
The entire value of the hire is that they take direction once and then run. If you have to explain something three times, you’ve already lost the hours you were trying to buy back.
The Money: $578K/Year in Savings
Let’s lay this out plainly.
Elayne is a seed-stage startup in New York City. Four key hires — an engineer, an ops manager, an EA, and an outbound sales rep — would run roughly $800K per year if hired locally. That’s salary, benefits, payroll taxes, and the reality of Manhattan compensation.
With hiring through HireUA…they’re saving well over half a million dollars a year.
For a seed-stage company.
For a startup that just raised a seed round, that math isn’t theoretical. It’s the difference between hiring aggressively and watching your runway evaporate. It’s the difference between building a team that can scale and being forced to choose between 2 hires you desperately need — because you can’t afford both.
Why It Worked
Three agencies failed before HireUA. Same talent regions. Similar price points. Different results.
Here’s what was different:
Caliber matching, not body filling.
Adria is a Wharton-educated former PE investor who went through Y Combinator.
She’s not looking for warm bodies. She’s looking for people who can walk into a startup with no SOPs, no processes, and no playbook — and build all three. The first three agencies sent people who needed to be managed. HireUA sent people who manage themselves.
Understanding the mission.
Elayne isn’t a SaaS tool for project management.
It’s a company that helps grieving families settle estates. The emotional weight of the work matters. The OM sending holiday gifts to clients who just lost someone — that only happens when the person understands what the company actually does and cares about it. You can’t screen for that with a skills test. You screen for it by understanding the client’s business deeply enough to match on more than just a resume.
Eastern European talent for a founder who knows the region.
Adria has roots from Eastern Europe.
She knows the education system. She knows the engineering and math culture.
She specifically wanted to hire from the region because she understood what was available there — she just needed an agency that could actually source it. Two of the three agencies she tried before couldn’t deliver Eastern European talent at the level she needed. One didn’t even operate in the region.
People who operate on their own.
This came up three times in the conversation.
Founders don’t have time to micromanage. She gives direction once. The person takes it and runs. If you need to be told twice, you’re costing more time than you’re saving. Every single one of the four hires passed that test.
Hire a Remote Team for Your Startup Through HireUA
If you’re a funded startup trying to build a team without burning through your runway in 12 months — you don’t have to choose between quality and cost.
Elayne hired four people across four departments. Engineering. Operations. Sales. Executive support. All performing at the level of a New York hire. At a fraction of the cost.
Three other agencies couldn’t deliver this. We did.
Next Success: How Monarch Wave Marketing Saved $200k by Hiring Global Talent