Meet Apply Genie, the 2024 Orlando Inno Madness champion

Apply Genie is the 2024 winner of Orlando Inno Madness — an automation tool for people applying for jobs that was borne of a real-life circumstance. 

Founder Charlie Render built a program to help his girlfriend (now fiance´) with her job search. 

“She hated her job,” he said. “She would come home from work every day feeling tired and wanting to relax but having to invest a couple of hours in job hunting,” said Render. “This was never meant to be taken public, but I told a couple of people about it, and they responded really well. I thought, ‘Maybe there's something here.’” 

That was in December 2022, and from there, Render’s team at Orlando-based Render Analytics further built out the platform incrementally over time using AI to power its functions, officially launching in December 2023. What started as a product of Render Analytics has turned into a company in its own right. Render hasn’t done any fundraising — he has tapped into Render Analytics resources along the way, from development to promotion — but now that momentum has picked up and the platform has 3,500 users, he’s about to look for investors. 

Apply Genie sends out job applications on behalf of the user — as many as several hundred at a time — and the feedback Render has gotten tells him that automation lifts a burden off an applicant. He has collected testimonials to that effect and plans to do large-scale studies on the effectiveness of the platform down the road. 

"I will say though, it is simply a numbers game. Applying to 100 jobs is more likely to generate a job interview or job placement that applying to two or three,” he said. 

Render has 12 developers on the project and plans to make more improvements and add more components.  

“The core functionality of having Apply Genie answer job questions accurately is something we constantly iteratively are improving. If an application asks something like, ‘Tell us about a time you had a conflict at work,’ that’s something we’re still figuring out. We're exploring more dynamic question answering,” said Render. 

Render also is looking at integrations with human resource platforms like WorkDay. 

When it comes to platform security, Render is especially proud of the measures he and his team have taken.

“Our entire environment is in Amazon Web Services, which is one of the more highly secured environments in the market,” he said. “Also, we don’t save user information or payment information, so there’s not much a hacker could take.”

As for monetization, a user's first 25 applications are free. After that, Apply Genie charges $19.99 for another 25 applications, $59.99 for 100 applications and $99.99 for 200 applications.

The reason Apply Genie was nominated for Inno Madness is that Render wanted to get coverage in Orlando Inno for some time and thought this was a way to accomplish that. He was right.

The bracket-style competition, where readers voted to advance companies based on whether they would invest in them, started March 12 with 16 local startups vying for this year's championship. With support from his professional and personal community, the company stayed on top round by round, and the voting results were tallied April 8, with irregular votes removed from the final count per the contest rules. Apply Genie beat out its competitors in the bracket’s final round for a decisive win. (Zapz Network withdrew from the competition April 5.)

The goal of Inno Madness is to give a snapshot of some of the area’s promising tech companies. By no means is this bracket a complete list of Central Florida's best startups or most well-funded firms. Instead, it is meant to represent the full breadth and diversity of the ecosystem. 

Apply Genie