The CEO of an AI startup company in San Francisco has issued an apology after asking people to permanently tattoo themselves to secure a job interview.
LemonLime is an AI startup comprising the Summer 2026 cohort of Y Combinator graduates, an accelerator that provides small companies with $500,000 checks and other networking opportunities. The company, based in San Francisco, has a team of five people.
However, company CEO Jordan Zietz brought controversy to the company after making a statement about their unconventional recruitment process, which involved jobseekers getting a tattoo of the company logo.
The logo resembles a wedge of lemon #
Zietz originally announced the news in a LinkedIn post. “We hosted a YC Startup School afterparty at the LemonLime office to meet exceptional people, and find out which of them are just as crazy as we are”.
“That’s why we brought an actual tattoo artist to our party and offered an instant interview to anyone who got a LemonLime tattoo,” he wrote. “We are bold, we take risks, and we do things that haven’t been done before.”
However, the LinkedIn post received immediate backlash, and the CEO was forced to issue a lengthy apology via X.
Seven people took the company up on the offer, and were tattooed permanently with the company logo. As per Inc. Magazine, the company have stated that all seven of these candidates are still in the running for a position, and three of them agreed to go skydiving with the team.
In correspondence with the San Francisco Standard, Zietz denied that anybody was tattooed with the company logo, contradicting his claim of seven on the deleted LinkedIn post.
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