AI working for you
Develop21 trains your AI to be your Career Coach.
It gives your assistant the tools and the knowledge: who you are, what you want, and how you present yourself in your resume — one coach that knows you, remembers you, and tells you the truth about every job. Less time wasted on jobs you were never going to get; real help showing why you fit the ones you go for.
Your AI knows nothing about you. And it remembers even less.
An AI assistant is a language model. It takes in context, works out what you are probably asking for, and delivers the output most likely to be what you want. It is guessing all the way — which of a million things are we talking about? What is the actual request?
And it remembers next to nothing. Your AI is stuck in Groundhog Day, with a clean context every session. Memories are slowly improving, but the key details rarely travel from one thread to the next.
AI guessing in a vacuum is where confident-sounding nonsense comes from. Develop21 fills the vacuum with knowledge.
Develop21 Tools
Once Develop21 is connected, you just say the word — your AI knows what to do.
“Create my Develop21 career profile.”
Your AI builds your profile from your resume and a short conversation — how you present yourself, where you have been, what you want next. Stored once, encrypted, and there in every future conversation. No more starting from scratch.
“Review this job — am I a fit?”
Two questions matter: are you right for them, and are they right for you? Your AI scores the real fit, both ways, against your profile — in minutes. Bad news saves you a week chasing a job you were never going to get. Good news comes with the evidence for why you fit, so you can say it plainly.
“What jobs have I saved?”
See a role on LinkedIn or Indeed? One click with our browser extension sends it straight to your account — including the pages your assistant cannot open itself. Every captured job keeps its description, its review and its documents together, ready to pick up in any conversation.
“Tailor my resume for this role.”
You and your AI edit your resume together — your real experience, described in the words the employer actually used. Truthful reframing only: AI-assisted, not AI-generated.
“Now the cover letter.”
A letter that combines your voice with the employer’s language, and shows the fit plainly. If you are a fit, show it honestly — and get past the filters built to weed out people using AI to fake theirs.
“I applied — log it.”
Applied, waiting, interview, offer, rejected, or decided to pass — your AI keeps the tracker current, remembers why you passed on the ones you did, and gives stage-appropriate advice on chasing, following up, and moving on.
“What does Develop21 know about me?”
Everything is inspectable: your profile, your ten most recent Job Opportunities, and a document pack for each — the description, the honest review, your tailored resume and cover letter. Encrypted, remembered between conversations, and yours to view, download or delete at any time.
Why I built Develop21
Hello, I’m Jeremy Penston. I built Develop21 to make AI work for you.
I founded Develop21 as the next move in my career, to help you make the next move in yours. When my last contract ended, I tried to use AI to help me find my next role — just like you might be doing now — but it was frustrating. I wanted a lot more than I was getting: I wanted honesty, for a start.
“Friendly, helpful AI” had been telling me what it thought I wanted to hear, polishing every idea until it shone. But this was not what I wanted, I didn’t want a cheerleader. I wanted the truth.
Especially about my résumé. Mine is a mix of everything I’ve done — Marketing, Business Development, Product Management, Consulting, Inventing, Data Architecture, Data Science, User Interfaces, and I’ve played with AI. To me, that path was interesting. To an Applicant Tracking System, I’m an 8-out-of-10 for every job and a perfect fit for none. I don’t even meet the requirements of the job I was doing for the last ten years.
Crazy, isn’t it? Machines decide who we are now — and all they do is put us in boxes. Develop21 is for the people who fit into many boxes.
I’m not saying this because AI suddenly got fashionable. I wrote about this broken system back in 2014 — when an algorithm quietly binning your résumé was already the reality, and nobody wanted to talk about it. Develop21 is the fix that has been coming together ever since, because it comes from all the pieces of my life.
I’m also “Coach Jeremy” to the young soccer players at Princeton FC, where I’ve worked for the last 12 years, in the evenings and at weekends. Coaching soccer is more than just teaching young people to kick a ball. It is a proxy for life: finding your niche in the group and on the field, owning your technical skills, being a leader in your moment. Progress isn’t a straight line — dealing with failure, your own or a teammate’s, the coach’s, the ref’s, or just plain bad luck. What do you do with that information?
I’ve learned the challenge — and the value — of honesty through coaching, so I built Develop21 to be honest. Bring a job in from anywhere on the web and your AI gives you a straight assessment. Is it worth your time? And if it is, what do you need to develop to win it? Everyone’s afraid AI will take their job — so I taught your AI to help you get one.
And a word on privacy: I never see your chats. Your conversations happen with your assistant, under your agreement with them — Develop21 receives only the tool calls your assistant makes on your behalf, and never sends your content to any AI model itself. What it keeps for you — your profile, your opportunities, your documents — is encrypted, and yours to view, download or delete at any time.
I will never sell your data, and you’ll never see an advert anywhere near Develop21. The law requires disclosure in exceptional circumstances — but unless you’re using this to do harm, your data is as safe as I know how to make it.
— Jeremy Penston, Founder
A career is a series of moves. Make good ones.
Develop21 is live — add it to your AI assistant in minutes. Use it for free to track up to ten Job Opportunities at a time; Develop21 Storage removes the limits for $4.95 a month, and the first 1,000 subscribers get a lifetime 40% off voucher. Terms apply.