How briq Reached $20M Revenue and 600 Customers by Automating Construction Back-Office Work (Interview with CEO and Co-Founder Bassem Hamdy)

Introduction and Company Overview

Nathan Latka

00:00Basim Handy built brick.com to 600 paying customers and about $20,000,000 of revenue. Now he comes from Procore, a construction technology company. He started building AI and robots before anybody was calling it AI, survived the VC apocalypse, and is now automating away 80% of his sales team. Over the next twenty minutes, you're gonna learn exactly how he convinced 600 customers to pay $3 per month per robot. We call it robot as a service. You'll see what actually

00:28happened behind the scenes when he got a check from Tiger Global in his series b, and you're gonna learn the one tactic he plans to use to break a million dollars of revenue per employee. Are you curious how much profit he makes every month? Watch until the end to find out. So let's jump in. Obviously, the agentic world is hot right now. Everyone, you know, is following the latest Chatuchipity or Grok release, but you're doing something

00:49much more difficult, which is actually helping this technology penetrate through much older industries. Maybe give an example of a current customer you're working with just so my audience can quickly understand what you're building at Brick.

What briq Builds and How Robots Work

Bassem Hamdy

00:59>> Yeah. Absolutely. So if you think about what we're doing so we're not a software company. I never intended to be a software company. When we started in 2018, and we've been doing, I guess, AI before they even really dubbed it AI, we wanted to be a robot company. So if you think about Brick, what we do is we build robots to replace those humans or at least augment their work streams. If you think about some of

01:22>> our clients, what they'll do is they'll actually employ an accounting robot to help with accounts receivable or accounts payable. Instead of hiring Jenny or Johnny to go through and process invoices or bill clients or even email clients looking for money. Instead of having a human do that, they have these super intelligent robots that do the work on their behalf. So when it was human involved in the loop, the human would take two to three days, make

01:49>> a ton of mistakes, whereas the robot works seven twenty four, three sixty five.

Nathan Latka

01:54Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. So is is your business model then you're basically charging per custom agent you're building per company?

Bassem Hamdy

02:01>> The way we do it is buy robot. Generally, it's unlimited transactions, actions, and automation minutes. We do have a consumption based model that's getting more popular where it's actually automation minutes. So the number of minutes that they, you know, basically active the the robot for. So there's an unlimited or a committed use model and a per minute model.

Nathan Latka

02:23Can you maybe give, like, what maybe the average customer might pay you for one of these robots, whatever your most used robot is?

Bassem Hamdy

02:30>> Between 2 and 5,000 a month.

Business Model and Pricing

Nathan Latka

02:32Okay. So it is recurring. It's not a one and done kind of thing. You build it, and then they pay on a, you know, consumption model, consumption block, etcetera. K. Yeah. So maybe not maybe not traditional SaaS, but it's it's almost better. Right? It's utility based. Right? Actually

Bassem Hamdy

02:44>> as a using service. It's Weibo versus Uber. The idea here is that these autonomous robots can plug into those work streams without them hiring more people. That's really the goal.

Nathan Latka

02:54How many customers are you serving now today?

Customer Count and Automation Volume

Bassem Hamdy

02:56>> Yeah. We're about 600 customers now. We did 2,600,000 automation minutes last month alone, 45,000 person hours.

Nathan Latka

03:04Okay.

Bassem Hamdy

03:05>> That is if you think about it, it was probably about 10 automation minutes a month when we started in 2018. So the growth has been enormous. Obviously, we lived through those roaring 20s and had to get to cash flow breakeven, which we did at the end of last year. So, I mean, that was the big transition. I think for anybody that's a founder now, they know it's not easy to raise.

Surviving the VC Contraction

Nathan Latka

03:25I do wanna talk. If you're comfortable being open and sort of transparent about this stuff, you did raise in the heyday. I mean, Tiger Global was famous for basically writing blank checks at insane valuations that any founder would be crazy not to take back in 2021. Based on

Bassem Hamdy

03:37>> the research, I think they did

Nathan Latka

03:39do that. And then and no board seat, no control. Maybe a little secondary juice. I don't know. But they were they're very famous for doing that to get the deals as well. Yeah. Yeah. But but can if you're comfortable sharing, I'd love to get your take on sort of how you right size the business in sort of a non bubble era because you have a base that's gonna be very in demand over the next decade. And

04:03I think before you dive in and answer that question, can I take the 600 customers you just articulated and the midpoint of monthly revenue you said between 2 and 5 k per month, let's take 3,500 a month? Can I multiply those together, Basim, get about the 20,000,000 run rate, 25 run rate today?

Bassem Hamdy

04:20>> No. We're less than that in run rate. Our, you know, our ASP is still a little bit lower than what our current average robot price is, but you're in the right ballpark.

Nathan Latka

04:29Okay. Okay. You definitely Are you comfortable teaching all the other entrepreneurs listening right now about the rightsizing and why you did what you did in 2021 in terms of fundraising and where you're at today?

Bassem Hamdy

04:38>> Yeah. So when you wake up so we were in the middle of doing our series c, and that was like a real kick in the gut when you realize that all of a sudden, like, the entire VC market contracted. So we're, like, literally talking about, you know, two x former round valuations to we can't raise. Right? So that's that is a really stark moment as an entrepreneur. You're like, you're not going to sleep. And the idea

05:06>> here is when you're burning as hot as we were in '21, which they have How to

Nathan Latka

05:12much? Mean, you talking like 500 ks net burn monthly, a million net burn monthly?

Bassem Hamdy

05:15>> Oh, 500 ks. And it would be a good month. We're about a million a month. So we're in there burning a million a month. And you go to every board meeting and they'll grow faster. We're also growing like 150%. You're in there and you're like, hey, let's burn, let's grow, grow and burn, grow and burn. It all came from the DNA at Procore. So, I'd go into board meetings and say, hey, my CAC is lower this

05:38>> month or this quarter. And they're like, why? Go spend more. The VCs really did stoke a lot of the fires. And then they just slammed on the brakes. I don't even know if VCs exist anymore post seed. Thanks to David Sachs and the All In podcast. Like, go for the seed. So, funny thing is when you do that, a lot of our vintage disappeared. Like, a huge amount of our vintage disappeared. Because if you're burning and

06:07>> you can't slam on the brakes, make tough decisions, cut, and have product market fit at that moment, then you have a problem, right? Nobody knew whether or not we would survive in post the contraction. So, have great insiders. So, they did, hey, let's do this. Let's forget about the C for now. Let's fund. And we added a couple of extra strategics. Let's fund, and we did. And let's figure out what's going on. So first thing we

06:40>> did was really take a good hard look at the group thing that had been produced around our company. I think when you're growing we have about 350 employees. When you're growing and you're selling

Nathan Latka

06:51multiple year was that Basim, what year was 350 employees?

Bassem Hamdy

06:54>> Oh, it's '21. Mid twenty one. Late mid to

The 2024 Flat Round at $150M Valuation

Nathan Latka

06:57late twenty just for the audience to follow along, you did just correct me if any of this is wrong. You did that seed round, Eniac and Blackthorn. I think two, three million, maybe one, three million tranche or 6,000,000 together. I'm not sure what. And then a series a of 10,000,000, 3,000,000.

Bassem Hamdy

07:10>> To Blackhorn. That was their series a. And then

Nathan Latka

07:14K. Tiger. That was 10,000,000. Yeah.

Bassem Hamdy

07:17>> So it's like eighteen twenty twenty one. That's really seed a b.

Nathan Latka

07:253,000,000, 10,000,000, 30,000,000 series b June 2020.

Bassem Hamdy

07:29>> Yeah. In in a round, that's price size. I think. Over 50,000,000. Yeah.

Nathan Latka

07:34Yeah. So okay. Talk to me about the b round ex I mean, you can call whatever you want. B round extension, a reset, whatever. The 8,000,000 raise in January 2024, was that a down round? Was it a flat valuation? Some of the press reports were a flat 150,000,000 valuation. Are you are you comfortable commenting on that?

Bassem Hamdy

07:50>> Yeah. It was flat. It was flat. Okay. There were obviously some, you know, sprinkling in of some kickers, and every founder knows that you have to do some kickers here and there. But, yeah, it was flat.

Nathan Latka

08:00You mean secondary?

Bassem Hamdy

08:02>> No, sir. Secondary. Nathan, are you kidding?

Nathan Latka

08:07Do you mean what do you mean what's a kicker? I don't know what that means.

Rightsizing from 350 to 135 Employees

Bassem Hamdy

08:09>> Like, kickers to the investors so that they can get a little bit of juice to when they get through and support. So it's the insiders who are supportive.

Nathan Latka

08:17I see. I see.

Bassem Hamdy

08:19>> There there are some things you had to give them.

Nathan Latka

08:20I see. Okay. Well, hey. Thank for being thank you for being so vulnerable on that stuff. A lot of founders just read TechCrunch, and they think the metric of success is just how much can you raise. Right? And so we rarely get founders that are comfortable sharing

Bassem Hamdy

08:31>> the stories. Yeah. I can see the flex making. How many

Nathan Latka

08:33how much do

Bassem Hamdy

08:34>> you raise and how many employees do you have? And I think we're doing more in

Nathan Latka

08:37revenue than

Bassem Hamdy

08:38>> we did with a third the number of employees. I think

Nathan Latka

08:43That's good. Yeah. And I I think what you guys cut down to a 135 employees or something like that today?

Bassem Hamdy

08:48>> Yeah. That is correct.

Nathan Latka

08:50Yeah. Yeah. That's the real flex employees is a beautiful metric.

Bassem Hamdy

08:54>> That is. Yeah. Yeah. Like, we're So can you use your own

Nathan Latka

08:56robots to replace your own team and get down to five people on your entire team doing 20,000,000 of ARR?

Bassem Hamdy

09:01>> Don't tell any of the Brick employees. Now, yes, we do wanna do I'd rather put it this way, Nathan. I'd like to double the size of the company in the next three years with that with the same headcount. That is our goal.

Nathan Latka

09:15There you go.

Using Own Robots to Automate Sales

Bassem Hamdy

09:16>> Fully audited. Right now, we have 80% automation in the BDR side. Our CAC, we have a over, like really overabundance of inbound, obviously, from AI. You know, we get that kind of AI glow helps us, but our CAC last quarter was the lowest in my career.

Nathan Latka

09:35That makes a ton of sense. Cool. And and so let's get back and give you your launch story a little bit. Procore, obviously, everyone knows Procore, wildly successful, right, in the construction space. So understand your genes come from there. Why leave that gig? What year did you launch this, and how long did it take you to get your first customer?

Origin Story and Leaving Procore

Bassem Hamdy

09:50>> Oh, sure. So just a little of my story. I was early Procore's employee one zero three at EVP of marketing strategy. We grew from 10 to 150,000,000 in ARR IPO ed. And my ultimate goal was to be an entrepreneur. I I really wanted to find the right place to be. And, you know, when right around actually, believe it not, the twenty sixteen election, there was all these conversations about bots posting to Twitter and Facebook. And I

10:17>> really got into that technology and kinda went down the rabbit hole. And so I thought, what if we could take these bots to do good? You know, instead of posting on Twitter or amplifying, you know, a racist message, what if these robots could be trained to do stuff that humans do in the office and back office? So that's that's where the idea came from, and I was lucky enough to be able to raise seed fund very

10:38>> quickly. Our first client, particularly sexy story

Nathan Latka

10:42What what year was that faster than the seed when did when did you write the first line of code, then when was the seed round closed? Do you remember?

Bassem Hamdy

10:47>> 2018. C round closed before we wrote our first line of code. It was back in the good old days. So we we closed our seed round then and then started writing. We closed it on an idea and a dollar and a dream. INIAC and Metaprop were the two great CPCs. INIAC being more horizontal, c funder, and Metaprop being more industry specific. So we said, hey, we wanna build robots to replace people in the back office. And

11:15>> they thought we were a little crazy. They liked my story. I'm a go to market CEO. I think that helps. We kind of sold the dream of what it could do and then and then wrote the code.

Nathan Latka

11:27And can you tell me the story of your first customer? What did you charge him? What'd you sell him? Was it a design partner or you hadn't built it? They prepaid? How'd you think about that?

Bassem Hamdy

11:34>> So we you know, finger in the air. I mean, we guessed. So we hired our first engineer,

11:42>> Guy sat at Pune, India. He's still with us. He's actually SVP of automation today. And we it was me, my cofounder, Ron Goldschmidt, and a gentleman by the name of Ash Kapoor. And then we started adding more and more people, obviously. But their first client was

Nathan Latka

11:57a friend of mine.

Bassem Hamdy

11:59>> Say again?

Nathan Latka

12:01Three cofounders?

Bassem Hamdy

12:03>> No. Well, there I mean, technically, there's two, and Ash was kind of the first technical hire.

Nathan Latka

12:09Okay.

Bassem Hamdy

12:10>> So a friend of mine had a a robotic issue. They needed to work with Meta, Facebook, on a project management platform that Facebook wanted them to use. And they were forced to hire people to do data entry into this Facebook platform to do this data center construction project. So we said, this is a great use case. I think we charged them, like, $12,000 for the entire project. We were just hoping for anything. We really just needed

Seed Round and First Lines of Code

Bassem Hamdy

12:38>> proof points. And we literally went out there and built a robot that took data from the general contractor system and put it into Metasystem and vice versa. Because they're obviously when you have a cross platform like that, there's no API access. I think that's really kind of the fundamental. This this robot acts like a human. So they logged into Metasystem, extracted data, logged into the general contractor system, and vice versa. So that's the first robot we

13:03>> ever launched.

Nathan Latka

13:05That's wild. So that first customer was back in what, 2019?

Bassem Hamdy

13:08>> 2019, yeah. It was good. Mean, well, actually '19. Late twenty eighteen. So we were we seed funded in early eighteen, wrote some code, got the client, and then kind of the sky's the limit after that. So we you know, there's been a lot. I mean, we can get into a lot of the nitty gritty. I think AI right now has a lot of, like, Y Combinator kinda Fugazi with a couple of people and, you know, a

First Customer and First Robot

Bassem Hamdy

13:31>> chat GPT rapper. I think it's unusual for people to see AI companies that are seven years old. So I think there's a lot.

Nathan Latka

13:38Oh, 100%. Yeah. These these these rappers are gonna die. I mean, you're not building a rapper. I don't get the sense you're building a rapper at all when I look at when my team gave me the research on the business. So before we wrap up here with the famous five, if people wanna learn more about you and the business, where can they find you online?

Bassem Hamdy

13:52>> Oh, you can go on LinkedIn, find me. I think I'm one of the few Bastard Hampties out there and brick.com, obviously.

Nathan Latka

14:00Alright. Famous Five here. Wrap and fire answers if you can. CEO you're following or studying?

Bassem Hamdy

14:05>> You know, the I still follow Elon Musk. I know it sounds really unpopular, but I like watching this degrading situation that we're having. I think he's smart, did a lot of things, overextended himself, and kinda, you know, it's a cautionary tale, but I think it's an interesting one still.

14:24>> Yeah.

Nathan Latka

14:25Number two, is there a book recently that you read, a business book you'd recommend?

Bassem Hamdy

14:28>> You know, I stopped reading business books. I, you know, I find them like they're the self help section. I hate to say it. Every business book I pick up seems to have some angle that sells me on some other idea. Right now, with focus, determination, and what we really need to do right now, I'm forging a trail that I can't read a book on. So that's I I kind of divulge myself in business.

Nathan Latka

14:51Number three. Oh, that's good. What's your favorite online tool besides your own?

Bassem Hamdy

14:57>> Gotta be Claude. I hate to say it.

15:00>> Yep.

Nathan Latka

15:01Number four, how many hours of sleep are you getting each night?

Bassem Hamdy

15:04>> Ugh. This is a bad one, man. So I'm his life extension. I'm getting about five. I'm getting about five.

Nathan Latka

15:11Okay. Alright. Fair enough.

Bassem Hamdy

15:12>> Trying to upgrade.

Nathan Latka

15:13And what's your situation, Basil? Married, single, kiddos running around?

Bassem Hamdy

15:17>> I yeah. Married. Got a 12 year old. Just picked up from camp in Maine. So he's back. Kid's taller than I am, but it's a good life.

Nathan Latka

15:25That's great. And take us last question. Take us back to your 20 year old self. What's something you wish you knew?

Bassem Hamdy

15:33>> At 20 or what what my 20 year old should tell me now? Wish I knew 20 I could old.

Nathan Latka

15:3820 year

Bassem Hamdy

15:40>> I could be as confident as I am today than when I was then. I actually you know, I'm a late founder. Right? So I was, you know, 40. I think I would have dealt into entrepreneurship earlier than I did. I wish I told him that.

Nathan Latka

15:57Yep. Guys, Bassam Handy, CEO and cofounder of Brick and AI automation platform, focusing on construction energy manufacturing. They charge between 2 and $5,000 per customer. Those customers, their customers are paying for robots that they build to help increase basically automatic or automation minutes each month, which are more efficient than human minutes. Over 600 customers today doing, call it, just south of a $25,000,000 run rate, but really getting more efficient after the years in 2021 when when

16:23they raised a bunch of a bunch of capital. Series b 30,000,000 ish June 2021 with Tiger and Kontak in their b round. Again, now really focusing on this movement in in the LLMs, the agent space, and really trying to position themselves to bring that new technology to these older industries based on his his experience prior to this at Procore, which was a huge software success story. Bassam Hamby, thanks for taking us to the top.

Bassem Hamdy

16:46>> Thank you, Nathan. Cheers.