He Makes $20m/Yr Selling Digital Robots to Companies

Bassem Handy, CEO of Briq.com, survived the VC apocalypse by firing 215 humans and replacing them with robots, growing from burning $1M/month to hitting $25M ARR with just 135 employees. After raising $50M including a peak-bubble Tiger Global round, he took a flat $150M valuation in 2024 and used his own robot technology to automate 80% of his sales team, achieving the lowest customer acquisition costs in company history. In this episode, he reveals exactly how he got 600 companies to pay him $2,000-$5,000/month for robots that process 2.6 million automation minutes monthly, and his plan to double revenue without hiring a single human.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Bassem Handy built Brick.com to 600 paying customers and about $20 million 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 way 80% of his sales team. Over the next 20 minutes, you're going to learn exactly how he convinced 600 customers to pay three grand per month per robot. We call it robot as a service. You'll see what actually happened behind the scenes when he got a check from Tiger Global in his Series B. And you're going to learn the one tactic he plans to use to break the $1 million 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.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  Everyone, you know, is following the latest ChatGPT or Grok release, but you're doing something much 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.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  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 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 intelligence robots that do the work on their behalf.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  So when it was human involved in the loop, the human would take two to three days, make a ton of mistakes. Whereas the robot works 724, 365.

• 1:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So is your business model, then, you're basically charging per custom agent to your building per company?

• 2:01Speaker 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 activate the robot for. So there's an unlimited or a committed use model and a per-minute model.

• 2:23Speaker 00

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

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Between 2 and 5,000 a month.

• 2:32Speaker 00

  Okay, so it is recurring. It's not a one and done kind of thing. You build it and then they pay on a consumption model, consumption block, etc. Okay, yeah, so maybe not, maybe not traditional SaaS, but it's, it's almost better, right? It's utility based, right?

• 2:43Speaker 01

  I call it robot as a service. It's Wavvo 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.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  How many customers are you serving now today?

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're about 600 customers now. We did 2.6 million automation minutes last month alone, 45,000 person hours.

• 3:04Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  That is, you know, 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 twenties and, you know, 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.

• 3:25Speaker 00

  I do want to 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 my research, I think you did do that. And then, and no board seat, no control, maybe a little secondary juice. I don't know, but they were, they were very famous for doing that to get into deals as well. 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 going to be very in demand over the next decade. And I think before you dive in and answer that question, can I take the 600 customers you just articulated

• 4:09Speaker 00

  and the midpoint of monthly revenue, you said between 2 and 5K per month, let's take 3,500 a month. Can I multiply those together, Basam, and get about 20 million run rate, 25 run rate today?

• 4:20Speaker 01

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

• 4:30Speaker 00

  Okay, are you comfortable teaching all the other entrepreneurs listening right now about the right sizing and why you did what you did in 2021 in terms of fundraising and where you're at today?

• 4:38Speaker 01

  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, 2X form around 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 here is when you're burning as hot as we were in 21, which they

• 5:11Speaker 00

  Did you share how much? I mean, are you talking like 500K net burn monthly, a million net burn monthly?

• 5:15Speaker 01

  500K, that would be a good month. We were about a million, a million a month. So we're, you know, we're in there burning a million a month and you go to every board meeting to like grow fast. We're also growing like 150%. So you're in there and you're like, hey, let's burn, let's grow, grow and burn, grow and burn. I mean, it all came from the DNA of Procore, right? So, you know, I'd go into board meetings and say, hey, my CAC is lower this month. And they're like, or this quarter, and they're like, why? Go spend more. So, you know, 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 Sacks and the All In Podcast, like go for the seed.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  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 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? And nobody knew whether or not we would survive in post the contraction. So we were, we have great insiders. So they, they did, hey, let's do this. Let's forget about the seed for now. Let's fund. And we did, you know, we added a couple of extra strategics. Let's fund and we did.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  And let's figure out what's going on. So first thing we 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 had about 350 employees. When you're growing and you're selling multiple

• 6:51Speaker 00

  What year was that? Bassem, what year was 350 employees?

• 6:54Speaker 01

  21, mid 21.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  Late mid till

• 6:57Speaker 00

  Okay, and 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 six million together. I'm not sure. What in a series A of 10 million? Three million.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  New Blackhorn, that was a series A. And then Tiger.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  That was 10 million.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was like 18, 20, 21. That's really seed A, B.

• 7:25Speaker 00

  Three million, 10 million, 30 million, series B, June 2021.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:29Speaker 00

  And then you had this right size, I think.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Over 50 million, yeah.

• 7:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, okay, talk to me about the B round. I mean, you can call whatever you want. B round extension, a reset, whatever. The eight million raised in January 2024. Was that a down round? Was it a flat valuation? Some of the press reports were a flat 150 million valuation. Are you comfortable commenting on that?

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was flat. It was flat. Um, 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.

• 8:00Speaker 00

  You mean secondary?

• 8:02Speaker 01

  No, sorry. Secondary. Nathan, are you kidding?

• 8:06Speaker 00

  What do you mean? What do you mean? What's a kicker? I don't know what that means.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Like kickers to the investors so that they can get a little bit of juice to when they get through and support. So the insiders were supportive.

• 8:17Speaker 00

  I see, I see.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  There are some things you had to give them.

• 8:20Speaker 00

  I see. Okay. Well, hey, thanks 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 the sort of stories.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, that gives you the flex, Nathan. How many companies can you raise and how many employees do you have? And I think we're doing more revenue than we did. Um, with a third the number of employees. I think.

• 8:43Speaker 00

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

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is correct.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  That's the real flex.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  Revenue per employee is a beautiful metric.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  That is, yeah.

• 8:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. So can you use your own robots to replace your own team and get down to five people on your entire team doing 20 million of ARR?

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Don't tell any of the Brick employees. Now, yes, we do want to 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.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 9:16Speaker 01

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

• 9:35Speaker 00

  That makes a ton of sense. Cool. And, and so let's get back and get to 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?

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Oh, sure. So just a little of my story. I was early at Procore as employee 103 at EVP of Marketing Strategy. We grew from 10 to 150 million in ARR IPO'd and my ultimate goal was to be an entrepreneur. I really wanted to find the right place to be. And, you know, when, right around, actually, believe it or not, the 2016 election, there was all this conversations about bots posting to Twitter and Facebook. And I really got into that technology and kind of 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?

• 10:33Speaker 01

  So that's, that's where the idea came from. And I was lucky enough to be able to raise seed fund very quickly. Our first client, particularly sexy story.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  Well, what year was that? When did, when did you write the first line of code? And then when was the seed round closed? Do you remember?

• 10:47Speaker 01

  2018. Seed 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 and then, and then started writing. We closed it on an idea and a dollar and a dream. Iniac and Metaprop were the two great. CVCs, Anyac being more horizontal, Cefunder and MetaProp being more industry specific. So we said, hey, we want to build robots for, uh, to replace people in the back office. And they thought we were a little crazy. They liked my story. I'm a go to market CEO. I think that helps. Um, we kind of sold the dream of what it could do and then, and then wrote the code.

• 11:27Speaker 00

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

• 11:34Speaker 01

  So we, you know, finger in the air. I mean, we guessed. Um, so we hired our first engineer. And guy sat at Pune, India. He's still with us. He's actually the SVP of Automation today. And we, it was me, my co-founder Ron Goldschmidt and a gentleman by the name of Ash Kapoor. Uh, and then we started adding more and more people, obviously, but their first client was a friend of mine.

• 11:57Speaker 00

  So three co-founders.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Say again.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  Three co-founders.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  No, well, there, I mean, technically there's two and Ash was kind of the first technical hire.

• 12:09Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  So, uh, a friend of mine had 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 proof points. And we literally went out there and built a robot that took data from the general contractor system and put it into Meta system and vice versa. Cause there are obviously, when you have a cross-platform like that, there's no API access. I think that's really kind of the fundamental. These, this robot acts like a human.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  So they logged into Meta system, extracted data, logged into the general contractor system and vice versa. So that's the first robot we ever launched.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  That's wild. So that first customer was back in what 2019?

• 13:08Speaker 01

  2019, yeah. It was good. I mean, well, actually, late 2018. So we were, we C-funded in early 18, 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 kind of fugazi with a couple of people and, you know, a chat GPT wrapper. I think it's unusual for people to see AI companies that are seven years old. So I think there's a lot.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  Oh, 100%. Yeah, these, these, these rappers are gonna die. I mean, you're not building a rap. 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 want to learn more about you and the business, where can they find you online?

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Oh, you can go on LinkedIn, find me. I think I'm one of the few Bass and Hamdies out there and brick.com, obviously.

• 14:00Speaker 00

  All right. Famous five here. Rapid fire answers if you can. CEO you're following or studying.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  You know, the, I still follow you on 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 kind of, you know, it's a cautionary tale, but I think it's an interesting one still.

• 14:25Speaker 00

  Number two, is there a book recently that you write a business book you'd recommend?

• 14:28Speaker 01

  You know, I've 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 kind of divulge myself with business.

• 14:51Speaker 00

  Number three.

• 14:53Speaker 00

  That's good. What's your favorite online tool besides your own?

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Gotta be Claude. I hate to say it.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  Yep. Number four. How many hours of sleep are you getting each night?

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Uh, this is a bad one, man. Uh, so I'm a life extension. I'm getting about five. I'm getting about five.

• 15:11Speaker 00

  Okay. All right. Fair enough. And what's your situation, Bassem? Married, single, kiddos running around?

• 15:16Speaker 01

  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.

• 15:25Speaker 00

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

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Uh, at 20? Or what my 20-year-old should tell me now. Uh, I wish I knew I could be, um, 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-ish. Uh, I think I would have delved into entrepreneurship earlier than I did. I wish I told them that.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  Yep. Guys, Bassem Handy, CEO and co-founder of Brick and AI Automation Platform, focusing on construction, energy, and manufacturing. They charge between $2,000 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, uh, doing, call it just south of a $25 million run rate, but really getting more efficient after the heyday years in 2021, when they raised a bunch of, a bunch of capital, Series B, 30 millionish in June 2021 with Tiger, uh, and Contex in their B round. Again, now really focusing on this movement in, uh, in the LLMs, the agent space, and really trying to position themselves to bring that

• 16:37Speaker 00

  new technology to these older industries based on his experience prior to this at Procore, which was a huge software success story. Bassem Handy, thanks for taking us to the top.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Thank you, Nathan. Cheers.