Paul Huck

This is an interesting article from SaaStr sharing data from ICONIQ Capital about revenue per employee. “These are useful yardsticks for folks scaling: At less than $25m ARR, actually SaaS start-ups aren’t any more efficient than in 2017-2019, at $130,000 per employee / FTE. Although that’s still more efficient than the Boom Times. At $25m-$100m ARR, SaaS scale-ups are about 25% more efficient than they used to be, at $172,000 in revenue per employee / FTE. Time to get real at $25m ARR, apparently 😉 And at $100m+ ARR, they are 20% more efficient then they used to be, at $249,000 in revenue per employee. On the path to the $300k+ we see in public SaaS leaders.” At Worksmith in October, our annualized revenue per employee was $238K. https://lnkd.in/gqkkpjEW

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𝗥𝗲𝘃 𝗗𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗧𝘂𝗿𝗻𝘀 𝟭 𝗬𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗢𝗹𝗱... 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝗡𝗲𝘅𝘁? After graduating UCSB in 2023, I teamed up with Jesse Brodkin + Lucas Krall to co-found 𝗥𝗲𝘃 𝗗𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 – a technology enabled delivery service designed around college campuses. This past September, we celebrated Rev’s 1-year anniversary. That same month, we hit another big milestone in our professional journey: our first business acquisition—the Duffl brand, a Series A-funded and Y Combinator graduate with 8+ locations. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲’𝘀 𝗮 𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗮𝗽 𝗼𝗳 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗲’𝘃𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝘂𝗽 𝘁𝗼: • We moved to Seattle with the idea to start a hyperlocal delivery company serving the University of Washington community.✈️ • Built our fulfillment technology 👨‍💻 • Leased our first commercial space (in Bruce Lee’s old studio), purchased our first inventory, and started delivering orders to our customers in ten minutes or less, using electric scooters, for a delivery fee of $0.99. 🛴⚡️ • Lived in the back of our warehouse for months (ask about our homemade shower and kitchen setup). 😁 𝗦𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗻: • We’ve scaled to tens of thousands of unique monthly orders and over 100 employees by leveraging: Data-Driven Pricing and Products📊 Grassroots Marketing 🌱 Student Culture👥 • We acquired the Duffl brand– The OG of the hyperlocal delivery space with 20+ million in revenue under their belt. ✴️ 𝗦𝗼 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁? It’s time to grow even more.  We’re enabling other entrepreneurs to open their own Duffl / Rev stores at college campuses. If you (or any aspiring entrepreneur you know) want to explore owning your own 𝟳 𝗳𝗶𝗴𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀, powered by our tech, data, and experience – then let's talk. ⬇️ https://lnkd.in/gkRDAw8a https://duffl.com https://lnkd.in/gKgrFEN3 https://rev.delivery https://lnkd.in/gzBpff4k

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Are you looking to break into VC / PE / being a CEO? Are you frustrated at job applying process? Do you want to surround yourself with the best and brightest and build a network that includes investors, 10x founders, and other hellbent on changing the world? Do you run a start up that needs some hypergrowth? The job market has changed, applying for jobs is dead, its all about creating jobs via entrepreneurship or possessing executive skills to create a job at a company. Come join us at IOTA Labs MBA bootcamp; a donation based month long part time, program that puts infront of VC/PE deal flow with the intention that if you can follow the program, you will be contributing to large deals and getting paid for the work. The point of this program is to rapidly convert highly motivated individuals to high performing executives by surrounding them with the training, network, and skills they need to be successful @ IOTA or beyond. With training from tenured product manager @ Google, VC Fund managers, investors, 10x founders, CxOs (15+ at GM, Salesforce, Accenture), legal experts, and other subject matter experts https://lnkd.in/eSgHkB9u Seats will fill up fast just as an FYI , do please repost this so we can help as many people as possible.

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'We do not plan to buy any software because we do not have enough SPP projects at the moment.' This is a common objection we generally hear from companies. Here's the problem with that: Currently, approximately 2,000MW SPP is being realized at different stages in a medium-sized country. The vast majority of them are +10MW. - Almost all of the EPC companies that make these investments use a lot of software at different stages, including pvX. - These EPC companies lose maybe 3 times the projects they receive, but thanks to the software they use, they can make much more investments and increase their chances. - The common feeling of investors: Trust. With pvX, we are solving these problems exactly. How 💸 We expand your potential SPP portfolio by reducing your sales costs. 🌱 We seed many more projects, and the seeds will sprout over time. 🚀 We get your ready to act, before you even need to. If you'd like to have a quick chat about strategies to increase your SPP projects and save cost, Here's my availablity: https://lnkd.in/dnXz4_K2. I will be at #REplus Anaheim next week. #trypvX #replus

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Temporal Technologies has been one of the coolest pieces of infra tech I've used. In this webinar next Tuesday, I'll be doing a deep dive of how we've used Temporal to build out Ampersand's integration engine. Link to register is below.

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The newest issue of The Pragmatic Engineer found a surprise uptick in eng hiring in the typically slow summer season - I'm curious to see how the macro environment impacts this uptick as we head into the fall, but I remain hopeful. I asked Gemini to give me the tldr of the article to share with my team (sorry, Gergely Orosz) and found it missed one of the most interesting pieces of the article. Gemini's highlights - Unexpected surge: Tech recruitment has seen an unusual spike in June and July, contrary to typical trends. Increased demand: Startups, especially AI-focused ones, are driving the hiring uptick. Global phenomenon: This trend isn't just limited to the US; Europe is also experiencing increased recruitment activity. Reasons for hiring: Companies are backfilling positions, investing in growth due to improved financials, and responding to increased VC funding. Challenges remain: While the job market is improving, finding qualified candidates and offering competitive compensation remains difficult for many companies. What I found most interesting - The nature of the backfills: the article finds that a lot of new headcount are actually backfills of folks that were "over-slashed" during rounds of layoffs. Not entirely surprising with the "trim the fat" and "rebuild lean" mentality, but interesting nonetheless. Either way, the uptick is encouraging (and don't always rely on Gemini's tldrs). #hiring #startups #VCbacked #softwareengineering

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One of our biggest learnings building AI developer tooling is that vanilla RAG doesn't work out-of-the-box for code search. At scale, the embed code + retrieve paradigm leaves many unanswered questions: ✅ What's the right semantic chunk of code to embed? ✅ How can you use the interdependency between different source files / classes to inform similarity? ✅ How quickly can you reindex a large codebase to keep results fresh? ✅ How do you prioritize different file types (a typical Python library may have .py, .txt, .pkl, .ipynb, .md, and more)? These questions have to be solved to unlock generative development over all the world's code.

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Multi-billion dollar companies are already using Outset with User Interviews. We just announced our partnership with Basel Fakhoury and his team yesterday. We're thrilled to see it in action. So are our customers. Here's what Joanne Locascio, PhD, Senior Research Manager at Intuit said: “As a customer of both Outset and User Interviews, we’re excited to use this integration. We’re leveraging AI-moderated research with Outset more and more to accelerate our research, and the quality of participants is critical. Integrating with the User Interviews panel will save us a ton of time and hassle, and allow us to capture user insights faster" So here's how it works: First, customers create their Outset discussion guide to give the AI moderator. Second, users create a custom screener to make sure certain specific conditions are met for participants. Third, they create their User Interviews recruitment within the Recruit tab. They set filters, choose a number of participants they want, and hit publish. That's it. To Michael Hess and I, this feels like a particularly big moment. -> We're unlocking great B2B recruitment within our platform -> We're tapping into a panel proven across the industry to be great for usability (our latest product) -> We're opening up more global opportunity than ever, perfect for multilingual interviews And ultimately, the more we can help customers solve the recruitment step of their research journey, the more we are pushing forward our mission to help customers more deeply (and more quickly) understand the people they serve.

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🎙️ Excited to share my recent appearance on the meez podcast! Had a fantastic time with Joshua Sharkey discussing how Starfish is helping small businesses understand and reduce their costs, and ultimately boost their profits. Check it out to learn more about our journey and tons of insights! #SmallBusiness #Entrepreneurship #CostManagement #Podcast

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My cofounder Saumil goes on the Stack Overflow Podcast to deep dive on AI Agents! He goes into detail how we leverage AI agents to power automated workflows to accomplish the most complex tasks. Including agents firing off tasks to other agents to tackle the details. Need an agent to verify your work? No problem. Give it a listen and let us know what you think!

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A lot of folks ask what it means to be successful as a non-technical person in a startup, and I believe Forrest Perry is a great example of this. 👨 Forrest was our first hire at Heard and has exemplified what it means to be adaptable, humble, and growth-oriented. His journey with us is nothing short of inspiring: ➡ Joined as a Sales Rep: He started strong, diving into the sales process and laying the foundation for our outreach. ➡ Took on Account Management & Customer Ops: Recognizing the need, he expanded his role to ensure our clients were well-supported and satisfied. ➡ Took on Onboarding: Forrest stepped up again, streamlining our onboarding process to ensure new clients had a seamless start with Heard. ➡ Built and Scaled Teams in Each Function: He built a team to manage both sales and onboarding, showcasing his leadership and team-building skills. ➡ Focused on Sales and Onboarding: He handed off onboarding responsibilities and focused on scaling the sales team further, building the team to what it is today. ➡ Took on Partnerships: Now, he's taken on partnerships, ready to unlock big opportunities for Heard. This incredible journey over just three years highlights Forrest's low ego and his consistent drive to replace himself in each function as he scaled it up. He collaborates with the team to bring in experts to take over, allowing him to move on to the next important challenge. With a deep understanding of our business, product, and therapist customers, he's perfectly positioned to drive our partnerships forward. Two key actions he’s taken in every role are characteristic of startup success: ➡ Deep diving into all the historical data, problems, and opportunities. ➡ Tapping into his network to set up meetings with 15-20 partnership leaders. This is how you navigate startups as a generalist, and don't let the startup grow beyond you!

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Here are some more updates for y'all: - We had our second in-person paper reading last Monday: https://lnkd.in/gJGuAMNJ - I'm presenting the paper at LLM school on Friday: https://lu.ma/v8nditjf - Today we're covering "Inference Scaling for Long-Context Retrieval Augmented Generation" from DeepMind CognitionTO

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Experiencing the Unstoppable Energy of SF's Tech Ecosystem at #SFTechWeek! Wow, what an incredible time to be in the Bay Area! The velocity of innovation here is absolutely electrifying. I'm thrilled to share that I'm currently in San Francisco for Stackbooster's fundraising and to expand our customer base during this amazing #SFTechWeek. The ecosystem here is buzzing with ideas and opportunities. Every meeting and event has been a gateway to new possibilities. We've connected with some of the most visionary minds and forward-thinking investors—it's humbling to see the excitement around what we're building with Stackbooster. For those who might not know, Stackbooster is dedicated to helping startups save money, time, and resources. We're empowering our customers to launch faster and more efficiently while seamlessly adopting AWS solutions. The positive feedback and success stories from startups we've partnered with have been incredibly inspiring. If you're around and want to chat about accelerating growth, optimizing your tech stack, or just share insights about the vibrant SF tech scene, let's connect! This week has been a whirlwind of inspiration, and I can't wait to see what's next. Feeling grateful and energized by the amazing community here! #Stackbooster #StartupGrowth #Innovation #AWS #Entrepreneurship #TechEcosystem #SFTechWeek

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I spoke with Eric Ignasik and Michael Sols from The Software House about dealing with silos at work. 🎙️ We discussed how Technology Managers can help their engineers gain deep operational expertise and take full responsibility for product/feature delivery. The best practices I described in this interview come straight from Payhawk. It doesn’t mean they can simply be copied — but they might be inspiring to some. Happy reading 👋🏼 ➡️ hubs.ly/Q02xn9j-0 #softwaredevelopment #cto #softwaredelivery

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Last week, Zach and I headed to Seattle for 2 days of our executive offsite. The goal? To set our vision for 2025. We focused on: → Solidifying our vision, → And allocating resources across our 3 product lines. We answered critical questions like → How can we get our customers to find even more value? → How can we be the rising tide that lifts all boats for our target industries - moving & insurance → How and when can we scale Yembo beyond our first two verticals I think this was our most productive offsite yet! Looking forward to executing on these priorities in 2025 - making ideas into code and into customer life improvements!

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Strong Opinions Weakly Held #3: Me in 2017: Just make the investment to do it right the first time - save the headache and cost of all the rework! Me in 2021: Just get something out there for people to use. Something is better than nothing. Me in 2024: Typical engineer answer comes back again - it depends. Something is not always better than nothing. It can damage your brand and your standing in customers' eyes and it may be hard to get them to give you a second shot - not everyone understands the idea of "beta stage" and "MVP". But conversely, I've seen far too many projects toil and churn on "Can we actually release this yet? It doesn't have feature X Y Z." DON'T DO THAT. You don't know what customers want until they tell you. Often, they can't tell you until they get some piece of your direction in their minds. The goal is an MVP: Minimal viable product. The problem is: what constitutes minimal? what constitutes viable? and to an extent, what constitutes product? PS: If you want to learn more, come to my #STLStartupWeek talk, "How Not To Build Your MVP: An Engineer's Advice for Non-Technical Founders". Register here:

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If you're thinking of submitting your YC application or are in the midst of the application process, check out this video by Dalton Caldwell. It covers everything that YC looks for in an application and was a great resource for me during my own journey. Take a look! #YC #startup #entrepreneurship

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I really hope JD Vance's anti-big tech/trust stance opens doors for innovation in heavily regulated industries. Given his background with Peter Thiel in VC and their shared belief that over-regulation stifles progress, Vance would be perfect to champion 'regulatory sandboxes' - controlled environments that level the playing field by allowing startups to compete against tech giants (who are better equipped to handle regulatory burdens) and test innovations with relaxed oversight, previously pioneered in the UK and other countries. Interestingly, I found out that the EU is already moving in this direction with their "AI Act", which includes plans for mandatory AI regulatory sandboxes across member states by 2026. These sandboxes aim to balance innovation with compliance, potentially providing a model for other regions. If implemented safely in the U.S., such sandboxes could reduce regulatory uncertainty, potentially increasing funding and innovation power for startups in critical areas like AI-driven healthcare (think drug discovery and disease diagnosis). This approach could also align with Vance's interest in spurring innovation beyond coastal tech hubs. However, the challenge lies in balancing innovation with safety, especially in high-stakes fields like healthcare. Could a similar approach in the U.S., championed by figures like Vance, help American AI startups compete globally while addressing regulatory concerns?

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If you have a YC interview coming up - reach out and our team of YC Alumni can help set up some mock interviews

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