Building a 10 person unicorn - Max Brodeur-Urbas, Gumloop

Channel: aiDotEngineer

Published at: 2025-07-15

YouTube video id: Qw9P1zvCupE

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw9P1zvCupE

[Music]
But, uh, yeah, I'm Max. I'm the founder
of Gum Loop. We went through YC a year
and a half ago now, winter 24. So, we've
been a pretty notoriously small team
since then. Um, we raised the series A
as a team of two and are now nine
people. But, uh, this tweet was kind of
like the one that inspired this talk,
like how how we scale to the, uh, the
size we hope to be with fewer than 10
people. I'll be honest, I tweeted this
when I was extremely caffeinated and and
really thought I was going to rule the
world. Uh, we're on on track roughly. uh
we're less than 10 people and growing
really fast, but um this was also a good
Twitter post for hiring because we
wanted to hire exceptional people and I
think uh working on a small team is
really fun. So uh I thought I would go
over I'm sure at this conference you've
heard a lot about like what AI tools to
use and how to work efficiently with
cursor and wind surf, but I was going to
focus on how you actually like once
you're efficient with these AI tools,
how you build a team that's uh has the
right culture and can actually scale and
do the things you're you're setting out
to do. But uh the first thing I was
going to go over was kind of how we got
here. So I spent like six months
building up a ton of terrible, terrible
software. I made like video game
moderation software. I made ML models to
detect children's age in video games so
that you could se uh separate adults
from children in VR. I made bot
detection software. Um, and then as a
side project, on top of my side project,
I made the first UI for autog, which was
this like really hyped uh open source
framework that came out right at the
start of the agent craze. And uh,
basically I noticed that everyone in
this Discord was excited to use AI, but
they had no idea how to actually clone a
GitHub repo or set things up locally. So
I just spun up like a really ugly UI. I
called it agent hub at the time. I
thought was that it was going to be
GitHub for agents. Uh I I thought this
was really genius, but it it was all
kind of built upon the idea that agents
were going to be immediately useful. So
we pivoted pretty quickly after this,
but um I noticed that all of the people
who were asking the agent to do things
were basically just describing complex
workflows. Like if they knew how to
write some Python, they knew how to make
some API calls and some LLM queries,
they could uh basically automate their
entire request. They don't need to like
cross their fingers and hope that the
agent will do it for them. So yeah, that
was the realization. It was my
co-founder and I at this time we just
started uh kind of editing how you could
configure an agent. Instead of asking
for everything that you wanted, you
could actually define the steps as a
series of of uh like nodes in a
workflow. Um and then we got into YC a
few months later. We raised a series A.
Uh we hired two interns for the summer
and then we raised the series or we yeah
we raised a seed then we raised the
series A about like 4 months later and
uh we were just a really small team kind
of overfunded but raised a lot of money
so that we could hire the most
exceptional people um over the next year
and the the general idea was just scale
with under 10 people because we we
noticed after working at Amazon and
Microsoft that working on a super small
team is really fun. You can just uh move
way faster not sit in meetings all the
time. Um so now Gum Loop is this It used
to be way uglier, but it's this uh
workflow automation tool that a bunch of
really large companies are using. Um, so
I thought I could go over how we
approach hiring internal operations and
then team culture. Uh, these are like
things that we we talk a lot about
internally, my co-founder and I. Um, I
did want to put a disclaimer here. I
don't actually know what I'm talking
about. I I'm trying to figure out if
we're just getting lucky over and over
or if like our approaches are actually
working. But take everything I say with
a grain of salt because uh could be
totally off base and it might ruin your
company if you do what I do.
So the three things that we try to do
internally when we approach hiring are
be super super picky, which is painful u
most of the time, productled hiring, uh
buzzword that we we've been trying to
coin, and then making time to work
together, which I'll explain in a
second. But um this is a screenshot from
the the co-founder of Instacart who
ended up investing in our company and
and we would ask him for advice cuz he
scaled a large company before um running
candidates by him and and one time I
asked him like I sent him a candidate
that I thought was pretty good. Uh this
was his only reply. He he tends to write
very short emails but um emphasizing
that you shouldn't lower the bar. Like
if you aren't extremely excited about
someone like if it's not a no-brainer,
you shouldn't even consider hiring them.
Uh, so we've done like hundreds of
interviews and tons of work trials,
which I'll explain in a second. But if
you're going to be a super small team,
every person needs to be absolutely
exceptional. Um, which often times makes
like investors of yours like confused
because you're still such a small team
and they gave you so much money to
scale, but you have to kind of be really
um, uh, thorough with your screening and
then also really confident in every
single person you hire.
We we've been trying to coin this term
of productled hiring. So, two of our
customers ended up quitting their jobs
to join the team. And uh that was like
the one of the easiest decisions we've
made in terms of hiring because they
already loved the product. They had a
ton of insight into how it could be used
in a business. So, like our customer
from Instacart, the one who originally
found us and brought us into the
company, he ended up quitting and
joining us and now he does a lot of our
uh like enterprise relationships and
working with our larger customers. And
then this screenshot is our head of
education and community. He was at Web
Flow before, but had a Zap year course
and a ton of automation um workshops
that he was selling and then found Gum
Loop and got super excited. So, that was
a no-brainer. But, I think if you can
focus on making a really great product
that obviously happens to be accessible
to people who you want to hire, um
there's a bit of luck involved there,
but it helps with the hiring process
because they know exactly what you do.
You don't have to like inspire them to
join the team. They they want to join on
their own.
And then making time to work together.
So, I think this is only hopefully this
video plays.
Uh, yeah. Okay. This is only really
possible if you have a really small
team, but we do this thing where we uh
rent Airbnbs and we just go hack
together for like 4 days at a time. We
we make like 3 weeks of progress in a
couple days, but um the two people
sitting on the left there are actually
work trials. They were like interviewing
at the time, but we brought them with us
to use to just hack. And uh I think t
doing this really intentional sort of
working together period is the only way
you'll actually know if you want to work
with someone. So we always bring people
into into work trials. They are on the
team for several days as if they already
joined the company. Um and then by the
end we're like totally confident whether
this is the right fit or not. And we've
done way too many of these honestly. Uh
but it's helped us make sure that
everyone on the team is exceptional.
Um another thing we try to do in terms
of operations, I mean there's three
things here. We have almost no meetings
uh purposefully. So I try to just let
people build like I hired great people
so my plan is to give them the space to
build which is easier said than done.
And then uh we automate everything
internally which is kind of a gum loop
selfplug. But yeah in terms of our
calendars like my calendar is always
insane because we're talking to
customers and or I'm talking to
customers and I I flew back from New
York this morning for example because I
was working with customers in person but
everyone else's calendar should ideally
be totally blank. Um, we try to just
give everyone deep focus time. If you're
an engineer and uh we hired you to build
exceptional product, like we we we
should let you do that, not make you
talk about building exceptional product
for 5 hours every day. I think that's
only possible if you have a really small
team because normally you'll have like
five person on five people on a project.
You'll have to sync and kind of agree on
the terms before you even start working
and that just leads to kind of slowness
everywhere.
So, um, also letting people build. So,
uh, I I used to be really involved in
every aspect of like every feature we
shipped, but now that we've hired
exceptional people who are all better
than I am at basically basically
everything, uh, all I do is kind of like
inspire or I try to inspire what the
features we should build are. So, I'll
make these like really stupid uh,
descriptions of the features that I
think we should build based on talking
to customers and then I just let people
do their thing. So that that's kind of
like only possible if you hire great
people, but once you do, you can really
just take a a back seat and give them
the space to be exceptional.
And then automate everything you can. So
this is our internal Gum Loop instance.
We we automate basically every part of
the business as much as we can. And if
there's something we can't automate,
then we build features on Gum Loop to
let us automate it. So like before every
meeting, we have like a deep research
report that tells us everything we need
to know about the customer. not just
their outward facing information, but
also like how they're currently using
our product. Uh are they a power user or
not? What features are they using? So we
we're like totally informed going into
the meeting. Um we have every time
someone interesting signs up, we get
notified uh uh why what they're doing on
the platform and also like an email
drafted in my inbox so I can reach out
to them, hop on a call and like talk
about why they they made that free
account. That's led to a ton of our
growth. Um, we have an AI chatbot on the
platform, for example, that gets like
50,000 messages a day, but we have a gum
loop workflow that reads the chats with
the chatbot so that it can tell us what
people are confused about and then we
use that to inform our product
decisions. So, uh, a lot of these little
tasks in the company would have been
someone's role or taking up like three
or four hours of their day, but now we
we use our own product to automate
everything. So, also a lot of luck
involved. You can be a small team if you
are an automation company, but uh if you
use Gum Loop, maybe you guys could be
more efficient. That's the plug. All
right. Um so culture- wise, I think this
is the most important thing. It's
impossible to to talk about having a
really exceptional team uh if no one's
having a good time or um they're
quitting. So, uh, we I mean, one of the
most annoying things I say, uh, at like
basically every day when we talk about a
feature that a customer is asking for is
like, what if we built it today? Um,
like what would that look like? And then
it's kind of caught on and now everyone
on the team, I mean, first of all,
they're I've said that like 10 times,
but they're exceptional and they're
really fast building engineers. So, we
often just challenge ourselves like,
what if we put on a timer for 45 minutes
and try to ship this feature um, right
now with cursor? Um, but this can lead
to crazy burnout. Like if you're always
asking what if we did it today on a
Friday night at 8 p.m. then people are
going to have a bad time. So you have to
be really intentional about making it
fun.
Um like I mentioned, we do these these
retreats, but we're going like we're
picking a cool place that I wish my like
boss would have taken me when I was
working at a company before this. And
then we get a bunch of food and do a
bunch of fun things like we go rock
climbing and and biking and um it kind
of offsets the intensity of building
with such a kind of like crazy timeline
for every feature. I don't think like
anyone would be having fun if we didn't
have these like really exciting times to
look forward to. I also think this is
only possible you can't fit 50 people in
an Airbnb, but you can fit 10 pretty
comfortably. Um, and then being really
intentional about your company culture
is another thing that I'm pretty adam
adamant about. This is our our company
handbook. It's like a month or two out
of date, but um, basically everything
that we say internally, we just put it
on a page so that we have to live up to
it. Um, we wanted to kind of hold
ourselves accountable for all of the the
ways we talk about building a company.
Uh, and this is also like one of the the
things that convinces most of the
exceptional people on our team to join
or to to book that initial call because
they read our outward facing handbook
and they know that like what we're about
before they even meet us.
Um, and I'm kind of at the end of uh I
was going to show the video but cut it a
bit short. Um, we are hiring a founding
head of growth so if you know anyone you
can email me there. Like I mentioned,
it's a fun time. Uh, pretty intense, but
hopefully
you know someone or you want to join the
team and help us scale.
Cool. Okay.
[Applause]
[Music]