Bassem Hamdy helped scale Procore to $100M ARR, but his own startup almost failed when investors forced a pivot. After firing 200 people to regain control, he ignored the "expert" advice and returned to his original vision to build an 8-figure AI automation platform.

In this episode, Bassem (CEO of Briq) reveals why "listening to the customer" often creates a Frankenstein product. Learn how he closes Enterprise deals in just 9 days using a "micro-value" strategy, why he downsized the team to increase revenue per employee, and the danger of selling to corporate Innovation Teams.

🔑 Key Lessons

• 🐘 The "Elephant" Trap: Why building exactly what customers ask for creates "bandages on bullet holes" instead of a scalable product.


• ⚡ 9-Day Enterprise Close: The "Land and Expand" strategy that bypasses long procurement cycles by selling micro-value first.


• 📉 The Failed Pivot: How investor pressure for "Daily Active Users" led to a forecasting tool that nearly killed the company.


• 🚫 Innovation Teams: Why selling to the "VP of Innovation" is a trap and how to find the real economic buyer (the CFO).


• 📊 Revenue Per Employee: Why he stopped measuring success by headcount (300 employees) and focused on efficiency (100 employees).

📖 Chapters

• Introduction & Welcome


• Is AI "Human Replacement" Software?


• The "Construction Data Cloud" Idea (And Why It Failed)


• Finding the Wrong ICP


• The "Agile" Trap: Why most product teams are actually doing Waterfall


• The Investor-Forced Pivot to Forecasting


• How to Close Enterprise Deals in 9 Days


• Selling on "Vision & Value" vs. Features


• SaaS Pricing: Moving to Tokenization & Consumption


• The Danger of Custom Features & Innovation Teams


• The "XY Problem": Digging Deeper into Requests


• Why Headcount is a Vanity Metric

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