breakout list hasn't been updated in AGES. it's been STAGNATING.
if you aren't familiar with BL, it used to be great. doordash was picked for the list at ~60 employees (now $90B public co), slack at 100 employees, affirm at 35, gusto at 50, robinhood at 15, coinbase at 50, instacart at 40.
now i'm thinking about a new list
here's some notes. and in the meantime, feel free to dm me questions, thoughts, suggestions, requests, recommendations etc -> @chrisbarber
right now you can have a lot of influence over the direction BL takes
this isn't the breakout list, just some scratch notes
ridiculous revenue growth - the ai coding flock. cursor especially. clear leader so far. but i'd watch zed. and then lovable, bolt, augment code, devin etc are interesting
mega obvious big ones that are still worth joining - openai, anthropic, google deepmind, runway
as a subset of the ai coding flock there's the whole autonomous engineer flock, seems to be growing slower than cursor though - devin, factory, etc
bootstrapped, profitable, quite non traditional, join if it's a great fit for you - midjourney
also doing well - together ai, openrouter, modal, eleven labs, recall ai, fal, cartesia, heygen, extend, speak, poe, suno, recraft, lindy, opus, lambda, crusoe, runpod, etc
oh and the data labeling cos - scale, but also surge, invisible, pareto, prolific
and then there's the cool robotics cos -- they don't have PMF but they are cool -- 1x, pi, agility, prosper
and some robotics cos with pmf like matic
other quick growth - granola, wispr flow
there's lots of smaller bootstrapped ones doing 1mm+ too, like the ai headshot apps, ai roleplay chatbots, handful of vertical specific transcription apps, small gpu clouds, that kinda thing
ARR per employee?
"most interesting"
lists from specific investors i respect?
list of companies that investor would most happily refer their relatives to work at?
most loved by customers?
quickest growth from 1mm to 10mm?
most transformative products?
ai cos behind the scenes most likely to impact ppls lives?
fastest hiring?
bootstrapped millionaires?
you? someone you know?
which investors should i get input from?
how the fuck to do a static list when the companies are shifting and growing so fast? better alts?
interviews with founders? text only? audio? video? office tours?
teach engineers how to make career decisions in a way they won't regret?
should there be an investment fund?
a thing that teaches companies how to hire?
events for engineers and founders?
virtual hiring demo days?
company hiring video pitches?
should there be a physical magazine? a menu of companies?
(ps i also made a cool emotional regulation tool, people use it to help their partner/kids/friends process big emotions. learn it here. i'm obsessed with that, so if you have suggestions for podcasts to teach it on, or ideas on how to integrate it with BL stuff, lmk)
a friend said "i think gut reaction is id like the new company list the most, and would like deeper dives on the prominent companies in the list with arguments on why u should join. like if each company had linked interviews with founders, employees, growth rate, etc that would be dope. and also in general folding in advice on tech careers in the new ai era throughout" - how do your preferences differ? dm or email me