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Hypotheses need to be tested — Jean Lebrument (Brigad.co)

by Alban Dumouilla

Brigad is providing businesses with independent workforce on-demand.

Your background

Who were you, before Brigad?

I studied at Epitech and worked in a bunch of startups. I met Florent about 5 years ago, while I was managing a tech team. I moved to California for 7 months, started a company in the music industry but crashed it quite fast.

We started Brigad while I was still working full time in November 2015 and launched in January 2016. We found our market fit in October 2016 with a 25% monthly growth rate, which enabled our first big funding round (~ 2 millions) and the opening of our office in Lyon in November 2017. We wanted to prove that we could replicate the model in other national cities.

How did you guys found the idea?

Florent had invested in a restaurant and realized how painful it was (he had to wash the dishes more than once) and a bunch of people in my family work in the food industry, so we both understood the industry.

A restaurant owner loses about 10k a year in average because of the lack of staff. In 2015 — with the gig economy booming — it seemed odd not to be able to find staff quickly.

We pivoted 5 times and now we are able to find the right person for any restaurant usually in a few hours, a few days max.

The CTO job

When you start from scratch, CTO means nothing

Can you describe your job ? What is it to be CTO and co-founder ?

When you start from scratch, CTO means nothing. You take care of every piece of the puzzle. We’ve been lucky enough to have Florent’s little brother study at Epitech as well, and he joined us with 5 of his friends to help us build the first version of the platform.

So we were 6 developers 6 months after getting started ! I had to start managing developers quite fast. It helped because I was a full-stack developer, but I had to become the CPO as well when we started scaling: I now manage a head of Engineering and a head of Product.

My role is now mostly about defining the tech and product strategy. My core value is to help people do their job correctly. I’m only operational on the stuff nobody else can do.

We face a lot of threshold effects: every six months, everything needs to be re-thought. When you grow from 2 to 50 in a short time and plan to grow even more, things can get a little crazy. You need to manage daily tasks while mapping everything in the company’s strategy: this means a need to grow the company, but grow as a person as well.

HR issues start arising quickly when you grow. I’m pretty young (25) and Brigad was my last engineering internship. So to make the difference in the long run, I need to really challenge myself.

Has your job changed since the beginning?

I have a 360 degrees background. Quite good everywhere, but never an expert at anything. I’ve been challenged by great people (Francis Nappez, Fabien Penso, Justin Ziegler) that I mostly met through 50 Partners.

I needed to get a ‘testing’ mindset: hypotheses need to be tested! That allows you not to hit too many walls and build a great product with great tech behind it.

A CTO needs to be able to challenge the product and the team but needs to love the business as well, because he needs to carry the entire tech strategy. If he doesn’t understand what the rest of the team is doing, he just can’t be efficient.

I can challenge any strategic decision in the company because I’m at the board.

Let’s talk tech

I had to think about what technology could help me with my future hires while doing the job correctly

What’s your stack ?

Full Javascript. Node, microservices AWS, Terraform, Ansible, Docker, etc…

We use ReactJS and React Native with a lot of caching, retries, etc. We try to mutualise as much code as possible between React JS and Native.

We haven’t had to change the stack since we started. I’m at the origin of the current stack because I like playing with new technologies. React was the technology of the future when it came to the front-end.

It was a bit harder to pick the back-end, so I had to think about what technology could help me with my future hires while doing the job correctly. So I went full JS !

NodeJS’s performance is great, and we’re using the HAPI framework. I like to stay small when it comes to frameworks — big frameworks do too much black magic for me.

Life as a CTO

Can you describe a crisis you’ve been through at Brigad?

One of the co-founders left for personal reasons and we didn’t see it coming. We had just raised 2 million euros when the COO left. We took a hit.

That made use become very close with Florent, and we had to collaborate greatly, and work well together, sharing the same vision. We trust and respect each other more than ever and this is the only way to pursue such adventure.

With that departure, we had to responsibilize junior people faster than expected, and that worked out perfectly. Employees that got more responsibilities became really involved in the project and are now part of the core team of the company.

Another problem we faced was when we gave more responsibilities to some people and that didn’t work out: you then need to switch strategies and might have to let go of some people. That’s hard.

Your biggest responsibility?

Never be a source of limitation for the growth of the company and make sure the product is always closely following the vision.

Biggest challenge?

Be schizophrenic: move fast and durably in a fast changing ecosystem.

I need to be the hammer of justice and take decisions that make us move forward even if some things need to be left behind. I am mostly responsible of things that can have a high impact on the company, and on this kinds of decisions, if you discuss for too long, you just stop moving.

I delegated most of the operational work to the heads of departments and can now focus on where to steer the boat!

People

Don’t fall in the high salaries trap or you’ll hire mercenaries

What are you searching for in a new hire?

I look at technical skills last. The most important features are open-mindedness and the will to join the project. Do that person’s values match the company’s? What are they searching for in their relationships with other people ?

Our entire HR and managerial strategy is based on the company’s values. When we need to talk to somebody about something they did wrong, we use the values to tell them how it was wrong, that it’s not subjective.

If the person has a good mind and good values, they’ll understand what it takes to be at Brigad quite easily. Even a core NodeJS contributor wouldn’t be able to join the team if his mindset doesn’t match ours.

We fixed a lot of issues by adding values, and the few people that left the company left in good terms, thanks to that.

Any hiring tips ? Things that work or don’t?

In the f*#%-up current context, the salaries are raising like never before because a bunch of startups are raising insane amounts of money. You really don’t want to fall in the trap of raising salaries because that’s where you’ll start hiring mercenaries that will leave you when the next company offers them more.

Work on your employer brand, as there will always be somebody that pays more than you do.

Also, stop thinking only about Paris! There are great profiles in other places of the country. Be smart about it.

Future

Where are you in 3 years?

We’ll be the leader all over Europe on what we do, because we proved the project is viable. We want to be unmissable for anybody that want a flexible job with a good quality of life and social security.

The biggest challenges to come?

Finish to build the product ! And handle the opening of new cities and countries. We’re in the middle of a learning phase when it comes to opening new cities, and we need to scale that part.