Chris Barber
@chrisbarber
Startups:
RL & data:
I read DMs.
1.5K Following 15.2K Followers
I asked people: "which robotics labs and startups have the highest talent density?"
28 votes: Physical Intelligence (@hausman_k, @svlevine, @chelseabfinn, @adnan_esm, @brian_ichter, @QuanVng, @lachygroom)
18 votes: Generalist (@peteflorence, @andyzengineer, Andrew Barry)
9 votes: Sunday (@tonyzzhao, @chichengcc)
6 votes: Skild AI (@deepakpathak, @gupta_abhinav_)
4 votes: Dyna (@Lindon_Gao, @YorkYang5050, @JasonMa2020)
3 votes: Bracket Bot (@sincethestudy)
3 votes: OpenAI Robotics (@model_mechanic, @PengchuanZ, @ChengshuEricLi)
2 votes: 1X (@BerntBornich)
2 votes: The Bot Company (@kvogt, @pariljain, @lukeholoubek)
2 votes: Figure (@adcock_brett)
2 votes: Genesis (@zhou_xian_, @theo_gervet, @johnsonwang0810)
2 votes: Prometheus (@JeffBezos, @vik_bajaj, @sherjilozair, @wgussml, Alex Graves)
2 votes: Robocurve (@chooi_jeq)
2 votes: Tesla (@elonmusk)
2 votes: Weave Robotics (@kaandogrusoz, @evan_wineland)
People couldn't pick a company they work at or founded. Disclosure: I'm a small investor in Physical Intelligence. I didn't vote.
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If you are early career, just close your eyes and join a post PMF company growing like crazy. A 250+ person company growing fast is less risky than Google or Amazon. Don’t overthink it. Revenue growth rate is the key metric (apply some common sense on whether they can make money someday - but honestly for career, it doesn’t matter - you want talent density not a guarantee of a payout). Anything growing 50%+ has good odds of being a great experience. 1000+ employees definitely great too and more open roles.
You won’t have this luxury later in your career. CTO? There’s one spot. SWE? Many. And life is not equitable. Your early experience will compound (you will have a rare and valuable experience of “seeing what great looks like.” absolutely zero substitute for that). Just ask early Stripe folks vs wherever their equal quality peers went. There are such companies in every era. The “don’t ask what seat on a rocket ship” is self-serving, but also true. Just validate that the rocket has in fact been built and already firing.
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whenever someone was asking where they should work, i sent them breakout list, it's so great to see it's back:
for @physical_int specifically, i'm looking to hire a head of / business leader (former/current founders ideal!) and our first creative hire!
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@chrisbarber @moritz_stephan @CarloWillem @oqbrady @ansonyuu @hudzah @G413N @devanshpandey The return of the breakout list...you legend
years ago, i consulted the og breakout list religiously to find my summer internships
so great to see @normalfactoryco @tacitlabsco @am_watt @sfcompute @braintrust @baseten recognized on this one
they are all hiring!
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a lot of former colleagues of mine either founding or working at the cos on this list, congrats @ninklefitz @maxisawesome538 @dan_biderman @j316chuck !
Very honored to part of the breakout list - if you want to chat continual learning and the future of products, dm’s are open!
I made a list of great startups to join. It's called the Breakout List.
The list has 92 companies. These are the 20 with 25 or fewer employees:
- Hone (@moritz_stephan, @CarloWillem, @oqbrady)
- Normal (@ansonyuu, @hudzah)
- Standard Intelligence (@G413N, @devanshpandey)
- Tacit Labs (@ninklefitz, @AmDroste)
- American Terawatt (@atroyn, @rslparker, @aranibatta)
- Conduit (@clemvonstengel, @riopopper)
- Convergent (Omkar Savant, Vivek Katara, @debnilsur)
- Core Automation (@MillionInt, @_arohan_)
- Engram (@dan_biderman, @EyubogluSabri, @realJessyLin)
- Instinct (@noahrshinn)
- Keenable (@styskin, Matthias Petri)
- Lumaril (Mark Elliot, Ben Duffield)
- Neion Bio (@Dimkell, Sam Levin)
- Pangram Labs (@max_spero_, @bradley_emi)
- Quadrillion (@echinaceous)
- Re (@karnsaroya, @AnandDhillon, @thecliffwhite, @benaneesh)
- Ricursive (@annadgoldie, @Azaliamirh)
- Sail Research (@neilmovva, @blintzbase)
- Trajectory (@rronak_, @michaelelabd, @QuantumArjun)
- Watney Robotics (Sean Cheong, Ryan Gannon)
Picks from Elad Gil, Charlie Songhurst, Keith Rabois, Mike Vernal, Alana Goyal, Sonya Huang, Ramtin Naimi, Marc Bhargava, Cory Levy, Aashay Sanghvi, Konstantine Buhler, John Luttig, Varun Gupta, Ray Tonsing and Avichal Garg.
Disclosure: I'm a small investor in American Terawatt, Convergent, Standard Intelligence and Trajectory (in this post), and in Factory, Physical Intelligence and SF Compute (elsewhere on the list). I didn't vote.
The full list is on Breakout List.
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Looking for a new role?
I remember the Breakout List was all the rage in 2014-15. I was a freshman at Stanford at the time and all the CS students were going crazy trying to get an internship at one of these rocketship companies. Different times…
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Love seeing @ArcanaAnalytics on @chrisbarber’s breakout list. Come build the future of finance with us at @ArcanaAnalytics 🚀
Honored to see Pangram make an appearance on the return of @chrisbarber’s Breakout List.
We are hiring across a number of roles, please reach out if you’re interested or if you know someone who you think is great!
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@chrisbarber @moritz_stephan @CarloWillem @oqbrady @ansonyuu @hudzah @G413N @devanshpandey This is a great list (even outside of Pangram, but we’re hiring!)
honestly an insanely good list whoa
Breakout list was instrumental for me during college to find high signal talent dense rocketships
Glad to have @chrisbarber the legend bring it back!
Chris knows how to pick em
Really cool to see SFC on this list next to a ton of companies I respect. If you're interested in compute you should talk to us, we've got a number of open positions across eng, GTM, and operations.
It is very cool to see us on the breakout list
A long time ago, i found segment on the breakout list and it was one of the reasons i joined and came to sf
And we have the best ai native interview for MTS (and other roles to come)
When I was job searching six years ago, I used this list to figure out where I wanted to work. It comes full circle.
