---
title: "First Block with Brendan Foody, Co-founder and CEO of Mercor"
description: "First Block features Brendan Foody, co-founder and CEO of Mercor, discussing the company’s path from selling donuts in eighth grade to building an AI-powered recruiting platform. Mercor reportedly grew from $1 million to $100 million in revenue run rate in 11 months, and Foody connects that growth to automated hiring solutions and the AI talent revolution. He argues that founders should pursue problems they cannot stop thinking about, set a high bar for their first 10 hires, and remain patient while shaping culture. The episode also frames fundraising as an input to better user experiences rather than an objective, encourages founders to return quickly to customers, and covers long-term orientation, personal scaling, and finding the right market."
---

# First Block with Brendan Foody, Co-founder and CEO of Mercor

[Notion](https://yomu.fyi/company/notion) · Anastasia Crew · Aug 27, 2025

**Type:** Explainer

## Summary

First Block features Brendan Foody, co-founder and CEO of Mercor, discussing the company’s path from selling donuts in eighth grade to building an AI-powered recruiting platform. Mercor reportedly grew from $1 million to $100 million in revenue run rate in 11 months, and Foody connects that growth to automated hiring solutions and the AI talent revolution. He argues that founders should pursue problems they cannot stop thinking about, set a high bar for their first 10 hires, and remain patient while shaping culture. The episode also frames fundraising as an input to better user experiences rather than an objective, encourages founders to return quickly to customers, and covers long-term orientation, personal scaling, and finding the right market.

## Context

The episode presents Brendan Foody’s startup journey and the lessons he draws from building Mercor, including choosing a compelling problem, hiring the first 10 employees, scaling culture, finding the right market, and navigating the AI talent revolution.

## Approach / What changed

Mercor is described as an AI-powered recruiting platform that builds automated hiring solutions. Foody’s operating principles emphasize obsession with the problem, highly selective early hiring, long-term orientation, customer focus, and treating fundraising as an input to better user experiences.

## Takeaways

- Mercor scaled from $1 million to $100 million in revenue run rate in 11 months, according to the episode description.
- Foody recommends setting the highest possible hiring bar for the first 10 employees because those hires shape the next 100 and influence company culture.
- Fundraising should support better user experiences rather than become the end goal; founders should spend as little time on it as possible and return to customers quickly.

**Tags:** [AI](https://yomu.fyi/topic/ai), [Hiring](https://yomu.fyi/topic/hiring)

- Source: [Notion](https://www.notion.com/en-gb/blog/first-block-with-brendan-foody)
- Source URL: https://www.notion.com/en-gb/blog/first-block-with-brendan-foody
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-09-09T05:21:33.929Z

[Read original post](https://www.notion.com/en-gb/blog/first-block-with-brendan-foody)