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At Baselayer, we access, normalize, and diligence data on every agent, person or business…
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Jonathan Awad shared thisIt took us 6 months to get our first customer live, 6 more months to reach $1M ARR, and only 12 more months to reach 100+ customers and many millions in revenue So, even though today is the biggest we've ever been, what I'm really excited about is getting to the next milestone. Here's how: The consortium flywheel Our growth is increasingly self-reinforcing. Every member makes the product smarter, so it sells itself a little more each quarter. The first 20 members took 50 cold calls & a promise. The latest ones came to us. The largest B2B fraud consortium in America compounds in a way a point solution never can Warm-start deals 200+ customers & partners means most deals no longer start cold. Somebody in the room has already used us, & nobody gets paid to take a risk on a stranger. In financial services, that reference base is the entire game The team's shipping speed We ship so fast that "we don't do that yet" usually becomes "we do now" within a week or two. 10+ products live & counting. Deals that used to die on a missing feature just... don't anymore What took you the longest: your first customer, or hitting PMF?
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Jonathan Awad shared thisWe make sure every new hire at Baselayer delivers work on day 1 Engineers ship their first PR Sales reps send their first cold email and join calls right away Solutions engineers build agents that answer real customer questions Designers start on a live feature or help make a new one pager, etc.. The best way for new hires to ramp is to just start doing the work. No excuses, study up, stay late and get something useful done immediately We have a world-class team at Baselayer and I’m so proud to put my name next to every single person And btw if you couldn't tell yet… we're hiring across all functions! The caliber of talent applying is at an all time high (!!) so hit us up
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Jonathan Awad shared thisMy parents immigrated to the US in 1986 Growing up my parents taught me hard work, to never complain, to focus on school and to show immense respect to everyone I met. A key focus was always about giving yourself up for others Last Sunday we sat down for dinner and we chatted about those first few years a bit more in depth than typical When they got here, nobody had a record of them. No credit file, no history, no institution that could vouch for who they were. They had to prove themselves over and over, to people who had no reason to trust them yet We've now run more than 60 million business verifications at Baselayer. Every one of them is a business in exactly that position: real, legitimate, and completely unknown to the institution deciding whether to take a chance on it I’m so proud to work on Baselayer every day and see the impact we’re having on regular people’s lives… folks like my parents who sought out a better life in a new place LFGBL
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Jonathan Awad shared thisWe're running out of office space... AGAIN. → Team 3x'd in the past year → Hiring across every function, NYC & SF, in office → Adding desks anywhere we can fit them Our first NYC office was a Brooklyn townhouse we converted ourselves (2nd pic). 10 of us (mainly engineers) in Tim’s old apartment that was never ~meant~ to be an office. Then we moved into xAI’s / Twitter’s building in Chelsea and felt much more grown up. This past month we just filled that one too (!) Just got a new SF office & now imminently moving to a much bigger space in NYC If you want to join a team growing this fast, we're hiring aggressively across every function in office in NYC and SF Link to jobs in the comments.
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Jonathan Awad reposted thisJonathan Awad reposted thisBanks have stopped billions in fraud by joining fraud consortiums. Until recently, non-bank lenders and FIs were left out. Repeat fraudsters knew this and targeted non-bank FIs at a much higher rate as a result. Nothing stops a fraudster caught at one institution from moving on to the next. Two years ago, Baselayer built the Fraud Consortium to expand protections to the whole industry. Anonymized fraud data reported by one member now becomes a warning for the rest of the community. Today it's the largest B2B fraud consortium in the US, with over 1.2 million member-reported records and more than $1 billion in fraud losses prevented to date. Comment "consortium" below or send us a DM and we'll send you our guide on how to join today.
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Jonathan Awad shared this2017: Left investment banking @ JP Morgan to start my first company w/ friends 2018: Wandering in the darkness, couldn't tell what was working 2019: Raised $30M to scale the first stock exchange for real estate - Wasn't a great overall experience; didn't learn as much as I should have 2020-2023: Left my company and went back to employee life 2023: Left a simple job. Started my second company - Call Timothy Hyde to quit his job and team up with me. He says "no thanks bud" - Asked him what it would take to get him to join. He says raise $3M - Incorporate Osiris Ratings, Inc. - Talk to 50 prospects. 20 agree to work with us if we built a fraud consortium - Fundraise the week SVB Crashes. Raise $5M during the crisis anyway - Tim joins full-time shortly after 2024: - Expand vision to "AI Risk Platform" - Rename to Baselayer - First customer goes live April 5th - Hit our first $1M ARR months later - 10 epic employees (mainly engineers). Tim moves to SF - Convert a Brooklyn townhouse into our first NYC office 2025: - 75+ customers and partners - Indirectly supporting 2k+ banks and lenders - Hired many more amazing employees - 10+ products live - Moved into xAI's office in Chelsea - Won almost every deal we touched - Scaled revenue to many millions of $ 2026: - 200+ customers and partners - Raised a major Series A (TBA) - Launched KYA and Agentic Commerce Products - Hired many more epic people - Moving to a brand new office (TBA) - Growing faster than ever before (and only halfway through 2026) - TBA - TBA There's no way we could have predicted the combination of moments that led us to this point. We're building Baselayer, the trust layer for commerce (and the agents that are increasingly powering it) & customers absolutely love it. How you can get involved: - Try Baselayer & give us feedback - Join the team (hiring across all functions!) - Engage with this post so more people see it
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Jonathan Awad shared thisA players vs. B players vs. C players Here's what each one actually feels like to work with: A players feel like relief • Want the ball, the ownership, and the credit • Care about winning more than you ever could • Chase feedback and run the pre-mortem before anything breaks • Can be divas, and that's the price of wanting it this badly B players feel like a steady hand • Never drop the ball, but need to be told where the ball is • Reliable and accountable, take the feedback, run the play well • Won't invent the new thing or see around the corner for you • You won't be disappointed, but you won't be blown away C players feel like chaos • Nothing is ever their fault; they are always the victim • Their slope never goes up, and they don't really care • Cling the hardest because they know how hard it is to leave • Don't have careers, they have jobs The rules I live by: • Hire A players & pay them extremely well • Lean on B players where you need stability • Avoid C players like the plague Early on, with almost no layers, nearly every hire has to be an A. You cannot afford the chaos… -- What do A players feel like to you? Anamitra Banerji Martha Cummings Julian Roeoes Sanjib Kalita Ian Bradley Jake Moross Alain Meier Diego Szteinhendler Mitul Parmar Cokie Hasiotis Mansi Parikh Jesse Podell
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Jonathan Awad shared thisON ENTERPRISE SALES We just signed a top-15 bank in America. It took 12 months and 156 meetings. More than 10 a month, for over a year, on a single deal Here's the enterprise sales playbook that got it done: 1/ You're probably not multi-threading enough. Are you sure you've met every single person who might have an opinion? Titles aren't the whole story, so don't get lost in the sauce chasing only the senior names 2/ It's all about trust. Most sellers wait to see if a person can make them money before investing in them. Do the opposite. Be useful first, and the money follows 3/ Give before you take. So many of those 156 meetings had nothing to do with Baselayer, and that is exactly what introduced me to the people who turned out to matter most 4/ Reintroduce yourself 10 to 15 times more than you think you need to. Enterprise deals are long, and people forget why they're even talking to you. The best sellers never lose steam and never mind repeating themselves 5/ Bring the right team and pass the ball. I can do all the talking, but the same message often lands harder from a different role. Put a technical title in the room and watch the trust go up 6/ Do their job for them. Nobody gets paid to buy software, so make it effortless: build the materials, run the ROI analysis, write the notes, set the next steps. A great solution plus zero work for them is an easy yes 7/ Make everything easy. Don't ask "when works next week?" Send 6-8 times you're free and let them pick. There is always a simpler, faster way, and whether you find it is often the difference between a deal closing and dying on the vine 8/ Time kills all deals. It's the single most important thing to manage in the enterprise. Follow up within 24 hours. Book the next meeting before you leave the current one. Never let a deal go quiet 9/ Stick to the process, because process excellence leads to outcome excellence. Every meeting has a beginning (set the tone), a middle (discovery, both directions), and an end (move the ball and lock the next step). Meet in person monthly. Know exactly how your champion gets paid and promoted, and tie your deal to it 10/ Ask for the cookie. Most people are too scared to ask for what they want. Whose budget is this? Who signs? Why can't this go live next month? Asking takes courage, and it instantly tells you whether the deal is real None of this is rocket science. The only question is whether you actually do it -- What would you add to the list? Nathaniel Harley Neepa Patel Omri Yacubovich Ann Sabatino (Olinger) Desai John Diamond Mark Schulze Charlie Kroll
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Jonathan Awad shared thisI just spoke on a fraud panel with a top-5 bank (US Bank), the Federal Reserve, and the person who built Zelle Here's the takeaway that might scare every bank in America AI agents are frighteningly good at one thing in particular: taking a mountain of data and turning it into a believable story In fraud, that is the entire game Most people's personal data is already leaked (an SSN runs a criminal about $15), and most business data is already public. Hand both to an agent and the attack surface builds itself Clone a real company's website, buy a lookalike domain, spin up a near-identical site, invent a business and the people behind it, generate matching invoices, then point the whole thing at thousands of bank applications and let it run 24/7 while you sleep That is synthetic identity fraud at scale. It is no longer hard, and most banks are not ready for it That is exactly why the four of us were in the room Were you at Improve 2026? Incredible group this year Repost this so more risk teams see it before the agents do Eric Woodward Rachel Castro Staci S. Brian Russell Frances Zelazny Reuben Stewart Riley Hughes Angela Diaz, CRMP Ben Colman PJ Rohall Ryan A.
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Jonathan Awad reacted on thisJonathan Awad reacted on thisThe web is about to make a choice about AI agents: block them, or learn how to trust them. We’ve already seen this play out in publishing. Agents arrive as anonymous bots. Existing business models can’t distinguish valuable machine traffic from extraction, and the rational response becomes restricting access. Commerce has much more at stake. Agents will buy products, negotiate terms, initiate payments, open accounts, and make financial decisions. But today, a merchant has no way to know whether an agent represents a loyal customer, a legitimate business, a rogue bot, or a fraudster. Economic systems are built around actors with stable identities. People and businesses accumulate histories, assets, obligations, licenses, reputations, and liabilities. An agent, by contrast, can disappear immediately after acting. For agents to transact on the open web, their actions need to bind back to a person who can be held accountable. I wrote about why I think solving this is one of the foundational trust problems of the agentic economy, and what agentic commerce can learn from publishing. Link in the comments.
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Jonathan Awad liked thisJonathan Awad liked thisEvery BDR is told to book more meetings. I booked fewer and got promoted. 10 things that took me from BDR to AE. This is for anyone trying to make the same jump at a seed or Series A startup (some of it plays differently at a bigger company). 1. Turn people away. Sounds like terrible advice for a new BDR, I know. When you're starting out the goal is always just get the meeting. But eventually you learn the meeting is worth nothing if they're not the right person or you had to strong-arm them into it. Quality over quantity wins every time. 2. Your KPIs are just the baseline. If your number is 75 calls a day, the question isn't whether you can hit it. It's how many you can do above it. 3. Never let a ball drop. That's what separates a good AE from everyone else. If you can show you do that consistently, you earn the trust and the credibility to start doing more of the role while you're still in seat. 4. Learn to multithread. Time kills deals. If there's only one person at the account taking your calls, that deal is going to slide quietly into next quarter. Ask who else needs to say yes, and then get in front of them. 5. Become a product expert before you need to be. Realistically, you can book meetings with limited product knowledge. But taking the time to learn your product and your prospect's business builds credibility fast, and it's what sets you up to take on more of the AE role before you're officially in it. 6. Network inside your own company before you go outside it. Meet the sales team, learn from them, learn from the product team. That knowledge makes you more valuable where you are, and it puts trust in the hands of the people who can push you to that next step. 7. Learn how to talk about your wins without being an a**hole. You can be the best BDR of all time, but if no one sees your wins, you're not going to get very far. 8. Raise your hand for events and conferences. It gets noticed, and you'll meet people you never would have from behind your desk. 9. Post on LinkedIn. It's painful, but it helps. Exhibit A. 10. Choose the company carefully. It doesn't matter how good the product is if you don't care about it. Find an industry you're at least moderately passionate about, with people you actually like working with. The job is unforgiving and at times thankless, and those two things are what get you through it. I'm one promotion into this, so take it as what worked for me and not a formula. If you're a BDR trying to make the jump right now, my DMs are open.
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Jonathan Awad liked thisJonathan Awad liked thisThe hardest job I’ve held is that of a parent. This week we dropped off our eldest at Villanova and it was harder than you can ever prepare. After all the boxes are lifted, the packages unwrapped, and the frames hung, you get one hug, an “I love you,” and the look of confidence that they got this. Fighting through the tears, I looked at my wife, and mustered a prideful smile at the young, confident, smart woman we raised. A quote from the University welcome speech yesterday hits hard. “As parents, it’s been our duty to provide roots and wings.” She has the roots. Time to fly, Sydney. Time to fly.
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Jonathan Awad reacted on thisJonathan Awad reacted on thisStartup life hack for getting your favorite city spots on a packed calendar: Gather a curated group of industry leaders and host them there 🍸✨ Last night, we partnered with Footprint for an exclusive rooftop cocktail hour at City Vineyard. The payoff? 🦪 Rosé, oysters, and prime golden-hour views 💡 Unfiltered conversations with the leaders shaping Fintech, Lending, and AI 🌇 A perfect summer evening in great company on my favourite Manhattan rooftop Thank you to everyone who brought their energy and insights to make this worth leaving our desks for. & especially to Elisabeth Edokwe Falvey for collaborating on this. Want to join us next time? Subscribe on Luma (details below) 👇 📸 Swipe through for a sneak peek from last night – full gallery coming soon! What’s one NYC spot your summer is incomplete without? 🏙️👇 I'll go first...
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