Brev is a startup founded by Chris Pitchford, a seasoned Seattle tech entrepreneur with previous experience at companies like Shyft and Ally. Brev leverages large language models to help companies manage reporting and analysis of their business performance, pitching its software as a “business performance OS.” The platform crunches internal data from various sources to streamline the creation of progress reports for metrics such as annual recurring revenue, sales forecasts, customer success, and more, with the goal of reducing prep work for meetings and reviews, or even eliminating meetings altogether.
In addition to generating progress reports, Brev also pulls insights from unstructured data on company metrics, automates meeting workflows, and manages goal-setting processes. The company takes advantage of Pitchford’s prior experience at Ally, a Seattle startup that focused on helping companies monitor their Objectives and Key Results (OKR) using a popular framework for running teams and businesses. Microsoft acquired Ally in 2021, showcasing the success of this approach in the business performance management space.
Pitchford believes that Brev stands out from competitors through its “LLM-native approach to business performance management” and by aligning closely with the goals and strategy of an organization. While acknowledging that legacy strategy execution and performance management players still serve a purpose, he emphasizes the importance of harnessing the power of AI in a deeper way for the future of this space. Pitchford, who previously co-founded worker shift software platform Shyft and held executive roles at Microsoft and VComply, co-founded Brev with Vic Hu, a former engineering manager at Indeed with experience working at Meta, Iterative Health, and Panopto.
As part of Brev’s founding team, Hu brings a strong engineering background to the company, while Pitchford brings a wealth of experience in business strategy and revenue generation. The company’s founding engineer, Benn Graham, complements the team with technical expertise. Pitchford recently relocated to San Francisco to stay close to the company’s customers, while Hu remains based in Seattle. Despite its location split, Brev is entirely bootstrapped and has not raised outside funding, indicating the founders’ confidence in the company’s potential for growth and success in the market.
The emergence of Brev adds to the growing landscape of AI-driven startups focused on improving business productivity and performance. With Pitchford’s track record of successful entrepreneurship and leadership in the tech industry, combined with Hu’s strong technical background, Brev is poised to make an impact in the business performance management space. As the company continues to refine its platform and build relationships with customers, it will be interesting to see how Brev evolves and differentiates itself in a competitive market.
