Ep. 168: Brett Martin, Co-Founder of Charge Ventures and Fonzi.ai, Automating Recruiting and The Future of Work

Leaders, 

We have three questions for you:

• What really is the future of work? 

• How will AI impact the future of work? 

• What’s the value of a platform? 

In this episode, we talk with Brett Martin, a 20+ year serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Brett has seen it all. His fund, Charge Ventures, has been around for over 9 years, invested in over 90 companies, and funded several unicorns. 

Brett has also been a leader in combining SaaS applications in the future of work, being in both the founder and investor seats. 

In this episode we’ll learn: 

• Brett views company building as “riding the wave” rather than creating one. 

• Brett’s perspective on the future of work, the types of companies that are needed, and which ones will successfully ride the wave.

• How entrepreneurs can leverage Generative AI and today’s technology to build the best talent-related companies.

A quote from Brett that resonates throughout the episode is: “Great companies ride waves; they don’t create them.” Write this down and keep it close, it's a powerful reminder as you think about your business.

In the theme of waves, Brett outlines the current factors shaping the future of work:

• We’re transitioning from thinking that the goal is “remote” to embracing a distributed, global workforce.  

• Moving from offshoring as a cost-savings function to treating it as a strategic sourcing channel.

• The best solutions today are augmenting humans, not replacing them. For example, his startup Fonzi replaces 60% of recruiters' tasks, allowing them to focus more on building relationships.

• Augmenting humans enables teams to do more with less—in some cases, what once required 20 BDRs can now be accomplished by one digital worker.

• The challenge of confronting broken systems built on legacy technology. The open question: should we build on top of these systems or start fresh with entirely new solutions?