FutureEngine: Ling, Thomas Bao launch recruiting startup for Silicon Valley

Ling
and Thomas Bao, brothers and cofounders of
FutureEngine.
FutureEngine; Shayanne
Gal/Business Insider

• Two brothers are trying to help tech workers find jobs at hot
  startups most likely to increase tenfold in value.
• Ling and Thomas Bao are the cofounders of FutureEngine, a
  recruitment startup aimed at Silicon Valley.
• It showcases promising job opportunities to job-seekers that
  pass its screening tests, and the pair often take a fee for
  placing candidates.
• “There’s no faster way to impact the world right now and
  generate personal wealth than to join a hypergrowth startup,”
  CEO Ling Bao said.

Ling Bao knows how life-changing working for a buzzy startup
early can be.

He joined Facebook back in 2010, before its IPO. It was a hot
commodity — it had around 400 million users by the end of that
year — but it was still a fraction of the size it is today,
with
a staggering 2.5 billion people across all its apps. 

Bao didn’t become wealthy overnight, he said; the value of
Facebook’s stock crept up slowly after it went public. But as the
years went by, it became clear to him that he now had
considerable financial security: “Our family went without
income for a year or so [in 2017]. It felt great going to sleep
at night not having to worry about paying the bills or about some
horrible life event like having a health issue and getting
fired.”

He and his brother Thomas — another Facebook veteran, who
worked at Instagram — are now on a mission to help other tech
workers in Silicon Valley find work, and make big bucks in the
process. They’re launching FutureEngine, a job-hunting startup
that tries to connect engineers to the startups that are most
likely to “10X” in value — that is, to increase tenfold in value,
(hopefully) making their employees filthy rich along the
way. 

“We fundamentally believe there’s no faster way to impact
the world right now and generate personal wealth than to join a
hypergrowth startup,” Ling Bao told Business Insider in an
interview.

FutureEngine hunts for ‘rocket ship’ startups

FutureEngine is, simply put, a recruiting platform for the
tech industry.  It screens job-hunters with tests, then
provides them with curated lists of opportunities at what it
describes as “rocket ship startups” — a reference to Facebook COO
Sheryl Sandberg’s remark about job-hunting that “if you’re
offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat!”

Its website lists openings at buzzy outfits including
electric scooter startup Bird, blockchain biz Coinbase, “Pokémon
Go” creators Niantic, payment processor Stripe, and DNA testing
lab 23andMe, among others.

Some of the businesses listed have partnerships with
FutureEngine, paying them fees equivalent to 15-20% of a
candidate’s base first-year salary — a hefty sum in Silicon
Valley, where technical role salaries often stretch into the
hundreds of thousands of dollars. But FutureEngine also lists
firms that it doesn’t have a relationship with and doesn’t draw
fees from (unlike its competitors, Bao said).

“We will connect engineers to the best companies that are
fit for them, period. Now some companies then, on top, pay us
this contingency fee because we do additional vetting for them,”
Bao said.

FutureEngine’s
homepage.
FutureEngine

FutureEngine tracks down next-big-thing startups using a number
of metrics. There’s headcount and employee growth (1,230, or 40%
year-on-year for work messaging app Slack), and venture capital
funding raise ($97 million, in the case of sneaker marketplace
startup GOAT). Reviews on GlassDoor, the employer reviews
website, are also taken into account — like video conferencing
tech firm Zoom’s 4.9/5.0 rating from 193 reviews. 

“All of these companies have a very good shot of being a 10X,”
said Bao, “but nobody can make guarantees right … we try to
prune the list to those that we think have a credible shot based
on your growth, history, funding.”

The data scientist-turned-entrepreneur say he and his brother’s
stints at Facebook and Instagram leaves them well-placed to
identify capable candidates. “We were both lucky enough to work
with very, very amazing people, to interview a lot of people to
figure out who is gonna be successful at Facebook or Instagram.
And just having that experience, I think, gave us a very good eye
for talent, and a very good understand of why having good talent
at a company is so critical.” 

14,000 engineers have used FutureEngine so far (though only a
fraction have actually been placed into jobs), and the startup
has raised $500,000 in pre-seed funding, which the brothers
intend to use on hiring. For now, though the team is just two
people — Ling and Thomas Bao, who sit in CEO and CTO roles
respectively.

“We can be very candid and then attack with two brains against
these problems, rather than have to, a lot of times, … play
optics and make sure everyone stays motivated,” Bao said of
working with his brother.

“I know we’re going to have this relationship for the rest of our
lives, so our incentives are as aligned as you could be.”

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