The Next Play community now has over 65,000 people thinking about joining or starting a company. “Do you have any recommendations for startups to join?” is a question we receive hundreds of times a month.
While we suggest you think for yourself (and consider all the nuances of your specific situation), lately we have been recommending people explore startups innovating in more traditionally “unsexy” industries.
The hot industries always make the headlines: “Fintech is revolutionizing the payments sector. Biotech is inventing new cures to disease. Spacetech is pioneering reusable rockets.”
But the more traditional industries—like for example industrial manufacturing or waste management or storage—are both full of potential and often overlooked.
Startups who have found strong product-market-fit in neglected industries can be especially lucrative; they tend to have stickier customers since there is far less competition from other upstarts. That’s partially because breaking into an “unsexy industry” is challenging—it’s hard to understand exactly what to build and what will actually make a difference. But if you do, you’ll end up finding lots of green space to grow quickly as you redefine the status quo.
This is far easier said than done; that’s why we thought it’d be a good idea to shed light on the team at Miter.
Miter is growing extremely quickly as they have found product-market-fit in the construction industry.
The construction industry is a great example of a sector that is ripe for change. Construction productivity is declining—we used to be able to build things (like homes, buildings, and infrastructure) both cheaper and faster than we can now. Why is this? One of the reasons is that the construction industry is running on software systems that are 30+ years old and full of inefficiencies.
The industry needs something better; that’s where Miter comes in. Their mission is to make it easier and faster for contractors to build. Aligned to this, they have built a platform that brings HR, compliance, operations, and financial software together—saving their customers lots of time and money. Much of this is made possible because emerging technologies and APIs are unlocking new opportunities for startups like Miter to create financial platforms built on embedded payments.
The result has been rapid growth: hundreds of contractors—like American Roofing (one of the largest roofers in Kentucky) and Marathon Electrical (the largest electrical shop in the Southeast)—now use Miter, and Miter just announced they have raised $38 million from Bessemer Venture Partners and Coatue to accelerate their vision of a “better built world—a world where it’s much faster and easier to build critical infrastructure.”
But what is it actually like to work at a technology company that’s focused on revolutionizing an “unsexy” space? That’s what we asked their team: How do you build empathy for your customers? How do you pair short-term plans with your long-term ambitious vision? How do you measure progress? All that, and much more in the Next Play Spotlight below.
Major thanks to the Miter team for sharing so many behind-the-scenes details with us!
One of the particularly challenging parts about building a company in a more traditional industry is that it can be hard to prioritize. Legacy industries tend to be filled with inefficiencies—how do you choose what to work on? How do you figure out where to start? How do you not fool yourself into believing you are solving an important problem and actually validate your product-market-fit?
Miter’s answer to that question is fairly straightforward—you need to be _all-in_ on understanding your customers. That has to be the number one priority.
If you ask Connor, their CEO, about customer-centricity, he’ll tell you that Miter exists for “one simple reason: to empower contractors to build with confidence.”
You need to reach complete clarity on the wants and needs of the people you serve. So how do you get there?
Perhaps one is to encourage a culture of curiosity and understanding. One that is not afraid of complexity and is excited to dig into the weeds. Before jumping to solutions, you want to develop true empathy for your customers.
“Seek first to understand: Construction payroll is notoriously complex. Contractors routinely deal with byzantine compliance reporting requirements, union labor agreements, multi-state and local taxes, prevailing wages, paper timecard inputs, weekly turnaround times, complex overtime rules, and more. It's hard to emphasize how deep some of these requirements can get. In addition, payroll has its own set of headaches: taxes, money movement, benefits and deductions, pay schedules, etc. Moreover, payroll is just one part of the back-office of construction. There's an entire lifecycle of time tracking, into payroll, into accounting systems where Miter has to operate as a high-fidelity partner to external integrations and speak our customers' language. Taking the time to truly understand the end-to-end objective helps us avoid XY problems that can be introduced by any miscommunication in any of those steps.”
If you are new to the industry, go talk to the people working in it!
“We also encourage every Mitosaur to talk to customers ASAP. We're extremely customer-oriented, and most roles involve extreme proximity and collaboration with customers on a daily or weekly basis.”
“Learn accounting fast!”
“While visiting a potential client in the Midwest, we spotted a local construction contractor’s truck and joked, “Why aren’t they a Miter customer?” Just a few hours later, a teammate turned around and said, “Demo’s booked.” That moment captured the spirit of the team perfectly — scrappy, bold, and always ready to make things happen.”
Even so, developing fluency in the nuances of a more traditional industry can be overwhelming. It helps to bring in experts to guide you through the process. Miter has actually hired some of their customers as a means for spreading that institutional knowledge.
“To get up to speed fast, you should talk to the former accountants/payroll folks on the team.”
“Before I was a Miter employee, I was a Miter customer. As a payroll manager I had been forced into finding a new payroll provider that could accommodate our unique union situations. I met with several companies that would eventually just turn off their screens since they were overwhelmed by our needs. Miter not only showed up in person, but met our needs confidently. I worked with many Miter team members during my implementation process and loved their drive and dedication to my success; it was tangible. Once I graduated, Miter continued to be supportive in my day-to-day life and I couldn't help but feel attached to Miter and their culture. Once I realized that I was ready to take the leap and do what I really enjoyed I reached out to Tobin and Connor. We met to discuss and the rest is history!”
It also helps to build a culture that values writing. “Make sure you take notes” is a rather simple suggestion but doing this consistently, and in a way that’s actually useful to a scaling organization is something many companies implement ineffectively (i.e. some people take notes but they are hard to read, scattered, and overwhelming).
Several Mitosaurs (yes that is what they call themselves internally, and yes, there is nothing unsexy about this) mentioned writing as a critical aspect of the company culture.
“I like the focus on great written communication.”
“At Miter, we're strong believers that writing clarifies thinking -- we write just as much for ourselves as for others.”
“We have a very writing-oriented culture. We try to hire people who are gifted and passionate written communicators and enjoy simplifying complex ideas in writing.”
“If I could give my former self advice about how to maximize my impact at Miter in the early days, it would be to get really intentional about organizing my thoughts and notes.”
It is indeed useful to talk to customers and write things down—but it’s also important to ensure these learnings make their way into the product in the most productive way possible.
Miter has a rather intentional strategic planning process that involves what they call “product blueprinting”—they find it really important to consider all the potential impact of their decision across their entire system.
“The product "blueprinting" process we undergo for all major product or technical decisions helps us think through the longer-term impact before diving in. Configuration in a complex, interrelated system like Miter can often potentially live at multiple levels: at a customer, an entity, an employee, a payment, a specific earning, etc. Taking the time to be thoughtful of what is the most intuitive way for our customers to interact with this saves us time in the long run.”
They also encourage all of their employees to actually use the product. To actually put themselves in the shoes of their customers.
“Use every bit of the product, even the ones that aren't intuitive! Hourly payroll, union rates etc.”
That’s because the team recognizes that while building an effective culture is important—documents and principles and processes can only go so far. At the end of the day, the difference between a successful company and one that flounders is really in the people.
“I don't think that the company's culture resides in rituals, values, or principles. Of course these exist at Miter and are a part of the foundation of the company, but in my opinion the culture is in the people. Every team member at Miter is genuinely helpful and driven by the success of the customer.”
Can you hire people who are determined to roll up their sleeves and solve problems for their customers? Can you hire people who are willing to commit? Commit to doing whatever it takes to help your customers.
“I didn't expect to find so much passion for the customer at the company. This group of people are so dedicated to a great product at a fast pace. As I was originally a customer, I never knew or even suspected the dedication and skill it took to get new products out so fast per the need of the customer. Upon coming to Miter I explained it as a duck swimming; above the surface they are so smooth and calm, but those legs are going a mile a minute under the water.”
Commitment needs to happen at every level of the company. It can’t just be the lower level employees who are diving into the details. It has to start from the top.
“Dedicated is a word that comes to mind when it comes to Miter culture, and it starts at the top here. Our co-founders are in it with us every day, which makes it a very motivating place to work.”
“Connor is not afraid to get into the weeds if a team needs extra help or support, from coding to front-line customer support.”
“Tobin is a humble, customer-obsessed leader that embodies Miter culture and values. Even early in my time at Miter, I spent countless hours side-by-side with him enabling large customer go-lives, and never once has he wavered in his optimism, his willingness to go the extra mile, or his integrity of doing what is right for the customer first.”
“Connor built a large part of the initial Miter product himself, teaching himself how to program after having a background in consulting and venture capital. The willingness to just jump into the fires of solving gnarly customer problems again and again has built up a large well of trust with the rest of the company and makes me proud to work here.”
“Connor is one of the most competitive and competent people I've ever met, and his persistence has led to a world-class culture where the entire team pushes the pace, remains customer-focused, and plays to win.”
“Our leadership isn't too big to step in and do the work with us. They are so willing to lend a hand, offer support, or assist on a call. It's something I try to emulate in my work life.”
And, especially as things are growing quickly, customer-centricity has to be the sort of thing that is bigger than any one individual’s mindset or accomplishments. You really need the whole team rowing in the same direction—people who all get energy from that joy of solving real customer problems.
“We win as a team, we give a damn, and everything is grounded in customer happiness. We've grown a lot in the last 3 years, but the founders regularly remind us that nothing else matters except for whether we're making our customers happy.”
“At Miter, we love solving customer problems in an intuitive way. Our success as a business depends on our ability to understand and respond to our customers’ needs quickly, efficiently, and with high quality. Folks who are interested primarily by scaling large distributed systems or fine tuning the latest LLMs, might be happier somewhere else. On the other hand, if you get satisfaction from seeing a customer’s face light up and celebrate the news of the latest feature your team shipped, you may fit right in at Miter.”
“Miter is about collaboration, adaptability, and pushing forward together, so people who prefer to work in isolation or avoid change might not thrive here.”
Being truly customer-obsessed in a way that’s beyond surface-level is the sort of thing that’s often best illustrated through real examples.
“During one of our offsites, the whole company planned to see an outdoor concert on Thursday night. As we arrived to the concert venue, our biggest customer calls in panicking about a bug that was impacting users' ability to clock in and out of our timekeeping system. Luckily, some of our engineers had brought their laptops to the concert. Unluckily, it began to rain. Our small engineering team huddled and debugged the issue under a tree while other team members held a blanket over them, protecting them from the rain. We resolved the bug and enjoyed the concert!”
Stories like this are worth emphasizing—if you want to work at a company that’s taking customer obsession seriously, you should be prepared to go the extra mile for your customers.
Sometimes that means working beyond traditional hours.
If someone is looking for a job they can turn off every day at the same time, and never think about work outside of their working hours, Miter might not be the right fit. It isn't about work-life balance, it's about fitting in well with this group of incredibly passionate people. We are all so dedicated to our work and our customers. We definitely aren't phoning it in.
Sometimes that means foregoing the sexy technical challenge and instead focusing on the more nitty gritty yet still impactful solutions:
“Miter is not a great fit for folks who are interested in solving abstract technical problems.”
The reward for this sort of focus is quite large: more revenue, more customers, more product, etc. But perhaps the best reward, and those who have worked on products before where they really really solved their customers’ problems will realize this, is that smile you see when customers find magic.
“The gratification of actually helping real customers solve really their trickiest problems. If construction payroll sounds boring, trust me, it's not. First, payroll literally makes the economy work. Enabling it for thousands of employees every week is pretty cool. But also it's really hard, and our customers end up saving tons of time and energy and gaining peace of mind by using our product. We're empowering the next generation of construction companies!”
“Miter is a "need-to-have" product for its customers, and if you want to be a part of building a platform that is changing the future of the built world + critical infrastructure, Miter is the place for you.”
If this sort of environment is exciting to you, Miter is hiring for numerous roles in NYC and SF: sales, engineering, customer success, launching, and more.
And if you are looking for more opportunities, be sure to create your free profile on the Next Play platform — we’ll try our best to connect you to the most relevant and interesting opportunities.
It's wonderful to hear about startups working like this...