The Bloomberg Terminal for Labor: How Revelio Labs Is Revolutionizing Workforce Intelligence
Ben Zweig doesn't mince words when describing his vision for Revelio Labs: "I think this could be one of the most consequential companies in the world."
It's a bold statement from the CEO and co-founder of what he describes as "something kind of like a Bloomberg terminal, but instead of for financial market data, it's labor market data." But when you consider that Revelio Labs has built the world's first universal HR database by absorbing and standardizing hundreds of millions of public employment records, that ambition starts to make sense.
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From Academic to Entrepreneur: The Origin Story
Zweig's path to founding Revelio Labs reads like a strategic reconnaissance mission through the data landscape. Starting as an academic labor economist studying social mobility and occupational transformation, he moved to a hedge fund where he witnessed something remarkable: "Everyone uses this Bloomberg terminal. It's amazing. Everyone's got their day job and right next to them, they have all the data they could possibly want. So finance as a field has become very sophisticated in their use of data."
The contrast became stark when he joined IBM to run a workforce analytics team. Despite employees representing the vast majority of most companies' expenses, Zweig discovered that "we are in the Stone Ages with how we analyze human capital and employees."
His eureka moment crystallized around a fundamental imbalance: finance represents roughly 18% of the global economy and has become highly sophisticated in its use of data, while labor allocation—which affects far more of the economy—still lacks that same analytical rigor.
This realization became impossible to ignore. "After having that thought, it kind of became hard to think about anything else," Zweig reflects. The idea wasn't just about building a successful company. It was about advancing "the science of labor markets" in a way that would be "more productive than trying to advance science through academic channels."
The Technical Fortress: Why 50 of 55 Employees Write Code
What strikes you immediately about Revelio Labs is its engineering-heavy composition: out of 55 employees, only five don't write code. This isn't accidental—it's intentional architecture.
"We really view ourselves as an engineering powerhouse," Zweig explains. "We believe that the best way to be commercially successful is to have the best product and have the best offering."
This philosophy extends even to their go-to-market strategy. When they do hire for sales or marketing roles, they specifically seek technical candidates. "We're really offering technical solutions to technical problems," Zweig notes. "We don't really view ourselves as coming in and providing some experience or just being able to relate to the problems of the clients."
The rationale becomes clear when you consider what Revelio is actually building: a system that processes terabytes of employment data to solve problems that, as Zweig puts it, "maybe don't have solutions, that no one's ever solved before." This isn't a company that can rely on relationship-building or industry experience to win deals. Their competitive advantage lies purely in their ability to engineer better solutions than anyone else has managed to create.
In this context, their distributed work model—with teams scattered across New York, the West Coast, and Europe, and an office policy where "people show up if they want to show up, they don't if they don't"—reflects a company that prioritizes output over presence, technical excellence over face time.
The Friday Showcase: Institutionalizing Initiative
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of Revelio's culture is their weekly Friday showcase—a ritual that perfectly encapsulates their approach to employee autonomy and innovation.
"Every week, every Friday, we have a showcase week where a different person takes the week off to basically work on something that's not their day job. And they work on whatever they think would be additive to the company."
This isn't a hackathon or a side project hour—it's a full week dedicated to self-directed work that employees believe would benefit the company. "So every Friday we see what someone thought would be useful to the company."
The results, according to Zweig, are consistently excellent. More importantly, the program sends a clear signal: "We want you to think for yourself about what would be useful to the company."
This approach reflects a broader cultural philosophy that Zweig describes in terms of rewards and consequences. "We don't really have product managers and project managers," he explains. While this can sometimes feel messy, "the flip side of that is that there's a lot of hands-on work being done. We're producing a lot of quantity of work."
The World-Class Team Hypothesis
Revelio's hiring philosophy centers on a simple but ambitious premise: every team should strive to be the best in the world at what they do.
"We have a data science team and they're working on cutting-edge models and are, I think, a best-in-class modeling team. Then we have a distributed backend team. And we think that team is at the cutting edge, the best in the world at distributed systems. And we have a scraping team. They are the best in the world at web scraping."
This isn't just corporate posturing—it's a strategic approach to talent density. "Every team, I think we'd like them to be able to take pride in being the best team in the world at what they're doing," Zweig says.
The hiring process reflects this philosophy. Rather than looking for culture fit in the traditional sense, they focus on professional identity. "Whether there's their professional identity is a big part of their core identity," Zweig explains. "So I think we like to sort of move away from people that are kind of on the work-to-live side of things. And really people that think of themselves as 'I am a great economist. I'm a great data scientist, I'm a great engineer.'"
They test for this during interviews by observing whether candidates "light up when they talk about hard problems" and can "have discussions about what they're working on in a really sophisticated way."
The Quality-Speed Balancing Act
Operating as a startup with world-class aspirations creates natural tension between speed and quality. Zweig's approach to this classic startup dilemma reveals the company's underlying values.
The line they draw is clear: context matters more than perfection. "If something doesn't work and it's because they were prioritizing something else, that's fine," he explains. But there's one scenario that crosses the line—client-facing failures that damage credibility.
"Let's say we're giving a demo to a client and something just doesn't work, and it was supposed to work. And that's embarrassing. We have to apologize to the client."
This isn't about perfectionism; it's about maintaining the technical credibility that their entire business model depends on. When hedge funds and Fortune 500 companies are paying for workforce intelligence, a broken demo doesn't just cost a sale—it undermines the fundamental premise that Revelio can solve problems others can't.
When forced to choose between speed and quality, Zweig leans slightly toward quality, though he acknowledges speed matters too. This balance reflects the company's core belief: "The problems are really hard. And I think they are solvable through good engineering."
Looking Forward: The AI Reconfiguration
As Revelio Labs sits on vast troves of workforce data, they're witnessing firsthand how AI adoption is reshaping the employment landscape. Zweig's prediction for 2025 and beyond focuses on organizational adaptability.
"Jobs don't get automated wholesale, but components of the jobs tasks get automated. So I think we expect to see more configuration of work."
The winners and losers in this transition won't necessarily be determined by size or resources, but by organizational flexibility. "Some organizations are well suited for that where they can sort of reorient what a job is and what the tasks and activities are within a job. Whether they can sort of shift the borders between teams flexibly and other companies are much more rigid."
His prediction: "Big companies will struggle more with that and smaller more nimble companies will be well positioned."
Final Tips for Founders, Recruiters, and Job Seekers
Founders — Consider implementing a regular "innovation time" like Revelio's Friday showcase, where employees can work on self-directed projects that benefit the company. It signals trust and often produces unexpected value.
Recruiters — When hiring for technical companies, don't automatically rule out technical candidates for traditionally non-technical roles. Technical sellers often excel when the product requires deep technical understanding.
Job Seekers — Look for companies where your professional identity aligns with the company's core mission. Organizations that value deep expertise over general skills often provide more opportunities for growth and impact in your field.