About Me

I’m a driven entrepreneur, software engineer, and artist who loves partnering with startups. Three have each exceeded a $1B valuation, and I’ve also launched my own ventures.

Originally from Canada, I spent time in San Francisco and New York. This blog blends personal journaling with tech insights. I’m always glad when readers find something useful here.

My strengths revolve around learning quickly, problem-solving, and scaling. Beyond work, I’ve explored mountains, run marathons, cycled long distances, and kept a daily yoga routine.

Join me for discussions on entrepreneurship, software engineering, art, and life.

As a Professional #

I’ve contributed to Airbnb, Mesosphere (D2IQ), and Braze. My path began at a Canadian oil and gas company building instrumentation for exploration, then shifted to mobile telecom optimization in California where I developed custom databases, an RPC system, and built parsers for Ericsson LTE data before that company was acquired.

At Airbnb, I focused on data infrastructure and open source contributions, including Apache Mesos (where I became a PMC member), Chronos, SmartStack, and Kafka. Later I helped scale Mesosphere, shaping its sales and services. After Braze, I pursued entrepreneurship, wrote Rust programming books, and expanded my startup experiences.

A copy of my résumé is here.

Public Speaking, Interviews, and Podcasts #

I’ve spoken at events like QCon, All Things Open, MesosCon, ContainerCon, and LinuxCon. I’ve also been interviewed on podcasts and in articles:

• SE Radio – Discussed “Idiomatic Rust”
• Rustacean Station – Also about “Idiomatic Rust”
• Rustacean Station – About “Code Like a Pro in Rust”

Open Source #

I’ve contributed to many open-source projects. Most notably:

• Conky, a system monitor
• ThetaGang, an options trading strategy
• dryoc, a pure-Rust cryptography library
• cracking-the-coding-interview-rust, Rust solutions to coding problems
• genserver, an Elixir-style GenServer in Rust
• And more on GitHub, where I maintain over 150 public repos

Writings #

I’ve written books and plenty of blog content. Some highlights:

• Code Like a Pro in Rust (affiliate link)
• Idiomatic Rust (affiliate link)

Blog Stats #

For those who love data, here are posts and word counts over the years and months. More details in the GitHub repo.

Photography #

I enjoy photography, particularly analogue photography (street, portraits, print making), and images on this blog are free to use under CC0 1.0. Here’s one example.

Videography #

I have a YouTube channel and used to stream on Twitch. My work once appeared in a WeWork documentary on Hulu.

Some older videos are still up, though they can feel outdated. They remain because some might still enjoy them.

Adventures #

I’ve tackled big challenges:

• Biked from SF to NYC unassisted in 27 days, recording a daily YouTube vlog
• Raced the Wolfpack Hustle Crash Race before the 2012 LA marathon, crashed, then still finished the marathon in under four hours
• Biked from sea level to Mauna Kea’s 13,000+ ft summit
• Rode from SF to Chico, then through the northern Sierra and up Mount Shasta

Contact #

For questions or general hellos, feel free to email me: hifromyourblog@brenden.brndn.io. No marketing, please.

This Website #

Source code for this site can be found on GitHub.