About Me

Hi! I’m Brenden Matthews. I’m a software engineer, author, artist, and entrepreneur who likes partnering with startups. Three of the startups I’ve worked with have gone on to exceed a $1B valuation, and I’ve also launched my own ventures.

Originally from Canada, I’ve lived and worked in San Francisco and New York. This site is where I publish essays that mix engineering, entrepreneurship, and creative work, with the occasional personal journal entry.

If you’re curious what to expect, the short version is:

• Building and scaling software (especially infrastructure and distributed systems)
• Rust, systems programming, and open source
• Photography and other creative projects
• Adventures, endurance sports, and staying healthy

Start Here #

If you’re new, here are a few posts to start with:

• The Value of Tools — Tools, leverage, and value creation
• Growth vs. Grind — Sustainable ambition
• The 10x Engineer Is a Myth: It’s More Like 100x — Power laws in software and teams
• Cities Are Technology — Urbanism, infrastructure, and the car-shaped problem
• Analogue Joy in a Digital World — Film, physical media, and digital minimalism

Or browse everything in the post archive.

Work #

I’ve worked at and with Airbnb, Mesosphere (D2IQ), and Braze, plus earlier roles in Canada and California.

A quick sketch of that path:

• Started in Canada building instrumentation for oil and gas exploration
• Moved into mobile telecom optimization in California (custom databases, an RPC system, and parsers for Ericsson LTE data; later acquired)
• At Airbnb, focused on data infrastructure and open source: Apache Mesos (PMC), Chronos, SmartStack, and Kafka
• Helped scale Mesosphere, supporting sales and services as it grew
• After Braze, leaned into entrepreneurship and writing, including Rust books

A copy of my résumé is here.

Speaking & Media #

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. Some of my own notable projects include:

• 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

Writing #

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

• Code Like a Pro in Rust
• Idiomatic Rust

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, especially analogue photography (street, portraits, and printmaking). 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. I even made a brief appearance 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.