I'm Brian, a

Chief Technical Officer (CTO), who is excited about AI, Product & Growth

My Press

Featured in over 30+ press interviews

My projects and businesses have been featured in over 30 national and international press outlets over the years. From TV, to radio and newspapers.

My Background

Entrepreneurial engineer & driven executive

I love making things. I've worked with Fortune 500 companies, led companies, sat in boardrooms, sold businesses, raised capital and bootstrapped startups. Most comfortable when things are tough.

Did you go to school for this?

I was a Computer Engineer at Vanderbilt undergraduate and continued on with a Masters in Management of Technology taught between the Engineering School and the Owen Business School at Vanderbilt.

How did you get started?

Besides starting my own business to help pay my way through Vanderbilt, I went into Management Consulting and worked on Wall Street after graduate school. It wasn't long before I was back in the startup world where I really belonged.

How did you start working with startups?

I had an incredible opportunity to become the COO of Eats. We had a successful sale and exit of Eats to Delivery.com. Eats.com was also featured in NY Magazine, NY Times, Thrillist, Los Angeles Times, and Yahoo.

What am I recently proud of?

I recently stepped in and worked with Mat Vogels at Zestful (YC W17) as his interim CTO. We were able to deliver an immersive iOS and Android experience, full API and multiple pivots in a short time period.

My Skills

Full Stack ai, mobile, web & backend developer

I have experience managing, and other times solely responsible for delivering, an end-to-end product on expedited timelines.

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Excited about advancements in generative AI. Integrated with OpenAI on several projects, but diving deeper into the current Open Source offerings from TII (Falcon), Meta (Llama 2), Mistral and MosaicML (MPT). Keeping an eye on Google offerings and other commercial models.

Mobile development

I have extensive knowledge with performant React Native mobile applications leveraging the entire iOS and Android ecosystems. From dealing in Native code, to each respective App Store submission and approval processes. I've been most recently playing in SwiftUI for iOS and Jetpack Compose for Android native development.

Front-end development

Love working with front-end frameworks, epecially anything TypeScript/React. Big fan of Next.js, Gatsby that build off the React/Redux ecosystem. I enjoy working with designs in Figma and bringing them to life in Tailwind CSS.

Back-end development

I love TypeScript, but Go is also amazing given its raw performance. From REST to GraphQL APIs, I love working in SQL especially with Postgres because it can handle anything you can throw at it! I've deployed to all major cloud providers, but most experience is with AWS and Google Cloud.

About Me

Some things you might not know about me

Any accomplishments outside of work?

I earned my FAA Private Pilot License while in graduate school. I'm also a PADI open water scuba diver with advanced dives. In addition, I have my ASA Sailing Skipper license that allows me to sail in most parts of the world.

Where are you currently located?

I am based on the West Coast. Originally a Southern California native, but I have lived all over. I did ten years in New York City, but also lived in the Bay Area, Denver and abroad in Barcelona too.

What do you do when you're not programming?

I love to rock climb, indoors and outdoors. Taking the electric bicycles through the city parks is always fun. Was alpine skiing in the Rockies when we moved to Colorado. Still love just going for a long motorcycle ride through the mountains or up PCH with my wife. Diving deep into the world of Espresso ☕️.

What would you be doing if you weren't a software engineer?

I really enjoy teaching people. Being able to share all the knowledge and experience I've aquired through my travels, businesses and adventures...so I'd probably teach. Maybe sailing, rock climbing or scuba diving for fun and completely away from the screen.