Brendan Kohler is a venture capital investor at Hyperplane who built his investing perspective as co-founder and CTO of Sentenai, an autonomous data engineering company, giving him direct experience commercializing complex machine-learning systems rather than coming from a purely financial background. He maintains his active role as a technical founder while investing, focusing on AI teams attacking hard physical-world problems and using his deep technical network to help research-heavy teams spin out companies and bring new technologies to market.

• Deep technical expertise with a specific passion for functional programming and infrastructure. Tweets frequently reference working with Haskell in production environments, such as combining machine learning with Haskell at Sentenai or playfully mentioning donut-driven development while hiring for distributed systems roles.
• Pragmatic view on product strategy where usability and solving hard problems take precedence over pure technical merit. He points to MongoDB success as a result of offering easy solutions and warns against business models that rely solely on IoT connectivity without a hardware component.
• Strong connection to the Boston and Cambridge innovation ecosystem. He actively participates in local academic meetups like those at MIT for category theoretic databases and enjoys the seasonal shifts of New England, from golden autumn light on granite buildings to the arrival of apple season.
• Appreciation for culinary experiences and travel, particularly involving Japanese culture. He shares enthusiasm for specific pairings like flounder with crisp Alsatian wine and documents trips to Tokyo and Kyoto with photos of architecture and local cuisine like tonkatsu.