Brian is a two-time founder who co-founded dating platform HowAboutWe and later SelfMade before joining Primary Venture Partners, where he draws on an eclectic background spanning high school sports, theatre, classroom teaching, meditation retreats, and political organizing to shape his hands-on approach to supporting founders through both operational challenges and psychological dynamics. He has shifted his investment focus from consumer companies to AI and developer infrastructure, emphasizing the full-stack AI value chain and backing technical tools used by developers while maintaining his founder-operator perspective on growth and company-building.

• Deep focus on generative AI infrastructure and hardware solutions that address efficiency bottlenecks. Highlighted enthusiasm for chip innovation through a significant investment in Etched, praising the founders' ambition to drastically improve inference speeds and accelerate the path to super intelligence.
• Strong preference for backing entrepreneurs who identified technical problems while working at large-scale companies and left to commercialize those specific solutions. Referenced the founder of Datafold, who built a data pipeline testing solution based on direct frustrations experienced while working at Lyft and Autodesk.
• Advocacy for iterative product positioning that evolves based on customer perception rather than internal vision. Shared a detailed case study of Supabase, noting how their growth exploded after they pivoted their messaging to explicitly present themselves as an open-source alternative to Firebase based on user feedback.
• Tactical advice on fundraising benchmarks and financial modeling, specifically regarding the realities of Series A and B expectations in the current market. Analyzed the mathematical relationship between average contract values and the specific volume of customers a startup needs to reach major revenue milestones like ten million in annual recurring revenue.
• Strategic guidance for open-source software founders regarding the balance between monetization and user adoption. Warned against aggressive monetization that creates friction for free users, arguing that maintaining a deep and broad community is the foundation of a lasting open-source business.
• Appreciation for business philosophy and enduring management principles. Frequently shares and reflects on wisdom from figures like Andy Warhol and Charlie Munger, particularly regarding the power of incentives to align teams and the idea that good business execution is a form of art.