aspiring barista
San Francisco
Joined March 2007
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brian pokorny retweeted
The 2026 Exceptional 100 is now live! 🚀 For the third year in a row, we are spotlighting 100 standout engineering and product builders at some of the fastest-growing companies in tech. These are the people architecting high-impact internal infrastructure and shipping key features and products daily.
View the full list at: exceptional100.com
Fun facts: Exceptional has funded 3 founders from prior years, and members of past cohorts have gone on to raise over +$2B in total funding!
Beyond the list, the report covers our analysis of what the data shows regarding today's top technical talent:
→ Geography and education
→ Roles, skills, and personal attributes that stand out
→ Emerging trends shaping the talent landscape
→ How talent is moving between companies, and into founding teams
→ Talent migration for prior cohorts
Huge congratulations to everyone on this year's list! And remember, if you have a high conviction idea, reach out to us any time, we want to be your first supporters!
@TheNestVC @Marell @grahaminhoo @fresco_inferno
brian pokorny retweeted
BREAKING: Pod 6 is live.
The sixth generation of our intelligent sleep system, redesigned for every kind of bed.
✅ The new Hub is small enough to fit under your bed frame
✅ More powerful than ever
✅ With 9x more sensors for enhanced accuracy
✅ In new Solo sizes, at our lowest starting price yet
This is our most significant hardware launch to date, and our most accessible.
Available now at eightsleep.com
brian pokorny retweeted
It took us 9 years, 11 prototypes, and our life savings to learn that every great product has the same design process.
Matic is now decisively the best home robot for families (I'm biased)
A 500-word thread and video on the Universal Design Process behind every great product:
Loving my Matic, my kids are gonna love to talk to our family robot.
Introducing Cues: Voice & Gesture control for Matic
We raised $115M and spent 9 years to make the world’s first intuitive home robot
Say you spilled coffee: Point to the spill and say, "Hey Matic, clean this" and it will hear, see, locate in 3D, and go clean on its own.
Matic comes with a lot of features:
1. Say "Hey Matic" - it locates your voice, turns, and looks at you
2. Say "Hey Matic, follow me" and start walking. Matic will follow behind
3. Say "Hey Matic, go clean the living room". Since it knows your house map, it navigates and just does it
It's so easy, a 5 year old and an 80 year old can use it and it understands 75 different languages.
Matic has 8x the airflow, specialised cleaning algorithms for rugs, corners, toekicks, mopping, etc and cleans better than any other robot vacuum.
Also keeps improving with software updates.
13,000 families use and love Matic.
WIRED magazine gave it a 10/10 (the only hardware to receive this rating in a decade)
Buy yours at maticrobots.com and if you don't love it after 6 months, we'll give you a full refund.
To celebrate our launch, we're cleaning 300 homes with Matic in San Francisco and New York City.
Comment "Matic" below, we'll send you the link to sign up and come to your doorstep to clean your home with Matic.
Congrats @ElizabethTurner on the new fund! Great working together over the years and look forward to your continued success with @Valkyrie_vc
You’re a great partner and advocate to founders who would be fortunate to have you involved in their new companies.
Today I’m launching @Valkyrie_vc - a $45M early-stage fund investing in AI, infrastructure, and critical industries.
Grateful to the founders, partners, and friends I’ve worked with along the way. You’ve truly shaped how I invest and why I built Valkyrie.
To the founders: Valkyrie was built for you. To partner with you. To build what matters. This is our new frontier. Let’s build it.
Thank you to @_pheebini at @Forbes who captured the story → forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/2…
Congrats on the round @danielkan and team!
thx @deantak for the incredible story. so excited to share what i’ve been working on. gamesbeat.com/fifth-door-rai…
brian pokorny retweeted
Really excited to be joining Burst Capital and to chat with Techcrunch about creating new jobs in the AI era.
We all know massive AI displacement of jobs is coming, and we at Burst are investing in AI because we think it is the future. The optimists among us assure everyone that AI will create more value than the jobs it displaces, and that there will be new work created.
One of our core investment theses at Burst is to actually invest in tech companies creating jobs. We are trying to find companies, using AI or otherwise, that help Main Street, help local and small businesses, empower them, and enable them to grow and thrive.
We already have many examples in the portfolio, including ResQ and Owner helping restaurants, Faire helping local retailers, Next Insurance helping small businesses with insurance, NuBrakes helping auto repair techs, and many more.
So excited to invest with Geoff, Wendy, and Rob at Burst, and to try to do some part in powering job growth in the large economic shift that is coming.
Congrats to @newmike on his new role with Geoff and the entire Burst Capital team!
I am so excited to have joined my longtime friends at Burst Capital! We all work so well together and I’m confident in our bright future. More in Geoff’s post below. I also want to thank Rebecca and the entire Canvas team for a great six years, and look forward to continuing on as an advisor and serving on our portfolio company boards.
linkedin.com/posts/gdonaker_…
brian pokorny retweeted
🚨UPDATE on Lithium plant fire near "Salad Bowl of America" (produces 70% of U.S. greens): 2 weeks later, scientists find big spike in Nickel, Manganese, & Cobalt in soil 2 miles away.
NYU toxicologist tells me at high levels, metals "can get into certain produce or fruit"
🧵
ALT Photo credit @LizaStarWalker
I was in Monterey the day this fire broke out with my family to visit the aquarium and stay overnight. We canceled and drove back home that same evening. I feel awful for the local residents, and the implications for the local food supply are very concerning. The response from the EPA provides zero confidence in ensuring the health and safety of the residents and the food supply impacted in this area, which affects many of us.
brian pokorny retweeted
Today, we’re launching @withPlenty: the investment platform for couples.
🧵 The 5 Whys for building Plenty 0/5