Location: Santa Monica, CA (Los Angeles)
Remote: Open to hybrid / remote. In SF often (lived there
8 years previously).
Willing to relocate: Yes, for the right team.
Technologies: Enterprise pre-sales & solutions
architecture, technical POCs, MEDDPICC, agentic
workflows. Strong with data — heavy quant/Excel
background from running a $20M lead-gen vertical. Build
side projects with Lovable and AI-assisted coding
(Claude Code). Ruby & Python fundamentals.
Résumé/CV: http://brantleybeaird.com
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/brantleybeaird
Email: first_initial + last-name at the big G one dot com
Engineer-MBA. Joined as #30 and spent 6 years at Segment (the customer data platform, acquired by Twilio for $3.2B) as a Solutions Architect and then Senior Sales Engineer. Drove $5M in annual bookings, guided 40+ enterprise accounts on data architecture, and was one of three people who launched the EMEA HQ in Dublin — scaling the SE team 4x and running 30+ technical workshops.
Since then I've been building, not just selling: a RAG pipeline over messy medical-billing documents (CPT codes, payer policies, claims guidelines) that cut research time ~50%, a steganographic image-watermarking app, and a handful of agentic workflows and full-stack tools with Claude Code and Lovable. I also ran investor relations and the financial model for an early-stage entertainment dining startup, and angel invest in AI/consumer (Limitless → Meta, Augie → JWX, Studdy YC S23, longevityhealth.me, etc).
The short version: a customer-facing and solutions engineer who can sit with a data team in the weeds, build the POC, and make the executive business case. That combination is rare, and it's exactly what good solutions and forward-deployed roles need.
Looking for: Solutions Engineer / Solutions Architect, Customer Success, an AI GTM/strategy role, Chief of Staff, or Forward Deployed Engineer. Seed–Series A preferred, open to all stages — strong bias toward AI-native teams.
Seeking: Chief of Staff, anything at the right VC firm, Sales Engineering, Solutions Architect, GTM, User Operations / Support Engineering ideally at a cool AI startup, but am flexible for the right team, opportunity, CEO, industry, etc.
Location: Los Angeles (Santa Monica)
Remote: In-person preferred, hybrid 3 days/wk in SF or nearby ok, open to remote.
Willing to relocate: Open to NYC or SF.
Technologies: Engineering + MBA + coding bootcamp.
Résumé/CV: 15 years in various technical, customer facing, and sales roles at startups and tech companies. Employee #30 at Segment; angel investor in various companies, managed $20m lead gen vertical at public online marketing company; started tutoring business in 20s.
Seeking: Chief of Staff, anything at the right VC firm, Sales Engineering, Solutions Architect, GTM, User Operations / Support Engineering ideally at a cool AI startup, but am flexible for the right team, opportunity, CEO, industry, etc.
Location: Los Angeles (Santa Monica)
Remote: In-person preferred, hybrid 3 days/wk in SF or nearby ok, open to remote.
Willing to relocate: Open to NYC or SF.
Technologies: Engineering + MBA + coding bootcamp.
Résumé/CV: 15 years in various technical, customer facing, and sales roles at startups and tech companies. Employee #30 at Segment; angel investor in various companies, managed $20m lead gen vertical at public online marketing company; tutoring business in 20s.
Seeking: Chief of Staff, anything at the right VC firm, Sales Engineering, Solutions Architect, or User Operations / Support Engineering ideally at a cool AI startup, but am flexible for the right team, opportunity, CEO, industry, etc.
Location: Los Angeles
Remote: In-person preferred, hybrid 3 days/wk in SF or nearby ok, open to remote.
Willing to relocate: NYC or SF okay.
Technologies: Engineering + MBA + coding bootcamp.
Résumé/CV: Early employee at Segment in various technical, sales, and customer facing roles; angel investor in various companies, managed $20m lead gen vertical at public online marketing company; tutoring business in 20s.
Don't get me wrong, unfettered capitalism has plenty of problems - eg tragedy of the commons, regulatory capture, effective monopolies, etc. That said, pricing things to maximize profits (given societal and economic constraints) still seems like the best route, especially in this case. How else could / should they price it?
I think one of the jobs of gov't is good regulation, which is hard. And once the rules have been set, maximizing profits within that box of regulation seems good, yea? Capitalism is reasonably good at allocating resources in many cases.
Do you all not think that companies should charge prices that maximize their profits (in the long run)? Typically, companies are trying to predict the price elasticity curve that yields the most profit via # units sold * price. That said, if you overcharge, that could be bad for the brand, turning off users in the short and longer term.
Another product like this for me is the Manta Sleep Pro Mask. It’s $80, but the best I’ve found, so I buy it anyways. I’m mildly annoyed and also feel like they’re taking advantage of me on price and will switch as soon as there’s an alternative at least as good for less…but when that happens, they’ll probably lower their price, which is what typically happens as sectors and products mature due to competition.
Profit maximization curves are interesting, and I think explain things like how convenience stores exist with much lower volume compared to grocery stores. Eg XYZ food costs 90 cents and the grocery store sells it for $1, yielding profit of 10% whereas a convenience store sells it for $1.50, just a 50% increase in price for the consumer (for the convenience), but the profit is 6x that for the grocery store, so they only need to sell approx 1/6 to make the same profit.
In the case of the author clock. If COGS is $50, profit is $150ish. If they sold for $100, they’d have to sell 3x as many to make the same profit. Given that it’s a niche product for readers (smaller population and typically more educated and wealthier), I think they care less about the price. Doesn’t seem that unreasonable to me.
I feel like the long term equilibrium of stuff like this is that in the not too distant future, anyone will be able to easily generate weird deepfake inappropriate porn / content for anyone. It seems unavoidable.
I might argue this could be good in that this sort of stuff will become so commonplace that it won't be a big deal and people will learn (be forced to shrug it off). Up until now-ish, the scarcity of celebrity nude leaks and revenge porn type stuff made it somewhat of a forbidden fruit. I like the idea of destigmatizing this sort of stuff so that it loses power.
That said, I'm sure there will be some casualties along the way. Eg vulnerable teens who are picked on by mean girls / boys, semi-celebrities / public figures who are targeted by online trolls, etc. I hope that the prevalence of this sort of stuff enlarges the conversation around this, increasing the reach of strategies to deal with this stuff psychologically, and significantly reduces it's impact.
I don't know many celebrities or politicians, but I suspect that after they see a few weird / porn related photos of themselves, they stop caring.
I would love a Wikipedia list article of games that have been solved computationally and but also games where humans can still beat computers / AI, discussing the challenges and context behinds wins / losses.
I should’ve mentioned that we have a unit in Atlanta that people can come try if they reach out. Also, I was going off the hardware recommendation in that link saying that you can post a video.
I made a Show HN post earlier today about a startup I invested in and am now working for. I haven’t posted too much to HN, so I only know what’s popular based on what’s on the front page, which is usually very high quality and interesting to me (tech, business, startups, generally really interesting stuff).
Given the builder-focus of HN, I thought more people might be interested. Selfishly we were hoping to generate buzz and some investor leads but also to get genuine feedback. HN is my favorite forum as the quality is so high.
Here are a few thoughts on why it’s flat, and I’m curious to hear y’all’s thoughts.
* Too market-y.
* Too long a post.
* HN is too nerdy for a sports related startup.
* I should’ve done more to “promote it”; however, I read this is frowned upon, so I didn’t really do it.
* It’s not a good idea.
* Poor posting time.
* Just not that relevant for HN.
* It was downvoted for some reason…perhaps I violated some written or unwritten rule.
Am I doing this in hopes that it will boost the original post? Yes, but also to understand the mechanics better as I’m going to post on some relevant subreddits too.
I don't post a ton to HN, much more of a daily lurker, but I'm surprised this post isn't a bit more popular given the builder nature of HN and that there's not a ton of hardware posted...and it's kind of cool / different.
I'm a big nerd, but I'm wondering if HN is too nerdy for this? Maybe we'll get more traction on some relevant subreddits?
The entertainment dining space has been heating up with a variety of concepts over the years and more recently - pickleball, F1, soccer, axe throwing, baseball, etc. It's kind of wild to me that Basketball entertainment dining hasn't been done before. I guess software + hardware makes things more tricky, and Paul and Dan can personally attest to some hardware challenges along the way, but still...given the popularity of the sport in general and, heck, even the popularity of the "pop-a-shot" games at arcades and Chuck E. Cheese, it's surprising to me.
I'll also say, I think the video above is cool, but honestly, it doesn't do justice for the experience. It's WAY more fun in person. At our beta site at an Atlanta brewery, half-way through a game, people who aren't that into basketball are talking trash and having a blast.
I'm also curious to hear thoughts on the skill-based component of BigHoops. I consider this very important as it can level the playing field making it fun regardless of skill-level in general but particularly within a group.
A quick personal story...this hit home recently when I took my 8 year old niece along with my 10 year old nephew and 2 of his male friends to play basketball (games, HORSE, and Knockout) at a school playground. My niece is younger and smaller, and she felt left out, eventually leaving to go play on the playground by herself because the boys were older / taller / better. I feel that a skill-adjustment component to the physical game will make the game much more accessible and attractive to folks regardless of skill-level, gender, age, etc.
Another way I like to think about this is...has your 10 year old child ever beaten you (40ish yo, decent shape) at Topgolf or bowling?
Brantley from BigHoops here. Ironically, I've never been a huge sports fan and don't ever really watch sports, but that said, I love doing social, fun things with friends that don't exclusively involve alcohol like at a bar, which is one reason why I love BigHoops.
Topgolf does this well but golf is a difficult sport and just not that much fun for me. Honestly, I think they succeeded in spite of golf's popularity (on-course play has been declining since the mid-2000s) by creating a terrific and more upscale experience compared to the more old-school entertainment dining of bowling (which has been catching up in terms of nice-ness). And if you pair a terrific experience with a sport that's more fun to play (also with a much larger market), I think there's a lot of potential.
Agreed about the "attractor country" comment; however, at least we have some restrictions on borders. I agree with the parent comment that this issue needs to be addressed by the federal gov't. I wonder if some states could even be incentivized to support such systems by creating rehabilitation communities which would bring jobs (and yes homeless) but still more $ in general. FL and AZ sort of does this with old people and some states seem to do it for addiction treatment centers.
X% of the population will always need some gov't help and Y% will need gov't help at some point. I think we need to stop negatively viewing these groups as sponges on society. Ability is a spectrum, and we don't criticize someone w Down's Syndrome, and so I don't think we should be so harsh on people who are homeless / have trouble holding down a job / low-ish IQ / and even those who fried their brain w drugs / etc.
Yes, we want to avoid perverse incentives and incentivize people to be productive members of society, but we also need to recognize that some people will always need some help, and as a society, I think we should help them, striving for a future with little to no involuntary poverty.
Engineer-MBA. Joined as #30 and spent 6 years at Segment (the customer data platform, acquired by Twilio for $3.2B) as a Solutions Architect and then Senior Sales Engineer. Drove $5M in annual bookings, guided 40+ enterprise accounts on data architecture, and was one of three people who launched the EMEA HQ in Dublin — scaling the SE team 4x and running 30+ technical workshops.
Since then I've been building, not just selling: a RAG pipeline over messy medical-billing documents (CPT codes, payer policies, claims guidelines) that cut research time ~50%, a steganographic image-watermarking app, and a handful of agentic workflows and full-stack tools with Claude Code and Lovable. I also ran investor relations and the financial model for an early-stage entertainment dining startup, and angel invest in AI/consumer (Limitless → Meta, Augie → JWX, Studdy YC S23, longevityhealth.me, etc).
The short version: a customer-facing and solutions engineer who can sit with a data team in the weeds, build the POC, and make the executive business case. That combination is rare, and it's exactly what good solutions and forward-deployed roles need.
Looking for: Solutions Engineer / Solutions Architect, Customer Success, an AI GTM/strategy role, Chief of Staff, or Forward Deployed Engineer. Seed–Series A preferred, open to all stages — strong bias toward AI-native teams.