One of our best ML engineers used to run his own YC startup.
@jtjenkins18 built a marketplace for trading Pokémon cards and took it all the way through Y Combinator.
He's also, somehow, one of the best Tetris players in the world. Top 0.8% in sprints, which I didn't even know was a thing you could rank in until I met him.
A couple years ago, the obvious move for someone like him was to either work at one of the big tech companies or keep raising and run his own company.
He chose to come be a founding ML engineer at Crustdata instead.
Now he gets to work on genuinely hard ML problems and shape the direction he wants to go himself. He ships things over a weekend that would have been a full quarter of roadmap two years ago.
And I think a lot more of the most talented founder-types are about to make the same call.
The most fun place to be right now is right next to the actual building.
Genuinely lucky to have him!
Jonathan's also hosting an ML event here in SF this Thursday. Some of the best ML and infra engineers in the city, bouldering at Dogpatch then dinner in NOPA, all on us.
If you're an ML engineer in SF, join us!
RSVP in the comments!