Rob Kim
100 posts
@collegedrobout
building better business travel and global T&E @brexHQ
Also I see this a lot If you live with your parents at 25 Like I know that's acceptable in some cultures, it definitely isn't acceptable in my culture (Dutch), nor is it acceptable to me as a person You should be leaving your parent's house at 18 and become independent, spread your wings and fly You'll never learn about the real world if you get pampered by mom and dad with free rent and free food So the reason you're not successful is, is maybe this, there's absolutely no incentive for you to become succesful, there's no urgency, you're just satisfied being complacent living in your parent's house Get out and spread your wings IMHO
I’ve joined Cognition to continue to work on the future of software engineering. I was employee #2 at Windsurf and have worked on AI+code for years. There’s never been a more exciting time and place for it than now at Cognition. I had a place at Google DeepMind as part of the deal. I won’t go into detail for legal reasons, but I’d like to be transparent about my personal situation. I was given an offer that would explode same day. I had to forfeit all of my vested shares earned over my 3.5+ years at Windsurf. I was ultimately given a payout of only 1% of what my shares would have been worth at the time of the deal. In going to Cognition, I’ve chosen a different direction. For someone who loves software engineering, Cognition feels like home. It reminds me of the energy of the earliest days of Windsurf, where we wrote excessive amounts of code and had excessive amounts of fun. Really excited to see how we can take the best of Devin and Windsurf to make the world’s best IDE and coding agents.
I was founding engineer, like my friend Prem. This is how I think about the founder-employee social contract, now that I’m a founder. Founders must recognize that financial scales are wildly different between ourselves and employees. For example, when I joined a company as first engineer, I had to pay five figures just to early exercise all my equity. I was a new grad, and any salary bump was game-changing. In contrast, a founder with a few years of career experience typically has more savings and doesn't have to pay to obtain their equity. In big acquisitions, liquidation for a founder can be the difference between being a billionaire and a very rich millionaire. For an employee it’s the difference in whether their student loans are paid out, whether they can rent a bigger apartment, or whether they can become a homeowner. Founders hold the cards in acquisitions and we should advocate for employees to be paid out. Employees are a privilege. They are betting their career and wealth on us. We have to honor that and look out for our people.
pay your founding engineer go into debt if you have to
Founders: not all “high yield” offers are created equal. Let’s talk about why floating NAV mutual funds and commercial paper are 🚩 for your treasury – and why Brex Treasury is built different. Warning: it's about to get nerdy up in here 🤓
Come through
The real unicorns are the tech socialites who haven’t shipped a product in 3 years but somehow make every Forbes party, Tech Week pop up, and yacht in Cannes.
Brex just crossed $100B+ in run-rate TPV across all products. From 1 in 3 US startups, to the most important AI companies, to the largest companies on the planet, we're proud to help customers spend smarter and move faster. May was our strongest month ever: here’s what happened 🧵
