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Inventing the near future - Brian Machado

sfalexandria.com · 2,484 words · saved by 1 readers

My friend Brian has a very interesting take on money. In that, it always feels like he doesn't have any, even though he probably should. He's an incredibly talented engineer who worked on Uber self-driving when he was 19, and has raised millions, yet is three months behind on his rent[1]. When I visited his apartment in Waterloo, every corner was filled with hardware parts and 3D printers. I asked: "Why do you need four 3D printers?" "So when I design new parts, I can make 4x as many iterations." Brian's philosophy is that if he spends all the money he can on learning, he'll make all of it back after that learning compounds. If buying four 3D printers means he can print a new part with four little tweaks and learn four times as fast, it's a no-brainer. After graduating, he moved to San Francisco and started renting out a factory to make robots full-time. It's pretty much the same as his apartment, but scaled to 5000 sqft. "Look at this thing! Do you know all the stuff I'm going to lear

Inventing the near future | Alexandria Inventing the near future Brian Machado on building a $1000 general purpose human-ish robot By Aadil Pickle Dec 2025 PHOTOS BY KARINA BAO My friend Brian has a very interesting take on money. In that, it always feels like he doesn't have any, even though he probably should. He's an incredibly talented engineer who worked on Uber self-driving when he was 19, and has raised millions, yet is three months behind on his rent [ 1 ] . When I visited his apartment in Waterloo, every corner was filled with hardware parts and 3D printers. I asked: "Why do you need

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