Brian Chen is a founder and CEO with 13+ years of experience launching hardware-first startups and scaling category-defining brands, most recently building Kite Compliance, an AI-driven platform that helps hardware innovators navigate regulatory hurdles. He cut his teeth at YC-backed Bluesmart, pioneered modular office architecture with ROOM, and now combines product, operations, and policy thinking to lower barriers for other hardware founders. A hands-on technologist and open-source contributor, Brian has full-stack experience—improving front-end expression parsing and notification systems in notable community projects like Mavo and Habitica. Based in New York, he’s also an active angel investor in 50+ companies and a co-founder of Pebble Spaces, blending venture insight with operator rigor. Less obvious: his background spans entrepreneurship support at Endeavor and early portfolio management, giving him a rare perspective across founding, funding, and global market development.
13 years of coding experience
12 years of employment as a software developer
Taipei American School
W15 Bluesmart, W15 Bluesmart at Y Combinator
Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.), Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) at MIT Sloan School of Management
Bachelor of Arts Economics English Literature, Bachelor of Arts Economics English Literature at Swarthmore College
Create web applications entirely by writing HTML and CSS!
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Contributions:12 commits, 11 PRs, 21 comments in 6 months
Contributions summary:Brian primarily contributed to the core functionality of the Mavo project, focusing on improving the expression parsing and evaluation within the HTML and CSS-driven web application framework. They addressed issues related to handling empty expressions and chained comparisons, ensuring correct behavior. The user also made code changes to update the UI, with a focus on removing and adding classes to elements based on interactions to make the UI consistent.
A habit tracker app which treats your goals like a Role Playing Game.
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Contributions:7 commits, 1 PR, 3 comments in 5 months
Contributions summary:Brian contributed to the Habitica project by refactoring notification display logic, including the addition of new notification types and consolidating related code. They modified both front-end (Jade/HTML) and back-end (JavaScript/Node.js) files, indicating a focus on full-stack development. Further changes included enhancing attribute point notifications and addressing a bug related to task IDs, demonstrating a grasp of the application's core functionality and UI elements.
trackerexpressvuereactjsrole
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.