Boris Epstein

Founder of 1st10 🌱 Building early engineering teams in SF/NY | xBinc Founder (built Stripe, Ripple, Airbnb, etc), acquired by Robinhood in ‘21. Dad.

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

Happy Labor Day 👋 Given I’ve dedicated my career to helping people create their own Labor stories, I thought I’d share mine:

-I graduated in 2000 with a degree in Bio from UC Irvine. After exploring careers in medicine, dentistry and law, I followed my passion into business
-My first job was with @PIMCO where I stayed for 1 year working in their compliance department. I learned at a young age that the corporate life wasn’t for me.
-I then started my first business called Dice Media. We built interactive websites for local small businesses. We pioneered something called Dice Cards which were entire websites built into mini CDs. They were cool but never took off.
-I needed a job so stumbled into a small recruiting agency called Brelon Page. There I learned the ins and outs of full desk contingency recruiting. During my first year, I billed 120k and made 7 hires mostly in the space of Civil Engineering. Think pre-cursor to the real estate boom of ‘03-08.
-In 2002, after 1 year at Brelon Page, I started Binc. We specialized in tech and innovated in the areas of people culture and recruiting service models.
-I ran Binc for 19 years. We did contingency for the first 7 years and then in 2009, pioneered what the industry now refers to as embedded RPO for the tech industry.
-Our timing turned out to be pretty impeccable. We rode the entire ZIRP decade to 150 employees and 30M ARR, which we hit in 2019. We never took funding, were entirely revenue generated and always maintained profitability. During this decade we specialized in early engineering team buildouts and were responsible for early buildouts for industry leaders @Pinterest @Airbnb @Square @Ripple @stripe and many many more.
-In 2021 when recruiting was peak market, we decided to do something crazy and sold our company to @RobinhoodApp. Our 80-person team joined Robinhood’s internal team to help power the next stage of their growth ambitions.
-I worked at Robinhood for 2 years. My first year was spent working with their Corp Dev team to acquire companies that employed top industry talent. Together we bought Say Technologies, a shareholder empowerment platform and Cove Markets, a crypto trading platform. My second year was spent leading their Talent Acquisition function. This involved leading the ~100-person team through two layoffs and a hiring freeze to a place of sustainability and productivity.
-I left Robinhood in May of this year and am exploring the very early seedlings for what’s next.
-As the next chapter of my career develops, I’ll continue posting stories and lessons from throughout my career and build in public perspectives on current market experiences and happenings.

Hope you enjoyed and thanks again for following 👋

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

@bryce I was told the same from two different banks
Lot of supply that needs a new home

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

@DeItaone Goldman is leading the IPO ya?
More demand more Goldman revenue ya?

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

@GadSaad Congrats 🇺🇸

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

@chamath I bought one of those!
Great bang for buck and experience.

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

One of the craziest parts of this AI moment is that a lot of the ideas already existed decades ago.

Peter Terrill, Co-Founder and CTO of Grounded Agents talked about reading about “Knowledge Agents” in an old AI textbook back in undergrad.

The vision was there.

“We just didn’t know how to do it.”

Now suddenly LLMs made it real.

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

@karpathy wow big update. congrats!

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

You ever notice how some people always seem to end up early to the big shifts?

Mobile. SaaS. AI.

Peter Terrill, Co-Founder and CTO from Grounded Agents had a take I liked:

“When you spend your time feeling the products of the time, you just start to feel where the energy is going.”

Most people who get there early aren’t predicting the future.

They’re just paying attention sooner.

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

One of my favorite startups right now is Plutus (https://t.co/Rrgdv8qsHm).

The simplest way to describe it is Spotify for investing.

Research teams (Citrini, Eliant, etc) create thematic investment strategies that users can browse, follow, and deploy directly into their brokerage accounts with one click.

And as the strategy evolves, the portfolio automatically stays in sync 🤯

What I like is that it’s not just another fintech app or trading tool. It rethinks investing as a modern discovery + action experience, which feels much more aligned with how people interact with products today.

Also one of the most cracked founders and early-stage technical teams I’ve seen in the Seattle/Kirkland ecosystem.

We’re currently helping them hire:
*Founding ML Engineer
*Founding Product Engineer
*Founding Marketing Manager

If you're passionate about investing and enjoy small teams, real ownership, and building consumer products from first principles, hit me up.

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

@wolfejosh Amazing 🇮🇱 🇺🇸

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

@levie If that’s true companies should pay them more than they pay regular engineers and consider offering an elevated title. Right now forward deploy engineers are held to an equivalent bar, often earn less and carry an inferior title based on market perception.

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

@wolfejosh @LTwolfe Mazel Tov 🥂

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

@Ronalfa People are going to sleep on AI and Bio until they get smacked in the face with it.

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

@msuster @FarroYossi Love this!

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

@FarroYossi @leetrink @FaZeClan Lee is the GOAT!
Spoke at both Jewish American Summits 🙌

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

Never deleting this app 😂

[horse @horsetwting]

fuck you

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

@pmarca Forward deployed engineer is one of the worst titles ever invented

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

@FarroYossi @sixers Love it. Killin the game out there!!

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

@dvasishtha Yes if open to Seattle and applying her expertise to social/community for a next gen investment advisory startup that gives regular people access to hedge-fund like strategies.

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

umm i would take the property if i had the shares to trade

[Short Squeez @shortsqueeznews]

BREAKING: Investment banker Storm Duncan is looking to swap his $8 million Bay Area home in exchange for shares of the AI giant Anthropic.

Duncan was a Global Head and MD of Technology at Jefferies before starting his own investment bank Ignatious.

[Boris Epstein @bozonit]

First of its kind AI government?
The world is accelerating!

[HH Sheikh Mohammed @HHShkMohd]

Under the directives of the President of the UAE, we launch a new government model. Within two years, 50% of government sectors, services, and operations will run on Agentic AI, making the UAE the first government globally to operate at this scale through autonomous systems.

AI is no longer a tool. It analyses, decides, executes, and improves in real time. It will become our executive partner to enhance services, accelerate decisions, and raise efficiency.

This transformation has a clear timeline. Two years. Performance across government will be measured by speed of adoption, quality of implementation, and mastery of AI in redesigning government work.

We are investing in our people. Every federal employee will be trained to master AI, building one of the world’s strongest capabilities in AI-driven government.

Implementation will be overseen by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, with a dedicated taskforce chaired by Mohammad Al Gergawi driving execution.

The world is changing. Technology is accelerating. Our principle remains constant. People come first. Our goal is a government that is faster, more responsive, and more impactful.