Brady Forrest

Independent

Brady is a Managing Director with Machine.

Most recently, he co-founded and served as Vice President of the hardware accelerator Highway1, established in 2013. In this role, Brady helped more than 70 startups (including Navdy, Cue, Modbot, and Ringly) with early-stage prototyping, team-building, product development, and fundraising; in total, Highway1 companies have raised more than $115M in subsequent funding.

Brady shares his knowledge and experience in talks around the world (TechCrunch, O'Reilly, Gigaom, Summit, SXSW), and co-wrote The Hardware Startup. He is co-founder of Ignite Talks PBC, a franchised global talk format that has been adopted by Google, the White House, the Gates Foundation, and the Ford Foundation.

Previously, Brady worked on the investment team at Khosla Ventures and was a Venture Advisor to 500 Startups's first fund. Earlier, he chaired conferences around the world for O'Reilly Media, including the Web 2.0 Expo, Where 2.0, ETech, and Foo Camp. Brady also wrote for the Radar blog and worked with OATV, the venture capital arm of O'Reilly.

Earlier in his career, Brady joined Microsoft through their acquisition of the music streaming startup MongoMusic, which later became MSN Entertainment. Later at Microsoft, he was on the founding team of Bing, launching search features and developer outreach programs. Brady started his career as a supply chain management consultant and system designer at Numetrix and i2. His first job was as a busboy in a New Jersey diner.

Education, Personal, and Fellowship

Brady attended the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in industrial management engineering. He sits on the board of the nonprofit CAST, which purchases and renovates buildings for arts organization around the San Francisco Bay Area; recently, he joined the board of advisors of the Association for Women in Science. He attends Burning Man most years.

Brady served his fellowship at Machine as a member of Class 22.