BRAINTRUST & CO.

Braintrust & Co. is an Internet company in New York City. We don't consider ourselves to be just a technology company. We exist simply to make the world better, we just happen to do so by building awesome technology products.

TK (Tawheed Kader) is the Principal and Founder of Braintrust & Co. Aside from the consultants that TK assembles as part of his Braintrust, he is also the sole full-time employee of Braintrust & Co., and more or less the brains behind the operation. Here is his story.

Tedious, repetitive work has always been a pet peeve for TK; working to eliminate that through the use of technology is his passion.

Early 2000s: TK started his entrepreneurial journey when he co-founded a pre-paid telecommunications network with his father. Through the platform that he built, millions of immigrants new to the United States were able to call home at affordable prices.

Mid-2000s: In College, he partnered with four of his Fraternity brothers and co-founded HipCal, one of the first web-based calendar services of the Web 2.0 era. He focused on building "Groups" in HipCal which helped people share the same calendar and schedule. This was before Google Calendar. In 2006, his senior year of College, TK and his co-founders sold HipCal to Plaxo, graduated college and then moved to Silicon Valley to work there.

Late-2000s: TK worked as a Product Manager at Plaxo and helped build Plaxo 3.0, an online address book that helped people stay in touch. He also worked on the integration of Plaxo's services with Comcast's services. Eventually, Comcast decided to buy Plaxo, and TK decided to move on and find his next entrepreneurial journey. TK moved back from Silicon Valley to the East Coast and decided to spend the last three years of the decade at a Hedge Fund out in Connecticut. Although he didn't learn much about finance during his time there, he learned a tremendous amount about building reliable enterprise technology and the value of principles-first thinking. TK eventually applied what he learned to the startup space and started blogging at length about underlying principles that go into building a business.

2010 and beyond: Eventually, TK came to the realization that his theme in life has always been to actuate change through technology. More importantly, he realized that with all that he had learned, it was time for him to continue building products that help people communicate better (another recurring theme) except at a significantly larger scale. And so, he quit his six-figure hedge fund job, and started Braintrust & Co.

Today, TK is actively leading Braintrust's offering of products and services, both of which help actuate change in this world through the use of technology. TK is 27, married, and loves every minute of his life in New York City. He'd love to hear from you, so follow him on Twitter or drop him a line via email.