Octo.Dad
I'm Ben Galbraith, a married forty-something American raising eight kids while working in tech. To learn more about my work history, see LinkedIn; a short summary is below.
My family and I recently left our home in Silicon Valley to move to London while I work at Tessl. We anticipate a return to the USA in 2026 or 2027.
I used to blog, but it's been a while, and it's all pretty outdated. I do occasionally spew random thoughts on Threads, Twitter, or Bluesky. I recently wrote about my move to Tessl on Medium.
I play a lot of board games, and, for reasons I don’t entirely understand, I log every play; you can see the gory details at Board Game Geek.
You can reach me by sending an email to my first or last name @ octo.dad.[*]
Career Highlights
Tessl (2024+)
Leading product + design as we define "AI native" software development.
Investor (2015+)
Have made ~20 angel investments in early-stage tech startups. Also an LP in the Uncorrelated 2020 and 2022 VC funds.
Google (2015 — 2019; 2020 — 2024)
Senior product + design + GTM leader on Firebase, Chrome, Privacy Sandbox, and Identity / Passkeys.
Segment (2019 - 2020)
In-between my two Google runs, I was VP Product up until Segment’s acquisition by Twilio.
Walmart (2010 — 2015)
VP Engineering for mobile US business for two years, then VP Product + Design + Engineering for all global ecommerce.
Palm (2009 — 2010)
Led Developer Marketing for webOS. My team also created what a leading tech journalist called the best mobile Facebook app of the era.
Mozilla (2008 — 2009)
Co-created Bespin, an open-source, web-based code editor; a few years ahead of its time.
Ajaxian (2007 — 2008)
Co-founded the leading web developer community of the Ajax / Web 2.0 movement; sold it to TechTarget.
Acer (1994 — 1996)
Left high school to lead a small software development team making Windows and early web apps. Super fun.