Profile banner
Spencer Burleigh

Spencer Burleigh

Engineer, founder, and economic development nerd building in the physical world

San Francisco, California
Oakland, California
ycombinator
Joined June 2024
Favicon imagespencerburleigh.com

Network

1.3K connections
💡
General Startup Founders
📊
Business & Finance Professionals
💻
Software & Hardware Engineers
🚀
Y Combinator Founders
📈
Growth & Strategy Leaders
📱
Tech Product & Development Leaders
☁️
...

Summary

Spencer Burleigh is a serial entrepreneur with a track record of building and scaling businesses from a young age. His ventures include an Uber Eats-style food delivery service in boarding school and e-commerce businesses that funded his college education. Most notably, he co-founded Pippin and Rent the Backyard, a Y Combinator-backed startup focused on addressing the housing crisis by building prefabricated accessory dwelling units (ADUs) in homeowners' backyards, which achieved a $10M contracted revenue run rate. He is now focused on making it easier to build deep-tech companies. spencerburleigh+3
With a strong educational background in Statistics & Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University and earlier studies at Phillips Exeter Academy, Spencer possesses a unique blend of quantitative and qualitative analytical skills. He applies a framework that integrates geography, history, economics, statistics, computer science, and machine learning to understand and address complex global challenges, especially in the physical world. spencerburleigh
Spencer is a vocal advocate for progress in the physical world, emphasizing the importance of infrastructure like energy generation, factories, and transportation networks. His writings and projects reflect a commitment to reversing the trend of stagnating physical capabilities in Western society, and he actively explores solutions to reduce overhead for hard tech startups and enable them to build with fewer resources. His passion extends to areas like economic development policy, AI and machine learning as a new industrial revolution, and housing policy as a solution to critical societal problems. spencerburleigh

Work

Education

Projects

Writing

Oil’s Financials are Falling Apart

July 28, 2025

An analysis of the financial viability of hydrocarbons and the increasing role of solar energy.

Favicon imagespencerburleigh.com

Founder’s Guide to Executive Skills

July 21, 2025

A collection of insights and recommendations on executive skills for founders, based on Tom Henschel's 'The Look and Sound of Leadership' podcast.

Favicon imagespencerburleigh.com

The Factory's Quote is the Product

July 14, 2025

Examines how instant quoting is transforming the machine shop industry and the unbundling of services within the ecosystem.

Favicon imagespencerburleigh.com

Gold Mines & Self-Terminating Business Models

July 7, 2025

Discusses the differences between SaaS and deep-tech business models, highlighting that deep-tech often resembles finding gold rather than continuous compounding.

Favicon imagespencerburleigh.com

Basic Capital's Big Idea: Bet Your Retirement on Interest Rates

June 30, 2025

A critique of Basic Capital's approach to increasing retirement portfolios by borrowing money, arguing it misinterprets investment philosophy.

Favicon imagespencerburleigh.com

Founder’s Guide to Hiring an Operations Team in the Philippines

A guide on how to build an operations team in the Philippines, drawing from his experience with Rent the Backyard.

Favicon imagespencerburleigh.com