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David Kobrosky
Founder and CEO at Intros AI
David Kobrosky is the Founder and CEO of Intros AI, a platform focused on creating personalized introductions between members of online communities. Intros AI is designed to automate community member introductions across various platforms like email, text, Discord, Telegram, and Slack. The company, based in New York City, was founded by Kobrosky and Robert Levy in November 2020 and has raised $1.3 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Neo.14
Before founding Intros AI, Kobrosky gained experience in several roles, including as a software engineer at 1Password, a product management intern at DataRobot, and a technical product manager at VaynerMedia. He also co-founded Blockchain at Michigan and served as a venture partner at Contrary.13 Kobrosky studied computer science and business administration at the University of Michigan and has been involved in various fellowships and leadership roles, such as being a Kairos fellow and a global teen leader for the We Are Family Foundation.3
Kobrosky is passionate about human connections and community building, which is reflected in his work at Intros AI and his personal endeavors, such as fundraising to support cancer survivors while undergoing his own treatment.2 He is based in Brooklyn, New York.15
Highlights
Social hierarchy feels like the intuitive way to predict connection within a community, yet it consistently fails to explain how and why connections form.
After five years and over a million social and professional matches at Intros AI, clear patterns emerged in how different kinds of community members interact and how those dynamics vary by community structure.
Social hierarchy is typically viewed through something called “Status Characteristics Theory (SCT),” which is essentially that groups quickly and almost unconsciously sort members into a rank order.
This theory intuitively makes sense, but when you look at how members actually connect with each other, it breaks apart.
In short, effectively all communities (especially professional-leaning) have some combination of the following “personas”. These personas are defined by their interest to connect with others and the interest of others to connect with them.
The Intern: Just happy to be there. Wants to meet everyone else, but few people want to meet them. The Salesperson: Only wants to connect with others for a specific purpose. They don’t need to be selling something, but their appetite to connect with someone else is directly tied to a goal (e.g. fundraising, getting a question answered, etc.). The Networker: They want to meet others, and others want to meet them. May have multiple reasons to be there. The High Achiever: Most people want to meet them, but they’ll only meet others if there’s a clear angle for them. The Mentor: Willing to connect, but never proactively. They only engage if reached out to first, for a specific reason.
These personas get especially interesting when you factor in:
- How different communities have varying distributions of personas.
- We can be interns in some communities, and mentors and others.
- We shift in and out of the different personas based on phase of life, or shifting goals. When we join a community, we usually start as an intern.
When you're building a community, understanding these dynamics makes it much easier to create the right programs and experience for each persona.
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