Brian Lam

Brian Lam (born May 23, 1977) is an American writer, best known for his work with Gizmodo, a blog focusing on technology; and The Wirecutter, a recommendation website for gadgets.

Early life and education Lam's parents are ethnically Chinese; his mother was born and raised in Queens and his father is an immigrant from Hong Kong. Lam was not fond of his time in New Jersey, noting that his preferences are for "deep urban-ness, or I'm into nature, but I'm not into this gray mushy zone in between, that's kind of what the suburbs were for me." Lam recalled that he discovered persistence after Gong's death: "I would just work so hard and I got whatever job I wanted eventually, even if I had to apply a few times."

Career Lam was a contributor and assistant editor for two years at Wired magazine His apartment in San Francisco served as Gizmodo's headquarters in the city.

Later in 2011, Lam started The Wirecutter, a blog that gave buying recommendations for gadgets. In 2013, he started The Sweethome, a similar recommendation website for household goods. By 2015, The Wirecutter generated US$150 million in e-commerce sales, and the sites had drawn attention for their influential business model: rather than earning money primarily by publishing and updating content frequently to drive site traffic, pageviews, and advertising, they used affiliate links to earn a fraction of the resulting sale. In 2016, The Wirecutter and The Sweethome were acquired by The New York Times Company for more than US$30 million.