Being a founding engineer at an AI startup
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Rust (programming language)
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Warp's tech stack evolution is discussed, and Rust is explicitly mentioned as a key technology choice. Understanding Rust's memory safety guarantees and systems programming capabilities explains why AI-focused startups might choose it over traditional languages.
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Y Combinator
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The article discusses startup culture, Hacker News engagement, and founding engineer dynamics. Y Combinator created Hacker News and has shaped the modern startup ecosystem that Michelle navigates, making it valuable context for understanding the environment described.
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In this episode
Michelle Lim joined Warp as engineer number one and is now building her own startup, Flint. She brings a strong product-first mindset shaped by her time at Facebook, Slack, Robinhood, and Warp. Michelle shares why she chose Warp over safer offers, how she evaluates early-stage opportunities, and what she believes distinguishes great founding engineers.
Together, we cover how product-first engineers create value, why negotiating equity at early-stage startups requires a different approach, and why asking founders for references is a smart move. Michelle also shares lessons from building consumer and infrastructure products, how she thinks about tech stack choices, and how engineers can increase their impact by taking on work outside their job descriptions.
If you want to understand what founders look for in early engineers or how to grow into a founding-engineer role, this episode is full of practical advice backed by real examples.
An interesting quote from the episode
Michelle’s advice to be a standout founding engineer at an AI company:
...Gergely: What would your advice be to software engineers who would love to join as a founding engineer, perhaps an AI startup these days?
Michelle: It’s about showing that you’ve built in AI before, because that skill is very much in high demand and it’s very new. Very few people — relatively speaking — have ever built an AI product before. So just spending some time over the weekends knowing how to build an AI product already helps you stand out above many people. Build anything that scratches your itch that uses any of the models, or the completion APIs.
To excel in the role: it starts off with picking the right founder.
Once you
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