Being a founding engineer at an AI startupMichelle Lim shares how to evaluate early-stage startup roles, negotiate equity, and grow into a high-impact founding engineer.
Stream the latest episodeListen and watch now on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple. See the episode transcript at the top of this page, and timestamps for the episode at the bottom. Brought to You by
• Statsig — The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more. Together with Statsig, I’m hosting The Pragmatic Summit on 11 February, San Francisco. Get tickets and join us there. • Linear — The system for modern product development. The founders of Linear saw how companies like Airbnb, Uber and Coinbase started to slow down as they grew quickly — and Linear was built to give clarity and coordination, without the overhead. Try it yourself. In this episodeMichelle 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 episodeMichelle’s advice to be a standout founding engineer at an AI company:
The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episodeTimestamps(00:00) Intro (01:32) How Michelle got into software engineering (03:30) Michelle’s internships (06:19) Learnings from Slack (08:48) Product learnings at Robinhood (12:47) Joining Warp as engineer #1 (22:01) Negotiating equity (26:04) Asking founders for references (27:36) The top reference questions to ask (32:53) The evolution of Warp’s tech stack (35:38) Product-first engineering vs. code-first (38:27) Hiring product-first engineers (41:49) Different types of founding engineers (44:42) How Flint uses AI tools (45:31) Avoiding getting burned in founder exits (49:26) Hiring top talent (50:15) An overview of Flint (56:08) Advice for aspiring founding engineers (1:01:05) Rapid fire round ReferencesWhere to find Michelle Lim: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michlimlim • Website: https://michellelim.dev Mentions during the episode: • Warp: https://www.warp.dev • Flint: https://www.tryflint.com • Meta: https://www.meta.com • Slack: https://slack.com • Robinhood: https://robinhood.com • Kafka: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Kafka • Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com • Zach Lloyd on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachlloyd • TypeScript: https://www.typescriptlang.org • Rust: https://rust-lang.org • Programming Rust: Fast, Safe Systems Development: https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Rust-Fast-Systems-Development/dp/1492052590 • Nathan Sobo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-sobo-92b46720 • Atom: https://github.com/atom/atom • Stop just using “Frontend” or “Backend” to describe the Engineering you like: https://michellelim.dev/writing/stop-using-frontend-backend • Claude Code: https://www.claude.com/product/claude-code • Cursor: https://cursor.com • Sohan Choudhury on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sohan-choudhury • Nuro: https://www.nuro.ai • Windsurf: https://windsurf.com • Weapons: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26581740 — Production and marketing by Pen Name. You’re on the free list for The Pragmatic Engineer. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber. Many readers expense this newsletter within their company’s training/learning/development budget. If you have such a budget, here’s an email you could send to your manager. This post is public, so feel free to share and forward it. If you enjoyed this post, you might enjoy my book, The Software Engineer's Guidebook: navigating senior, tech lead, staff and principal positions at tech companies and startups.
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Being a founding engineer at an AI startup
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