Being a founding engineer at an AI startup

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.

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*Brought to you by:*
•⁠ Statsig ⁠ — ⁠ The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more http://statsig.com/pragmatic

•⁠ Linear ⁠ — ⁠ The system for modern product development https://linear.app/pragmatic?utm_source=gergely&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=pragmatic-engineer

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*The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode:*
• Thriving as a founding engineer: lessons from the trenches https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/thriving-as-a-founding-engineer
• From software engineer to AI engineer https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/from-software-engineer-to-ai-engineer
• AI Engineering in the real world https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/ai-engineering-in-the-real-world
• The AI Engineering stack https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-ai-engineering-stack

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*Where to find Michelle Lim:*
• X: https://x.com/michlimlim
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michlimlim
• Website: https://michellelim.dev

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*In this episode, we cover:*
(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

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See the transcript and other references from the episode at https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/podcast

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/.