Khoi Tran

Terminal Use (YC W26): Vercel for background agents. Terminal Use is hosting infrastructure for background agents that makes harness engineering easy. https://lnkd.in/gv99wN2t

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Founding Engineer hires have been our specialty dish for years now. But what it means to be a Founding Engineer, and what startups should expect from one, is changing rapidly. A Founding Engineer was always responsible for getting the product to market, proving product-market fit, setting the technical bar, and carrying the company through a Seed round on the company's terms. It's never just been 'our first hire that can code', despite how often it's treated that way. But AI tooling has expanded what one engineer can produce to the point where a single person now covers ground that required a small engineering team just 6-12 months ago. This doesn't make the role easier, oh no... It makes it much bigger, far more important, and even more responsible for the company's overall success. In fact, I am convinced we will see one-person technical teams raise Series A rounds in the coming years. And that changes both what founders should demand from this hire, and what they should offer in return. Firstly, if you cannot afford one of the most capable product minded Software Engineers in the country, you do not have the budget to make your Founding Engineer hire yet. Don't be the founder who hires someone average because it's all you can afford. No hire + getting more money from somewhere is better than wasting all your limited runway on someone average. A Founding Engineer who needs meaningful support to get you where you need to go is not a Founding Engineer. They are a wasted hire. Avoid. Next, if someone is taking you from pre-seed to Series A on their own, the equity needs to reflect that. 1%-1.5% is standard today. This isn't enough. Not for the responsibility you're giving them, and the impact you expect in return. You need someone to stay with you for years, likely through many challenges when they could work for literally anyone they like - token amounts like that won't do it. If a single person is responsible for your entire technical operation through the most formative period of your company, what's your genuine objection to 3%, or 5%? When they help you grow to be a $100m company, do you think you'll even care? And finally, the bottleneck in AI-augmented engineering is no longer how fast you can build - it is knowing what to build on the fly, using product judgement and taste, a somewhat rare skillset even among startup engineers. This doesn't mean hiring a product person who can code (unfortunately this is becoming common and is a mistake). It means an exceptional engineer who also thinks clearly about customers and product direction. AI has shrunk the pool here, not widened it. Deep technical skill is still the foundation. But without product judgment on top of that, you'll just find yourself running faster in the wrong direction. Then again, I've only been trusted to place Founding Engineers with startups backed by Blackbird, AirTree, Square Peg, and more... so what would I know about any of this anyway? ;)

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We backed MuleSoft back in 2006 to build the leading platform for enterprise adoption of APIs. WunderGraph is the next MuleSoft.

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My Startup Was Working… Until It Wasn’t We had paying customers. We had local press. We were gaining traction. It was 2016. Then UberEats, DoorDash, and Postmates entered Portland with billions in funding. At the same time, Intel—where I worked full-time—announced massive layoffs. Overnight, my 40-hour week almost doubled. Midnight fab shifts, weekend work, endless overtime. My startup didn’t die because the idea was bad. It died because I didn’t have the financial runway to compete. Here’s what that painful chapter taught me: 1. Passion + grit aren’t enough. Startups need time, capital, and breathing room to survive. 2. Corporate is just built for stability. It can’t nurture the creative chaos that startups need. 3. Adaptation beats stubbornness. Sometimes the smartest move is to regroup, save, and come back stronger. So I made a choice: doubled down on my W-2 career, moved to Seattle, and joined Amazon to maximize income. Every dollar earned—and every loan I could pull—went straight into real estate. One property a year turned into two… then into double digits in a single year. Deals kept coming, I kept closing, and I built a local team to keep momentum alive. By the end of 2022, my portfolio was generating more passive income than my paycheck. That’s when WoolooAI.com was born—not as a flashy startup, but as a necessary system to simplify and automate the chaos: acquisitions, CRM, portfolio management, project management, all streamlined. The truth is: - Without the grind of my early startup days, I wouldn’t have landed the Amazon role. - Without Intel’s layoff threats, I wouldn’t have learned the importance of building a financial runway first. - And without the expertise I developed at Amazon, I wouldn’t have gained the skills that helped me build WOOLOO AI. The irony isn’t lost: the same challenges that once crushed me ended up shaping the freedom I enjoy today. 💡 Takeaway: Sometimes what feels like an ending is really just the foundation for the next chapter. 👉 If you want the full story, I wrote it here: https://lnkd.in/geEVye36 💬 I’d love to hear your story too—what twists or setbacks ended up shaping where you are today? #Entrepreneurship #Startups #RealEstateInvesting #AmazonAlumni #FinancialFreedom #LessonsLearned #HumbleGrowth

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Today, I have been at odds with Base44. I tried the app because, its NEAT! But.... Base44 and WIX are the same company now, and the applications are designed to run on the Base44 SDK and to be tightly wound with base44 libraries. If you happen to want to put your app on a different stack... you find out the hard way... (insert UFC opponents here) It's far easier to port apps from v0.dev onto your desired architecture. #LessonLearned #YouHaveToBreakStuff #OUCH

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Most startups die from moving too fast. But plenty die from moving too slow. So how do you actually balance speed vs. technical debt? I sat down with Shuzhi Huang, former Engineering Leader at Google, someone who's seen this play out at massive scale, and got a remarkably honest answer. The insight that hit hardest: technical debt isn't the enemy. Unacknowledged technical debt is. If you're a founder scaling your engineering team right now, or a hiring manager trying to decide when to prioritize velocity over quality — this one's for you. What's your take? The full episode is live. Link in the comments 👇 #Engineering #TechnicalDebt #StartupFounders #EngineeringLeadership #Hiring #BotifySessions #BotifyTech #TechLeadership #Founders

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Super exciting to see reports this morning that Waymo is in advanced discussions to raise $10–15B at a valuation near or above $100B, with Alphabet expected to anchor the round. That would be a major step up from Waymo’s prior ~$45B valuation in 2024 and a clear step change in investor confidence. Notably, Waymo has not raised this year, despite the broader AI funding frenzy. The size and structure of the round also make this feel like a step toward an eventual spinout or IPO. This matters because capital supercharges growth. Waymo is past the “does this work?” phase and firmly in “how fast can we scale?” mode. The company has already logged ~14M rides this year and expects to reach ~1M rides per week by late 2026 as it expands into markets like Miami, Dallas, and Philadelphia, including expanding onto freeways. At the same time, competition and consumer expectations are accelerating. In markets where Waymo operates, fully driverless rides are becoming normal rather than novel. Once people can reliably hail a car with no one in the driver’s seat, tolerance for “pilot programs” and distant timelines drops quickly. The race is no longer about whether robotaxis work. It is about who can scale them first, safely, and everywhere — a win for consumers who get cheaper, safer, and more reliable rides.

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leaning on proprietary undocumented formas like xcode projects might have seemed a good idea for many years, but it’s become as painful for llms as it’s always been for humans

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after working with hundreds of candidates at VibeScaling trying to place them at the top AI-native startups in SF/NYC, here are 5 unconventional tactics that we've seen work to stand out 👇🏻: 1️⃣ customer interviews tactic: when referrals fail, go directly to their customers - outbound 30-50 asking about pain points, turn 3-5 responses into a short analysis, and send it to the head of sales. Shows you can create value before you're hired while most people just send resumes and pray 2️⃣ the "not now" drip campaign tactic: when you get rejected for a specific reason, don't walk away - fix the objection and stay in touch. If they say you're "not technical enough," learn their space, use their product, and send updates on your progress. They often come back when timing changes, and you'll be top of mind as someone who actually takes feedback 3️⃣ the brand book tactic: hiring managers have tunnel vision and only see your recent experience. Create a portfolio with career highlights, peer quotes, outbound examples, and deal case studies to tell your full story. Helps you control the narrative and show skills beyond what's on your resume 4️⃣ proactive references tactic: instead of waiting for companies to backchannel you, have a strong reference reach out to hiring managers before your final rounds. Lets someone handle objections for you while most candidates just wait around. Being proactive with references gives you a huge edge 5️⃣the gratitude loop tactic: send thank you notes to everyone who helped - interviewers, referrers, advisors - regardless of outcome. People remember genuine appreciation, and it's a small tech world where today's "no" often becomes tomorrow's opportunity invest in relationships and stand out by doing what others won't wrote the full breakdown with templates in GTMBA 👇🏻

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