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? ;)