Leonardo Ferigutti - Full-Stack Developer

The term Founder Engineer has been everywhere lately. But what does it actually mean?

In simple terms, it’s a role very close to being a cofounder, but with less risk and, of course, less upside than being a Founder outright. Still, it’s one of the most intense and formative roles you can have in an early-stage startup.

What being a Founder Engineer really means

As a Founder Engineer in an early-stage startup, you’ll most likely be the first full-time hire, or one of the very first. And no, your job won’t be closing tickets thrown at you by the CTO (if there even is one). Quite the opposite.

You’ll be deep in product.

You need to understand:

what the business actually is,
why a customer would pay for the product,
what its unique selling point is.

Without that context, any technical decision you make will be incomplete.

Prototype vs MVP (they are not the same)

This is a distinction that’s often overlooked.

Prototype
Something fast and disposable. It’s useful for demos and for validating interest with early customers. It’s not meant to scale or to be maintained long-term.

MVP
This is a real product, used by real users. Yes, it can have bugs. But the problem it promises to solve must be solved properly. Not halfway. It should do one thing, and do it extremely well.

If what you receive is a prototype, use it as inspiration or as a mockup. But please, don’t build on top of it. It never ends well. Speaking from personal experience: sooner or later, it will bite you.

Architecture, decisions, and ego

Often, one of the cofounders will be technical and act as the CTO. In that case, there’s usually already a more or less solid foundation: architectural decisions, tech stack, monolith vs microservices, and so on.

Your job is not to come in and change everything.

First, understand why those decisions were made. If you strongly disagree with something, discuss it. But if there’s no clear reason to change it, it’s time to build on top of what’s already there.

The beginning: learn, observe, choose your battles

Early on, there’s usually a backlog defined by the CTO. Starting there is the best move: it helps you get familiar with the stack and the architecture.

At the same time, you’ll start noticing things that may feel off, decisions that could be improved, shortcuts that could have been taken differently. That’s where your experience starts to matter.

When should you change something? When should you just move forward and build a feature?

Everything is a trade-off. And from this point on, almost every decision will be one.

You’ll make mistakes. A lot of them. And you’ll also get things right. What matters is recognizing when you were wrong and burning that lesson into your memory so you don’t repeat it later.

Feature requests everywhere

This is my favorite part.

Feature requests start coming from all directions: sales, customers, founders, support. The key to deciding which ones to fight for and which ones to push back on is understanding the business.

Only then can you evaluate whether the cost of building something, or the tech debt it introduces, is actually worth it.

That’s where the real value of a Founder Engineer lies:

building the best possible solution,
as fast as possible,
with the highest impact on the business,
without compromising the product’s future.

It’s not a role for everyone. But for those who enjoy the intersection of product and engineering, it’s without exaggeration the best job in the world.

You’re given an almost blank map, and the responsibility (and privilege) of helping take the company to its next stage.

Closing

If you’re considering a Founder Engineer role, my advice is simple: don’t see it as just a technical job. It’s a role about context, hard decisions, and real impact.

You’ll write code, yes. But more importantly, you’ll decide what is worth building and when. If that excites you more than just closing tickets, you’re probably looking in the right direction.