MichelleLim

LubaHi everyone. Today we're walking around San Francisco with Michelle Lim, CEO of Flint, an autonomous web and ads building platform. Michelle almost went to med school, but instead she decided to become an engineer and interned at Meta, Slack, Robinhood and then became employee number two at Warp, a coding terminal that she then grew to 500,000 developers.Link

Michelle and I talk about how she pulled the trigger to become a founder. She really felt like she needed to try all the different functions at Warp, the startup she was at, before feeling ready. We talked about her picking her cap table. She's working with Neo, Accel, Sheryl Sandberg. We talk about the vision for Flint and how she settled on that specific idea and so much more. Let's get to it. I hope you enjoy this one.Link

Michelle, thank you so much for taking the time. I'm so excited for our conversation.Link

MichelleNice to meet you. Thank you.Link

LubaSo you grew up in Singapore?Link

MichelleThat's right.Link

LubaAnd now you're a startup founder?Link

MichelleYes.Link

LubaWhat was the definition of success in Singapore? Did you want to start a company, you know, since you were a little girl?Link

MichelleYou know, I've always wanted to be a doctor.Link

LubaOkay.Link

MichelleAnd the definition of success was to be either a government scholar, doctor or lawyer. And so when I decided to not go to med school, which I got into, I was a bit of a family disappointment.Link

LubaMhm. Damn. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk a little about that. So when you say you got into med school, was it med school in Singapore or was it med school in the US?Link

MichelleIn Singapore. Aha. So outside of the US you go to medical school as part of your undergrad degree. So I got into it and I even went to the admit weekend, and I just saw what the next ten years of my life were going to be, and I just felt like it wasn't for me.Link

LubaHow old were you when you went to that weekend?Link

MichelleI was 18.Link

LubaGotcha. So at that point, were you already in the US or was this still in Singapore?Link

MichelleNo, I was still in Singapore. I just finished my A-levels.Link

LubaGotcha.Link

MichelleAnd I was looking to go to university. And I also applied to Yale on a whim.Link

LubaOh, wow.Link

MichelleYeah. And so it took me going to the admit weekend for medical school in Singapore to make me realize that this wasn't quite for me.Link

LubaOkay, so this is quite a different path. So you were on the path to potentially become a doctor, stay in Singapore?Link

MichelleYeah.Link

LubaAnd then on a whim, you decided to apply to Yale. Like, tell me more about why you decided to apply. How come there's only one school?Link

MichelleYeah. Because I did Model UN in high school. I spent a lot of time with humanities students, and they were all applying to the liberal arts schools. And so I decided to apply. Why only one school was because of early action. And for restrictive early action, you can only apply to one school.Link

LubaGotcha. Wow. So you go to this weekend, you're like, no, med school is not for me. What was it like to realize that and also tell your parents about it?Link

MichelleI think it was a lot about needing to listen to my gut for like one of the first times in my life. And I knew that my parents would support me no matter what. So it was scary, but I just knew that I would live in regret if I didn't make the decision that I had.Link

I think I looked a lot at who I was when I was 15 versus who I was when I was 18, and I just saw how different of a person I was, which made me extrapolate that if I was going to turn from 18 to 21, I'd probably be a different person, too. And I don't want an 18-year-old deciding what my 21-year-old life is going to be.Link

LubaVery wise.Link

MichelleYeah.Link

LubaI mean, yeah, like a similar story as well. Yeah, yeah. Kind of. Actually, I studied chemical engineering in school. And then in second year I was like, I'm going to teach myself how to code because I don't see myself as a chemical engineer. So some similarities for sure. What were you like at 15, and what was Michelle at 18? Because you were saying you were two very different people.Link

MichelleYeah. Those are good questions. I think at 15, I cared a lot more about prestige than I cared about when I was 18.Link

LubaMhm.Link

MichelleYeah. Like when I was 15, I was like part of the student leadership board. And I had a lot of exposure to public-facing opportunities. But when I was 18, I was a little bit more, I changed schools because we graduated when I was 16, go to another school. I changed schools and then was a little bit more like low-key. And I spent a lot more time in like my little niche club of Model UN, and I felt I derived a lot of value from just like creating good impact for people, even if, like, no one...Link

LubaNo one's gonna clap for you.Link

MichelleYeah. No one's gonna clap for me. Not like in front of the school body every morning anymore.Link

LubaDo you think you've carried that lack of care for accolades with you since you were 18? You know, going to Yale, obviously, it's a very prestigious school. And then a lot of people, I'm sure, were doing very interesting and prestigious things that elevated their status within the social community.Link

MichelleYeah, I can't say that I'm like fully ascended.Link

LubaNot fully enlightened.Link

MichelleYeah, I know it does. It does feel great to have certain external signals. That said, in college, doing a startup is one of the lowest prestige things that you could do. My college is known for Supreme Court justices and senators, public defenders. And that was kind of what was seen as, like, successful. And so the idea of like, taking computer science and then joining a company that no one's heard of before, or even starting my own back in...Link

LubaCome on, Meta as an intern. I'm sure people heard about Facebook.Link

MichelleYeah, but, like, you know, when it ultimately came down to, like, graduating college and, like, doing something, I joined a startup with a placeholder name that had no product and no code written yet. Like, that idea was crazy to the general audience in college.Link

But the one thing I learned about prestige is that it's very much relative to the crowd you choose to be in. Like, if you stay in Singapore and you're not a doctor, then everyone around you would feel like you're not doing what's great. And if you're at Yale and you're not doing law, it's like everyone's like, what are you doing? Why are you wasting your life on something so pragmatic instead of the arts? And then you come to San Francisco and you hang out with the tech people. Then people are like, oh, like you're doing what we think is valuable. So prestige is not only ephemeral, but it's also very much tied to the environment.Link

LubaIt's very contextual.Link

MichelleSo what's the most important thing? You just do what you love, because you can always find places and people to be with that will think that what you're doing is valuable.Link

LubaYeah, I 100% agree with you. And obviously, you know, moving cities and moving into an industry that you're really excited about can also propel your own motivation to be in it and do great things. Everyone around you is working on that thing and elevating it to like, this is the thing that you need to be working on.Link

Actually, for me, when I moved from San Francisco to New York, I was still running my startup, and only being in a different environment allowed me to take a step back and actually evaluate, is this still something that is worth it for me to be working on? Because if I were to stay in San Francisco, if you're not a founder, like, what are you even doing with your life here? I'm exaggerating, but it would have been harder to make that decision.Link

MichelleI think the key is you want to figure out what your intrinsic motivation is, and then you find a place. Maybe just to rephrase it, it's more like, I think that you need to figure out, like, for yourself, like what is the most virtuous thing that you are excited to do? And then find a place where the incentives are aligned for you to continue to steer yourself towards that, like, impact. Because I think that for a lot of us, it's just really hard to be immune to like what everyone else is saying and what all the external values are.Link

But what you can do is to align yourself towards like what will do good. And I think that having is not the worst thing in the world to do. We're in a world where everyone is trying to focus on creating something, innovating, making some impact, even if there's some negative undertones to it. I think it's at least better than being in banking.Link

LubaOkay, well, that brings us back to your time at Yale. When you went to Yale, did you pick CS right away, or was this something that you discovered while you were in school?Link

MichelleYeah, so I only discovered it in school through intentional exploration. So I figured if I've given up this specialized profession, I owe it to myself to try as many different things as possible.Link

LubaAnd what drove you so hard to try to find that thing that you're excited about? Because, again, you know, growing up in Singapore, there were three careers that are valued and respected. A lot of people follow a linear path and follow what they're expected to follow.Link

MichelleYeah.Link

LubaWhat is it in you that gave you so much agency to decide that, hey, this is not for me, and I'm going to intentionally explore?Link

MichelleI think I'm very privileged. I think that my parents have always supported me in the decisions I've made, and my school system has also always supported me in trying things out. But that's a good question. I think it's like a necessary but not sufficient condition: you need to have privilege to try it, and then you need to have the ability to fail if it doesn't work out. And I feel like I was really supported because I was in a really good school system, and good parents who support me.Link

LubaThat's amazing. I'm glad that that was the case. Yeah, I feel similarly, where I was, you know, going on a lot of explorations to figure it out. But I think another thing is I always just knew that work is going to be something that I'll spend so much of my life on. And despite all these external expectations, like, I need to be enjoying my life and what I'm doing, and that was so important to me from a young age that that gave me permission to be like, okay, well, maybe this is not it, but this other thing is it.Link

But I agree with you that the safety of your exploration container is really important, because both you and I had a little, you know, the school system was supporting it, but we were not like starving on the streets trying to make ends meet. Like, there was a scaffolding to this exploration phase.Link

MichelleThat's a good point about how, like, it's also because, you know, you're spending a lot of time on work that you want to make sure that it's time well spent.Link

LubaSo when you were studying CS, did you know that you always wanted to start a company, your own company, or how did that come about?Link

MichelleSo interestingly, I took my first computer science class because of this entrepreneurship club I joined. So in my freshman year, I joined this entrepreneurship club where everybody was like supposed to start their own projects. And out of the ten groups that were there, only one of them made any progress. And it turns out because they can code. And so they got to iterate on new features. The feedback loop was extremely quick. Whereas with the other teams, we were building things that would require FDA approval or would require like manufacturers or like a lot of different steps, or hiring someone to code for you. And so I wanted to have more autonomy to do things myself. And so I decided to take computer science my freshman spring.Link

And back then it was still like one of ten directions that I could go into. And I decided to stick with computer science because, one, it enabled entrepreneurship, but then two, I felt like it had a lot of parts of medicine that I enjoyed, which is you get to almost be like a computer doctor when you debug something. So like whenever there's a bug, they will always appear in very specific regular patterns. And then you can trace it back to specific parts of the code, specific parts of the system. And I find that very interesting. It's like debugging, like a human having an enlarged...Link

LubaLike, I feel like you're an outlier. Most people are like, screw debugging, I hate it. I remember always struggling with debugging. And here I'm just sitting, banging my head on the wall, trying to figure out what the problem is. And you know how sometimes the problem is not even your code or your issue, but it's like a package update or someone else's piece of code. And you have to spend a lot of time, yeah, trying to get to it.Link

MichelleYeah, I'm a weirdo. Yeah. But back to the question of, like, founding. I knew I wanted to do entrepreneurship, but I didn't know, like, when specifically. I thought I was just going to go into, like, product management or like software engineering for a while before developing the confidence to do it.Link

But I found through my internships that every time I went to a smaller company, I received a lot more autonomy. So from Meta to, yeah, 12,000 people, like 1,200 people, Robinhood, to the 300 people. I felt like every time I went down, I got more ownership of the product, and I just knew that it would be even more autonomy if I'm going to join a two-person startup, which is what I did after college.Link

LubaYeah. Let's talk a little bit about all these companies that you worked at before Flint, the company that you started yourself.Link

MichelleYeah.Link

LubaSo Meta to Slack, to Robinhood, to Warp.Link

MichelleExactly.Link

LubaYeah. Tell me, for each one of them, what is the thing that you really admired about how the engineering team and the company was built? And what is the thing that you were like, hey, don't love that, not going to take it away into my own Rolodex of leadership skills or culture-building skills?Link

MichelleYeah. At Facebook, I really loved that there was a hacking culture where there would be a hackathon every summer or like every quarter, where you could just decide that you wanted to build something and then just go build it. And I really love that. And I find that it's something that I'm taking to my current company, where I want people to prototype more, because a lot of times, the things that may be really important that you think could take a lot of time to build are...Link

LubaReally quick.Link

Michelle...can just be done with an overnight hack. Yeah, yeah. I think what I didn't like about it, and this is not like a knock on Mark, but like, as a company gets bigger, they tend to specialize a lot more. And so there were entire teams that would be building infrastructure that had no clear line of sight to like how that infrastructure was going to impact product.Link

LubaOh, interesting. So there was that big disconnect between the products and the infra layer. Yeah. But like, was the infrastructure that's being built actually used on something, and the engineers were disconnected from the impact?Link

MichelleYeah. It was more that engineers were disconnected, but the infrastructure was definitely being used.Link

LubaUsed. Okay, so that's the thing that you were like, okay, I've got to always keep people in the loop.Link

MichelleYeah, like always communicate customer impact, is what I would say. Like, even though my company is small, it's still really important that I bring customers into the office. So like every other Friday we would have a customer come in and they would use Flint in front of all of us. And every single time we file 25 tickets.Link

LubaOh, wow. Yeah, that's a really cool...Link

MichelleIt's pretty cool.Link

Luba...ritual. Is it every single week?Link

MichelleEvery other Friday.Link

LubaEvery other Friday.Link

MichelleYeah. And then the other Fridays we have someone on the Flint team use the product instead, which is very important, since we're building a product that the engineers don't necessarily have to use as often.Link

LubaThat's really cool. I wonder how that's going to evolve for when Flint becomes really big. Like, will you have different pods for different teams when you bring the customer in? Because I agree that communication loop of why am I working on what I'm working on is super important.Link

MichelleI think the key is you want to be segmenting the company based on the product area that you're impacting. So maybe instead of it being like fixing latency errors on app startup being the pillar, maybe the pillar should be like time to first aha moment. So then while that earlier project would contribute to that pillar, at least everyone is clear that if the infrastructure is built right, users will have a great time, right?Link

LubaOr like the moment will come faster, sooner. Okay, so at Meta, how much exposure did you have to any high-level leadership? The reason why I'm asking that is because I'm curious, as an intern, what were your takeaways from, you know, the leadership style of, let's say, Zuck or Boz or whoever was in your line of sight, as this is great or this is not so great?Link

MichelleYeah, I would say I attended two Q&A sessions with Sheryl Sandberg. And then there was a Q&A session every Friday where you could ask a question to Mark in a big arena. I was also really lucky to have won, like, the best internship project. So I won an hour with Mark in his office.Link

LubaThat's amazing.Link

MichelleYeah. So that's the picture.Link

LubaWhat was your project?Link

MichelleThis is really funny because I made an internship project that makes it really easy for friends to split bills.Link

LubaOh, my.Link

MichelleSo it would detect...Link

LubaThat's a very common problem, though.Link

MichelleAs a CS kid, you either build a dating app or you...Link

LubaYou're...Link

Michelle...splitting. Like, it's just how you build startups. And it uses like Bluetooth technology to like figure out who are the friends who are close to you. And then you can use OCR to like scan the receipt, and then you can drag and drop your friend avatars to the receipt item and then it immediately splits.Link

LubaThat's cool. That's a really good UX.Link

MichelleThank you. Yeah.Link

LubaSo you won an hour with him? Yeah. And what did you guys talk about?Link

MichelleWell, the first thing he told me about my app was like, how is this different from Venmo?Link

LubaMhm.Link

MichelleAnd I found that to be a huge compliment, because at the time Instagram was just copying Snapchat Stories. So I feel like it's almost a compliment that I was...Link

Luba...copying.Link

MichelleThat was copying Venmo. So that was fun. And mostly, like, he struck me as very humble. Like, at the door when I went in, he told me, hey, hi, I'm Mark, and I'm like, I know you're Mark. And then just, like, mostly talked about his daughter and how he's been listening to Moana, like, ten times a night. So, yeah, it was just, like, pretty personal.Link

LubaYeah. Sweet. Sheryl?Link

MichelleI think it's actually really funny because Sheryl Sandberg is now my investor in my startup. And what I really liked about her leadership style during the Q&A sessions was that, like, I feel like she is very considerate of, like, the specific stories that she remembers to tell each time. So I remember I went to one Q&A...Link

LubaSo that she doesn't repeat the story.Link

MichelleNo, she repeats the story. But I think that's good leadership, very good leadership. So I went to one larger Q&A with like more employees, and I went to a smaller one that's just meant for the interns. And there were similar questions being asked. And she always brought out the same story and the same way of, like, hooking into the story, but then when she says it, it felt really natural.Link

But the thing is, like, it is so important to repeat and then be consistent with the way that your message is delivered. And even though my company is only eight people right now, I always make sure to, like, almost always repeat myself. Like, this is what we're doing this week. This is why we're doing it this week, and product principles. I will also always say it, and that's what I took away from the leadership style.Link

LubaThat's very interesting. It's the same as in advertisement. Like, you have to have whatever, seven touchpoints with the product or the message so that finally it precipitates in the customer's mind for them to buy it.Link

MichelleYep.Link

LubaWhy do you think the consistency of delivery is so important? Because doesn't it sound rehearsed if it's always the same?Link

MichelleI mean, I think that it's the same with marketing. You need to have the same messaging, and there's just some stories that always hit. I mean, I might have reused a few talking points in this walk that I have, which, you know.Link

LubaYes.Link

MichelleYeah. They hit. Why not?Link

LubaYeah. That's true. I agree with that. I'm just curious about the delivery point, because I feel like if you vary the delivery with the same intent, though, then the story doesn't sound exactly the same, but the sentiment is the same.Link

MichelleYeah. I think the thing is, I think many people might think that everyone's already heard the last thing.Link

LubaMhm.Link

MichelleBut the thing about marketing is that you always have to assume that when you are out there, no one's heard of you before, or this is going to be the first time that anyone's going to be hearing that messaging. So I think the risk of, like, repeating the same delivery to the same person who's like, oh, I've heard this before, is very low compared to, like, the benefit of net new audiences being able to hear a really well-done story.Link

LubaYeah. Yeah. It reminds me of content creation, too, because there is so much cringe that comes with putting yourself out there and sharing content. And obviously you're trying to share some stories and you try to appeal to certain audiences, and then people over-focus on their close friends or family who are going to say, like, oh my God, why are you doing that? Instead of focusing on all the opportunities that can come from sharing themselves online. So it's similar to the point that you're making.Link

MichelleYeah. Like, I've been posting on LinkedIn every day since I started the company. And that's the one thing I always think about: assume that no one knows me. Why would they care about this content? How can I be helpful in a way that doesn't require, like, prerequisite information? So even if it's repetitive to the people already following you, it's probably still very useful for people who've never heard of you before.Link

LubaSo as a B2B AI startup founder, tell me more about your selection of LinkedIn as a platform, and what opportunities have you gotten through being consistent with posting on LinkedIn?Link

MichelleHmm. So because I'm a B2B AI selling to VPs of Marketing and founders, I find that a lot of the customers are on there. And so what has been helpful is I do get a lot of inbound on my DMs of people who are interested in using the product. So that's been really big. I think that there's been a little bit of hiring help as well, where I remember posting about design being important, and someone reached out and we actually hired them.Link

LubaOh. That's incredible. Wow. So you post a lot on LinkedIn as a founder building a startup. For someone listening who wants to replicate the LinkedIn strategy, what are your three tips for the type of content that hits on LinkedIn?Link

MichelleYeah, so it really depends on the brand that you're trying to create. For me, I try to be a lot more personal. So the kinds of content that I always do is like a photo of me and my team or me and my customer. And photos do extremely well. Second point is, if you're doing a photo, it needs to be portrait mode, because it takes up more of a screen than if it's horizontal.Link

LubaYeah.Link

MichelleAnd then the last note is that the hook is the most important thing. So try to establish credibility within the first, you know, X number of, like, characters, because that's what's going to determine whether someone clicks to learn more. Yeah.Link

LubaHow do you work on your hooks? What's your framework for building?Link

MichelleYeah, I think that one framework is to lead with credibility.Link

LubaGive me an example. What does that mean? Like, I'm Michelle, CEO of Flint, we raised $5 million from X, Y and Z.Link

MichelleWell, say, like, I recently launched a recruiting video. So my recruiting video takes a video of my entire team doing almost like a *Birdman*-style one-shot, like, office tour. And the old hook that we started with was like, you know, my team created this really creative video to explain why you should join Flint, which is my startup. But what would provide even more credibility is, you know, this team raised X million dollars to build the future of the website. This is what the team is composed of.Link

LubaThat's cool. Yeah, that's definitely, okay.Link

MichelleYeah. So, like, imagine if someone who doesn't know me sees the post. The second version is what people would click on.Link

LubaMakes sense. Yeah. Okay, let's go back to your internships and speedrun your learnings. So tell me the same thing about Slack, Robinhood, and then we'll dive into Warp. What are the things that you learned that you're now replicating as a leader, and what are the things that you're like, well, now I'm not going to do that?Link

MichelleYeah. I think that Slack wasn't afraid to be fun.Link

LubaMm.Link

MichelleLike, even you can see in the marketing as well for Slack, where they are always joking when, like, the loading screen shows up. They're like joking about tending to your forest or some, like, really funny thing.Link

LubaMhm.Link

MichelleAnd they weren't afraid to, like, make the changelog really funny. Like, most people just, like, write down the name of the pull requests that were made. But for them it's like, lol, well, welcome to my daily podcast of what's changed. Whoops, we accidentally did this, but don't worry, it's fixed now, you know. And it's just, like, really fun.Link

LubaDidn't expect that from Slack.Link

MichelleSo yeah, I mean, now maybe it feels a bit different now that it's, like, acquired. But it was so fun. And I think that we're creating, like, a company brand or, like, an employer brand. We're trying not to be so, like, straitlaced about it. Like, work can be creative and fun, and that's why a lot of us do it. And so why does the website need to, and the way that you talk to people need to be so, like, straitlaced?Link

LubaDo you think the culture of the team and the way the team feels inside of a company is always an extension of the personalities of the leaders? Or can things like that, like, we're fun, we're creative, be manufactured intentionally?Link

MichelleI think that even if the leader is fun, they still need to be intentional about creating the culture.Link

LubaMhm. Like actually showing that side of themselves and making rituals around it.Link

MichelleRituals around it. Like rewarding people for exhibiting the right values. So I think culture is a lot about the actions of a leader. And so as a corollary, it can be manufactured, because it has to be.Link

LubaBut what if you're trying to force being, like, very fun and quirky, but you're actually not that fun and quirky as a person?Link

MichelleI see, yeah. I think it would be hard unless the founder is very good at pretending. Yeah. But what I've learned on this job is that it's so all-consuming that if your company is not in line with who you are, it's worth your burnout. Yeah, yeah.Link

LubaSo, okay, so now that brings us to Robinhood. What did you learn at Robinhood that you really liked?Link

MichelleYeah, I loved that they invested in a lot of young talent. Like, a lot of the people there that were building the most interesting, most important products were all new grads.Link

LubaWhy do you think Robinhood made this decision to give young people so much power? Because that sounds like an intentional decision.Link

MichelleI think...Link

LubaVlad...Link

Michelle...and Baiju were young as well, and so I think they were recruiting a lot of their friends. I think that the concept of the product could be hard to digest as someone who's a little bit more experienced, early on.Link

But what I took away from that is, like, to always bet on young, smart talent. So, like, one of my first interns at Flint, he's a sophomore in college, and I decided to hire him as my intern. And I gave him the most difficult project to work on in the company. His name is Connor. And he crushed it. And he built, like, one of the most important parts of our product. And I think, like, other hiring managers would see that this guy is 19, he's, like, unable to do big work, maybe give him something that cannot be productized or put in production. But I knew I wanted to invest in that. And then in my role at Warp, I hired maybe like 8 or 10 people. And many of them were young.Link

LubaCan you spot when the young person earns that level of trust, and when maybe it's not that good of an idea to give them a lot of responsibility?Link

MichelleYou do it gradually over time, so you would give them something that is on the smaller side, and then they crush it, and you give them something bigger, and then they crush it. But you can only tell based on the work that they've done, because they wouldn't have had the track record before that. But sometimes you do see the track record before that. But with young people, by nature of them being young, it's harder to see.Link

LubaYeah. Okay, let's talk about Warp. So when you graduated, you did all these fancy internships. You joined a company as, like, a second employee, that I think had a code name, Devin, before. Denver.Link

MichelleDenver.Link

LubaDenver. Yeah. Yeah, I think I saw a tweet about Devin today.Link

MichelleYeah. No worries.Link

LubaHad a code name, Denver. And you spent four years there, right? From engineering to marketing, product, sales, to have, like, a very windy, in a way, career at Warp. Let's talk about that. Why did you decide to join such a small company? Why did you decide to go from engineering, you know, the triumphant career in Silicon Valley, to, like, a second-class citizen running marketing? I think marketing has a very different rep now, but at the time when you were doing it, pre-AI, I still think engineers were very much, like, first class.Link

MichelleYeah. So at the time of me joining Denver, COVID was happening and I was living in New York, and, like, bodies were piling up, and there were specific times where we were allowed to go into the supermarket.Link

LubaLiterally, bodies were piling up? Is that what was happening in New York?Link

MichelleYeah, because it was just so many, they couldn't process it. So they just started, like...Link

LubaSee, COVID is disappearing from my mind. I have, like, COVID amnesia.Link

MichelleGood, good for you. Okay. Block it out. And basically all the death in the air was making me feel like life can be short and you want to make the most of everything. There's no, like, waiting for something else. Just do it now. Because if you die, at least you know you would have tried to do something interesting. So...Link

LubaAnd the interesting thing is a new terminal.Link

MichelleThe interesting thing. Yes, actually. Okay, so here's what I thought. Okay. So, like, one is, I think coding is one of the best, like, social levelers that, like, mankind has ever seen. Like, someone who's, like, a high school dropout could actually get, like, a really decent shot at a really comfortable life, for sure. And I think that coding can be really hard when you have to use a terminal for the first time. Like, I was a TA in college. And the hardest thing, beyond, like, data structures, was, the easy part. The hard part was like, how do I, like, run this GDB debugger? How do I, like, make sure the code compiles? And seeing this screen is really scary. So I do think that making the terminal more accessible could be eventually very helpful to the world. We eventually proved that by being, like, one of the core terminals most students use.Link

But second of all, it was, like, a really creative thing to be doing. To be joining a company before any code was written, to be imagining something that hasn't been tried before. Like, what a new terminal can be.Link

LubaAnd how did you meet Zach, the CEO?Link

MichelleYeah. So I'm part of this program called Neo. This program is started by Ali Partovi. He finds, like, college students and then helps to mentor them into joining startups or starting startups.Link

LubaIs it true that he spotted Michael from Cursor? Was that the story?Link

MichelleYeah. He spotted Michael Truell, and then that same summer, Michael Truell and I went to the same startup camp.Link

LubaWow. So we need to be investing in Flint early.Link

MichelleYeah. And that was the same startup camp where I met the Graphite guys.Link

LubaOh, wow.Link

MichelleWhere they were also eventually acquired.Link

LubaLike Greg Foster and Greg? Yeah, I worked with him at Airbnb.Link

MichelleOh, yeah. That's funny. Yeah, it's one of our best customers. So, yeah, that was a momentous time. It was January 2020. And Ali said, like, that I should meet up with Zach. And at the time, I was only looking at, like, you know, 15-person startups. Because to me, joining a 15-person startup is also kind of like...Link

LubaYeah, yeah, so much opportunity.Link

Michelle...to beat and puff, you know? But then I met Zach, I saw the idea of, like, improving the terminal and just couldn't stop thinking about it. And he was someone who, again, like the Robinhood founders, was very open to young talent. I interviewed a lot of his previous reports that had worked with him when they were new grads.Link

LubaYeah. And he had a very interesting career, right? He was a pretty senior engineer, and he was an interim CTO of Time.Link

MichelleAnd also had a brief stint at Yale Law School.Link

LubaOh, wow. Okay.Link

MichelleSo, very smart guy. And he was like, he believed in me and believes in young talent and liked a lot of the product ideas that I had. And one of the first features I built was an idea I came up with during my product interview with him, and he just let me build it end to end.Link

LubaWow.Link

MichelleLike, I established, like, our back end for the first time, because we'd never had a back end before I built that product. But you can share commands and outputs.Link

LubaVery cool.Link

MichelleYeah. So, yeah, in the midst of bodies piling up, I joined a startup to change the way we code.Link

LubaI love it. Yeah. Okay, so then you were at Warp for four years?Link

MichelleYeah.Link

LubaTell me a bit more about that decision to go from engineering to marketing to sales. And I believe you single-handedly, with obviously the help of your team and people you hired, really grew Warp's user base.Link

MichelleYeah. Yeah. So when I first met Zach, I actually told him that I wanted to learn to be a founder.Link

LubaMhm. So at that point you were already set on doing it at some point.Link

MichelleYeah. To do it. I just didn't have an idea yet. And so I told him, like, I really want to. I think coding is important and I want to be really good at coding. But I believe there's, like, this other half of it: you need to distribute the product, you need to sell the product. And I was like, I want to work on that. And he said, there is no product yet. There's nothing for you to sell. But jointly, let's build the product together. Let's do a lot of coding at the beginning, and you will have to code all the time. But eventually, when the product does well...Link

LubaYou'll be...Link

Michelle...selling it. You'll be selling it. Every opportunity there was, once the product was in a really stable state, I just kept volunteering to do what was important for the business. And I didn't realize what I was doing was marketing or growth at the time. I just thought, like, as a young kid, I just thought that this was just part of engineering. Like, oh, wow, coding up the marketing website, it's like, oh, that's cool. Oh, like posting on Hacker News while I'm writing blog posts that are extremely technical. Isn't that engineering?Link

LubaMhm.Link

MichellePosting on Twitter about the product. Okay, that was like less engineering, but, like, I'm really good at social media. I'll do it. And I also ran all of our, like, data stack, our analytics, our marketing operations and all that kind of stuff. And I was writing code. I was writing in Segment to, like, post events. And then I was, like, using conditional logic to figure out, like, when to send email. So to me it still felt like engineering.Link

It was only after, like, many months, that I realized I was doing growth and marketing, and I was asked to hire all these people to scale up things that I built, that I realized that I was in marketing. And I was just always wondering, like, if I needed a lot of this code to get the things that I did done, like, how is marketing even done in other companies? And I realized that it was a very difficult problem. I talked to a lot of my friends who were in similar roles, and they were also saying that, like, to build a landing page or to start a Google Ads campaign required, like, many months. And I had many nights of stress when the marketing website was not ready for launches. And that gave me almost, like, a villain origin story to, like, improve marketing once I left.Link

LubaThat's incredible. We're going to dive in to talk more about Flint and how you decided to pull the trigger to leave. I had a question about what you said when you met Zach. You very honestly told him that you wanted to be a founder.Link

MichelleYeah.Link

LubaA lot of people in your position would be kind of, like, feeling bad about that, that they're joining a company as a stepping stone to learn those skills. So for someone listening who wants to be in the same spot of learning all these different skills and really learning to be a founder before they become a founder, what would your advice to that person be?Link

MichelleIf the founder you talk to doesn't like what you're saying, they're not the right founder for you. You don't want to join a job where you have to be deceptive about what your intentions are. Join me at flint.com/careers. We love people who want to be founders. So you need to find the right person. It's like, you have a lot of power in the job interview process. Like, find an employer that you deserve, and, like, know your worth.Link

Because, like, aspiring founders are one of the best employees ever. Like, you look at Ramp, like a lot of their early employees are now starting companies. But when they were there, like, they were building functions from scratch. They were building some of the most important features. And then they're also able to stretch into a lot of functions that otherwise a founder would have to hire headcount for. Like, because I was able to do what I was doing with, like, marketing, sales and product, I saved us, like, so much headcount during the years that I was doing those functions. So it's, like, really helpful to a founder, and they need to see that as well. And if they don't see it, then it's not a good employer.Link

And the other thing is that if you do make your intentions clear, you also end up getting the opportunities that would help you.Link

LubaMhm.Link

MichelleSo my founder was always looking out for opportunities for me. And he would also, like, send me DMs sometimes of, like, things that founders should be doing or what founders shouldn't be doing. And I felt like he really cared about my career development.Link

And the same happened with, like, my intern, who's now a founder. When he was interning with me, he also made it clear that he wanted to be a founder. So I brought him to investor meetings. I made sure he had FaceTime with, like, all of the tier-one people I was talking to and who invested in us, and made sure that, like, everyone knew what he was doing. I posted about him. And, like, if you hide your intentions, you're never going to have opportunities like this, because they wouldn't know how to support you.Link

LubaHow, now, as an employer, do you manage that desire to hire founders, and then the expectation that at some point they might leave, and that some point might be very soon? Like, you know, you invest all this time into hiring someone, training them, giving them opportunity. And then, like, eight months later, they're like, peace. Okay, I'm ready to start my own company.Link

MichelleYeah, I try to be very upfront with them that, like, while I do support their journey, I do need them to stay for at least two years.Link

LubaOh, okay. Gotcha. What if, you know, life throws different wrenches and maybe they stay for a year? How does that conversation go?Link

MichelleI think this happens, like, for others, like, even if you're not a founder. Like, a lot of, like, you know, life is just long. People are people and there's always going to be things that come up. So I will be, theoretically, I will be understanding, but I'll be...Link

LubaTheoretically.Link

MichelleYeah. I'll just be really bummed whenever someone...Link

LubaSo that hasn't happened yet.Link

MichelleNo one has.Link

LubaI guess you guys are not two years in yet.Link

MichelleNot two years yet. And the intern was only going to be here for, like, six months, so we already knew that he needed to go back to college.Link

LubaOkay, so whoever's listening who's working with Michelle, try to be clear.Link

MichelleYes, exactly.Link

LubaBe clear with where you're at. That's totally fair. Yeah. Life is life. Okay. So now, when did you feel like you were ready to leave Warp and start your own company?Link

MichelleYeah. So I felt like there were, like, five Infinity Stones to collect. There was, like, the engineering and the product.Link

LubaI love the term Infinity Stones. Where is it coming from? Is it Avengers? Oh, God. *Avengers: Endgame*.Link

MichelleI love...Link

LubaI love it.Link

MichelleYeah. It's my passion. So I think there's, like, there's the engineering and the product. Then there's the marketing, and then there's customer success, and then there's sales. And I felt like at the end of my four years at Flint, at Warp, I managed to collect all these stones. And so I felt comfortable with the learnings that I've gotten, and that while I wasn't the best in any of these five stones, I at least knew that they existed and vaguely know how to hire for each of them. So I hired our first AE. I hired our first support person, our first PM, many engineers. So I felt like I was getting ready.Link

And I had such a good time there, but I just knew that if I wasn't going to leave after four years, I just wouldn't ever leave. So there was something about the magical number of four that also made me really think about...Link

LubaAlso the vesting schedule.Link

MichelleI didn't say that.Link

LubaOkay, so it sounds incredibly structured. Is it hindsight that it's so structured? Or were you actually this structured while you were working at Warp in making your decision to start your own company?Link

MichelleIt wasn't structured at all. My founder was very clear with me that I needed to put the company first, above my own, like, personal development goals. So, but he was very clear that the job is to just do the most critical thing in the business. And so I ended up running all these functions just by nature of the business progressing and there being no one else to do the job.Link

So, like, the engineering, because there wasn't code yet, and then product, because we had no PM until 20 employees, and then support and customer success, because, like, someone needed to respond to the Hacker News comments and all the bugs coming in. And then we grew so fast to, like, half a million developers. So a lot of developers were in enterprises that required sales. So I had to, like, take on the sales. So it was, like, a progression over time of what the business needed. And I just, like, volunteered to do them. And I had a track record of doing everything I take on well, and so that was how it happened.Link

LubaDo you think if Warp hadn't started working, you would have left to go try out another startup to get those skills? Or, let's say, like, a year in, you know, you guys coded up some products and it was, like, kind of crickets, or not going up and to the right just yet, what would you have done? Would you have left to start your own company then? Or did you really, really crave being somewhere where you see all the different functions?Link

MichelleI mean, I don't think we were crushing it, but I still stayed for years. I think, like, a lot of people might think that employees choose startups because of how well everything is doing. But there's also a lot of other factors, like how much the team trusts in you, like how much you get to learn, the impact that you're making.Link

And I felt like I have, like, my entire life to keep repeatedly joining, like, successful companies. But what I had with Zach at Warp, to be able to be in the leadership team, present to the board of directors every quarter as, like, a 23-year-old...Link

LubaWow.Link

Michelle...like, impossible. Really hard to get. So why lose it just because we haven't won yet? It took seven years for Clay to be successful. Four years for both. So why I joined a startup? Because I want to have a shot at, like, making it successful and being responsible for its success. So, yeah, not the kind to quit because it's not, like, doing well.Link

LubaThat makes a lot of sense. So for Flint, you decide to leave. You obviously already had that experience with marketing pages and setting up Google Ads, and the fact that it was a pain and took a long time. And for context, for anyone listening, that is what Flint is today. But did you right away start with that idea, or was there some exploration?Link

MichelleYeah, I actually did a lot of exploration. I was working on pharmaceuticals at one point, and then finance RevOps at another point. And I remember, like, in my ideation period, I was like knocking on doors and going to biotech companies here and, like, trying to get...Link

LubaSo you were still feeling very warm to that past Michelle who wanted to be a doctor.Link

MichelleThat's true. Okay. Should I pay you for therapy? Yeah. Yeah, I tried a lot of those paths, but then, like, the little part of me was also, like, exploring a little bit on, like, the marketing and the growth side of things, because a lot of people were trying to learn from me. I was already naturally advising a lot of other developer tool companies on marketing. And so I was talking with them, and what I found was that if I was going to be doing this for, like, 10 to 20 years, I need to really love my customer. And I felt like I loved growth, growth marketing and growth people, like, just way too much to not try and do something in this space.Link

LubaWhat made you love that specific customer so much?Link

MichelleI feel like they're so creative. And they're also very quantitative and very experiment-driven. They love the fast feedback loops. And they're, like, so fun to be with. And we always have, like, fun when we meet up, just brainstorming different ways of, like, getting in front of people. And it just feels like my kind of people.Link

And it was a tough decision to make, to do it, because, like, everyone was telling me to not go into spaces that sell into marketing. It's well known within VC that this space is quite unfundable as a business.Link

LubaThat VCs don't like funding companies that do marketing, or not do marketing, but sell to marketers.Link

MichelleExactly. The thing about VCs is that you're trying to predict, like, what company can be really big. And so one really easy way to look at that is look at public comps, right? Like, look at the Fortune 100. See how many of them are in marketing and then how big are they. And you will look at things like HubSpot, which is at 10 billion. And you're like, oh, like, maybe that's too small. So that's the one reason.Link

The second reason is, like, a lot of the, like, other startups have tried doing very similar things, but their ACVs have, like, only been 200K. They're looking for more, like, multi-million-dollar value kind of deals. There's a feeling that, like, the buyers change a lot. Like, every change of a CMO is, like, only six months. They love trying new tools, but they still love, like, swapping out old tools. Tools tend to be very much, like, tied to the seasonality of, like, the programming that they're picking. Like, oh, like, this month is going to be the account-based marketing month, so I'm going to use this, but then I'm going to churn after I focus on, like, ads instead.Link

So there were a lot of structural reasons why a lot of VCs don't want to fund this space. A lot of VCs also didn't want to fund recruiting, but now there's Juicebox. And a lot of VCs didn't want to fund support, and now there's Decagon and Sierra. So my bet is that it's going to be different now, because it used to be that we're replacing, like, software point solutions, but with AI, we're, like, helping to, like, augment more labor, more things that are...Link

LubaYou know, you're not really just selling to marketing. You're selling also to growth engineering, and you're selling to ads.Link

MichelleInstead of, like, selling the software, you're selling more of the work as well.Link

LubaAnd work, like, an end result, versus something that would give you some sort of nudge and data on how to create the end result that you're looking for. So in your case, it's marketing pages, it's ad copy, but actually the entire ad, and it's very concrete that this is what you're going to get. And that concreteness has a lot of inputs that go into it.Link

MichelleI think the way that I would think about it is there's, like, three layers of value. There's, like, the tooling and the software side of things. So, like, if you think of Webflow, this is how you, like, go into the platform and you make, like, website pages. Then the other layer is that everyone who uses Webflow actually hires a Webflow agency. So they pay them, like, at least 10K a month to go in and use the product on your behalf. So that's the labor, like, on top of it. And with labor there's, like, indirection and, like, slower timelines when you have to redirect. And then the last layer above it is not even labor or software. It's actually the outcomes. When I think of outcomes, I think of, like, increased revenue, conversions, like, making money for people.Link

And I think that the TAM has been so small because we've only been able to get, like, the value that comes from the software, the hosting and such. But, like, with Flint, we can also help to, like, improve the work that's being done to build the pages and also figure out what pages should be built, which is what we do with our ads agent. But the grand vision of the company is that we can charge by outcome. So, like, you're no longer thinking about it as, like, oh, this is another, like, website management tool. You're thinking about it as, like, oh, like, I'm going to pay for more revenue, right? Why would I not pay?Link

LubaI'm going to convert this for my customers. Yeah.Link

MichelleYeah. So you're, like, providing that outcome. And because of that, I think that TAM is, like, huge, a lot larger than, like, what you would consider old. Like, marketing companies tend to have just, like, stayed at, like, 5 or 10 billion. Like, we're looking at $100 billion a year that we can get, because marketing, if you, like, bring it to the very end, it's all about making revenue. And what is the revenue? It's the GDP of America. So that's why I think it's really big. And that's why I think that they're wrong. But time will tell.Link

LubaThat is...Link

Michelle...true.Link

LubaYeah. So what made you convinced at the time of exploration that this is it? Despite all these naysayers, you see the light at the end of the tunnel. The market is huge.Link

MichelleThat the market is huge?Link

LubaNo. This is the idea that you want to work on.Link

MichelleIt really boils down to loving your customers. You know, it's, like, all about, like, who do you want to spend your time with every day? Who do you want to, like, solve problems for? And I would just, it's like, this is a segment that I would just, like, keep working with, like, even when times are hard.Link

This is actually related to a previous discussion we had about, like, decisions and, like, you know, coming to the US, like, doing something less prestigious. It's like, I know that whatever decision I make, I have to live with for years, even if it was something that everyone else saw was a good decision. I have to live with it every single day.Link

LubaIt's your responsibility. Yeah.Link

MichelleAnd so it was very important for me to do things based on love, rather than to do things based on logic. Though I think my logic is sound, more like do things based on love rather than what, like, everyone else, the consensus, is. So.Link

LubaThat is very wise advice. Yeah. How did you meet your co-founder?Link

MichelleI met him through a mutual friend of mine, Katie Goldstein. I met Katie through, like, a Christmas party. And then Katie told me I should meet Max, who used to be a tech lead manager at Nuro. So he was building cars that drive on the road, was managing many simulation and infrastructure teams. And when we met, we realized that our values really aligned. When we...Link

LubaHow did you realize that? Did you go through some sort of very structured co-founder dating, value alignment exercise, or was it just spending time together?Link

MichelleThere's the 200-question questionnaire.Link

LubaThat is the first round.Link

Michelle...that we went through, that goes through every single scenario. But I think the game changer was meeting his parents. So I visited his parents, and apparently it was a bit of an interview process.Link

LubaWait.Link

MichelleBecause...Link

LubaYour parents interviewing you, or you, like, your parents? His parents? Because his parents were interviewing you? Or, yeah, I mean, it makes sense, because almost like, you know, you guys are getting married, but I guess this is like a work marriage.Link

MichelleSo this is so much, like, this is, like, close up.Link

LubaIt might even be higher. Yeah. Yeah.Link

MichelleI probably spend more time with him than his girlfriend. So, yeah, the mom was really good at judging character, and she thought I was a good, firm, good kid. Yeah. Was a good kid.Link

LubaWhat values are aligned between the two of you?Link

MichelleI mean, like, we both, like, would ride a Citi Bike to go visit investors during our fundraise because we wanted to save on, like...Link

LubaOkay, so frugality.Link

MichelleFrugality, conservative, like, spending. That's important. You know, like, when we thought of, like, what company and product do we want to build, we both said Linear, because we cared about good product experience as opposed to just maximizing revenue.Link

LubaMhm.Link

MichelleYou know, like, things like that. They just, like, all come up during the 200-question questionnaire.Link

LubaHow did you guys decide who's going to be the CEO?Link

MichelleOh, that's a tough question that most founders have to go through. I think in this case, I was, like, pretty upfront that I wanted to do it.Link

LubaAnd why?Link

MichelleI feel like I'm really excited about the customer side of things, and the marketing and the sales and the product, and I just really felt that I got the call. Yeah, the calling, too.Link

LubaDid you guys have any, like, big conversation around it, or was it pretty easy? You know, he didn't want to do it, you wanted to do it.Link

MichelleIt was pretty easy.Link

LubaOkay, great. Yeah. So you guys were pretty aligned. Yeah. I wonder how the conversations go when there is, you know, multiple people who want to be CEO. Obviously, you can go down the co-CEO route, but I think a lot of the time maybe it's not the right path for a lot of teams.Link

MichelleYeah. Like, a lot of times this decision about who has to be CEO is the reason that co-founders break up.Link

LubaBut then you see companies like Ramp just announced that they're going to have a co-CEO situation. And there is Brex, who are...Link

MichelleRobinhood as well.Link

LubaRobinhood. Yeah. Oh, I didn't know about Robinhood. Hightouch. Huh. So when do you think it works? And when do you think, in your experience seeing founders be in that situation, it just doesn't have any grounds to work out?Link

MichelleI mean, the key thing, no matter what your title is, is, like, knowing who's responsible, like who is doing which responsibilities. Like, you could have, like, the most clean titles but have fights all the time. Or you could have, like, the same co-CEO title and, like, be completely fine. It really depends on, like, how you split your responsibilities and how you communicate about that. Yeah, that's the key.Link

LubaTell me more about what is Flint today?Link

MichelleYeah. So Flint today is an agentic marketing platform built for lean marketing teams. We started first by making it really easy to make landing pages. And this is really helpful for things like ads and account-based marketing. But now we've introduced, like, a second layer of the product, which is our agents layer, that helps marketing teams figure out even what to be building in the first place.Link

Because the toughest thing about marketing is really figuring out, like, the strategy. Like, the positioning. Who's the ICP? Like, what is our plan for targeting? Like, which keywords and such? And so this new layer is going to help marketers more upstream of the work to be able to connect to their Google Ads account and then figure out, like, what are even the landing pages that they should be building in the first place.Link

LubaAnd you guys are eight people, primarily engineering.Link

MichelleYeah, eight people, primarily engineering. We have one designer, one marketer. Our designer was the head of growth design at Netflix.Link

LubaOh, that's really cool. How did you guys get such a heavyweight? Is that the designer you found on LinkedIn?Link

MichelleNo. No, no. This designer I found through a mutual friend. So she was responsible for Netflix.com if you're logged out on Netflix, and then if you have not upgraded, she was responsible for all of the things that make you want to upgrade.Link

LubaUpgrade? Yeah, that's really cool.Link

MichelleSo I found her through mutual friends, and then we met up for coffee. We didn't realize we were, like, hiring or recruiting, but it just ended up being, like, a conversation that never ended until there was a job offer signed.Link

LubaIncredible. Congratulations.Link

MichelleMy marketer was also really incredible. So she used to be, like, head of digital at Reddit. And then she was director of marketing at a Series C company, where she, like, built up, like, I consider, a lot of the revenue was, like, because of her. And she's really incredible. And I found her through my angel investor.Link

LubaAny tips on signing incredible talent, given such an insane amount of competition?Link

MichelleI think that it's about offering them a mission where they can build something really big and generational. And I think it's...Link

LubaYou know, every startup is trying to do that.Link

MichelleThat's true. Yeah. Something that they think is going to be a big generational company. And then second is to, like, really listen to their needs and what matters to them. Yeah. Like, both of these hires have, like, 12 to, like, 15 years of experience. And the normal, like, 996 doesn't work for great talent like that. So needing to, like, just listen out and, like, making sure that we create an environment where everyone can have a good life and also do good work.Link

LubaBut you're finding that hiring such senior talent at a very small-stage company can be a good idea, depending on what you're looking for and how people work. Because, you know, you could say that at a startup, it's better to hire someone younger and inexperienced, because they're going to hustle more and they're more willing to be malleable to what the startup needs, versus coming in with their own agenda for how things should be done.Link

MichelleYou just got to find the right people. Like, Leona and Erica are amazing and open, but also bring on really good experience. I think experience is underrated sometimes, like, especially in domains where I don't know it too well. Like, I'm not a designer, as much as I want to be, and I don't know how to hire designers. And hiring someone senior, they would know how to build a team. And, yeah, the other great thing about hiring someone senior is that you don't have to spend as much time doing management.Link

LubaMhm.Link

MichelleI think management is the most important thing in the company, but it also can take quite a bit of time, unless the person is more autonomous.Link

LubaYeah, 100%. I think, as you said, experience is underrated. And I see this so often, where we glorify young talent, which can be incredible, which, you talked about your intern and how Robinhood gives young talent a lot of responsibility. But in a small team, you have so little time, and actually having someone who hopefully is still malleable but can just come in and be like, I know how to do this work, I'm going to take care of it, saves you so much time and money as a result. And if you don't have expertise in that given area, then experience is huge.Link

MichelleYeah, I agree. It's like, one thing I learned, it's unrelated to in-house, but never try to save money on a lawyer.Link

LubaHow did you learn that lesson?Link

MichelleI learned it through friends who are getting sued for reasons that were completely preventable.Link

LubaWow.Link

MichelleYeah.Link

LubaOkay, so you guys raised $5 million from Accel, Neo, Ali Partovi, Sheryl Sandberg, Shonda Negras and a lot of other people. How did you pick your lead, and how's working with your cap table?Link

MichelleYeah. So my lead at Accel is Daniel Levine, and he was the first check into Sentry and Vercel and Scale AI.Link

LubaIncredible.Link

MichelleYeah.Link

LubaAnd good track record.Link

MichelleMade the fund a lot of money. I had known him through a friend of mine who suggested him as someone I should talk with to ideate, and I just really enjoyed, like, how much of a good person he is and how generous he is. And I also really liked the product focus that he has, and he cares a lot more about building a good product at scale than he does about short-term revenue. And that's what it takes for my business to be as large as Cursor, right? Like, Cursor could grow really fast because the product could sell itself.Link

So it's just been really incredible. Like, many times, sometimes I'm, like, tempted by large, large ACV deals, and he's like, Michelle, I love you, but this is not going to be good. And whenever I don't listen to him, he always ends up being right. So he's really, really awesome.Link

Neo, I mean, Ali is, like, amazing. He just, like, believes in, like, the team and myself. Just really helpful to just have someone who always believes in you. And he's also a really good source for talent. I hired my first engineer through the network.Link

And then, yeah, I mean, Sheryl Sandberg's fund. She's kind of the person who I believe is responsible for digital monetization with, like, Google Ads when she was at Google and then Facebook ads when she was at Facebook. So just having someone like that on the table, she's so responsive. Like, she'll call me sometimes.Link

LubaThat's incredible.Link

MichellePublic close candidates have just been really helpful.Link

LubaFor someone listening who is raising their first round, what would you tell them about picking the people to work with?Link

MichelleYeah. I would say that you would ideally have gotten to know them for a little bit longer. So, like, when you are at your current job right now, like, try to go to a few of these, like, VC dinners or, like, talk to a few of them. Because this is a very long-term relationship. And if you were to only, like, work with someone you just met within the course of three weeks during the fundraise process, then it could be, like, a shotgun wedding, but this person instead has, like, 10 to 20% of your company.Link

And then I would say, like, find someone who's, like, just a good person, because, like, things can get really rough in a company, and you want someone who's going to be there for you through thick and thin. Rather than someone who, like, you know, doesn't play with a toy once it's not fun, you know, it just, like, throws you away.Link

And then someone who's, like, very aligned with the business that you want to build. Like, at Warp, I attended the board of directors meeting every quarter to present, and I always found that those investors were always focused on the product, whereas, like, all my other friends' companies were, like, focused on revenue at all costs. And because of that, a lot of them shut down. That board at Warp, they were just all about the product. And that's the reason why they are doing so well right now in revenue, is that the product is so good that you don't need to do all these complex onboardings. So it can, like, yeah, sell itself with, like, a good sales motion.Link

LubaOkay. And to wrap up, what's your one hot take about building?Link

MichelleI don't believe in 996. I think that...Link

LubaThat's a hot take. What about nine-nine-seven?Link

MichelleHuh? That's funny. Like. Wow. Well, the founders would do 996. I think that, like, people on my team, you know, building a startup is, like, a marathon. And I would like them to be able to have healthy bodies and clear, like, thought, because it's a lot easier now to, like, stop and execute a lot. And today, and, you know, like, having the weekends to, like, just, like, rejuvenate, like, remember what we're doing this all for, like, helps to make sure we're always, like, moving in the right direction.Link

And, like, also, people have bodies that just need to be able to do this for a long time, and 996 could work if you're young, and maybe you could work for, like, 3 to 4 years, but then you would lose out on senior talent, and then you also lose out on employees who burn out. So we do work a lot as a startup, but, like, we're not requiring people to work, like, 12 hours a day for six days.Link

LubaSo is yours, like, nine-two-whatever, six, nine-to-seven, five days a week?Link

MichelleSo it's 9 to 7, Mondays to Fridays. And then over the weekend, on nights, we expect maybe half a day of productivity, but they don't have to come into the office.Link

LubaAwesome. Michelle, thank you so much for your time. This was awesome.Link

MichelleThank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.Link

LubaYeah.Link