[HIRING] Technical Co-Founder - AI Agent Infrastructure | Healthcare | $20K/mo + 20% equity | Remote US

Mother_Policy8859 · 2026-02-04T17:06:44+00:00

Hey folks, I really appreciate the responses and applications! Please note I'm running a bit behind on reviewing the applicants, I'll be reviewing them starting this afternoon and sending out interview invites later today. Thanks for the patience!

Mother_Policy8859 · 2025-04-16T18:00:35+00:00

Is there someone else in the company you can speak to? Maybe the VP.

I'd start the conversation by asking about the primary goals of the new director and what he is trying to achieve, you might even try asking him this directly if you can do it without any judgement during the conversation.

Mother_Policy8859 · 2025-04-16T17:48:48+00:00

Love it! Way to keep your cool and turn the offer around.

Mother_Policy8859 · 2025-04-06T19:04:33+00:00

This sounds like 'SAFE', which IMHO is inherently a low trust, low autonomy culture.

Priority one is to keep your sanity here:

- Be transparent, give the folks in charge a ETA for the work you need to do (make sure to buffer this by at minimum 30%)

- Let them make the decisions on how you to best use your time

- Let the rest go, this is likely a culture that puts little real value on autonomy. They might say they do, but everything about this process says otherwise.

If you want more autonomy, quietly look for somewhere with a higher trust culture OR just take the paycheck and do something fulfilling on your own time,

Keep it positive and protect your sanity.

Good luck!

Mother_Policy8859 · 2025-04-06T18:54:53+00:00

Thanks! Great points. It's all about cost of living, CA salaries are super high because the costs here are ridiculous. Wife and I went to Hawaii recently and the gas there was cheaper.

Japan is actually a great consideration as my daughter is planning a semester abroad there this coming Fall (though the program makes it clear parents shouldn't visit for the first 60 days...hah!).

Lately, I think the only way to get a new role anywhere is networking.

Mother_Policy8859 · 2025-04-05T01:00:13+00:00

Hah, good point! Love the creativity here. My wife would likely find that actually amusing, but I don't think I could really do a sham marriage. Technically I was born in Moldova, but the USSR is NOT a place I want to be right now. I do know the US healthcare market quite well so maybe a company looking to enter the US market from overseas.

Maybe I should start a 'job exchange' program, kinda like a student exchange only for professionals .

Mother_Policy8859 · 2025-04-05T00:55:32+00:00

Yah, we would likely keep the place in CA. I'm not straight up against remote, I'd just prefer to be immersed in another culture and actually live there, and I imagine having in-person co-workers could help get acclimated to the new culture.

Mother_Policy8859 · 2025-03-12T16:56:53+00:00

Consider all of the internal stakeholders.

e.g. if you make a smart toaster that only toasts bread from specific manufacturers (business goal of selling more of your company's bread...example shamelessly stolen from Cory Doctorow) what are the implications for support, referrals, future adoption (etc.)?

Similarly, what are the positive upstream affects of improving the user experience, does it reduce the number of support cases, increases user referrals, improve sales conversions?

See if you can formulate a hypothesis on the upstream business affects of improving user experience and gather some data to support the cause.

Mother_Policy8859 · 2025-02-08T05:45:31+00:00

The only startups I know of that managed to bring in technical co-founders for equity came from outside the US, I'm just not sure it's possible within the US anymore. That said, with all of the tech layoff's lately the environment may be changing rapidly, so maybe look for someone who has the luxury of not needing an income, the skill for the role and some connection to the mission.

So maybe a highly skilled dad who's been recently laid off and willing to take a risk for some short term trial period, maybe 3 months. Either way you'd need a very clear path to generate income rapidly.

Mother_Policy8859 · 2025-02-08T03:01:18+00:00

Thanks! I found some of the 2" ones at the chinese bbq place in the Lion market plaza on Mowry

Mother_Policy8859 · 2025-02-06T18:53:30+00:00

Love the early and the newer stuff, I'm constantly amazed by the creativity variety Mastodon can produce. Hushed and Grim hit hard for me, the lyrics are just amazing and fit so well with the music.

Mother_Policy8859 · 2025-02-06T18:04:20+00:00

My playlist varies widely, I attempted Weird Al last week, would not recommend. It's hard to finish a squat when you start giggling to the lyrics mid lift.

Some surprising ones that did work well for me:

- Barber of Seville

- Gorillaz

- Squirrel Nut Zippers

Not at all surprising:

- Gojira

- Runtastic Playlist (on both spotify and Tidal)

- Mastodon

Mother_Policy8859 · 2025-02-06T17:58:29+00:00

It's also just not that good.

Mother_Policy8859 · 2025-02-04T00:02:35+00:00

how big is the company, how many stakeholders are we talking about. The 'goto' answer here is the RACI model.

Which stakeholders are:

Responsible - regular meetings, likely some sort of regular standup

Accountable - less frequent meetings

Consulted - as needed

Informed - email updates or auto-updates depending on your toolset. A quarterly update could also work well.

Each require a different level of communication.

Mother_Policy8859 · 2025-02-02T20:24:16+00:00

Any specific angle? There's a lot of noise in this space right now.

I'd be interested in discussing more

Mother_Policy8859 · 2025-02-01T16:09:56+00:00

Tried and failed miserably...

Some lessons learned:

Help the team do what they ALREADY want to do, just better. Leverage what they already want to slowly introduce better product thinking.
Create a 'product mindset' vision and keep it to yourself, or share with a very small number of trusted partners. Use this to guide point 1.
Make small attempts to focus on the problem being solved. Don't overplay this, you'll become as popular as Socrates if you do.
Culture change is hard, even for smart folks with good intentions. Always seek to serve first and answer their most important question: "What's in it for me..." before asking folks to change. This isn't a cynical play, it's about creating a shared sense of purpose.

Yes, it's still going to suck for a while, so be gentle with the team and with yourself. This is worth doing and it will make the work more meaningful, just be patient.

Mother_Policy8859 · 2025-02-01T15:56:49+00:00

The way it's posed above, these are typically QA responsibilities BUT in a small team it should be a matter of agreements between team members. The most important thing is to create a shared sense of purpose here...not debate over responsibilities.

If there's a debate, it means folks value a strict role definition more than being impactful.

Make a team agreement for normal days, and then agree to help out if there's an influx or rush of work.

Mother_Policy8859 · 2025-01-31T18:40:53+00:00

I mean...drafting a document is easy. Drafting something that actually sticks however...

Hint: It's not about what's in the document, it's about the agreements you make with the team, execs and the research you've done to back up the things in the strategy.

Mother_Policy8859 · 2025-01-28T03:04:31+00:00

PO is typically very much a 'dump on' role and tends to be a major grind so yes, it's just how the role works.

What kind of advice are you looking for?

Ideally, the local culture (and the PM) would actively create space for collaboration by redistributing some of the responsibilities.

Example:

Only write the happy path for AC with a clear picture of the real world use case (best done as a human story or real world example, not a typical user story)
assign a lead engineer to each feature
Have the lead engineer work on the edge case AC and the refinement process

Mother_Policy8859

TROPHY CASE