Founder Snapshot
-
Founder: Ethan Gibbs, Co-Founder & CEO
-
Company: Embedder
-
Stage: Seed
-
Investors: Y Combinator
-
Previous: University of Michigan Researcher
“The application is actually a trick because I would never hire anybody who applies to my company through a job application,” says Ethan Gibbs, Co-Founder and CEO of Embedder. “Most people who actually know what’s going on will do a lot of other things besides apply to the job. Nobody who works here actually applied.”
It’s a bold stance, but for Ethan, it’s necessary. He isn’t building another SaaS dashboard; he’s building an AI coding agent capable of writing, testing, and debugging firmware for mission-critical systems like cars, surgical robots, and aerospace components. The stakes in embedded systems are life or death, requiring a different breed of talent - the kind that doesn’t wait in a queue.
From 300 Rejections to a Pivot
Embedder’s journey began at the University of Michigan, where Ethan and his co-founder (who was then working on vehicle firmware at Tesla) started a side project to automate the painful manual work of driver bring-up.
“There’s a lot of manual work… you have to read thousand-page documents and copy over manually specific values into the driver to make sure it works,” Ethan explains. “It might only be 50 to 100 lines of code, but if you get anything wrong, then the entire thing just doesn’t work.”
Their initial concept, a “data sheet to driver compiler,” got them into Y Combinator. They launched a demo video that went viral, booking 300 inbound calls. But those calls brought a harsh reality check.
“Basically everybody told us, ‘Great, great, great, finally this is what we want. But what you built is kind of not good because I need this and this and this,’” Ethan recalls. “We heard that from like every single customer.”
The feedback revealed a critical insight: the embedded landscape was too fragmented for a standard rigid tool. “When you make a software tool, it works for everything because everybody operates on the same standard. But when you work in embedded… what tool chain and the standards they have vary even by company.”
To solve this, they realized they couldn’t avoid using AI. They needed a system adaptable enough to handle the “non-deterministic nature” of generative AI while delivering the absolute determinism required by hardware. “Software optimizes for performance, embedded optimizes for determinism,” Ethan notes. “That half second between when you push the brake and when the brake activates in the car… is a real time constraint that could be life or death.”
Hiring the Hacker
Ethan’s unconventional hiring philosophy is best illustrated by how he found one of his founding engineers: an 18-year-old high schooler from Milan, Italy.
“I caught him in my logs on my website because he actually hacked it,” Ethan laughs. “He downloaded our entire database… I only found him because I took a computer security class and I knew about a vulnerability in my website.”
Instead of threatening legal action, Ethan saw raw talent.
That 18-year-old is now a core part of the team, pulling “insane hours” and building core services. For Ethan, this proves that pedigree matters less than pure capability and drive. “He has no firmware background, he has no college experience, he has nothing, but he’s an absolute machine.”
The “Exceptional Engineer”
Embedder is currently scaling aggressively following a large unannounced fundraise, but Ethan isn’t looking for specialists with perfect resumes. He’s looking for “exceptionally talented generalists.”
“I don’t really look for any specific skill set at all,” Ethan says. “It’s more about finding extremely talented generalists who are able to adapt and do anything very quickly.”
Adaptability is crucial in a startup environment where priorities shift overnight.
“A lot of people will start projects and it will become their baby… and the business priorities will change… and your project gets canned,” Ethan warns. “That has to be okay as well”
Building Tony Stark’s Tool
For engineers considering their next move, Ethan argues that Embedder offers a challenge far more compelling than “just another web optimization tool.” They are tackling a problem that has stubbornly resisted modernization, with the goal of vertically integrating hardware design and development.
“The payoff is that you might build a tool that allows your 12-year-old brother to fully conceive, architect, design, program, and maintain their own version of an autonomous vehicle all through a single platform.”
He likens the vision to the ultimate builder’s fantasy. “We’re basically building the thing that Tony Stark has in his basement - where he prototypes and puts the pieces in - and it just programs it and prints it out.”
With 1,700 engineers already using the tool and major enterprise pilots underway, Embedder is moving fast to make that sci-fi vision a reality. For those who want to solve “almost impossible” problems, Ethan has a simple message: don’t apply. Build something, break something, or maybe even hack something - just show him you can do the work.
Learn More
Embedder is an AI coding agent that can write, test, and debug firmware on both physical and simulated hardware.
-
Website: https://embedder.com
-
Connect with Ethan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/etgibbs/
