A 21-year-old Founding Engineer who built an AI SaaS but is struggling to land the next opportunity

Hi everyone, I’m a 21-year-old computer science student currently working as a Founding Engineer on an AI product called Codepup. I wanted to share a bit about my journey and also ask for advice from developers who have gone through a similar phase early in their careers. Over the last year I have been deeply involved in building developer tools and full-stack systems. One of the main things I worked on was Codepup AI, a platform that helps users generate and deploy fully functional websites automatically. My work focused on the backend infrastructure and engineering side of the product. I built systems such as: • An AST-based modification engine to update code efficiently while reducing LLM token usage by around 80% • A containerized sandbox environment that allows users to preview their generated websites in real time • Backend services using TypeScript, Express, PostgreSQL, and Drizzle ORM Before this, I also worked with a tech agency where I helped build and deploy websites for dif