Johnson Lin ’21

Overview

Co-Founding Engineer, FSH Technologies
Philadelphia, PA

• BA, Mathematics, Vassar College
  

Johnson Lin (he/him) is the Co-Founding Engineer of FSH Technologies, a VC-backed startup serving municipal governments with modern, configurable software. From starting a side project during the winter break of his senior year, to fundraising a pre-seed and seed round, to pivoting the company product multiple times, Johnson has seen the peaks and troughs of an early-stage tech start-up over the past 5 years. As an engineer, Johnson’s day-to-day typically consists of pushing lines of code and getting software out the door. But working at a small startup also involves having your hands in many places, like getting on sales calls and copywriting for marketing. And on a broader scale, thinking on a company level, like how to validate product market fit, and on a personal level, like how to manage a sustainable startup workload, Johnson has been iterating on the full scope of how to keep a business running over the course of his startup journey.

Advice to Students: 

Always be open to trying a lot of new things, but also pick one thing you really love and follow it. My journey as a software engineer started in high school when my friends told me about hackathons, so I went for the free food and energy drinks, and then figured I might as well learn to code while I’m here. Those same friends got me into streetwear. I went to Vassar dreaming I would take my career into fashion, and spent my free time thrifting clothes and learning to sew. While that didn’t happen (at least, not yet), I learned to enjoy the process of experimenting and the payoff of building something with my own hands, a value that has carried my career in startups.