Kinda ruined the technical interview at an AI startup interview but the CEO call was amazing - need advice on what to fix in 15 days
I recently went through an interview process at an AI-focused startup. Here’s the full breakdown and I genuinely want honest feedback on what to fix. Background on me: 20yo, third year CS, self-taught through building products and getting clients before I even studied CS formally. I’ve shipped real full-stack AI products, contributed to an open-source LLM orchestration startup, and won a hackathon recently. I use AI heavily in my workflow but I genuinely build and iterate myself.
The process: To get shortlisted I had to build a project assignment and record a demo video. I felt my submission was strong. They shortlisted ~25 people. Then there were two calls: ∙ 1 hour technical call with the CTO ∙ 30 min conversation with the CEO/founder
What I expected vs what happened: I assumed the technical call would cover my assignment, product thinking, architecture, AI workflows. Because in the JD they mentioned providing Claude Code max. Instead the CTO opened with tell me about yourself and then gave me a DSA problem cold, it was an easy one though. I completely blanked. Before starting I told him honestly: “I don’t really do competitive programming, I mostly build products.” He said no problem, let’s focus on the logic. But I still struggled heavily and couldn’t progress independently. He then moved to a system design question. I struggled initially and needed him to re-explain the problem a couple of times before I could start reasoning through it.
Then he asked operational questions like “if something breaks in production and I text you, what do you do first?” — I got closer on those eventually but needed prompting.
He stayed engaged the whole call and didn’t cut it short. At the end I asked him “if you hired me, what would you expect for me to achieve in 3 months” and he said: “Ownership.”
The CEO call afterward felt relaxed and genuine — we talked about life and ambition more than technical stuff. He said they’d get back in about a week and a half. This call was really nice. 9/10.
My honest self-assessment:
My communication, energy, and builder mindset were probably my strongest points. My DSA and structured reasoning under pressure were clearly weak. I know how to ship things. I don’t know how to perform CS fundamentals cold in an interview setting.
Why I’m posting:
- To know if they will get back?
- I have another technical interview with a same kind of startup in 15 days. I know I need to fix something but I don’t want to spend 15 days grinding LeetCode and end up mediocre at everything. I’m a product builder by nature and I learn fast when I have a clear target. What’s the most efficient way to go from “completely blanks on DSA” to “can at least reason through basic problems out loud” in 15 days? And how do I get better at system design specifically around scale/concurrency which is where I fell apart?