In my experience: C++ is a rarified language in much of the startup world. Mobile devs can't use it in an app (with a few notable exceptions), front-end web dev

In my experience: C++ is a rarified language in much of the startup world. Mobile devs can't use it in an app (with a few notable exceptions), front-end web devs can't use it in the browser, and backend devs are rarely working on problems of such scale, complexity or performance that C++ would be of benefit more than hindrance. (This changes as the company grows, but since you said "startup" I'm assuming you're talking about very early stage ventures) That being said, there certainly are startups that use it, but they're often working in the world of embedded devices, IOT, etc; contexts where development on a traditional server isn't practical or even possible. Much of finance and HPC also use languages like C and C++ (not to mention FORTRAN and others). So if I were in your shoes, I'd look up some startups where you'd like to work, and find out exactly what they're doing with C++. (You can often glean that kind of information from hiring posts, Angellist, etc.) Once you have that, build something as relevant to their business as possible. Sorry for the vague advice, but here are a few examples: If you want to work in embedded devices or IOT, grab yourself an Arduino, and use C or C++ to program it to do something cool. Any complex behavior will demonstrate at least a working-proficiency with the languages. If you want to work in finance, maybe building some black-box trading software would be a fun experiment. Get creative, I'm sure you'll think of something.