How do you find cool startups you might want to work for these days?
Do you just kind of look at HN and TC and a thousand other places? Or do you look for some particular problem or space you are interested in and start googling?
Usually they find me, I advertise myself well through GitHub, blogging, and being active in the communities I specialize in.
I check the portfolio section on vc's websites, and I also follow/read TechCrunch.
AngelList is great for both. Better discovery than Product Hunt and there's also an application form. Applications via AngelList have extremely poor response rates, though.
One thing that can be particularly helpful is if you know someone at a VC firm, talk to them about startups. And of course, use your network and chat with ex-coworkers, etc.
Be a user of the startup. To do this: use startups. To do that: build things.
just browsing GitHub and bumping into interesting projects, that is it … at least sometimes works for me …