Binti’s Path to Product-Market Fit — Lessons in Immersive User Research

“Sweat the Details” and Other Commandments for Mapping Out a Career in Product

Veteran product leader Jiaona Zhang walks us through the biggest lessons from her entire career in product at Dropbox, Airbnb, WeWork and now Webflow, from breaking into the function as a first-time PM to tactical tips for navigating transitions into more senior roles.

The Startup’s Guide to Customer Advocacy: How to Get Closer to Your Champions

Kalina Bryant (formerly of Asana, Talkdesk and Marketo) shares tactical advice for turning customers into advocates, with tailored pointers for startups on a budget.

X1's Path to Product-Market Fit — How the Consumer Credit Card Company Pulled off a Pandemic Pivot

X1 founder and CEO Deepak Rao unpacks the key milestones on the journey to product-market fit.

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The Minimum Viable Testing Process for Evaluating Startup Ideas

25 Habits of High-Impact Managers

The Secret to a Great Planning Process — Lessons from Airbnb and Eventbrite

The Power of Performance Reviews: Use This System to Become a Better Manager

‘Give Away Your Legos’ and Other Commandments for Scaling Startups

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40 Favorite Interview Questions from Some of the Sharpest Folks We Know

Given the high-stakes nature of every hire, interviewing chops are always in need of sharpening. We’ve spent the past few months reaching out to some of the most thoughtful company builders in our network to pose a simple question: What’s your favorite interview question to ask and why? Here are their answers.

How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product Market Fit

Superhuman founder and CEO Rahul Vohra walks us through the framework his startup used to make product/market fit more actionable, detailing the survey and four-step process that were key to measuring and optimizing it.

How to Become Insanely Well-Connected

Chris Fralic is a world-class super-connector. Here's how the long-time First Round Partner has methodically built bonds spanning years and careers.

Radical Candor — The Surprising Secret to Being a Good Boss

Kim Scott cut her teeth as a manager at Apple and Google, and now helps create great leaders as an author and coach for companies like Twitter. Here's the secret that's made all the difference for her.

‘Give Away Your Legos’ and Other Commandments for Scaling Startups

Molly Graham helped forge a work culture at Facebook that's withstood huge amounts of growth. Today, she's something of a rapid scaling expert. Here's the key to doing it right, she says.

This 90-Day Plan Turns Engineers into Remarkable Managers

Twitter's former Director of Engineering shares the plan he uses to transform engineers into successful and happy managers.

Speed as a Habit

All things being equal, speed will determine whether your company succeeds or not. Here's how to make it core to your culture.

From 0 to $1B - Slack's Founder Shares Their Epic Launch Strategy

“HELL YEAH WE'RE USING @SlackHQ AT WORK I. LOVE. SLACK.”

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The Startup Founder’s Guide to Hiring a Data Scientist

Are you ready to hire a data scientist? Mengying Li, Growth Data Science Lead at Notion, shares her framework for testing whether you should invest in this key hire and how to find the right data science skillset for your startup.

Retool’s Path to Product-Market Fit — Lessons for Getting to 100 Happy Customers, Faster

Retool founder and CEO David Hsu unpacks the key milestones on the journey to product-market fit.

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Small Habits Co-Founders Can Hang On to as They Build the Plane While Flying It

Small habits co-founders can practice at any stage to strengthen their relationship and align on decision-making.

Photo of Maven founder and CEO Kate Ryder and First Round Partner Todd Jackson

Maven's Path to Product-Market Fit — Lessons for Leveraging Community in the Early Days

Maven founder and CEO Kate Ryder unpacks the key milestones on the journey to product-market fit.

Illustration of Sam Corcos, Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, Annie Duke, David Nunez, Ximena Vengoechea

The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2022

We rounded up 30 essential insights for startups in the coming year, no matter the climate.

Pull, Don’t Push: How Catalysts Overcome Barriers and Drive Product Adoption

Marketing expert Jonah Berger shares his framework for becoming a catalyst – lessons for lowering barriers to change when building and selling products.

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If you're thinking about starting a company:

Advice for pressure-testing ideas, finding a co-founder, and all you need to know before taking the founder's leap.

This Founder Built Startups in 2008, 2016 and 2018. Here’s What He’s Learned About Resiliency

Bob Moore's first brush with life as a founder started in 2008—three days before Lehman Brothers collapsed. Since he cut his teeth as a first-time founder in turbulent times, he's gone on to build two other companies. Here, Moore shares the lessons he's learned along the way, from weathering bear markets and losing out to the competition, to finding (and falling out of) product/market fit.

The Founder Dating Playbook – Here’s the Process I Used to Find My Co-Founder

Gloria Lin opens up about her pre-founder journey, from founder dating and early conversations to how she prototyped with potential partners to narrow in on a specific idea. Her playbook is one of the most detailed and intentional processes we’ve ever seen — and the set of 50 questions she used to probe compatibility is an essential tool for any entrepreneur looking to team up on a startup idea.

Navigating the Leap from Big Tech to Startups — Advice from a Former Google and Flipkart Exec

Punit Soni cut his teeth as a product leader at large companies such Google, Motorola and Flipkart before venturing out on his own to found Suki, a healthcare startup. Here, he shares his observations on the differences between the two experiences, noting what surprised him, what he felt unprepared for, and what aspiring entrepreneurs should consider as they look to make a similar leap from big to small.

Future Founders, Here’s How to Spot and Build in Nonobvious Markets

Nonobvious markets can lead to hypergrowth, but they’re hard to spot in the moment. Leaning on his experience as a seasoned investor and operator, Elad Gil shares four principles to help uncover the three types of opportunities that others are overlooking.

Here's the Advice I Give All of Our First Time Founders

According to First Round Partner Rob Hayes, there are only three things new founders need to focus on to succeed.

90% of Feedback is Crap: How to Find the Next Big Startup Idea

Flatiron Health Co-founder Nat Turner on the process he uses to distill, pitch and iterate on new ideas.

How to be an Exceptional Chief of Staff: Advice for Scaling Impact at Startups

10 tactical tips and guiding principles for a new Chief of Staff to lean on as they scale their impact at a startup — from building better systems, not just booking more meetings and finding an executive's superpower.

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From BigCo to Startup: 20 Tips for Evaluating Early-Stage Companies & Making the Leap

Considering moving from BigCo to startup? We crowdsourced a tactical guide for first-time startup job-seekers on how to evaluate career opportunities at early-stage companies.

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Airtable's Path to Product-Market Fit — Lessons for Building Horizontal Products

Airtable co-founder Andrew Ofstad unpacks the key milestones on their journey to product-market fit..

Investing in Internal Documentation: A Brick-by-Brick Guide for Startups

David Nunez, an early hire at Stripe and Uber, shares his step-by-step playbook for establishing good internal documentation habits in the early days of a startup

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Annual Planning in Uncertain Times: 6 Tactics for Rethinking Your Company’s End-of-Year Exercise

We’ve combed the extensive Review archives for a timely roundup of the most unique advice for end-of-year strategic planning.

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Grit or Quit? Tactical Advice for Founders Facing Tough Company Building Decisions

Why founders need to get good at quitting

How Product Strategy Fails in the Real World — What to Avoid When Building Highly-Technical Products

Why does strategy tend to stall when the rubber hits the road? Nate Stewart, Chief Product Officer of Cockroach Labs, shares an essential guide for creating a resilient strategy that’s still standing next year.

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Don't Let Growth Hurt Your Margins: A 4-Step Pricing Framework to Build Products With Scalable Unit Economics

Pricing pro Dee Sahni shares a highly customizable framework for tweaking your monetization and pricing model so that it scales with you, not against you as the company grows. She then applies the 4-step framework to household-name companies like Amazon, Netflix and Uber.

The 5 Phases of Figma’s Community-Led Growth: From Stealth to Enterprise

Claire Butler, Figma’s first business hire, walks us through the different phases and key milestones of the company’s community-led growth model.

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Why Now’s the Perfect Time to Retool Your Hiring Process and Get Creative

Unconventional tips for revamping your hiring, from swapping resumes for a screener survey, to sharing interview questions in advance.

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The Critical Startup Skills You Might Be Overlooking — And How to Bring Them Into Focus

Leaders share advice on the critical startup skills that are easy to overlook, along with tactical ideas for focusing on them.

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Stop Overcomplicating It: The Simple Guidebook to Upping Your Management Game

Cut through all of the competing opinions, frameworks and advice on how to be a better manager with this simple leadership toolkit.