Merge’s Path to Product-Market Fit: The Importance of Founder-led Sales (Even for a Self-Serve Product)

Elevate Your Performance Review Conversations with these 12 Expert Tips

Stop dreading performance reviews. We assembled a list of 12 tips from expert leaders like Lenny Rachitsky, Molly Graham, Russ Laraway, Brie Wolfson, Julie Zhuo and more to make these conversations more impactful. There are frameworks and tactics for managers and reports alike to rethink their approach.

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Unlock the Power of Money Words: How Founders Can Write Copy That Converts

Tiny tweaks you can make to boost conversions today

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Vanta's Path to Product-Market Fit — Solve the Customer’s Problem, Then Write Code

Vanta founder and CEO Christina Cacioppo sits down with First Round Partner Todd Jackson for an inside look at how she created a new category of security compliance for startups.

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How to Scale Yourself Down — Not Up — as a Leader

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Finding Language/Market Fit: How to Make Customers Feel Like You’ve Read Their Minds

The 25 Micro-Habits of High-Impact Managers

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

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

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The 25 Micro-Habits of High-Impact Managers

We asked a bunch of sharp folks for the small habits that make great managers stand out.

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.”

How Design Thinking Transformed Airbnb from a Failing Startup to a Billion Dollar Business

Airbnb Co-founder Joe Gebbia talks about the true meaning of being scrappy and being willing to do things that don't scale.

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How Talent Teams Can Better Weather Boom-and-Bust Cycles — Advice from Two Decades at Gem, Facebook, and Robinhood

Richard Cho has led talent acquisition teams at large tech firms for the better part of two decades. He’s collected the lessons he’s learned from operating in both hiring booms and busts, offering a thoughtful guide on how startup talent teams can do more — with less.

The Art of Self-Awareness: A Founder’s Guide to Assessing Strengths and Weaknesses

Psychologist Dr. Emily Anhalt unpacks the five traits of high-impact founders — and how the very traits that make a founder successful can also hold them back.

How to Scale Yourself Down — Not Up — as a Leader

Tactical advice for eng leaders going from BigCo to small startup

Material Security’s Path to Product-Market Fit — Find Your Winning Idea by Selling Products That Don’t Exist Yet

Material Security co-founders Ryan Noon and Abhishek Agrawal explain how they whittled 25 startup ideas down to 4 and then used a pre-selling technique to find their winning idea.

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21 Ways To Shore Up Your Customer Success Org

Founders are relying on customer success orgs more than ever. Here’s how to make sure you have a successful one up-and-running

Productboard’s Path to Product-Market Fit — Building a Unicorn Company with Lean Startup Principles

Productboard's founder and CEO Hubert Palan on how he built a product to solve his own pain points as a PM.

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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.

WorkOS’ Path to Product-Market Fit — Why Your ‘Bad’ Idea Might Actually Be the Best One

WorkOS founder/CEO Michael Grinich sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to tell the story of how he identified a huge untapped market and built a “minimum awesome product.”

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Zūm’s Path to Product-Market Fit — How The Student Transportation Company Found Product-Market Fit Twice

Zūm co-founder Ritu Narayan sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to tell the story of how her transportation company found product-market fit in both B2C and B2B.

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The Most Common Go-to-Market Questions This Expert Gets from Early Founders

Struggling to figure out your startup's early go-to-market? First Round's VP of GTM Emery Rosansky shares her expert advice and tactical templates.

Labelbox's Path to PMF: Founders Need to be Contrarian and Right — Here's How

Labelbox co-founder and CEO Manu Sharma shares the journey of building Labelbox.

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‘Give Away Your People’ — How Managers Can (and Should) Prep for High Performers to Leave

Seasoned startup operator Clarissa Shen offers a framework on how to proactively manage for when high performers leave.

Alma’s Path to Product-Market Fit — How to Pivot and Succeed as a Solo Non-Technical Founder

Alma founder and CEO Harry Ritter tells the story of how a huge pandemic pivot turned his initial startup idea on its head.

Kubecost’s Path to Product-Market Fit — How the Co-Founders Validated Their Idea with 100 Customer Conversations

In this post in our “Paths to Product-Market Fit” series, Webb Brown sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to tell the story of how he and his co-founder validated the idea for Kubecost.

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The Silent Killer of Your Operating Practice: Fear

Amanda Schwartz Ramirez, former PayPal strategy leader and now COO advisor for startups, shares the 5 biggest fears that can derail your company's strategic planning sessions (and tactical advice for how to sidestep them).

The Rounds’ Path to Product-Market Fit: Accelerating the Eco-Friendly Delivery Startup through Gut Intuition

The Rounds co-founder Alex Torrey walks through the key milestones on his startup’s journey to product-market fit.

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How to Sell Your Startup: The Complete Guide to Running an M&A Process as a Founder

Three-time startup founder Daniel Debow reveals his no-nonsense playbook for how to run an M&A process from top to bottom.

Webflow’s Path to Product-Market Fit — Lessons on Creating a Market with Rigorous Customer Empathy

Webflow’s Bryant Chou tells the story of how he and his co-founders leaned into the power of customer empathy to create the leading visual development platform for building powerful websites without writing code.

The Secret to an In Sync Startup? Ditch Your Meetings and Try an Asynchronous Culture

Sidharth Kakkar (co-founder & CEO of Subscript) share his playbook for ditching your meetings and moving to an asynchronous culture.