Management

Focus on Your First 10 Systems, Not Just Your First 10 Hires — This Chief of Staff Shares His Playbook

Management

Making Self-Care Tactical — Why You Should Focus on Boundaries, Not Just Bubble Baths

Therapist Jessmina Archbold (publicly known as Minaa B.) shares her detailed guide to deeper self-care work, pushing back against common myths, offering up tactical advice and making the case for focusing on boundaries.

Management

From Exec Roles to Board Seats — Lessons for the Startup C-Suite from Zendesk, Guru, eBay, & More

Anne Raimondi looks back on her biggest lessons from a career as a top tech executive and board member.

Management

How to Build an Invention Machine — 6 Lessons That Powered Amazon’s Success

Former Amazon execs on what startups can learn from the "invention machine" of leadership principles and business processes that will outlast Bezos.

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The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2020

Build Products With This Lightweight JTBD Framework

6 Counterintuitive Rules for Being a Better Manager — Advice from Lambda School, Quip & Facebook

The 40 Best Questions to Ask in an Interview — How to Go Deeper Than “What’s the Culture Like?”

Drive Growth by Picking the Right Lane — A Customer Acquisition Playbook for Consumer Startups

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People & Culture

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.

Product

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.

People & Culture

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.

Management

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.

Management

‘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.

Management

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.

Management

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.

Product

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

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

Engineering

How to Build a Culture of Ownership, and Other Engineering Leadership Tips from Plaid & Dropbox

Jean-Denis Grèze has led engineering teams at Plaid and Dropbox: Here’s what he’s learned about crafting a bottoms-up culture, hiring and motivating large teams.

Management

The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2020

Tackle whatever's to come in this new year with the best startup advice we heard in 2020.

Starting Up

Fresh Off IPO, Upstart’s CEO Shares Why the Startup Isn’t a Typical Success Story

Dave Girouard sketches out the story of how Upstart got built, detailing the bumpy starts, lucky breaks and lessons learned along the journey to IPO.

Management

A Tactical Guide to Managing Up: 30 Tips from the Smartest People We Know

Building a good relationship with your boss takes work. Here are the 30 best tips for managing up from accomplished startup leaders.

Management

How This 5X Founder Creates an Internal Culture With a “Crazy Focus” on Storytelling

From screenplay writing inspiration, to how storytelling training is part of their onboarding, CEO David Cancel shares how they drive narrative internally at Drift.

Product

Unpacking 5 of Atlassian’s Most Unconventional Company-Building Moves

After a long run as the President of Atlassian, Jay Simons details all the non-consensus moves in the company's story.

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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.

Management

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.

Starting Up

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.

Management

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.

Starting Up

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.

Management

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.

Starting Up

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.

Design

The Case for Adding DesignOps to Your Org Chart — Lessons From InVision

Drawing on her experience in design operations at InVision, Automattic and Hot Studio, Alison Rand explains what DesignOps can achieve for your startup, and how to get a successful team up and running.

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Starting Up

The First-Time Founder’s Guide to Learning Everything the Hard Way

Steve El-Hage picks his head up and shares his biggest lessons as a first-time founder from the 8-year, heads-down journey of building Drop.

Product

Build Products That Solve Real Problems With This Lightweight JTBD Framework

An inside look at the streamlined jobs-to-be-done framework (and templates) used by product leaders at Instagram & Facebook.

Product

Finding Startup Ideas and Building in Heavily-Regulated Spaces — Lessons from Cash App & Carbon Health

The best way to pick startup ideas and advice from Cash App & Carbon Health for heavily regulated industries.

Management

6 Counterintuitive Rules for Being a Better Manager — Advice from Lambda School, Quip & Facebook

Carly Guthrie has run HR for major restaurant groups and startups. Here, she shares lessons for startups looking to hold onto their talent.

People & Culture

The 40 Best Questions to Ask in an Interview — How to Go Deeper Than “What’s the Culture Like?”

Top startup leaders shared their favorite thought-provoking questions for candidates to ask during an interview to stand out from the crowd and gain in-depth knowledge about the company, the team, and the role.

PR & Marketing

Your Marketing Org is Slow. Here’s a Framework to Move Faster.

Former Gusto marketing leader Jaleh Rezaei shares a six-step framework for how marketers can "get out of the basement" and start thinking speed-first.

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Join now to unlock every article, access exclusive content and get our weekly(ish) newsletter in your inbox.

Starting Up

Drive Growth by Picking the Right Lane — A Customer Acquisition Playbook for Consumer Startups

In Dan Hockenmaier's and Lenny Rachitsky's experience, founders are often surprised to learn that there are very few routes to scalable new customer acquisition. Here, this duo unpacks the three ways to drive consumer startup growth, offering a detailed framework and set of case studies for accelerating in each lane.

People & Culture

6 Small Steps for Handling the Emotional Ups and Downs at Work

Tips you can use every day from seasoned startup veterans and psychology experts on how to manage your emotions at work.

People & Culture

Use This Startup's Playbook for Running Impactful Virtual Offsites

Many team retreats have the tendency to leave participants feeling exhausted, sick of slide deck presentations and itching to get back to the emails that have been piling up in their absence—and virtual offsites add marathon Zoom sessions and interruptions at home to the mix. Here, the Sitka team shares how they planned an intentional, engaging virtual offsite, delving into the framework, agenda and tactics they used to pull it off.

Design

The Ultimate Guide to the Founding Designer Role

We summarized the most tactical, honest pieces of advice from a group of design experts on what it really takes to be a startup's first design hire.

PR & Marketing

Don't Just Throw Together a Webinar — The Virtual Events Crash Course You Need

Community experts, go-to-market leaders and founders everywhere are facing a new challenge: quickly spinning up virtual events and online communities that feel unique and valuable.