We asked top startup leaders to share the questions they ask themselves to become better managers and assembled their answers into a can't-miss checklist. 

35 Impactful Questions Managers Should Ask Themselves Regularly

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A Tactical Guide to Working with Executive Assistants

Sam Corcos, co-founder & CEO of Levels, admits he's obsessive about optimizing his time. He shares the ins and outs of how he delegates 400 tasks a month with this ultra-specific guide to working with executive assistants. 

A Tactical Guide to Working with EAs: How to Make Delegation Your Superpower

How to Chart Your Engineering Career Path

From early employee to technical founder: Amber Feng shares essential lessons for engineers up and down the org chart, drawing from her 8-year career at Stripe and becoming a technical founder of Cocoon. 

How to Chart Your Engineering Career Path: IC, Manager or Technical Founder? 

"Take Control of Your Desk" — Career Tips for ICs, Managers & Founders

After an 11-year career as an HR exec at Splunk, Shreya Iyer unpacks her comprehensive guide to startup career growth, with tailored tips for candidates approaching career planning, managers looking to retain top talent, and startups carving out their career development plans. 

"Take Control of Your Desk," And Other Career Tips for ICs, Managers & Founders

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Ditch Your To-Do List — Use These Docs To Make More Impact

After tackling startup challenges from Stripe Press to Figma Education, Brie Wolfson shares her personal collection of templates — the docs that she's used to stay focused on the work that matters and true to her own career goals.

Ditch Your To-Do List and Use These Docs To Make More Impact

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 How to Make Better Decisions When Starting & Scaling Companies

The First Round team has been lucky to work with retired poker player and decision-making expert Annie Duke in a special capacity these past few years. Here, we open-source some of the advice she gives to help founders face down uncertainty and make better decisions.

The Tactical Guide to Making Better Decisions When Starting and Scaling Companies

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23 Company Building Lessons From Stripe & Notion

From Stripe to Notion, Cristina Cordova has worked on some of the biggest products in tech. Now a Partner at First Round, she shares tactical tidbits on what she’s learned about about scaling companies and shaping your career.

23 Tactical Company Building Lessons, Learned From Scaling Stripe & Notion

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Use This Framework to Build (and Evaluate) Early Company Culture

There are tons of reads on why company culture matters, but few on how to actually architect it. And it’s rarely examined at the co-founding duo, 5-person team, or 30-person startup level. Laura Del Beccaro aims to change that by sharing this 3-step framework she’s leaned on while building Sora.

Run This Diagnostic to Thoughtfully Build (and Evaluate) Your Startup’s Culture

How to Build Your Startup's "Product Strategy Stack"

Ravi Mehta, former CPO at Tinder & Product Exec at TripAdvisor, shares his framework for crafting a crisp product strategy for startups — a 5-step system called the "Product Strategy Stack." He also makes the case for setting "non-goals" and using an alternative to OKRs.

Set “Non-Goals” and Build a Product Strategy Stack — Lessons For Product Leaders

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Unexpected Advice for Tackling the Cornerstones of Company Building

Dharmesh Shah has spent the last 15 years as co-founder & CTO of HubSpot. He pinpoints the inflection points and key decisions that other founders face in the early days, from choosing a co-founder to crafting the culture, and shares unconventional advice. 

The Company-Building Cornerstones Every Founder Needs to Focus On — Advice From HubSpot’s Dharmesh Shah

How to Get Management Training Right

Plenty of startups leave manager training on the backburner until they become a bigger company — or try to fit it into a 30-minute lunch-and-learn. Melissa and Johnathan Nightingale, founders of Raw Signal Group, unpack why this is a mistake and outline their top tips for management training that makes a mark.

Your Startup’s Management Training Probably Sucks — Here’s How to Make it Better

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Great Startups Deserve Great Brands — Here's How to Build One

After working with hundreds of startups on brand strategy, Arielle Jackson shares the most common early marketing missteps that founders make. From how to articulate your product benefit and clarify your company's purpose, to tips for infusing your brand with personality and making your launch announcement count, her advice will help you lay the foundation for a great startup brand.

Great Startups Deserve Great Brands — Build a Strong Foundation by Avoiding These Mistakes

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The Tactical Guide to Becoming a Better Listener

When it comes to annual resolutions and personal development goals, listening usually isn’t very high up on the list. User research leader and author Ximena Vengoechea makes the case for why you should put more intention and effort into sharpening this skill, offering advice tailored to different levels and roles across the startup org chart.

The Art of Becoming a Better Listener — Tactical Advice for the Startup Setting

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How Managers Can Stop Fixing and Start Coaching

Anita Hossain Choudhry (The Grand, First Round) and Mindy Zhang (Dropbox, Oscar Health) draw on their experiences as executive coaches to unpack why managers fall into the “fixing” trap and make the case for adding coaching as a skill. They share four practical tools, sample scenarios and thoughtful questions to help managers put these concepts into practice.

The Best Managers Don’t Fix, They Coach — Four Tools to Add to Your Toolkit

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Start the new year off on the right footing with the 30 most impactful insights and ultra-tactical frameworks from every article we published in 2021. 