Permission to Think For Yourself: Inside the Thiel Fellowship’s Early Years

A former educator and school founder helped design the process for selecting and supporting teenagers who’d go on to build Ethereum, Figma and Anthropic. She set out to give them permission to pursue their ideas. 15 years later, it’s one of the most sought-after credentials in Silicon Valley.

References are the most underrated tool in hiring

There's a better, more informative way to run references.

AI

Parsing “Can” from “Should”: How Netflix's Product Team Got Thousands of Creatives to Trust an AI Overhaul

Inside Netflix's internal AI rollout, a process that included lots of good old-fashioned thinking, writing and talking.

People & Company

Firing Underperforming Employees (at Startups)

How to make something extremely difficult, hopefully less difficult for everyone involved.

Firsthand: How I Built a Brand with Heart at Lovable

At previous jobs I had to slow myself down to ask what the committee thought. Not at Lovable. I joined as the first designer and fourth employee — and Lovable's culture of intense ownership trusted me to build a brand by following my own instincts, as a design team of one.

Firsthand: Six Years at Vanta, My Reinvention is the Only Constant

I joined as the first product marketer back when the website was just a llama and a "request a demo" button. Six years later, Vanta is a $4.15B company, and I'm CMO. Here's how I've reinvented myself alongside the company.

First-time founders

Board Meetings 101 (for Early Stage Founders)

First-time founders tend to make one of two mistakes: they overprepare for the performance or underprepare for the conversation.

Firsthand: Seven Years Inside Applied Intuition, the Quietly Dominant Physical AI Company

I joined Applied Intuition as a new-grad engineer back in early 2019, when it was just a handful of us working above a bar on Murphy Ave in Sunnyvale. Today I'm Deputy CTO of the company (that now has over 1,000 engineers). Here's why I've stayed all these years.

PR & Marketing

“AI-Powered” Isn’t a Position

A playbook for building a distinctive brand when too many AI products sound the same, look the same and have the same positioning.

Firsthand: How I Bet On Clay (And It Bet On Me)

I joined Clay as one of its earliest employees and a reluctant marketing hire. This is how, over the last three years, we built a role around my strengths as a storyteller, scaled past $100M ARR, and created a brand that startups study.

Reluctantly Influential: Inside Lenny Rachitsky’s Demandingly Chill Life

With millions of subscribers across platforms, Lenny Rachitsky is one of the most prolific people in tech media. But what drives him — and what keeps him up at night — is a story most people don’t know.

Product

Guideline's Path to Product-Market Fit — The Early Decisions That Powered Its Acquisition by Gusto

Ten years after shaking up the retirement fund industry for SMBs, Guideline has been acquired by Gusto. Here, co-founder Kevin Busque shares the early-stage decisions and pivots that put the startup on the path to success.