All of our First-time founders articles

Navigating the Legal Maze: A Founder’s Guide to Hiring Lawyers at Every Stage of Your Startup

Veteran legal executive Irene Liu provides a comprehensive guide on the startup legal roadmap and how to engage lawyers as you scale. She offers insider advice on hiring outside and in-house counsel and building strong founder-lawyer partnerships.

Navigating New Waters: 10 Tips for First-Time Founder Success

Tactical advice from seasoned founders like Thumbtack’s Marco Zappacosta and Dropbox’s Drew Houston about the biggest mistakes to avoid as a first-time startup founder.

The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2023

It’s the first week of the new year, and here on The Review we’re ushering it in with a beloved annual ritual (that we find to be much more delightful than other yearly exercises like annual planning or performance reviews).

Shippo’s Path to Product-Market Fit — The Upside of Being Industry Outsiders

Shippo co-founder and CEO Laura Behrens Wu sits down with First Round Partner Todd Jackson for a behind-the-scenes look at how she leveraged industry outsider and first-time founder status to build a billion-dollar shipping company.

The 100 Best Bits of Advice from 10 Years of First Round Review

We combed The Review archives for a special compilation of the 100 very best advice published on our digital pages over the last 10 years from folks like Stewart Butterfield, Claire Hughes Johnson and Alexis Ohanian.

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 all the unconventional moves in the company’s first few years — from creating a new category to signing the first 600 customers without a proper website.

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

Productboard's founder and CEO Hubert Palan sits down with First Round Partner Todd Jackson for a sweeping look at how he used Steve Blank's principles to build a product that tackled his own pain points as a product manager.

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

Psychologist and co-founder of Coa, 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.

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 for narrowing down your ICP, running a successful sales call, and accurate forecasting.