All of our First-time founders articles

Scaling and selling AI products for enterprise | May Habib (Co-founder and CEO of Writer)

May Habib is the co-founder and CEO of Writer, a full-stack generative AI platform built for enterprises. The model is trained on a customer’s own data to create content that is consistent with their brand style and voice. Writer recently raised $100M at a valuation of around $500M.

Must-reads

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).

Clay’s path to product-market-fit: Building vertical, creating power users, and understanding founder psychology | Kareem Amin (Co-founder and CEO)

Kareem Amin is the co-founder of Clay, a lead-generation software that uses AI to scrape 50+ databases and help companies scale their outbound campaigns.

Mastering modern entrepreneurship | Building lean, starting young, and studying customers | Steve Blank (Author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany)

Steve Blank, an Adjunct Professor at Stanford University, is widely regarded as the father of modern entrepreneurship. Prior to academia, Steve’s career spanned eight different startups.

Winning with open and closed source products | Neha Narkhede (Co-founder at Confluent and Oscilar)

Neha Narkhede is a co-founder at Confluent, a data streaming software that raised at a $9.1b valuation in 2021. Neha later co-founded Oscilar, a no-code platform that helps companies detect and manage fraud.

Product

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.

Must-reads

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.

How goal-setting and planning is different for AI products | Anastasis Germanidis (Co-Founder & CTO at Runway)

Anastasis Germanidis is the Co-Founder & CTO at Runway, an applied AI research company shaping the next era of art, entertainment, and human creativity. Runway has raised $237m and was one of Time Magazine’s “100 most influential companies” in 2023.

Building Zapier from first principles | Contrarian takes on growth, hiring, fundraising | Wade Foster (Co-founder & CEO)

Wade Foster is the Co-founder & CEO at Zapier, a platform for building workflow automations without a developer. Zapier was started during 2011 in Columbia, Missouri, and by 2021, it was valued at $5b, having only raised $1.3m.

Product

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.

Product

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.

People & Culture

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.