All of our First-time founders articles

Engineering

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

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.

Starting Up

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

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

People & Culture

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

Starting Up

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

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.

Management

The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2021

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.

Management

The Feedback Founders Need to Hear — How to Grow Yourself To Grow The Company

After 20 years of executive coaching, Alisa Cohn shares advice for getting better at self-reflection, collecting feedback, and changing behavior.

PR & Marketing

The Playbook This Startup Used to Get Their Founders on 100+ Podcasts in 6 Months

When it comes to turbocharging brand awareness for your startup, think podcast Interviews over ads. Tom Griffin, Head of Partnerships at Levels makes the case for why you should do a podcast tour for your startup, with a step-by-step guide for getting it right.

PR & Marketing

The Playbook for Hiring the Right Marketer at the Right Time for Your Startup

Should you hire a brand, product or growth marketer, and how do you know when you've found the right candidate? Maya Spivak, former marketing leader at Segment and Wealthfront, unpacks her frameworks for identifying the type of marketer your startup needs, interviewing and closing candidates.

Management

The Ultimate Guide to Running Executive Meetings — 25 Tips from Top Startup Leaders

Learn 25 tips from top leaders to run effective leadership meetings. From getting started with an executive team to crafting the agenda and tracking success.

Starting Up

Advice for the Pre-Product-Market Fit Days — This Founder’s Playbook for Pivoting with Purpose

CEO Tara Viswanathan shares her biggest lessons from the early years of building Rupa Health — including how to pivot your way into the right product and build the winning team.

Product

8 Product Hurdles Every Founder Must Clear — This PM-Turned-Founder Shares His Playbooks

Repeat PM turned first-time founder Ryan Glasgow addresses the tough product questions every founder faces, from segmenting the market and iterating on early MVPs, to finding product/market fit and spinning up a second product.

Starting Up

The Startup Happiness Formula — This 3X Founder Shares His Approach to Figuring Out What to Build Next

Repeat founder Waseem Daher, co-founder and CEO of Pilot, has founded three startups with the same group of co-founders. He pays particular attention to Pilot’s first year — including validating the idea, choosing an ICP, and outlining the product roadmap for a company that can go the distance.