All of our First-time founders articles

Management

The Founder’s Guide to Discipline: Lessons from Front’s Mathilde Collin

Front's CEO and co-founder Mathilde Collin shares why a founder’s discipline matters more than vision, unveiling her own best practices and templates for communication, time management, fundraising and team building.

People & Culture

Opening Up About Comp Isn’t Easy — Here’s How to Get More Transparent

There's more to comp transparency than just sharing everyone's salaries in a spreadsheet. Compaas co-founder and CEO bethanye Blount makes the case for opening up and gives a rundown on the full spectrum of pay transparency options, sharing tips for how startups can find the right setting and commun

Starting Up

Future Founders, Here’s How to Spot and Build in Nonobvious Markets

Nonobvious markets can lead to hypergrowth, but they’re hard to spot in the moment. Leaning on his experience as a seasoned investor and operator, Elad Gil shares four principles to help uncover the three types of opportunities that others are overlooking.

Product

Pinterest and Grubhub’s Former Growth Lead on Building Content Loops

While at Pinterest and Grubhub, Casey Winters relied on content loops, an overlooked path to growth. Now a scaling advisor to companies such as Eventbrite and Reddit, he shares a 5-step process and three more advanced strategies for using this approach to achieve steep and sustainable growth.

Management

Assembling an Executive Leadership Team is Daunting — Let Thumbtack’s CEO Help

Recruiting and hiring executives is difficult for any leader, but especially first-time or early-stage founders who may not have enough knowledge to test candidates for skill in their area of expertise. Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta has been there — and has a roadmap that'll help.

People & Culture

How Warby Parker Makes Every Point In Its Employee Lifecycle Extraordinary

Warby Parker is known for being a wonderful place to work. Here, Co-founder Dave Gilboa breaks down exactly how they've constructed this culture.

People & Culture

Develop Your Hiring System Like a Product to Eliminate Bias and Boost Retention

At Medium, Dan Pupius and his team built a tremendously successful rubric for hiring using the principles of product development. Here's how they did it.

Product

17 Product Managers Who Will Own the Future of NYC Tech — and the 9 Frameworks They’ll Use to Do It

Last year, First Round hosted a seminar of 17 rising star product managers in NYC, taught by some of the best product leaders in the tech industry. Here's who they are and what they learned.

Fundraising

Step-by-Step Fundraising Tactics from the NYC Legend Who Raised $750M

Kevin Ryan has spent decades on both sides of the fundraising table. Here, he provides secrets seldom shared for getting and keeping VCs interested before closing the deal.

Engineering

How Instagram Co-founder Mike Krieger Took Its Engineering Org from 0 to 300 People

Instagram Co-founder and CTO Mike Krieger built one of the industry's leading technical teams from scratch. Here's how he navigated rapid scale.

Product

The Habit Behind This Founder’s Fast Financings, Product Development and Book Deal

MissionU CEO Adam Braun has a habit that's helped him get term sheets in weeks, launch products and pen a bestseller. Here's an inside look at the practice that guides him.

Management

The Don’ts That Turned Alexis Ohanian into the Leader He Is Today

Alexis Ohanian is back at Reddit and excited to pick up where he left off. As he starts this new chapter, he's looking back at the things he DIDN'T do that made all the difference.