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Building a Deep Tech Company? Most Startup Advice Doesn’t Apply — Read This Instead
Starting Up

Building a Deep Tech Company? Most Startup Advice Doesn’t Apply — Read This Instead

Learn from Loyal founder Celine Halioua’s rigorous approach to milestone-based planning, fundraising and multi-product strategy for deep tech companies.
How I Spent 17,784 Hours in 5 Years as a Startup Founder
Starting Up

How I Spent 17,784 Hours in 5 Years as a Startup Founder

Sam Corcos, co-founder & CEO of Levels, shares a detailed look into exactly how he spent 5 years building the company, with reflections on what changed in the transition from very early-stage to scale up.
0-$5M: When, Who, and How to Make Your First Sales Hire
Sales

0-$5M: When, Who, and How to Make Your First Sales Hire

Expert advice from Dropbox, Figma and Stripe on timing your first sales hire, finding the right candidate profile and creating effective onboarding to successfully transition from founder-led sales to a scalable revenue team.
Lessons in Product Scaling and Storytelling from Figma’s CPO
Product

Lessons in Product Scaling and Storytelling from Figma’s CPO

Figma CPO Yuhki Yamashita offers up his playbook for the gnarly phase of product building that arrives after a startup clinches product-market fit — and sets its sights on the next phase of growth.
The Rotation Program That Keeps This Startup’s Engineers Learning — and Not Leaving
Engineering

The Rotation Program That Keeps This Startup’s Engineers Learning — and Not Leaving

Checkr VP of Engineering Krista Moroder opens up about the rotation program that’s helped keep her org’s non-regrettable attrition at near-zero.
0-$5M: How to Nail Founder-Led Sales
Sales

0-$5M: How to Nail Founder-Led Sales

First Round partner Meka Asonye sits down with founders and first sales hires to unpack 6 specific tactics for learning to embrace founder-led sales instead of avoiding it.
Introducing 0-$5M
Sales

Introducing 0-$5M

First Round Partner Meka Asonye introduces 0-$5M, a new go-to-market series on First Round Review.
EvolutionIQ Just Got Acquired for $730M — Here's Their Playbook For Building an Enduring AI Business
Product

EvolutionIQ Just Got Acquired for $730M — Here's Their Playbook For Building an Enduring AI Business

We sat down with the founding team for the inside story of one of the first major vertical AI exits.
This 90-Day Plan Turns Engineering Leaders Back into Frontline Developers
Engineering

This 90-Day Plan Turns Engineering Leaders Back into Frontline Developers

David Loftesness has deftly cycled between management and IC roles throughout his career. Here, he lays out a plan to help engineering leaders make a smooth transition back into the technical weeds.
The GTM Inflection Points That Powered Clay to a $1B+ Valuation
Starting Up

The GTM Inflection Points That Powered Clay to a $1B+ Valuation

How do you create a go-to-market machine that’s able to turbocharge (and then sustain) revenue growth? Clay co-founder Varun Anand shares the biggest lessons from the company's success, with growth advice for both product-led and sales-led startups.
How to Make Your Product Idea Go Viral Inside Your Company: Lessons from Figma Slides
Product

How to Make Your Product Idea Go Viral Inside Your Company: Lessons from Figma Slides

How Figma Slides founding PM Mihika Kapoor transformed a hackathon project into one of Figma's most anticipated launches.
The 30 Best Pieces of Company Building Advice We Heard in 2024

The 30 Best Pieces of Company Building Advice We Heard in 2024

For the 12th year in a row, we rounded up 30 timeless company-building insights we published from the year before.
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For the founder's notepad:
"If you personally want to grow as fast as your company, you have to give away your job every couple months." – Molly Graham
“Asking ‘Why can't this be done sooner?’ methodically, reliably and habitually can have a profound impact on the speed of your organization.” – Dave Girouard
“End every meeting or conversation with the feeling and optimism you’d like to have at the start of your next conversation with the person.” – Chris Fralic
“Focus is doing things with a clear intention. It doesn’t mean you charge single-minded toward a goal. It means you pay rapt and incremental attention to how you need to turn the rudder on a project.” – Fidji Simo
“It’s essential to grow with the company — rather than having the company grow around you.” – Cristina Cordova 
“You have to be impatient with shipping, but patient with your career.” – James Everingham
“‘I trust you, make the call’ might be the six most powerful words you can hear from a manager.” – Sean Twersky
“Your job as a CEO is to build fire departments, not put out fires.” – Sam Corcos 
“Can you say with confidence that each report would want to be on your team again? If you aren’t sure that the answer is yes, it’s probably no — much like how if you have to ask, ‘Am I in love?’ you’re probably not.” – Julie Zhuo 
“People can get addicted to yak shaving. An effective engineering generalist knows when to move on. Pay attention to whether they used their time wisely, not just the results.” – Mike Krieger 
“It sounds so simple to say that bosses need to tell employees when they're screwing up. But it very rarely happens.” – Kim Scott
“You’ll know you understand the customer problem enough when you can predict 75% of what a customer tells you. Keep having these conversations until three-quarters of it is stuff you already know.” – Christina Cacioppo
“I have a rule: no company swag until the business has at least $250K of revenue or 250k users. Until then, you don’t get to “feel” the benefits of having started a company.” – Gagan Biyani
“The business model ends up becoming the business. It’s equally important as the market you’re going after and the product that you build.” – Jay Simons 
“If speed is the yin, the yang is prioritization. You can’t be fast if you don’t know what’s important.” – Jaleh Rezaei
“If you treat your connections as a kind of personal ATM you use for frequent withdrawals, you’ll quickly be disappointed (and overdrawn).” – Karen Wickre 
“Delighting the customer always yields better returns than countering or copying a competitor. It’s just a lot harder to do.” – Andy Rachleff 
“When you’re a founder, every moment you’re not writing code or getting users, you need to be making a conscious choice: Is whatever you’re doing worth your time?” – Alexis Ohanian
“‘Why would a customer not want this?’ is often a far more interesting question than why they would.” – Rick Song
“When you leave the planning process wondering if you put too many resources behind a single bet, that’s the bet that ends up succeeding. Bold ideas need bold resourcing.” – Lenny Rachitsky and Nels Gilbreth
“Treat customer development as a one-on-one with a direct report — you just want to ask the hard questions.” – Ryan Glasgow
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