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Cut Through The Small Talk and Connect — Lessons from 130+ Dinners, Summits and Salons
People & Culture

Cut Through The Small Talk and Connect — Lessons from 130+ Dinners, Summits and Salons

Anita Hossain has a gift for turning conversations into community. Throughout her career, she's found ways to help leaders cut through the small talk and surface what matters.
Here's How Women and Startups Can Accelerate Pay Equity in Tech
People & Culture

Here's How Women and Startups Can Accelerate Pay Equity in Tech

Over two decades, Jana Rich has seen hundreds of compensation negotiations, including patterns in who wins, who loses and why. Read on to learn how startups can begin with good comp hygiene early on, and what candidates can do to be empowered and equipped to get the comp they deserve.
Clean Up Corrosive Interpersonal Dynamics on Your Team with This System
People & Culture

Clean Up Corrosive Interpersonal Dynamics on Your Team with This System

Laura Gates has repaired interpersonal dynamics for orgs ranging from NASA to Shell Oil, from the military to tech giants. Here's the system she recommends to startups.
User-First Monetization — Lessons from Instagram and Strava
Product

User-First Monetization — Lessons from Instagram and Strava

James Quarles played a crucial role in creating Instragram's multi-billion dollar business model. Now CEO of Strava, he's sharing the fundamentals of healthy monetization for startups.
Use This Equation to Determine, Diagnose, and Repair Trust
Management

Use This Equation to Determine, Diagnose, and Repair Trust

Anne Raimondi has headed up product, marketing and operations at big names throughout tech. This one lesson is at the heart of her approach to leadership.
Wait But Why’s Tim Urban on Parsing and Transmitting Complex Ideas
Product

Wait But Why’s Tim Urban on Parsing and Transmitting Complex Ideas

From cryonics to AI to procrastination, Wait But Why's Tim Urban distills and presents the most complex ideas. Here he shares how he makes sense of hard-to-understand concepts so they're rich and resonant for others — an act that every startup leader and team must master over and over again.
Lean Startup’s Eric Ries on How to Make ‘Gatekeepers’ a Source of Power and Speed
Management

Lean Startup’s Eric Ries on How to Make ‘Gatekeepers’ a Source of Power and Speed

As companies add 'gatekeeper' functions like Legal, Finance, IT and Compliance, they tend to slow way down. But they don't have to. Here's how to lay the right foundation.
How Warby Parker Makes Every Point In Its Employee Lifecycle Extraordinary
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.
Develop Your Hiring System Like a Product to Eliminate Bias and Boost Retention
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.
Master the Art of Influence — Persuasion as a Skill and Habit
Management

Master the Art of Influence — Persuasion as a Skill and Habit

As a product leader at Google and Reddit, Tyler Odean uses persuasion as a tool in his everyday job. Here's what he's learned through experience and research about being influential at work.
Our 6 Must Reads for Managers to Give Feedback That Helps People Grow
Management

Our 6 Must Reads for Managers to Give Feedback That Helps People Grow

Giving constructive feedback that resonates is extremely difficult. You have to strike exactly the right chord for your words to cause change. Here's the best advice we've seen on how to do that.
Betterment Tested Three Performance Management Systems So You Don't Have To
People & Culture

Betterment Tested Three Performance Management Systems So You Don't Have To

As Founder and CEO of Betterment, Jon Stein realized startups can't just establish one way to measure employee performance — they have to continually iterate as they grow. Here's how to do it well.
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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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