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From Burning Millions to Turning Profitable in Seven Months — How HotelTonight Did It
Management

From Burning Millions to Turning Profitable in Seven Months — How HotelTonight Did It

HotelTonight went from a monthly burn of $2.5 million to profitability — in just over two quarters. Now a year since that milestone, CEO and Co-founder Sam Shank shares the tactics and lessons that helped the company execute the impressive turnaround.
Fighting Factions: How Startups Can Scale Without Mutiny
People & Culture

Fighting Factions: How Startups Can Scale Without Mutiny

Between them, eero's David Loftesness and BCG Digital Ventures' Alexander Grosse have held engineering leadership roles at Twitter, SoundCloud, Amazon/A9, issuu and Nokia. Throughout their careers, they’ve noted a silent force that can be particularly damaging to a fast-growing company: factions.
I’m Sorry, But Those Are Vanity Metrics
Product

I’m Sorry, But Those Are Vanity Metrics

After three decades of leading data teams at companies like LiveOps, Netscape and ReadyForce, Looker founder and CTO Lloyd Tabb's biggest learning isn’t what you would expect — or want to hear: You’re measuring the wrong metrics. We all are.
PlanGrid's Playbook for Startups to Crack Big, Established Industries
Starting Up

PlanGrid's Playbook for Startups to Crack Big, Established Industries

PlanGrid is changing the way the construction industry has operated for years. CEO Tracy Young describes the scrappy strategy that made them a catalyst.
Credit Karma's CEO Built a Sexy Brand in an Unsexy Category with No PR Firm and a Tiny Budget — Here's How
PR & Marketing

Credit Karma's CEO Built a Sexy Brand in an Unsexy Category with No PR Firm and a Tiny Budget — Here's How

Kenneth Lin was determined to make Credit Karma a compelling brand in a boring industry, but he had to be scrappy about it too.
eBay’s First Chief Diversity Officer on Humanizing Diversity and Inclusion
People & Culture

eBay’s First Chief Diversity Officer on Humanizing Diversity and Inclusion

Damien Hooper-Campbell is on a mission to generate more authentic, effective conversations about diversity and inclusion. Here's how you can join him.
Lessons in Tenacity from the Co-Founder of Foursquare
Management

Lessons in Tenacity from the Co-Founder of Foursquare

Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley has been doggedly pursuing an idea for over a decade across a few startups. Here, he shares the different types of tenacity it takes to turn a new concept into a notable company.
Warning: This Is Not Your Grandfather’s Talent Planning
Management

Warning: This Is Not Your Grandfather’s Talent Planning

So you've heard of radical candor by now, right? That's just one of many tools you'll need to be a better boss, according to Candor, Inc. co-founder Kim Scott. You also must master the different modes of performance on your team — especially for your top people. Here's why.
Why You Need Two Chiefs in the Executive Office
Management

Why You Need Two Chiefs in the Executive Office

Influitive CEO Mark Organ explains how a chief of staff can power up a CEO to superhuman status. Here, he details a roadmap to hiring and training for this critical role.
How Chewse Operationalized Transparency — Starting With Salaries
People & Culture

How Chewse Operationalized Transparency — Starting With Salaries

Chewse CEO Tracy Lawrence shares how she's made open salaries work at her startup — and how it has transformed it. She runs through tactics and rubrics that help intangibles such as transparency and openness feel real to employees.
From C++ to the C-Suite: How Software Engineering Made Me A Better Executive
Management

From C++ to the C-Suite: How Software Engineering Made Me A Better Executive

For most software engineers, career development is a choice between managing more code or more developers. Here, Sailthru President and CEO Neil Lustig makes the case for jumping out of those two lanes — and how software engineering can equip you for the executive track.
Six Steps to Superior Product Prototyping: Lessons from an Apple and Oculus Engineer
Engineering

Six Steps to Superior Product Prototyping: Lessons from an Apple and Oculus Engineer

Engineering phenom Caitlin Kalinowski has worked on everything from the Oculus Touch to the MacBook Air. Here, she shares her playbook and philoisophy for product design and prototyping.
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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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