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The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2016
Must-reads

The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2016

In our annual roundup, we've distilled the top 30 insights from all of our articles published over the last year. Read on to take in tactics and advice from some of the sharpest minds we know.
Team Health Monitors and Why Your Startup Needs a Check-up
Management

Team Health Monitors and Why Your Startup Needs a Check-up

Atlassian president Jay Simons makes the case for team health monitors and explains how to evaluate for the eight traits of high-performing teams.
ClassPass’ CMO on How and When to Invest in Product Marketing
Product

ClassPass’ CMO on How and When to Invest in Product Marketing

ClassPass CMO Joanna Lord covers the essentials on product marketing for teams struggling to define, implement and launch the function at their startup.
Less Work, More Play: Change the Game With Simulations
Management

Less Work, More Play: Change the Game With Simulations

New Relic CIO Yvonne Wassenaar details the game-changing benefits of business simulations and how to use them to transform your company.
A People Ops Veteran on Navigating the Gnarliest Conversations
People & Culture

A People Ops Veteran on Navigating the Gnarliest Conversations

Climate Corporation's Chief People Officer Meg Makalou has been the human resources leader for startups big and small. Here, she tells of the three most daunting conversations people ops executives face — and recommends routes to resolution.
Three Powerful Conversations Managers Must Have To Develop Their People
Management

Three Powerful Conversations Managers Must Have To Develop Their People

Google and Twitter veteran Russ Laraway breaks down the most critical conversations you must have with your employees to help them grow into fulfilling careers.
It’s Price Before Product. Period.
Product

It’s Price Before Product. Period.

Pricing pro Madhavan Ramanujam uncovers a powerful idea: Determine price before you design your product. Here, he details the ways companies trip up when they try to monetize and explains how to do it right.
What I Learned From Developing Branding for Airbnb, Dropbox and Thumbtack
PR & Marketing

What I Learned From Developing Branding for Airbnb, Dropbox and Thumbtack

As one of Silicon Valley's most sought-after brand strategists, Julie Supan has helped some of tech's fast-growing companies find their high-expectation customer — and optimal position in the market.
Turbocharge Your Recruiting Machine — Here’s How
People & Culture

Turbocharge Your Recruiting Machine — Here’s How

NerdWallet VP of People Operations Flo Thinh outlines the profile of an exceptional Head of Recruiting as well how to design a magical candidate experience.
What Obama’s Tech Startup Has to Teach About Adaptability
Management

What Obama’s Tech Startup Has to Teach About Adaptability

USDS marketing chief and former head of marketing for Google X Janine Gianfredi shares her lessons on how to build adaptable teams, even in the most rigid and regulated environments.
Your Database is Your Prison — Here’s How Expensify Broke Free
Engineering

Your Database is Your Prison — Here’s How Expensify Broke Free

Startups can fall into dangerous defaults when it comes to database architecture. Expensify founder and CEO David Barrett shares how his company sidestepped these missteps and made its database architecture one of its competitive advantages.
The Case For Startups to Put CX at Their Core
PR & Marketing

The Case For Startups to Put CX at Their Core

At eero, the Customer Experience (CX) team is known as the "truth squad." Here's how its CEO and Co-founder Nick Weaver and Head of CX Dana Lindsay built and scaled an essential — but often overlooked — discipline at startups.
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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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