• Articles
  • Curated Reads
  • Paths to PMF
  • Newsletter
  • Podcast
  • Sign In
  • Articles
  • Curated Reads
  • Paths to PMF
  • Newsletter
  • Podcast
  • Sign In
All Product Fundraising Starting Up Management Engineering PR & Marketing Must-reads People & Culture Design Sales
The Right Way to Grant Equity to Your Employees
Management

The Right Way to Grant Equity to Your Employees

Andy Rachleff, co-founder of Benchmark Capital, breaks down the ideal plan for granting equity to incentivize loyalty.

Fight Like You're Right, Listen Like You're Wrong and Other Keys to Great Management
Management

Fight Like You're Right, Listen Like You're Wrong and Other Keys to Great Management

Stanford Business and Engineering Professor Bob Sutton shares his secrets for effective leadership (including the No Asshole Rule).

Top Hacks from a PM Behind Two of Tech's Hottest Products
Product

Top Hacks from a PM Behind Two of Tech's Hottest Products

Todd Jackson has experience managing products at Google, Facebook and his own startup. Here's what he learned.

The Secret to Making Board Meetings Suck Less
Management

The Secret to Making Board Meetings Suck Less

Jeff Bonforte, former CEO of Xobni (now SVP at Yahoo), provides a step-by-step guide to running a painless, productive board meeting.

There’s a .00006% Chance of Building a Billion Dollar Company: How This Man Did It
Management

There’s a .00006% Chance of Building a Billion Dollar Company: How This Man Did It

David Friedberg, CEO of The Climate Corporation, tells the story of how they built a valuable company from scratch.

What Everyone Should Know About How Talent is Bought and Sold
Management

What Everyone Should Know About How Talent is Bought and Sold

Mike Brown, corporate development veteran from Facebook and Twitter, explains how to win the talent acquisition process.

Why Most Startups Don't 'Get' Press
PR & Marketing

Why Most Startups Don't 'Get' Press

PR guru Brooke Hammerling gives step-by-step advice for startups looking to get good press coverage without an agency.

How to Go From Google Engineer to First-Time CTO
Management

How to Go From Google Engineer to First-Time CTO

Artillery Co-founder and CTO Ian Langworth talks about the tactics required to make the jump to technical leadership.

What to Do When You’re the Only Designer They’ve Got
Design

What to Do When You’re the Only Designer They’ve Got

Betable's Chief Experience Officer Jeffrey Kalmikoff on how to make it if you're the first or only designer at a startup.

What You Want in a VP Eng from the Recruiters Behind Twitter and Zappos
Engineering

What You Want in a VP Eng from the Recruiters Behind Twitter and Zappos

Top technical recruiters Ali Behnam and Mike Morell of Riviera Partners share how startups can snag a great VP of Engineering.

The Anatomy of the Perfect Technical Interview from a Former Amazon VP
Engineering

The Anatomy of the Perfect Technical Interview from a Former Amazon VP

Neil Roseman, former VP for Amazon and Zynga, has interviewed hundreds of technical candidates. Here's what he learned.

How Medium Is Building a New Kind of Company with No Managers
Management

How Medium Is Building a New Kind of Company with No Managers

Jason Stirman, one of the top minds behind Medium, explains how the company is using holacracy to do more faster and better.

  • About
  • Articles
  • Curated Reads
  • Paths to PMF
  • Newsletter
  • Podcast
  • Sign in
  • Sign In
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
Shuffle

Published by