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How to Build an Iconic Brand Without Breaking the Bank — This Founder's Formula for Early Marketing
PR & Marketing

How to Build an Iconic Brand Without Breaking the Bank — This Founder's Formula for Early Marketing

Studs co-founder Lisa Bubbers shares how they melded a strong brand with operational rigor to build a thriving business with minimal marketing expenses.
The Secret to Running Effective Growth Sprints — Follow This Process to Learn Faster
Starting Up

The Secret to Running Effective Growth Sprints — Follow This Process to Learn Faster

"With every growth experiment, you're not just trying to optimize your return on ad spend, lower your CPA, or bag a few new logos ahead of the next fundraise. You're fundamentally learning and making progress toward a simple question: How are we going to grow this business?"
Pilot’s Path to Product-Market Fit — Three-Peat Founders on Picking the Right Team and the Right Market
Product

Pilot’s Path to Product-Market Fit — Three-Peat Founders on Picking the Right Team and the Right Market

The founders of Pilot have started three times over, starting with Ksplice (sold to Oracle in 2011) and then Zulip (acquired by Dropbox in 2014).
The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2023
Must-reads

The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2023

It’s the first week of the new year, and here on The Review we’re ushering it in with a beloved annual ritual (that we find to be much more delightful than other yearly exercises like annual planning or performance reviews).
Look Back to Leap Ahead: 7 Questions for Your End of Year Reflection
Must-reads

Look Back to Leap Ahead: 7 Questions for Your End of Year Reflection

As the year draws to a close, you may find yourself in a reflective mood. There’s plenty to take stock of as you look back on how 2023 went.
How to Take Bigger, Bolder Product Bets — Lessons from Slack’s Chief Product Officer
Product

How to Take Bigger, Bolder Product Bets — Lessons from Slack’s Chief Product Officer

Seasoned product leader and Slack’s CPO Noah Desai Weiss shares the three-step framework he leans on to make quality product decisions with just the right amount of risk.
New Engineering Managers Have a High Failure Rate — This Figma Leader is on a Mission to Fix It
Engineering

New Engineering Managers Have a High Failure Rate — This Figma Leader is on a Mission to Fix It

Are leaders setting up new engineering managers to fail? Marcel Weekes (VP of Engineering at Figma) sure thinks so. He unpacks his playbook for supporting the tricky transition from senior engineer to people manager and tested tactics for avoiding the common traps.
Shippo’s Path to Product-Market Fit — The Upside of Being Industry Outsiders
Product

Shippo’s Path to Product-Market Fit — The Upside of Being Industry Outsiders

Shippo co-founder and CEO Laura Behrens Wu sits down with First Round Partner Todd Jackson for a behind-the-scenes look at how she leveraged industry outsider and first-time founder status to build a billion-dollar shipping company.
The 100 Best Bits of Advice from 10 Years of First Round Review
Must-reads

The 100 Best Bits of Advice from 10 Years of First Round Review

We combed The Review archives for a special compilation of the 100 very best advice published on our digital pages over the last 10 years from folks like Stewart Butterfield, Claire Hughes Johnson and Alexis Ohanian.
Storytelling as a Craft: Advice from 5 Experts on How to Tell a Compelling Business Story
PR & Marketing

Storytelling as a Craft: Advice from 5 Experts on How to Tell a Compelling Business Story

Every startup leader should practice flexing their storytelling muscles. To help warm these muscles up, we’ve rounded up some of our best advice about storytelling in business that’s been featured in the Review.
Hire Better Managers: 35 Interview Questions for Assessing a Candidate
Management

Hire Better Managers: 35 Interview Questions for Assessing a Candidate

We asked top hiring managers and startup leaders to share their favorite questions for interviewing management candidates.
A Founder’s Framework for Understanding Performance vs. Brand Marketing for Your Startup
PR & Marketing

A Founder’s Framework for Understanding Performance vs. Brand Marketing for Your Startup

Startup marketing experts Sarah Emmott and Holly Chen share a multi-step process for how to craft a brand and performance marketing strategy, including how to set goals, allocate the right budget, and measure success.
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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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