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Annual Planning is Killing Your Growth – Try This Plan Instead
Management

Annual Planning is Killing Your Growth – Try This Plan Instead

The need to plan a year ahead can cripple fast-changing startups. Instead, here's a system to think long-term with short-term agility.

This Is How You Get People to Trust Your Product
Product

This Is How You Get People to Trust Your Product

Startups can't succeed without the trust of their customers. Here, Urbansitter CEO Lynn Perkins shares how to bake trust into your product.

How to Make Engineering Interns Effective for Your Startup
People & Culture

How to Make Engineering Interns Effective for Your Startup

Startup Sift Science relies on its interns to hit its goals. Here's how it designed its program to produce incredible and effective engineers.

7 Tactics to Get the Most Out of Your Startup's Advisors
People & Culture

7 Tactics to Get the Most Out of Your Startup's Advisors

Many entrepreneurs don't make the most out of their advising relationships. Get more done by deepening these connections.

WhatsApp Used This Pricing Strategy to Win and You Can Too
Product

WhatsApp Used This Pricing Strategy to Win and You Can Too

While WhatsApp solved a real problem, their understanding of the Penny Gap may have been their shrewdest product move of all.

Here’s Why Founders Should Care about Happiness
Management

Here’s Why Founders Should Care about Happiness

After 24 years climbing the corporate ladder, Scott Crabtree now focuses on data-driven approaches to what makes people happy at work.

Find the Best Lawyer for Your Startup with This Off-the-Record Advice
Starting Up

Find the Best Lawyer for Your Startup with This Off-the-Record Advice

Ken Callander’s helps all kinds of startups work with their lawyers. Here he shares secrets for increasing productivity and cutting costs.

Win the War for Great Global Talent — Keys to International Recruiting
People & Culture

Win the War for Great Global Talent — Keys to International Recruiting

HR specialist Megan Zengerle is a veteran at international hiring. Here, she clarifies the visa process, best practices and more.

What Eventbrite Did Early to Create ‘Sustainable’ Success
Management

What Eventbrite Did Early to Create ‘Sustainable’ Success

When Julia and Kevin Hartz first started Eventbrite, they knew they weren't looking for a quick exit, but for long-term, durable success.

When It Comes to Market Leadership, Be the Gorilla
Product

When It Comes to Market Leadership, Be the Gorilla

There are three ways to dominate a market: product leadership, cost leadership or customer intimacy leadership. Here's how to achieve it.

This is Why People Leave Your Company
Management

This is Why People Leave Your Company

Carly Guthrie has run HR for major restaurant groups and startups. Here, she shares lessons for startups looking to hold onto their talent.

A Counterintuitive System for Startup Compensation
People & Culture

A Counterintuitive System for Startup Compensation

Molly Graham helped structure compensation at Facebook and now Quip. She's emerged with these rules for creating a fair, motivating system.

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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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