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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.
Tips for Recruiting: How to Hire the Right Person
Management

Tips for Recruiting: How to Hire the Right Person

We've combed the Review archives for the best advice on how to hire the right person for your startup — including tips on writing the job description, asking better interview questions, and checking references.
Live Tinted’s Path to Product Market Fit — How to Build a Loyal and Passionate Community Before You Even Have a Brand
Product

Live Tinted’s Path to Product Market Fit — How to Build a Loyal and Passionate Community Before You Even Have a Brand

Live Tinted co-founder and CEO Deepica Mutyala sits down with First Round Partner Todd Jackson for a behind-the-scenes look at how she built a loyal and powerful customer base long before she ever had a product to sell.
9 Steps for Crafting a Good Decision Making Process
Management

9 Steps for Crafting a Good Decision Making Process

We’ve combed The Review archives to identify some of the more unique advice we’ve heard over the years, boiling it down into an easy-to-follow, 9-step decision-making process.
A Tactical Guide on How to Make Decisions Faster
Management

A Tactical Guide on How to Make Decisions Faster

We’ve put together a guide of tactical advice on how to speed up decision making at your startup — whether you’re trying to fix a decision making process that’s slowed as you’ve scaled, or you’re looking to build in speedy habits right from the start.
Merge’s Path to Product-Market Fit — The Importance of Founder-led Sales (Even for a Self-Serve Product)
Product

Merge’s Path to Product-Market Fit — The Importance of Founder-led Sales (Even for a Self-Serve Product)

Merge founder and CEO Shensi Ding sits down with First Round Partner Todd Jackson for a behind-the-scenes look at how she and co-founder Gil Feig built and scaled a product that solved the painful headache of building and maintaining integrations.
Elevate Your Performance Review Conversations with these 12 Expert Tips
People & Culture

Elevate Your Performance Review Conversations with these 12 Expert Tips

Stop dreading performance reviews. We assembled a list of 12 tips from expert leaders like Lenny Rachitsky, Molly Graham, Russ Laraway, Brie Wolfson, Julie Zhuo and more to make these conversations more impactful. There are frameworks and tactics for managers and reports alike to rethink their appro
Unlock the Power of Money Words: How Founders Can Write Copy That Converts
PR & Marketing

Unlock the Power of Money Words: How Founders Can Write Copy That Converts

Copyhackers’ Joanna Wiebe shares the science behind word choice to help take your copy from guesswork to goldmine.
Vanta's Path to Product-Market Fit — Solve the Customer’s Problem, Then Write Code
Product

Vanta's Path to Product-Market Fit — Solve the Customer’s Problem, Then Write Code

An inside look at all the unconventional moves in Vanta's first few years — from creating a new category to signing the first 600 customers without a proper website.
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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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