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Maven's Path to Product-Market Fit — Lessons for Leveraging Community in the Early Days
Product

Maven's Path to Product-Market Fit — Lessons for Leveraging Community in the Early Days

In the second post for our new series, "Paths to Product-Market Fit," Maven founder and CEO Kate Ryder sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to share the inside story of the first female-led telemedicine startup to achieve unicorn status.

The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2022
Management

The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2022

The best company-building advice is timeless, with a focus on the fundamentals. We rounded up 30 essential insights for startups to lean on in the coming year, no matter the climate.

How to be an Exceptional Chief of Staff: Advice for Scaling Impact at Startups
Management

How to be an Exceptional Chief of Staff: Advice for Scaling Impact at Startups

10 tactical tips and guiding principles for a new Chief of Staff to lean on as they scale their impact at a startup — from building better systems, not just booking more meetings and finding an executive's superpower.

From BigCo to Startup: 20 Tips for Evaluating Early-Stage Companies & Making the Leap
People & Culture

From BigCo to Startup: 20 Tips for Evaluating Early-Stage Companies & Making the Leap

Considering moving from BigCo to startup? We crowdsourced a tactical guide for first-time startup job-seekers on how to evaluate career opportunities at early-stage companies.

Airtable's Path to Product-Market Fit — Lessons for Building Horizontal Products
Product

Airtable's Path to Product-Market Fit — Lessons for Building Horizontal Products

In the first post for our new series, "Paths to Product-Market Fit," Airtable co-founder Andrew Ofstad sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to share the inside story of the no-code platform's long journey and the challenges they came across while building a horizontal product.

Investing in Internal Documentation: A Brick-by-Brick Guide for Startups
Engineering

Investing in Internal Documentation: A Brick-by-Brick Guide for Startups

David Nunez, an early hire at Stripe and Uber, shares his step-by-step playbook for establishing good internal documentation habits at your startup. He unpacks his tested tactics for creating a culture of documentation, setting the quality bar and keeping things organized.

Annual Planning in Uncertain Times: 6 Tactics for Rethinking Your Company’s End-of-Year Exercise
Must-reads

Annual Planning in Uncertain Times: 6 Tactics for Rethinking Your Company’s End-of-Year Exercise

We’ve combed the extensive Review archives for a timely roundup of the most unique advice for end-of-year strategic planning. Leaders like Lenny Rachitsky, Nels Gilbreth, Jeff Lawson, Annie Duke, Ravi Mehta and more share the inventive frameworks they lean on for this annual exercise.

Grit or Quit? Tactical Advice for Founders Facing Tough Company Building Decisions
Management

Grit or Quit? Tactical Advice for Founders Facing Tough Company Building Decisions

Quitting is an underrated startup skill, says decision science expert, bestselling author, and former poker pro Annie Duke. She unpacks the psychology behind why it’s so hard to walk away, sharing tactical advice for all the forks in the road.

How Product Strategy Fails in the Real World — What to Avoid When Building Highly-Technical Products
Product

How Product Strategy Fails in the Real World — What to Avoid When Building Highly-Technical Products

Why does strategy tend to stall when the rubber hits the road? Nate Stewart, Chief Product Officer of Cockroach Labs, shares an essential guide for creating a resilient strategy that’s still standing next year.

Don't Let Growth Hurt Your Margins: A 4-Step Pricing Framework to Build Products With Scalable Unit Economics
Product

Don't Let Growth Hurt Your Margins: A 4-Step Pricing Framework to Build Products With Scalable Unit Economics

Pricing pro Dee Sahni shares a highly customizable framework for tweaking your monetization and pricing model so that it scales with you, not against you as the company grows. She then applies the 4-step framework to household-name companies like Amazon, Netflix and Uber.

The 5 Phases of Figma’s Community-Led Growth: From Stealth to Enterprise
PR & Marketing

The 5 Phases of Figma’s Community-Led Growth: From Stealth to Enterprise

Claire Butler, Figma’s first business hire, walks us through the different phases of the company’s community-led growth model — from planting the seeds with power users in stealth mode all the way to layering a sales motion and moving upmarket.

Why Now’s the Perfect Time to Retool Your Hiring Process and Get Creative
People & Culture

Why Now’s the Perfect Time to Retool Your Hiring Process and Get Creative

Whether hiring is slowing down or keeping pace, now's the time to revamp your process, from job description to offer. Peoplism's founders share unexpected tips, from swapping resumes for a screener survey, to sharing interview questions in advance.

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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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