The Minimum Viable Testing Process for Evaluating Startup Ideas
The traditional approach is to do some customer research, throw an MVP out there as fast as possible, and hope it hits. After being early at three startups that achieved over $1M in run-rate in their...
View ArticleThe Ultimate Guide to Running Executive Meetings — 25 Tips from Top Startup...
Frustrated with your Executive team meetings? We tapped 25 top leaders from the startup C-Suite to share their tested tips, from getting started with an executive team to crafting the agenda and...
View ArticleThe Playbook for Hiring the Right Marketer at the Right Time for Your Startup
Should you hire a brand, product or growth marketer, and how do you know when you've found the right candidate? Maya Spivak, former marketing leader at Segment and Wealthfront, unpacks her frameworks...
View ArticleThe Playbook This Startup Used to Get Their Founders on 100+ Podcasts in 6...
When it comes to turbocharging brand awareness for your startup, think podcast Interviews over ads. Tom Griffin, Head of Partnerships at Levels makes the case for why you should do a podcast tour for...
View ArticleThe Feedback Founders Need to Hear — How to Grow Yourself To Grow The Company
After 20 years of executive coaching, Alisa Cohn shares advice for getting better at self-reflection, collecting feedback, and changing behavior.
View ArticleFinding Language/Market Fit: How to Make Customers Feel Like You’ve Read...
After more than a decade of running B2B growth teams at PayPal and investing at 500 Startups, Matt Lerner now spends his days helping early-stage startups with growth. He's seen firsthand how changes...
View ArticleThe Best Leaders are Feedback Magnets — Here’s How to Become One
Drawing from her career at PayPal, Intercom, GetYourGuide, and now as founder/CEO of Ascend (an online leadership program that empowers women) Shivani Berry shares her playbook for attracting more...
View ArticleA Founder’s Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Your First 1,000 Community Members
Pivots, MVPs and Community: How Joseph Quan, Founder & CEO of Knoetic, got his startup back on track by making community his wedge. He shares his hard-won wisdom and his six-step guide for building...
View ArticleThe IC’s Guide to Driving Career Conversations — 25 Tips for Purposeful...
Top startup leaders and operators share a tactical manual with 25 tips for direct reports to take charge of career conversations with their managers.
View ArticleThe Design Leadership Playbook: How to Hire, Onboard & Manage a High-Impact...
From the high-level perspective of what makes for a great design leader, to the tactical suggestions around the slide that needs to be in your portfolio presentation, Twilio & Segment's Hareem...
View ArticleThe 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2021
Start the new year off on the right footing with the 30 most impactful insights and ultra-tactical frameworks from every article we published in 2021.
View ArticleThe Best Managers Don’t Fix, They Coach — Four Tools to Add to Your Toolkit
Anita Hossain Choudhry (The Grand, First Round) and Mindy Zhang (Dropbox, Oscar Health) draw on their experiences as executive coaches to unpack why managers fall into the “fixing” trap and make the...
View ArticleThe Art of Becoming a Better Listener — Tactical Advice for the Startup Setting
When it comes to annual resolutions and personal development goals, listening usually isn’t very high up on the list. User research leader and author Ximena Vengoechea makes the case for why you should...
View ArticleGreat Startups Deserve Great Brands — Build a Strong Foundation by Avoiding...
After working with hundreds of startups on brand strategy, Arielle Jackson shares the most common early marketing missteps that founders make. From how to articulate your product benefit and clarify...
View ArticleYour Startup’s Management Training Probably Sucks — Here’s How to Make it Better
Plenty of startups leave manager training on the backburner until they become a bigger company — or try to fit it into a 30-minute lunch-and-learn. Melissa and Johnathan Nightingale, founders of Raw...
View ArticleThe Company-Building Cornerstones Every Founder Needs to Focus On — Advice...
Dharmesh Shah has spent the last 15 years as co-founder & CTO of HubSpot. He pinpoints the inflection points and key decisions that other founders face in the early days, from choosing a co-founder...
View ArticleSet “Non-Goals” and Build a Product Strategy Stack — Lessons For Product Leaders
Ravi Mehta, former CPO at Tinder & Product Exec at TripAdvisor, shares his framework for crafting a crisp product strategy for startups — a 5-step system called the "Product Strategy Stack." He...
View ArticleRun This Diagnostic to Thoughtfully Build (and Evaluate) Your Startup’s Culture
There are tons of reads on why company culture matters, but few on how to actually architect it. And it’s rarely examined at the co-founding duo, 5-person team, or 30-person startup level. Laura Del...
View Article23 Tactical Company Building Lessons, Learned From Scaling Stripe & Notion
From Stripe to Notion, Cristina Cordova has worked on some of the biggest products in tech. Now a Partner at First Round, she shares tactical tidbits on what she’s learned about about scaling companies...
View ArticleThe Tactical Guide to Making Better Decisions When Starting and Scaling...
The First Round team has been lucky to work with retired poker player and decision-making expert Annie Duke in a special capacity these past few years. Here, we open-source some of the advice she gives...
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