In Depth
Welcome to In Depth, a new podcast from First Round Review that’s dedicated to surfacing the tactical advice founders and startup leaders need to grow their teams, their companies and themselves. Hosted by Brett Berson, a partner at First Round, In Depth will cover a lot of ground and a wide range of topics, from hiring executives and becoming a better manager, to the importance of storytelling inside of your organization. But every interview will hit the level of tactical depth where the very best advice is found. We hope you’ll join us. Subscribe to “In Depth” now and learn more at firstround.com
1
From Chrome extension to $5B platform | Postman...
66 min
2
How Canva leveraged unconventional growth lever...
64 min
3
Twitter's former CEO on rebuilding the web for ...
65 min
4
Ignoring Silicon Valley advice to build a $3B f...
61 min
5
Inside the ex-YC partner’s $15B self driving ca...
60 min
6
What Braintrust got right about product-market ...
70 min
7
How Gusto built a $9.5 billion company by ident...
55 min
8
How rejecting conventional wisdom grew Sentry t...
101 min
9
Inside Linear: Why craft and focus still win in...
93 min
10
How Wes Kao coaches founders to influence, lead...
79 min
11
From reluctant founder to $2B valuation: The st...
74 min
12
How a weekend hack became a multimillion-dollar...
60 min
13
1Password’s growth story | How they went from b...
68 min
14
Scrappy tactics and a huge post-COVID pivot | O...
83 min
15
What makes (or breaks) executive hires | A deep...
Eeke de Milliano is the Head of Global Product at Stripe, helping drive innovation and success in the company's product line. Before this role, she was Head of Product at Retool and co-founded Constellate. Eeke previously spent 6 years as Product Lead at Stripe, working with the company during their hyper-growth era.
59 min
16
Inside Guideline's mission to modernize 401(k)s...
Kevin Busque is the co-founder and CEO of Guideline, a 401(k) management company revolutionizing the retirement space for small and medium-sized businesses. Prior to Guideline, Kevin co-founded Taskrabbit, where he encountered firsthand the complexity and low participation rates of traditional 401(k) plans—largely due to confusing fee structures.
84 min
17
Inside Braze’s blitz to $500M in CARR | Buildin...
Bill Magnuson is the co-founder and CEO at Braze, along with Kevin Wang, who joined as employee #8 and serves as the CPO. The two MIT graduates have built Braze into a publicly listed customer engagement platform with a $4.4B market cap. In 2023, Braze surpassed $500M in CARR, and serves over 2,200 customers worldwide. Before Braze, Bill spent time at Bridgewater Associates. Kevin’s academic background is in brain & cognitive sciences, and prior to joining Braze he worked at Accenture and Brewgene.
83 min
18
Inside Clay's unconventional path to $1.25B: Re...
Varun Anand is the co-founder and Head of Operations at Clay, a lead-generation software that combines data and AI to help over 5000 companies reach their best-fit customers. Clay recently announced their Series B expansion, raising $40M at a $1.2B valuation. Before Clay, Varun was the Director of Operations at Newfront and the Head of Expansion at Candid. Varun also spent four years working on Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign.
62 min
19
Building a 4 billion dollar data platform: Insi...
55 min
20
How Figma taps into taste, simplicity, and stor...
Yuhki Yamashita is the Chief Product Officer at Figma, leading the product and design teams. Previously, he was a product and design leader at Uber, where he orchestrated the redesign of the rider and driver apps. Yuhki was also a product manager at Google (YouTube iOS app) and Microsoft (Hotmail). Additionally, he has taught introductory computer science at Harvard University.
69 min
21
How to find customers in the Dept of Defense: F...
Steve Blank is an Adjunct Professor at Stanford University, where he co-created the "Hacking for Defense" curriculum for the Department of Defense.
34 min
22
Shifting Career Altitudes: Insights from a CPO’...
Anneka Gupta is the Chief Product Officer at Rubrik, a cloud management and data security company with a US$6B market cap. Before Rubrik, Anneka spent 11 years leading various teams at LiveRamp, including product, go-to-market, and operations.
69 min
23
How to find and pull startup growth levers | Ma...
Matt Lerner is the Founder and CEO at SYSTM and the author of "Growth Levers"
65 min
24
How to find — and keep — product-market fit | B...
78 min
25
Rebooting Intercom: Eoghan McCabe on Defying Si...
Eoghan McCabe is the CEO and cofounder at Intercom, an AI customer service platform. Intercom has raised over $240M, and was last valued at $1.3B in 2023.
75 min