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
51
Building Zapier from first principles | Contrar...
Wade Foster is the Co-founder & CEO at Zapier, a platform for building workflow automations without a developer. Zapier was started during 2011 in Columbia, Missouri, and by 2021, it was valued at $5b, having only raised $1.3m. Prior to founding Zapier, Wade had just two professional jobs, and had never managed or hired anyone. He worked as a PM on a web app used by 20k students, and as an Email Marketing Manager at Veterans United - a role that had a significant influence on Zapier’s eventual success.
67 min
52
How young outsiders changed the shipping indust...
Laura Behrens Wu is the Founder & CEO at Shippo, a company that has raised $100m+ and was last valued at $1b in 2021. Shippo provides an API and dashboard that makes shipping easy for e-commerce businesses, marketplaces, and platforms. Prior to starting Shippo, Laura graduated from Harvard University, and was heavily influenced by a short internship at LendUp, which exposed her to Silicon Valley and startup culture.
59 min
53
AI Hot Takes and Unusual Twitter Fundraising St...
Dan Siroker is the co-founder and CEO at Rewind AI, a personalized AI powered by everything you’ve seen, said, or heard. Dan launched Rewind to an emphatic response on Twitter, and used a public pitch video to fundraise at a $350m valuation. Prior to starting Rewind, Dan co-founded Optimizely, which reached $120m ARR before being acquired by Episerver, a content management company. Dan was also the Director of Analytics for Obama’s first presidential campaign.
64 min
54
A guide to building product in a post-LLM world...
Sprig is an AI-powered user insights platform that has raised over $88m. Today’s discussion features two key individuals in Sprig’s journey so far: Ryan Glasgow, Sprig’s CEO and founder; and Kevin Mandich, Sprig’s Head of Machine Learning. Before Sprig, Ryan was an early PM at GraphScience, Vurb, and Weeby (all of which were acquired), and Kevin was an ML Engineer at Incubit, and a Post-Doctoral Researcher at UC San Diego.
76 min
55
An org-design masterclass from a Square GM | Sa...
Saumil Mehta is the GM of Square’s flagship point-of-sale business, as well as CRM, Square Staff, and Square Online. Before Square, Saumil was the Founder and CEO of LocBox, which raised over $5.1M, and helped offline/local businesses run multi-channel marketing campaigns, all from one universal dashboard. Saumil has now been a leader at Square for 8+ years, and has overseen many complex re-orgs. These experiences have shaped Saumil into an all-round org-design expert.
74 min
56
How to supercharge your engineering org | Kella...
Kellan Elliott-McCrea is a Head of Engineering at Adobe. He discusses how software engineering has changed in the last 10-15 years, the importance of alignment and tactics for achieving it, how to think about and enable engineering productivity, and lessons on culture from Adobe, Dropbox and Flickr.
72 min
57
The zero to one B2B marketing playbook | Alex K...
The Zero to One B2B marketing playbook | Alex Kracov (Lattice, Dock)
63 min
58
Lessons from Loom on product strategy, organiza...
Anique Drumright is Chief Operating Officer at Loom. She shares insights and strategies on how Loom approaches product design and strategy, how to recruit and build a high-performing cross-functional org, and how to structure effective internal meetings.
61 min
59
Lessons from Slack on decision making, product-...
Noah Desai Weiss is Chief Product Officer at Slack. He shares frameworks and strategies on how Slack’s product org approaches decision making, what PLG for a horizontal SaaS product looks like, and when it pays off to take big bets.
76 min
60
Lessons in leadership | Scaling an org, develop...
Jack Altman is the co-founder and CEO of Lattice, a people success platform for building engaged, high-performing teams. Lattice has raised over $330M, and was last valued at $3B. He is an expert in building company culture, and wrote a book on the topic, titled: “People Strategy”.
78 min
61
Lessons from Stripe on adding new products - As...
Tara Seshan is the Head of Product at Watershed, a climate platform that companies use to measure, report, and reduce their carbon emissions. Before joining Watershed, Tara was Head of Product at Stripe throughout the launch of Stripe Billing and Stripe Treasury. As a Thiel Fellow and experienced multi-product builder, Tara brings a wealth of experience with 0-1 SaaS products.
55 min
62
How to design a high-impact growth org for a PL...
Melissa Tan is the GM of Self-Service and Head of Growth at Webflow and formerly the Head of Growth and Monetization for Dropbox Business. She unpacks the nuances between the two PLG businesses, including the growth strategy, approach to pricing and packaging, and goal setting techniques.
59 min
63
Why is the transition from IC Engineer to Manag...
Marcel Weekes is the VP of Product Engineering at Figma, and was formerly VP of Engineering at Slack. He unpacks why most startups get it wrong when they uplevel someone from IC engineer to eng manager and unfurls what stellar engineering management looks like at high-growth companies.
58 min
64
How to pull off the ‘zoom-in pivot,’ and other ...
Kesava Kirupa Dinakaran is the co-founder and CEO of Luminai, an early-stage software startup that automates workflows by taking any multi-click process and making it one click. Formerly a world-renowned Rubik’s Cube champion and a back-to-back corporate Hackathon winner, Dinakaran shares nuggets of wisdom from his personal journey to tech and Luminai’s path to finding product-market fit for other founders.
57 min
65
The go-to-market guide for open-source compani...
Douglas Hanna, Chief Operating Officer at Grafana Labs, explores the nuances of building and scaling revenue at an open-source company.
63 min
66
What this 3-time founding team did differently ...
Jessica McKellar is the co-founder and CTO of Pilot, the largest accounting firm for startups. She’s also a three-time founder, all working with the same group of co-founders. McKellar shares the most valuable lessons the founding team has learned about smoothing your path to product-market fit by choosing the right market.
54 min
67
How to measure product-market fit with the REV ...
Artem Kroupenev, VP of Strategy at Augury, shares by-the-book frameworks for how his company measures product-market fit in the complex field of industrial equipment.
53 min
68
The early user research playbook for founders —...
User research expert Jeanette Mellinger shares her three-step process to high-quality user research, with tailored advice for founders in the early days of validating a startup idea.
71 min
69
Claire Hughes Johnson on being a “learning orga...
Claire Hughes Johnson spent seven years as the COO of Stripe, overseeing rapid growth as the company scaled from under 200 employees to over 7,000. She takes us behind the scenes at some of the most pivotal moments in her own life and career that catapulted her into the deeply curious leader she is today.
74 min
70
Notion’s Head of Marketing on building a growth...
Rachel Hepworth, Head of Marketing at Notion and formerly Slack’s first growth marketing hire, shares her high-level frameworks for bringing marketing process and analytical structure to PLG companies.
52 min
71
What makes someone a truly remarkable talent ev...
Nadia Singer, Chief People Officer at Figma, shares why she believes anyone can become a skilled talent evaluator, her best interview questions and how Figma leverages transparency across the org.
48 min
72
How Vanta’s founder bet big on startup security...
Christina Cacioppo is the co-founder and CEO of Vanta. She pulls back the curtain on some of the security company’s more unconventional moves on the path to product-market fit, like waiting until they acquired hundreds of customers before building a website and operating at cash flow break-even for years before raising its Series A.
46 min
73
Lessons from Notion on building a thriving dece...
Ben Lang, Head of Community at Notion, shares his playbook for how to tap into your product evangelists and build a powerful community that grows from dozens to millions.
43 min
74
From a narrow ICP to a wide-open market – Lesso...
Bryant Chou is the co-founder of Webflow. He goes back to the early days of ideating on and building Webflow, walking us through how the co-founders formed their hypothesis around Webflow’s ICP, its viral launch on Hacker News, keeping a startup afloat with dwindling capital and the lessons in customer empathy that stick with him.
55 min
75
How to lead with transparency amidst adversity ...
Before taking over the helm of CrossFit as its new CEO, Don Faul’s leadership experience included an 8-year stint as a U.S. Marine Corps platoon commander and executive roles at Pinterest, Meta and Google. Here, he unpacks the leadership principles that have carried him through vastly different operating environments.
68 min