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
76
How to lower barriers to change when building a...
Wharton professor and author Jonah Berger on overcoming barriers to change when building breakthrough products, convincing customers or leading teams.
56 min
77
How Retool reached $2M in ARR before launch by ...
David Hsu is the founder and CEO of Retool, a low-code platform for developers building custom internal tools. He goes back to the early days of ideating on and building Retool, from going against the grain with his product idea, finding language/market fit, and signing on early customers in the Fortune 500.
55 min
78
How to approach GTM with an engineering lens — ...
Rich Rao is the VP, Small Business Group at Meta and former GM at Google. He uses his technical background to explain how leaders can apply an engineer’s playbook to their go-to-market strategy.
58 min
79
What startups can learn from enterprise corpora...
Sara Varni is the CMO of Attentive. She shares her biggest lessons from her marketing leadership career at Salesforce and Twilio, and what startups should know about crafting a corporate message that resonates.
49 min
80
Finding product-market fit twice — Alma’s Harry...
Founder Harry Ritter dives into Alma’s journey to product-market fit, with advice on rallying through tough pivots and building as a solo founder.
47 min
81
Why everything we’ve been taught about quitting...
Annie Duke is First Round’s Special Partner of Decision Science. On the heels of releasing her new book, “Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away,” she dives into all of our misconceptions about quitting and makes the case that getting better at this skill lays the groundwork for greater success.
72 min
82
How to scale your co-founder relationship along...
Manu Sharma and Brian Rieger are the co-founders of Labelbox and in this conversation, they take a microscope to their co-founder DNA and share tons of advice for other entrepreneurs looking for magic in their founding team.
46 min
83
A crash course on founder-led customer success ...
Sydney Strader shares tips from Catalyst & InVision on founder-led customer success, from structuring customer conversations to making the first hire.
57 min
84
The founder’s guide to making your first few hi...
Gem co-founder Steven Bartel shares tactics for recruiting the first 10 hires, from sourcing and nurturing passive talent, to structuring interviews.
54 min
85
From product roadmapping to sprint planning: Ho...
Snir Kodesh is the Head of Engineering at Retool and former Senior Director of Engineering at Lyft. He unpacks the ins and outs of shipping software, from agreeing on the product roadmap, to setting your course, and getting better at estimating your development cycles.
52 min
86
The 5 phases of Figma’s community-led growth — ...
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 in stealth all the way to org-wide enterprise adoption.
56 min
87
Airtable’s path to product-market fit — co-foun...
Airtable’s co-founder Andrew Ofstad shares Airtable’s early journey to product-market fit — from prototypes and launch, to go-to-market strategy.
45 min
88
Operations vs. Algorithms: Advice for scaling s...
Ian Wong is the co-founder and CTO of Opendoor. He discusses the tricky balance between operations and data science in the early days of the startup, and his advice for other founders looking to make data science core to their business.
65 min
89
Want to go totally asynchronous? Repeat founder...
Subscript founder Sidharth Kakkar shares tactical advice on how to build a totally asynchronous, distributed team with no internal meetings — from increasing transparency and encouraging autonomy, to how hiring and documentation need to change.
63 min
90
Why COO is the most fluid role in the C-Suite —...
Sara Clemens was most recently the COO of Twitch and also previously served as the COO of Pandora. She explores the nuances of this unique C-Suite role and her advice for CEOs considering bringing aboard their first COO.
61 min
91
From PM to VP of Product: Jiaona Zhang’s career...
Jiaona Zhang shares her framework for building a product career, from PM, to manager, to exec, with advice from her time at Webflow, Airbnb & Dropbox.
56 min
92
“When They Win, You Win”: Russ Laraway unpacks ...
Russ Laraway is a seasoned leader who's been at Google, Twitter, Candor Inc, Qualtrics, and recently joined as the Chief People Officer for Goodwater Capital. Russ unpacks the management frameworks from his new book: “When They Win, You Win” and why he believes we’re in a manager crisis.
59 min
93
Building a highly-technical enterprise product?...
Nate Stewart is the Chief Product Officer of Cockroach Labs, which is the creator of CockroachDB. He unpacks the ins and outs of building a product org for a highly technical enterprise product — from crafting the product roadmap, teaming up with the right design partners, and avoiding a product strategy that fails in the real world.
56 min
94
Building & selling a product into government is...
Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins is the co-founder and CEO of Promise, a modern government payment solution. She shares her advice for other founders building a product for government — from dealing with long sales cycles, hiring folks with industry expertise, and pivoting with purpose.
58 min
95
The art of starting a startup — Gagan Biyani’s ...
Maven co-founder Gagan Biyani shares advice on starting a company — from generating ideas, to exploring business models and finding co-founders.
61 min
96
How to handle comp challenges at every startup ...
Kaitlyn Knopp, founder & CEO of Pequity, shares tactical compensation advice for every startup stage — from initial leveling and comp philosophy, to negotiating offers, extending exercise windows, and handling bonuses and inflation adjustments.
61 min
97
A crash course on comms for founders — Nairi Ho...
Nairi Hourdajian (VP of Communications at Figma & first comms hire at Uber) shares advice on how startups can get comms right, from crafting a narrative and building relationships with reporters, to working with agencies and making a full-time hire.
57 min
98
How founders can get executive hiring right fro...
Jack Altman, co-founder & CEO of Lattice, shares tactical advice for assembling your startup’s executive team — from common traps and hiring profiles, to the end-to-end process of interviewing, checking references, and evaluating performance.
64 min
99
IC? Manager? Technical Founder? How to chart yo...
Amber Feng is the co-founder and CTO of Cocoon, and was formerly an engineering leader at Stripe for eight years. She shares her advice for other engineers wrestling with whether to take the founder, IC or management career track, and the engineering lessons from Stripe she’s bringing to her new startup.
55 min
100
Never done sales before? Meka Asonye shares GTM...
One year after transitioning from GTM leader at Stripe and Mixpanel to early-stage investor at First Round, Meka Asonye dives into the playbooks and sales coaching advice he shares with the technical and product oriented founders he invests in.
64 min