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
101
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
102
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
103
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
104
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
105
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
106
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
107
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
108
The startup playbook for expanding internationa...
Max Rhodes, co-founder & CEO of Faire, shares tactical advice for expanding internationally, from getting the timing right and facing down competition, to hiring the team, tweaking the operational cadence, and crafting the strategy to pull it off.
59 min
109
Usage-based? Hybrid? Tiered? Which pricing mode...
In this episode with Jeanne DeWitt Grosser, Head of Americas Revenue and Growth at Stripe, we dive super deep into all things pricing — including the pros and cons of usage-based pricing, exploring hybrid pricing models, and treating pricing like a product.
48 min
110
The Product Strategy Playbook that Powered Grow...
Ravi Mehta is the former CPO at Tinder and taught product strategy as an Executive in Residence at Reforge. He explains what he calls the product strategy stack that he developed in his career at Tinder and TripAdvisor, and his alternative approach to OKRs.
62 min
111
After building hundreds of startup brands, Arie...
After helping to launch iconic products at Google and Square, Arielle Jackson has worked with hundreds of early-stage startups on brand strategy as First Round’s Marketer in Residence. Here are the most common early marketing mistakes that she sees.
84 min
112
Buy or build? Focus on the core product or inn...
Adrian McDermott joined Zendesk in 2010, when the company had 50 employees. Now as CTO, he’s seen the team grow to over 5000. He shares his lessons on scaling, answering common startup dilemmas and offering advice for leading product and eng teams.
59 min
113
The biggest lessons from building Hubspot, from...
Dharmesh Shah is the co-founder and CTO of Hubspot. He explores the 15-year journey building the company — from his partnership with co-founder Brian Halligan, choosing to never have direct reports, and treating company culture as a product.
53 min
114
The story of why Canva worked: Zach Kitschke sh...
Zach Kitschke was an early Canva hire, and since 2013 he’s done everything from comms, support tickets and cooking team lunch, to starting the people function. Now as CMO, he shares his own career lessons and digs into why the company worked.
61 min
115
Take your design org from good to great with th...
Hareem Mannan is the Senior Director of Product, Enablement & Design at Twilio, which she joined via the company’s Segment acquisition. She explores the three pillars that set great designers apart and her top lessons on hiring, onboarding and managing a high-impact design org.
64 min
116
Instacart co-founder Max Mullen gets tactical o...
Max Mullen has worn many hats as a co-founder of Instacart, but he’s been uniquely focused on culture. He shares advice for crafting unique values, tips for making sure they guide day-to-day behavior, and pointers for sidestepping common mistakes.
61 min
117
Growing from founder to CEO: Executive coach Al...
Alisa Cohn has nearly 20 years of experience in executive coaching at companies like Etsy, InVision, and Google. Here, she shares advice for getting better feedback and actually enacting change on the journey from scrappy founder to seasoned CEO.
61 min
118
Executive hiring is incredibly difficult to get...
Gretchen Howard is the COO of Robinhood and former Partner at CapitalG, Alphabet’s investment fund. She covers the ins and outs of building your executive team — from developing the profile and recruiting to interviewing and onboarding.
59 min
119
Building a hybrid go-to-market motion — GC Lion...
Giancarlo ‘GC’ Lionetti has been the CMO of Confluent, a VP of Growth at Dropbox, and sales engineer and product marketing manager at Atlassian. He digs into building hybrid go-to-market motions that combine product-led growth and traditional sales.
66 min
120
Creating physical products and getting feedback...
Sandra Oh Lin is the founder and CEO of KiwiCo, which creates hands-on learning kits for children. We discuss how Sandra tackled the early obstacles in creating a physical product — from the design process, production, and consumer testing when your cus
58 min
121
How to hire the right marketer at the right tim...
Maya Spivak is the Head of Marketing at Mux and former Head of Global Brand Marketing & Comms at Segment. She explains the three core pillars of the marketing org (product, brand and growth), how to know which one is right for your startup stage, and tips
56 min
122
From developer to CMO — Archana Agrawal’s marke...
Archana Agrawal is CMO of Airtable and former Head of Enterprise and Cloud Marketing for Atlassian. She shares her biggest marketing lessons from the two product-led growth companies, including developing the right personas and strategic org design.
56 min
123
How to pivot your way to product/market fit & o...
In this episode with first-time founder Tara Viswanathan, co-founder and CEO of Rupa Health, we cover her biggest lessons on finding product/market fit and hiring the early team.
57 min
124
Building an operationally-intensive business an...
Steve Gutentag shares the lessons he’s learned building three startups, including how to figure out if there’s founder/product fit and how to build an operationally complex business with unit economics that work from day one.
59 min
125
Don’t have a UX research team? Jane Davis’ tips...
Jane Davis shares the playbooks she’s honed leading user research teams at Zoom, Zapier and Dropbox, tackling everything from specific questions to ask in customer interviews, to frameworks for getting feedback as you launch and prototype products.
63 min