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
126
After leading product & growth teams at Instaca...
Today’s episode is with Elliot Shmukler, founder and CEO of Anomalo. Before starting Anomalo, Elliot was a top product and growth leader at Instacart, Wealthfront, LinkedIn, and eBay. He shares his biggest lessons from transitioning from exec to CEO, ho
65 min
127
A deep-dive into product-led growth & self-serv...
Today’s episode is with Kate Taylor, who spent 8 years at Dropbox (leading their SMB revenue and scaled sales operation) and is now the Head of Customer Experience at Notion. Kate is full of actionable tactics on getting product-led growth, self-serve a
57 min
128
Setting up the people function and training for...
Today’s episode is with Mark Frein, the Chief People Officer & Head of Alumni Programs at Lambda School and former CPO at InVision. As we dive into how to set up this essential startup function, Mark shares advice on everything from org design and onboa
67 min
129
How Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta Parses Throu...
Today’s episode is with Marco Zappacosta, co-founder and CEO of Thumbtack. Reflecting on the 13-year journey of creating Thumbtack as a first-time founder, Mark pays special attention to the many cultural hurdles that founders must clear on the path to
67 min
130
Building engineering orgs and new products at S...
Today’s episode is with Tido Carriero, an engineering leader who’s built out teams at Facebook, Dropbox and Segment, where he is currently the Chief Product Officer. From his thoughts on organizational design and advice for newly minted engineering ma
58 min
131
Essentials to engaging employees & developing h...
Today’s episode is with Russ Laraway, a seasoned leader who’s been at Google, Twitter, Candor Inc, and Qualtrics, where he recently served as Chief People Officer before shifting into a new role helping the company’s customers think differently abou
71 min
132
CEO Jeff Lawson Reflects on the Peaks and Valle...
Today’s episode is with Jeff Lawson, co-founder and CEO of Twilio. Reflecting on the 13-year journey of creating Twilio, Jeff shares the peaks and valleys and some unexpected aha moments — from getting his executive team to argue more, missteps with t
64 min
133
Treat Operational Debt like Tech Debt — Leah Su...
Today’s episode is with Leah Sutton, SVP of Global HR at Elastic, which provides open-source software for search and data analytics. Elastic has been a distributed company from the beginning, now with over 2,000 employees across 40 countries and 48 stat
57 min
134
“My product is the company” — Kevin Fishner on ...
Today’s episode is with Kevin Fishner, the first business hire, former VP of Product, and current Chief of Staff at HashiCorp, a cloud infrastructure automation company. Kevin takes us through the most important systems at HashiCorp, including how they
73 min
135
Growing a consumer product from scratch to 1 bi...
Today’s episode is with David Lieb, the Director of Google Photos and former founder/CEO of Bump. He unpacks the underpinnings of Google Photos’ success and walks us through how product builders can focus on solving real problems. From how annual plan
69 min
136
An inside look at the system that will outlast ...
Former Amazon execs share an inside look at the company's leadership principles and business processes in their new book
71 min
137
From exec roles to board seats — Anne Raimondi’...
Today’s episode is with Anne Raimondi, Chief Customer Officer at Guru, a knowledge management platform. Across her career in tech, Anne has been a founder, operator, executive and an independent board member at companies like eBay, SurveyMonkey, Zendesk
78 min
138
Plaid & Dropbox’s Jean-Denis Grèze’s playbook f...
Today’s episode is with Jean-Denis Grèze, Head of Engineering at Plaid, which securely connects your bank to your apps like Venmo and Betterment. Before joining Plaid back in 2017, Jean-Denis was Director of Engineering at Dropbox and even took a 4-yea
56 min
139
Upstart just went public — CEO Dave Girouard sh...
Today’s episode is with Dave Girouard, the CEO and co-founder of Upstart, an AI-powered lending platform that recently went public. First Round invested in Upstart’s seed round back in 2012, so we were thrilled to chat with Dave about his lessons from
63 min
140
Unpacking all the non-consensus moves in Atlass...
Today’s episode is with Jay Simons, who spent the last 12 years as the president of Atlassian, overseeing go-to-market strategy and big acquisitions as the company went from startup to IPO. He digs into their unconventional moves, such as using channel
76 min
141
Partnerships lessons from Stripe & Notion — Cri...
Today’s episode is with Cristina Cordova, who spent 7 years at Stripe (as the 28th employee and first partnerships hire), and is now the Head of Platform & Partnerships at Notion. Cristina is full of actionable tactics on crafting win-win deals and buil
79 min
142
Start with the story — Drift’s David Cancel on ...
Today’s episode is with David Cancel, co-founder and CEO of Drift, a conversational marketing and sales platform. This 5X founder has also been a serial CTO and the Chief Product Officer at Hubspot, giving him a unique perspective on leadership. In addi
50 min
143
Lessons from a first-time CEO — Steve El-Hage o...
Our third episode is with Steve El-Hage, Founder and CEO of Drop (formerly Massdrop). Drop is an electronics brand that creates products based on feedback from enthusiast communities. Steve and Drop aren’t household names — you’ve very likely...
92 min
144
Product lessons from Cash App & Carbon Health —...
Our second episode is with Ayo Omojola, VP of Product at Carbon Health and the founding product manager for Cash App at Square, where he co-created the Cash Card. Tapping into his experience working in heavily regulated spaces, we dive into how he finds s
71 min
145
Molly Graham’s management lessons from Google, ...
Our first episode is with Molly Graham, who helped scale Facebook, Quip, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in their early days, and is now the COO of Lambda School. We dive into her thoughts on management, from the traps that are easy to fall into, to why yo
76 min
146
Preview of In Depth from First Round
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. We’ll cover a lot of ground and a wide range of...
2 min