In Depth
Welcome to In Depth, a podcast from The 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
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
127
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
128
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
129
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
130
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
131
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
132
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
133
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
134
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
135
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
136
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
137
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
138
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
139
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
140
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
141
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
142
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
143
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
144
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
145
Getting startup employees to stick around & lea...
Flatiron Health’s Chief People Officer Alex Buder Shapiro shares her lessons from scaling, including resolving workplace conflict with techniques from couples therapy and getting employees to stick around long-term at startups.
57 min
146
How to find product/market fit before you start...
UserLeap founder & CEO Ryan Glasgow stops by to share tactics for validating startup ideas, approaching early customer conversations, operationalizing product principles, and teaching yourself founder-led sales.
65 min
147
Nick Caldwell on the engineering cultures that ...
In this episode with Nick Caldwell, we have a wide-reaching conversation on his storied engineering leadership career at Microsoft, Reddit, Looker, and now Twitter.
59 min
148
“Everyone wants a silver bullet” — Selling less...
In this episode with Sam Taylor, we get super tactical with the lessons he’s picked up from his career as an early sales leader at top product-led growth companies — Dropbox, Quip and now Loom.
61 min
149
The do’s and don’ts of scaling from dozens of e...
In this episode with McKenna Quint, most recently Head of People at Plaid, she unpacks the unique people challenges when aggressively scaling, including decoding data, when to pull from existing playbooks, and looking for your first people leader.
66 min
150
A look at one repeat founder’s frameworks for v...
Waseem Daher is the co-founder and CEO of Pilot and previous co-founder of Ksplice (acquired by Oracle) and Zulip (acquired by Dropbox). He digs into the first year of validating a startup idea, choosing an ICP, and outlining the product roadmap.
66 min