All of our First-time founders articles
A look at one repeat founder’s frameworks for validating ideas — Pilot’s Waseem Daher
https://waseem.substack.com/ [email protected] twitter.com/firstround twitter.com/brettberson Waseem Daher: I like to ask three questions about a business that I'm evaluating, or an opportunity I'm evaluating, and this is principally geared towards like a business to business product, but I
Starting a Company in a Space You’re Not an Expert in — This Founder Shares 6 Lessons
From the importance of founder naivety, to seeking out the doubters, to rigorously assessing founder/market fit, Irving Fain shares his lessons from building a company in a space he wasn't an expert in, as well as other takeaways from the earliest days at his startup, Bowery Farming.
The story behind Slack’s marketing and the leap from marketer to CEO — Abstract’s Kelly Watkins
[email protected] twitter.com/firstround twitter.com/brettberson https://medium.com/hackernoon/how-to-hire-your-first-head-of-marketing-67c43dd2cd73 https://review.firstround.com/build-products-that-solve-real-problems-with-this-lightweight-jtbd-framework KELLY WATKINS Brett Berson: Well, thank you for joining us Kelly. Kelly Watkins:
Hiring a VP of Engineering? Use This Framework from Shopify’s VPE to Get it Right
After more than 20 years in tech, eight companies, and thousands of hires, Shopify's Farhan Thawar shares his go-to-framework for snagging a VP of Engineering. From the skills that are most important to the questions to ask and red flags to watch out for, his advice will help founders dive several l
How Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta Parses Through Mountains of Advice as a First-Time Founder
Today’s episode is with Marco Zappacosta, co-founder and CEO of Thumbtack. He’s spent the last 13 years building the company into a billion-dollar business — and it’s his first and only job after graduating college.
This GTM-Leader-Turned-Investor Crowdsources Early Lessons From Stripe, Figma & More
As he makes the transition from operator to investor, Meka Asonye looks back on his career as a sales leader at Stripe and Mixpanel to offer tactical takeaways and go-to-market lessons — crowdsourcing additional advice from the top revenue leaders in his network.
Upstart just went public — CEO Dave Girouard shares why it isn’t a typical success story
Today’s episode is with Dave Girouard, the CEO and co-founder of Upstart, an AI-powered lending platform that recently went public. Before founding Upstart, Dave was President of Google Enterprise, and spent 8 years building Google's billion dollar cloud apps business.
Start with the story — Drift’s David Cancel on lessons he’s learned as a 5X founder
Today’s episode is with David Cancel. David has been a CEO and founder of multiple different companies throughout his career. He’s also been a software engineer, a serial CTO, and the Chief Product Officer at Hubspot, giving him a unique lens into company building and leadership at different levels.
Lessons from a first-time CEO — Steve El-Hage on learning everything the hard way
Given the high-stakes nature of every hire, interviewing chops are always in need of sharpening. We’ve spent the past few months reaching out to some of the most thoughtful company builders in our network to pose a simple question: What’s your favorite interview question to ask and why?