The Best of First Round
20+ most popular First Round articles, as voted by our community.
First round, first hires, first product, first customers — we’ve helped @NotionHQ, @Roblox, @Uber, @Square, and 300 others tackle these firsts and more.
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35 Interview Questions for Manager Candidates
We asked top hiring managers and startup leaders to share their favorite questions for interviewing management candidates.
A Founder’s Framework for Understanding Performance vs. Brand Marketing for Your Startup
Startup marketing experts Sarah Emmott and Holly Chen share a multi-step process for how to craft a brand and performance marketing strategy, including how to set goals, allocate the right budget, and…
The 100 Best Bits of Advice Ever Shared on First Round Review
We combed The Review archives for a special compilation of the 100 very best advice published on our digital pages over the last 10 years from folks like Stewart Butterfield, Claire Hughes Johnson and…
First Round on Community Building
Product Hunt is Everywhere
Two years ago, Product Hunt didn't exist. Now it's the toast of the town. In this exclusive article, Found Ryan Hoover tracks its ascent.
First Round on CTO
The Best Advice We Overheard at First Round's CTO Unconference
Our second annual CTO Unconference brought together 160+ of the sharpest technical leaders we know. Here's a rundown of some of the best tactics we heard them share.
First Round on Decision Making
Make Product Decisions Without Doubt — My Lessons from Twitter and Slack
At Twitter and Slack, Paul Rosania built interfaces that millions use each day. Here, he dissects how he eliminated doubt from four high-stakes product decisions.
This Matrix Helps Growing Teams Make Great Decisions
As CTO of Flatiron Health, Gil Shklarski has had to keep a rapidly-growing technical team aligned through many tough decisions. This is the framework that works every time.
First Round on Leadership
A Manager’s Guide to Helping Teams Face Down Uncertainty, Burnout and Perfectionism
Uncertainty, burnout and perfectionism are holding teams back — Liz Fosslien is here to share tactical advice (and her signature witty illustrations) on how managers can help.
«How does your workload feel right now? Is there anything I can take off your plate, help you delegate, or help you deprioritize?»
Radical Candor — The Surprising Secret to Being a Good Boss
Kim Scott cut her teeth as a manager at Apple and Google, and now helps create great leaders as an author and coach for companies like Twitter. Here's the secret that's made all the difference for her.
First Round on Networking
How to Become Insanely Well-Connected
Chris Fralic is a world-class super-connector. Here's how the long-time First Round Partner has methodically built bonds spanning years and careers.
First Round on Product Design
Mastering the Art of the Outcome: How Guru Turned Customer Success Into a Company Cornerstone
At Guru, customer success is at the center of every aspect of company-building, from product design to sales strategy. Co-founder and CEO Rick Nucci shows how a relentless dedication to outcomes gives…
Pull, Don’t Push: How to Drive Product Adoption Like a Catalyst
Marketing expert Jonah Berger has spent years probing into the science behind changing people’s minds, and why becoming an effective change agent is about lowering barriers, not pushing harder. He…
First Round on Product Management
The Best Managers Don’t Fix, They Coach — Four Tools to Add to Your Toolkit
Anita Hossain Choudhry (The Grand, First Round) and Mindy Zhang (Dropbox, Oscar Health) draw on their experiences as executive coaches to unpack why managers fall into the “fixing” trap and make the…
«Empathetic listening means shifting from "What does this mean for me?" to "What's going on for this person?"»
8 Product Hurdles Every Founder Must Clear — This PM-Turned-Founder Shares His Playbooks
Repeat PM turned first-time founder Ryan Glasgow addresses the tough product questions every founder faces, from segmenting the market and iterating on early MVPs, to finding product/market fit and…
«You can't rely on your customers to figure out what to build. They can really only tell you what outcomes they're looking to achieve»
First Round on Product Market Fit
Webflow’s Path to Product-Market Fit — Lessons on Creating a Market with Rigorous Customer Empathy
In this post in our “Paths to Product-Market Fit” series, Webflow’s Bryant Chou sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to tell the story of how he and his co-founders leaned into the power of…
Binti’s Path to Product-Market Fit
In this post in our “Paths to Product-Market Fit” series, Binti’s co-founder and CEO Felicia Curcuru sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to tell the story of how her time spent shadowing…
First Round on Public Relations
The Top Comms Mistakes Startups Make — And How To Avoid Them
After two decades of comms experience with companies like Eventbrite, Yahoo, Mattel and Nike, Terra Carmichael shares four common PR mistakes and her techniques for sidestepping them.
The Best PR Advice You’ve Never Heard - from Facebook’s Head of Tech Communications
Caryn Marooney, Head of Technology Communications for Facebook, shares the PR secrets that help companies get great press.
First Round on Startups
The One Tool Startups Need to Brainstorm, Test and Win
At the heart of the Lean Startup movement, the Business Model Canvas can help early stage startups carve out a successful model.
«Use Post-Its on the Canvas to sketch out your basic business model using your best guesses — your best hypothesis of what will work, Osterwalder says.»
An Exact Breakdown of How One CEO Spent His First Two Years
Sam Corcos, co-founder & CEO of Levels, tracked exactly how he spent the two years since founding the company for a rare inside look at being a startup leader.
«This article isn’t an optimistic or sanitized take on how I’d like to spend my time; it’s an unvarnished look at how I actually spent my time over the last two years.»
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Stop Overcomplicating It: The Simple Guidebook to Upping Your Management Game
Russ Laraway wades through all of the competing opinions, complex frameworks and advice out there on how to be a better manager, creating a simple, data-backed leadership toolkit.
«The activities that make you successful as a manager look nothing like the activities that make you successful as an individual contributor.»
Ditch Your To-Do List and Use These Docs To Make More Impact
After tackling startup challenges from Stripe Press to Figma Education, Brie Wolfson shares her personal collection of templates — the docs that she's used to stay focused on the work that matters and…
The Critical Startup Skills You Might Be Overlooking — And How to Bring Them Into Focus
We’ve combed the extensive Review archives for tactical guidance from some of the sharpest folks we know on how to get better at specific startup skills you’re probably discounting. Leaders like Annie…
The Design Leadership Playbook: How to Hire, Onboard & Manage a High-Impact Design Org
From the high-level perspective of what makes for a great design leader, to the tactical suggestions around the slide that needs to be in your portfolio presentation, Twilio & Segment's Hareem Mannan…
4-Step Pricing Framework to Build Products With Scalable Unit Economics
Pricing pro Dee Sahni shares a highly customizable framework for tweaking your monetization and pricing model so that it scales with you, not against you as the company grows. She then applies the 4…
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