In Depth

Today’s episode is with Gagan Biyani, co-founder and CEO of Maven, a company that empowers the world’s experts to offer cohort-based courses directly to their audience.After being early at 3 startups that achieved over $1 million in run-rate in their first six months of going live, Gagan has learned some valuable lessons and seen a wide range of outcomes — from Udemy going on to IPO in 2021, to Sprig shutting down in 2017.In our conversation, we dive deeper into the process of starting a startup. We start on generating ideas and open-ended exploration. We talk about key signals to look for in the market and the competition, as well as the mistakes he sees many aspiring founders make.Next, he recaps his concept of minimum viable tests for validating early versions of your idea. As we mention in the episode, Gagan wrote a popular article on The First Round Review last year, where he shared much more detail about his “Minimum Viable Testing Process.”Then, we dig into how you start bringing the idea to life, from exploring different potential business models, to selecting your co-founders and managing that relationship as the company grows.If you’re eager to hear even more on finding startup ideas from Gagan, he’s teaming up with The Hustle’s Sam Parr to run an Ideation Bootcamp on the Maven platform — learn more and sign up here by May 2nd if you’re interested.You can follow Gagan on Twitter at @gaganbiyani. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson.

Today’s episode is with Kaitlyn Knopp, founder and CEO of Pequity, which automates HR workflows to make compensation more equitable and scalable.Prior to starting Pequity, Kaitlyn built compensation programs and teams at companies like Instacart, Cruise, and Google — bringing a deep well of experience to this often complicated topic.We start our conversation with her advice on the traps founders need to avoid when they’re making their first hires. She sketches out a lightweight framework of how to think about comp at this early stage, from broad levels to an initial comp philosophy.We then get into the pros and cons of negotiating offers, as well as creative approaches you can bring to other aspects of comp outside of salary, such as the exercise window. Kaitlyn also shares tons of tips around how to communicate the value of equity, especially with candidates who’ve never worked at a startup before.In the back half of our conversation, we dig into the comp challenges that come up as a company starts to grow quickly. Kaitlyn shares advice on retaining existing employees through techniques like equity refreshes. We also get into the psychology of bonuses, as well as how to navigate inflation and salary adjustments.Kaitlyn shares her take on the recent trend of offering very individualized packages, and she ends on the importance of helping employees to fully understand their comp, and not shying away from topics like dilution and tax considerations.You can follow Kaitlyn on Twitter at @KaitlynKnopp. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson.For more information on Cocoon, visit http://meetcocoon.com/

Today’s episode is with Nairi Hourdajian, the VP of Communications, Content and Community Marketing at Figma.Prior to joining Figma, Nairi was the Chief Marketing Officer at Canaan, an early-stage venture capital firm. In 2013, she became Uber’s first communications person and spent the next 3 years building out the function. Before getting into tech, Nairi came from the world of politics. She was a VP at Glover Park Group, a communications consulting firm started by former Clinton officials, and she also served as a policy director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and as a staff assistant to then-Senator Joe Biden.Our conversation focuses on what a great communications strategy looks like at early-stage startups. Nairi breaks down the basics for founders who aren’t familiar with this function, and shares advice for thinking beyond just announcing your Series A funding. She shares lots of thoughts on crafting foundational messaging for different audiences and shaping the company narrative — with examples from both Uber and Figma, as well as startups she’s advised.Next, we get into the nuts and bolts of building relationships with reporters. Nairi shares her take on handling negative stories about your competitors, and offers tons of tactical pointers on how to prepare for a media interview.We ended on her advice for assembling the team that can help you shape and execute on your comms strategy — from working with agencies and freelancers, to making your first full-time comms hire.You can follow Nairi on Twitter at @NairiHourdaj. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson.

Today’s episode is with Jack Altman, co-founder & CEO of Lattice. There were so many topics we could have gotten into with Jack as it relates to scaling as a founder and CEO, but we decided to dive deep on executive hiring, a huge challenge for founders. The conversation starts with how the hiring profile for executives changes as the company grows. Jack is a strong believer that you should focus on hiring someone who’s a great fit for the next 18-24 months, not the next 5 or 10 years. (Here's the blog post he mentioned about the different stages a CEO faces.)He also talks about the traps of hiring “too big,” whether that’s over indexing on BigCo experience, or focusing on seniority and titles that don’t match your startup’s current challenges. Instead, Jack shares more about why founders should focus on getting good at assessing and taking a chance on more junior, undiscovered talent. Next, we dig deep into his end-to-end hiring process, from how he sources folks and what he asks in interviews, to why he sometimes does references on a candidates’ references. Whether it’s diving into how a leader might build out their team, or the red flags that signal that an executive candidate doesn’t have an ownership mentality, Jack shares tons of tactical pointers.We also get into where executive hiring errors come from, as well as the leading performance indicators to look for and what to do when a new executive leader doesn’t work out. We end by chatting about promoting internally versus hiring externally, and why you should think about your executive team like you’re constructing a portfolio.You can follow Jack on Twitter at @jaltma. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson.

Amber Feng, Co-founder and CTO of Cocoon, shares her insights from eight years at Stripe. She discusses the unexpected traits of high-achievers in engineering and the debate between honing technical skills versus management roles. Amber highlights the importance of understanding user perspectives and effective communication in tech. As a first-time founder, she reveals lessons learned from Patrick Collison and provides advice for engineers looking to launch their own startups, emphasizing the need for a complementary team and adaptability.

Today’s episode is with Meka Asonye, a Partner at First Round Capital. This week marks the one year anniversary since he joined, making the transition from seasoned GTM leader to full-time early-stage investor.Prior to First Round, Meka served as the VP of Sales & Services at Mixpanel, where he ran the more than 100-person global revenue team and owned the customer lifecycle from first website visit to renewal. Meka also spent four years at Stripe as it scaled from 250 to 2000 people and matured its sales org. When he first joined in 2016, he served as one of the payments company’s early account executives, leading their first attempts to go upmarket and land enterprise logos. For the next three years, he headed up Stripe’s Startup/SMB business.In today’s conversation, Meka starts by digging into his playbook for founder-led sales, from what a great first customer conversation looks like, to how to self-diagnose what went wrong. He also shares advice for founders making their first hire, including the leveling mistake that’s easy to make, and what to ask in the interview and in reference calls. He also offers thoughts on comp and the leading indicators to look for after onboarding.We then dig into structuring early pilots, from what makes for a good design partner, to how to make sure your ICP is well defined enough. We also cover helpful tactics for customer success, which Meka finds is often the most overlooked aspect of go-to-market. Throughout the conversation, we also touch on how Meka’s experiences have translated into his first year as a VC. We end on his advice for startup folks looking to transition into venture.To read more of Meka’s go-to-market advice for founders, check out his article in the First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/this-gtm-leader-turned-investor-crowdsources-early-lessons-from-stripe-figma-and-more You can follow Meka on Twitter at @BigMekaStyle. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson.

Today’s episode is with Max Rhodes, the co-founder and CEO of Faire, an online wholesale marketplace that connects independent retailers and brands.Prior to starting Faire in 2017, Max spent several years at Square, where he was a founding member of Square Capital, the first product manager on Square Cash, and a Director of Consumer Product for Caviar.In today’s conversation, we dive deep into how startups can get international expansion right. After launching in the U.K. and Netherlands in March 2021, Faire company expanded into countries like France, Germany, Italy and the Nordic region. They’re now in 15 markets, with over 700 employees in 10 offices around the world. After sharing the company’s origin story and initial strategy, Max offers a helpful analogy that helped him decide when to go international, and details some lessons he learned from other companies like DoorDash and Airbnb.Next, Max takes us through the nuts and bolts of how the Faire team approached their first international launch, from staffing and operations, to how they thought about local competitors. Max also walks us through the operating cadence and strategic planning process that powered Faire’s international growth. We also talk about the human side of scaling internationally, and the growing pains that come along with it. To help mitigate the effects, Max shares how he’s implemented the concepts from the First Round Review article on “Giving away your Legos.” Read the article here: https://review.firstround.com/give-away-your-legos-and-other-commandments-for-scaling-startups You can follow Max on Twitter at @MaxRhodesOK. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson.

Today’s episode is with Jeanne DeWitt Grosser, Head of Americas Revenue and Growth for Stripe, where she’s responsible for all sales functions and leads the company’s enterprise strategy. She joined Stripe after a career in sales at Google and also serving as Dialpad’s Chief Revenue Officer.In today’s conversation, we dive super deep into all things pricing. To start, Jeanne outlines the trade-offs when it comes to usage-based pricing versus SaaS pricing, and how usage-based gets your company more closely aligned with the customer. She also debates the merits of hybrid or tiered pricing that Stripe has implemented and provides tips for other companies looking to go this route.Next, she explains her philosophy of treating pricing like a product, and how this shows up in Stripe’s org design. Jeanne outlines some of the pricing experiments that have had the biggest impact on how the company does business, and her tips for getting a steady drumbeat of customer feedback.To wrap up, she shares her advice for founders when it comes to treating pricing as an art and a science. If you’re in sales, or are a founder just starting to think about pricing your product, you won’t want to miss Jeanne’s insights she’s picked up over the course of her career. She’s got plenty of ideas for small startups and larger companies alike. Along the way, Jeanne provides plenty of examples from her time at Stripe to illustrate her playbook in action.You can follow Jeanne on Twitter at @jdewitt29You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/firstround and twitter.com/brettberson

Today’s episode is with Ravi Mehta, who is formerly the Chief Product Officer at Tinder, and taught product strategy as an Executive in Residence at Reforge.In today’s conversation, we dive exceptionally deep into product strategy, starting with what Ravi sees as the most common disconnect between product strategy and what product teams actually work on day-to-day. In the bulk of our discussion, we walk through the core tenants of what he calls the product strategy stack, which includes the company mission, company strategy, product strategy, product roadmap, and product goals.Next, he unpacks his alternative approach to OKRs, called NCTs. He makes the case that outlining narratives, commitments, and tasks sidesteps some of the most common headaches when it comes to OKRs, and gives suggestions for implementing NCTs within your own product teams.Strategy is often misunderstood and has come to mean all sorts of different things. What struck me about Ravi is how clearly he’s able to articulate these amorphous ideas like “mission” or “vision.” He’s also got plenty of examples from his own career at TripAdvisor and Tinder, plus his work as an advisor for other fast-growing startups.You can follow Ravi on Twitter at @ravi_mehta.You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/firstround and twitter.com/brettberson

Today’s episode is with Arielle Jackson. For the past 7 years, she’s helped hundreds of companies build their positioning and brands from the ground up, both as our Marketing Expert in Residence here at First Round and in her own consulting work.Before helping early-stage startups, Arielle started her career in Product Marketing at Google, where she helped launch and grow Google Books and AdWords before leading marketing for Gmail. She then joined Square, where she led the launch of the Square Stand. She then headed up marketing & communications at Cover, an Android app that was acquired by Twitter.Given that she’s worked with so many companies, Arielle is a pro at spotting common patterns when it comes to early marketing, so today we spend our time digging into the challenges and missteps she’s seen so many founders run into.From category creation and company purpose, to messaging, brand personality and launch strategy, Arielle details both common pitfalls to avoid and the exercises and frameworks that she shares with founders in her consulting work.Whether it’s about not falling into the trap of focusing too much on other startup competitors, relying on emotional instead of functional benefits, or coming with unrealistic PR expectations, Arielle has tons of examples to bring these concepts to life. If you are looking to learn more, Arielle has turned the brand strategy work she does at First Round into a cohort-based course, powered by Maven. The course runs in February and applications close on Jan 28th – find out more and apply here.Additionally, here are the resources we talked about in the episodeArielle’s First Round Review articles:- Positioning Your Startup is Vital — Here’s How to Nail It- ​​Three Moves Every Startup Founder Must Make to Build a Brand That Matters- So You Think You’re Ready to Hire a Marketer? Read This First.The books on the subject that Arielle recommends:- Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind- Play Bigger: How Rebels and Innovators Create New Categories and Dominate Markets- Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life- Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our DecisionsYou can follow Arielle on Twitter at @hiiamArielle. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson.