Todd Jackson’s filling in as host again this week. (As a reminder, he’s hosting a few product-focused episodes this season — all about finding product-market fit.)Today, Todd chats with Andrew Ofstad, co-founder of Airtable. In our conversation, we go deep into Airtable’s early days, and how they navigated the journey of finding traction and scaling.Here’s a preview of what Todd and Andrew cover:How the founders came together, their vision for the product, and what the initial prototypes looked like. Airtable’s alpha, beta, and launch timelines, as well as their early traction.The challenges of creating a horizontal product that can do many things, including identifying initial use cases and figuring out how to describe what they were building.How to approach pricing and competition, as well as their early go-to-market strategy.What the next 3 years will look like for Airtable, and how they’ve navigated scaling while staying true to their vision.Whether you’re a founder validating your own idea, or a product leader looking for growth advice, there are tons of tactics here that go much deeper than the typical founding stories you hear.You can follow Andrew on Twitter at @aofstad. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @tjack.

Today’s episode is with Ian Wong, co-founder and CTO of Opendoor. Before founding Opendoor, Ian was Square’s first data scientist, where he developed machine learning models and infrastructure for fraud detection.In today’s conversation, we cover his essential advice for how to integrate data science into your startup. As Ian puts it, in the early innings it might make sense for your startup to be operations heavy. But as you start to scale, data science becomes a critical component for running a business with longevity in mind. We dive into how both Square and Opendoor approached this transition.Along those lines, we discuss some of the early considerations for your fledgling data science team, including the type of folks to hire for the early team, like whether to look for generalists or specialists, and how to set up your interview loops. Ian also dives into his lessons on structuring the data science function so that it’s deeply integrated with the rest of the technical org.Next, we dive into some of his biggest lessons as a first-time founder and CTO, including his practice with Opendoor’s leadership team of doing pre-mortems to predict why something might not work. He also encourages founders to run through a bi-yearly exercise of re-writing their job rec.You can follow Ian on Twitter at @ihatYou 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 Sidharth Kakkar, founder and CEO of Subscript, a subscription intelligence platform that empowers B2B SaaS leaders to better understand their revenue. (Read more about the company in this Techcrunch article.) Previously, he was the founder, CEO of Freckle, an education platform that grew to serve 10 million students and was acquired by Renaissance Learning in 2019. As a repeat founder, Sidharth picked up a ton of valuable lessons, particularly when it comes to company culture and management. Right from the start, he knew he wanted to build Subscript to be global, distributed, and asynchronous. That’s why there are no internal company meetings. Everyone also operates autonomously, deciding what to work on for themselves.We dive into both the philosophy behind this unique approach and the nitty gritty details of how exactly it works in practice. Here’s a preview: How to share company updates asynchronously every week. Advice on how to approach goal-setting and performance feedback, while minimizing micromanagement. Tips for improving transparency and documentation, plus details on Subscript’s running product/market fit journal.  Thoughts on how to assess asynchronous communication skills when hiring. How this culture impacts a founder’s role and schedule. There’s tons of food for thought in here, whether you’re a founder thinking about shaping your company culture, or a manager looking for some fresh ideas. You can follow Sidharth on Twitter at @sikakkar. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson.

Our guest is Sara Clemens, most recently COO of Twitch and former COO of Pandora.In this interview, we explore the nuances of the COO role, which can vary drastically across different companies. We cover: The three main COO archetypes and which sorts of folks are best suited for those roles. The tactical elements of being a COO, including Sara’s advice for what good strategy actually looks like, and how to truly create a no-blame culture. Sara’s lessons on keeping pace as a company doubles in size, including her tips on sketching out “decision rights.” Guidance for CEOs considering bringing on a COO to the executive suite. You can follow Sara on Twitter at @ClemensSaraYou can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/firstround and twitter.com/brettberson Learn more about our sponsor, Cocoon, at meetcocooon.com

For our 60th episode, we’re doing things a little bit differently — with a new guest host! Welcome to Todd Jackson, who’s filling in for Brett Berson this week.Todd is also a Partner at First Round, and the episodes he hosts will mostly focus on product, given his previous product roles, from the VP of Product & Design at Dropbox and Director of Product Management at Twitter, to being a PM at Facebook and Google, leading Newsfeed and Gmail. He was also a founder — his startup Cover was backed by First Round in 2013 and later acquired by Twitter. (For more on Todd and his advice for company building, check out his article in The First Round Review from a couple years ago.)Today, Todd chats with Jiaona Zhang, the VP of Product at Webflow. (She goes by JZ though, so you’ll hear that throughout their conversation.) You might remember her popular Review article, Don’t Serve Burnt Pizza (And Other Lessons in Building Minimum Lovable Products)Before joining Webflow, JZ was the Senior Director of Product Management at WeWork, a Product Lead at Airbnb, and a PM at Dropbox and at Pocket Gems, a mobile gaming company. JZ also teaches product at Stanford and mentors a lot of rising product leaders, so she’s the perfect person to talk to about building a career in product.As the framework for the entire conversation, we start with why she doesn’t think of it as a career ladder, but rather as three distinct phases: contributing as a PM, managing PMs, and then leading the function. Here’s a preview of what Todd and JZ cover:The PM role. Advice on breaking into the function, what you should look for when you’re a candidate interviewing for PM roles, and the mistakes that are easy to make early on.The managing phase, including how to think more strategically as you get more senior, archetypes to look for when hiring, and her advice for first-time managers. The executive phase. JZ talks about thinking of your org as a product, and she shares super tactical pointers for working with your CEO, your peers on the exec team, and the board.Whether you’re trying to break into product, grow in your career, or you’re a founder looking for hiring advice, there’s tons in this conversation for you.You can follow JZ on Twitter at @jiaonazhang. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @tjack.

Today’s episode is with Russ Laraway, a seasoned leader who's been at Google, Twitter, Candor Inc, Qualtrics, and is now the Chief People Officer for Goodwater CapitalSince we last had Russ on the show, he’s written a new book, titled: “When They Win, You Win.”On today’s episode, we dive deep into the management frameworks and original research that Russ discusses in his book. He starts by pointing out how broken our process for selecting managers is to begin with, where we often default to just promoting the highest performer on a team, rather than looking for folks who explicitly demonstrate leadership chops. He explains the raw ingredients that point to whether someone’s ready to take on a management role — even if they weren’t the best individual contributor of the bunch. And if you’re looking to hire a manager from outside of the company, he’s got plenty of interview questions to suss out the right hire.Next, we explore the heaps of research that Russ did in writing this book, and how that led to him pulling together a few specific frameworks for managers to lean on. This includes a list of the behaviors of highly-engaging managers — and how you can put these into practice.As Russ discusses in today’s interview, there are countless resources out there on how to be a better manager — often with tons of conflicting advice. Russ distills all of this down to an essential, research-backed guide for the modern manager that cuts through the noise.You can follow Russ on Twitter at @ral1. His book, “When They Win, You Win” comes out on June 7, 2022.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 Nate Stewart, CPO of Cockroach Labs, the creator of database product CockroachDB.In today’s conversation, we cover his essential advice for building a highly-technical product. He sketches out how the Cockroach team decided on the specific use case for its database product. Nate explains the steps the team took to reach conviction on their go-forward plan — which meant saying no to a lot of customers who didn’t align with the product roadmap. Nate dives into the tactical ways to avoid taking on too many customer commitments, which he calls tech debt for product teams.Next, Nate dives into his advice for approaching design partnerships, especially when handling more conservative enterprise clients. He explains the different types of design partners, and why you should have all of those represented in the early days of your startup.Finally, we wrap up with his advice for other product leaders, including how to create a rock-solid partnership with a CEO as the first head of product, and how he solicits honest feedback across the executive team.You can follow Nate on Twitter at @Nate_StewartYou 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 Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, co-founder and CEO of Promise, a modern government payment solution.In today’s conversation, Phaedra explores the ins and outs of selling a product into government. Phaedra pulls back the curtain of how she and the Promise team tackle the extra-long sales cycles, navigate layers of subcontractors, and convince risk-averse decision-makers to take a chance on a startup.We also take a step back to traverse the winding road that led to Promise in its current form. Like plenty of founders before her, Phaedra had to pivot her way into product-market fit. She explains the signals that the first iteration of the product, a bail reform platform, wasn’t going to work as she’d hoped. She then doles out lessons for other founders in the process of pivoting.You can follow Phaedra on Twitter at @phaedraelYou can learn more about our advertiser Cocoon at meetcocoon.comYou 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 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/