In Depth

Our guest today is Aaron Zamost.After a comms career at Google, Aaron joined Square in 2011 to lead corporate communications. He went on to join the exec team, reporting directly to Jack Dorsey and leading the comms strategy for Square’s IPO in 2015. In an interesting move, he also took on leading the people organization as well, running both orgs up until he left in late 2020. In addition to lecturing at UC Berkeley's School of Law, Aaron now runs Background Partners, a communications consulting firm.In today’s conversation, we dive deep into what founders need to know about both external and internal comms. Aaron shares more on: Why comms deserves its own spot on the exec team and why most founders shouldn’t hire PR agencies. The jobs-to-be-done of the comms function in the early days of a startup — and why it’s not a good customer acquisition strategy. A 3-question framework for simplifying your company message early on. How to prep for interviews and deal with difficult lines of questioning. How to think about commenting on events in the news, or message layoffs to the team. Given how much the media landscape has changed in recent years, and how many founders are grappling with internal comms issues these days, Aaron’s advice makes for a valuable listen. We also recommend checking out his two excellent Medium posts:-What’s Your Hour in ‘Silicon Valley Time’?No, you don’t need to hire an agencyYou can follow Aaron on Twitter at @zamosta. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson. 

Our guest today is Daniel Debow, a VP of Product for Demand at Shopify. Daniel is a three-time founder and a seasoned M&A pro. Daniel oversaw the process of all three of his companies’ acquisitions and has helped continue to grow them at scale inside larger corporations. His most recent startup, Helpful, was acquired by Shopify in 2019. Before that, he co-founded Rypple which was acquired by Salesforce in 2011. His first startup, Workbrain, was acquired by Infor in 2007. In our conversation today, we focus on all the moving parts of running an M&A process as a startup . Daniel shares tactical advice on: What conditions founders should look out for at potential acquirers, as well as what established companies can do to create a more “founder-friendly” environment How to spot clear buying signals and weed out companies that are just “tire kicking” How to build meaningful relationships with executives of all types, not just corp dev teams. Techniques for including your investors in the M&A process, as well as messaging tips when opening up about the process to the wider team.  You can follow Daniel on Twitter at @ddebow. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson. 

Our guest is Anna Binder, Head of People at Asana.We go back to the earliest days when Anna first took on the role, starting with how she prioritized the initial things to tackle as a new People exec and combing through a slew of opinions that bubbled up from other folks at the company. Next, she shares her tactical playbook for creating a culture of feedback for not just low-performers, but high-performers, too. Anna also unpacks her methodology of conscious leadership, and how the best leaders always interrogate how the opposite might be true. She shares her insights from working on Asana’s executive team for nearly 7 years, and how to build habits to make sure this group is a healthy nucleus at the center of the company. We end with a rapid-fire round, with some quick hits tackling onboarding, all-hands meetings, and mentors. You can follow Anna on Twitter @annaebinder.You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/firstround and twitter.com/brettberson 

Mike Boufford, CTO of Greenhouse, shares insights on scaling a career at a startup. Topics include building a supportive environment, preparing for growth phases, reading books on various executive areas, and reducing attrition. He also discusses the importance of adapting, coaching team members, and evaluating hires based on versatility and adaptability.

Our guest is Peter Kazanjy, co-founder of Atrium and author of “Founding Sales: The Early Stage Go-to-Market Handbook.”As an early-stage founder, there’s something comforting about the build stage. You’re tinkering with the nascent product, honing your MVP and dreaming up the possibilities of how much folks are going to love what you create. But once you get out of that comfort zone of quietly building and start trying to sell, things tend to get infinitely more complicated.In today’s conversation, Pete lays out the roadmap for getting founder-led sales right in the early days. From small exercises to build up your selling muscles, like his “turbo rapport” challenge to thornier topics like self-diagnosing if your selling narrative is working, he’s got tons of advice for breaking down the art of a sales call. Pete also shares tailored guidance for folks who are facing the additional hurdle of creating a new category (and trying to create a new budget), with the playbooks he used building Atrium.You can follow Peter on Twitter @Kazanjy. Check out his articles for First Round Review, including his lessons on building a customer advisory board.You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/firstround and twitter.com/brettberson

Todd Jackson is back on the mic to guest host another product-market fit focused episode this week. He chats with Deepak Rao, co-founder and CEO of X1, a consumer fintech startup that’s building a credit card for a new generation. Just last week, X1 announced a $15 million funding round. But we’re here to rewind the clock and unpack how the startup got to this point. As you’ll hear in today’s conversation, the path required a dramatic pivot. Here’s a preview of what Deepak shares: The emotional journey of how the pandemic forced them to abandon the initial idea for a personal loan product. How the team validated demand for the new idea by focusing on the launch announcement and getting all of the branding exactly right — before building anything. The launch strategy that crashed X1’s website and built up a 600K long waitlist. . Why finding product-market fit is different for consumer companies, plus advice on fundraising in tough times. Whether you’re in the early innings of starting a company, going through a tough pivot yourself, or planning out your product’s launch there are tons of helpful tactics here.You can follow Deepak on Twitter at @drao1. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @tjack.

Our guest today is Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the bestselling author of “Contagious” and “Invisible Influence.” Today we’re chatting about his follow-up book, “The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind.” Founders start companies to change industries and behaviors, but change is hard. Going back to chemistry, Jonah notes that catalysts don't just create change by pushing harder or exerting more energy — they remove or lower the barriers to change. (In the book Jonah offers a helpful framework about 5 specific barriers to change, called REDUCE — which stands for reactance, endowment, distance, uncertainty, and corroborating evidence.)We focus on how founders and leaders can do that in the context of building and selling products. Jonah shares his thoughts on: Whether you truly need to build a 10X better product and why a startup’s biggest competitor is actually inertia.  The role of urgency in selling or getting someone to adopt a product. How to apply the freemium approach in different contexts, like with physical products. Techniques for negotiating price, as well as the role that identity and category creation play in persuasion and product adoption. You can follow Jonah on Twitter at @j1berger. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson. 

Todd Jackson is back on the mic to guest host another product-focused episode this week. He chats with David Hsu, founder and CEO of Retool, a low-code platform for developers building custom internal tools.Today, Retool is valued at over $3 billion and has some of the biggest companies in the world building apps on its platform. But in this conversation, David rewinds the clock to Retool’s early days. He discusses why plenty of smart folks thought the idea for Retool would fail and that the product’s developer focus would sink the company.We explore why David had such strong conviction in his target customer, even in the face of doubters, and his early lessons on finding language-market fit. David also explains how Retool nabbed its earliest customers (which includes Brex, DoorDash and a Fortune 500 BigCo) and shares his playbook for creating incredibly tight feedback cycles with these early evangelists.On the surface, Retool’s path to product-market fit seems incredibly smooth. But as David tells it, there were plenty of bumps in the road — and he’s got tons of advice for early-stage founders that are finding their footing.

Rich Rao, VP of the Small Business Group at Meta, shares insights from his extensive background at Google and Meta. He discusses how his engineering perspective shapes go-to-market strategies, highlighting structured product roadmaps and the importance of creativity in marketing. Rao reflects on the early days of Gmail at Google, detailing critical pricing lessons and the challenges of moving from free trials. He also emphasizes the value of partnerships and engaging early adopters for successful product launches.

Our guest is Sara Varni, CMO of Attentive, a conversational commerce platform. Before joining Attentive, Sara was Twilio’s CMO and spent 10 years as a senior marketing leader at Salesforce.In today’s conversation, we talk about what startups can learn from enterprise marketing playbooks, particularly around creating and honing a corporate message. Sara takes us behind the scenes at how companies like Twilio and Salesforce craft a corporate message from the ground up, and tweak it as the company grows. She also shares specific advice for marketers with sights on the CMO seat, including how to form collaborative, not combative relationships with sales counterparts.You can follow Sara on Twitter at @SaraVarniBrightYou can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/firstround and twitter.com/brettberson