In Depth

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/

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.