Laura Behrens Wu

People think you find product-market fit once and then you’re good. In our experience, you find product-market fit for one customer segment or for one product, and then you need to continuously find product-market fit for new products that you launch or for new customer segments that you’re entering into.

How Corporations and Startups Are Redefining Corporate Venturing

The Mack Institute’s Corporate Venturing Report presents a data-driven analysis of how corporations are engaging with startups today. Based on a systematic review of the world’s 500 largest companies, it reveals a corporate venturing landscape defined by structured, mutually beneficial partnerships. These collaborations enable corporations and startups to access new technologies, build business ecosystems, and tackle complex challenges.

Matt Lerner

Before you can become a “growth machine” you need to become a learning machine. The first overarching goal is to turn your startup into an instrument for discovering your big growth levers.

Shensi Ding

When you do founder-led sales you’re not just learning how to sell your product, you’re learning how to tell a story. This is essential to sell the vision to investors or to candidates you’re trying to hire.

How I Spent 17,784 Hours in 5 Years as a Startup Founder

Sam Corcos, co-founder & CEO of Levels, shares a detailed look into exactly how he spent 5 years building the company, with reflections on what changed in the transition from very early-stage to scale up.

Editor’s Note: This is a follow-up article. Corcos first published something similar after only two years building Levels. See An Exact Breakdown of How One CEO Spent[ Read more ]

Claire Hughes Johnson

We always talk about scaling companies, but companies are just collections of people. If you’re not really thoughtful about them and what they need to succeed, it’s going to be hard to succeed as a company.

Abhishek Agrawal

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was that when you’re starting a company, you often think you’re picking an idea, but you’re really picking a customer. It’s actually pretty easy to change your idea, but it’s way harder to change the customer you’re serving.

Every time you change customers, you leave all this learning on the table and start from scratch. Whereas … [ Read more ]

0-$5M: When, Who, and How to Make Your First Sales Hire

Expert advice from Dropbox, Figma and Stripe on timing your first sales hire, finding the right candidate profile and creating effective onboarding to successfully transition from founder-led sales to a scalable revenue team.

5 Tips for Finding the Right Angels

Not all investors are created equal. Entrepreneurs should look for ones who share their vision.

Emily Anhalt

The great myth of entrepreneurship is that the founder’s path will get you all the autonomy, validation and recognition that you’re craving. It won’t — definitely not right away, and often not at all.

Emily Anhalt

As a founder, instead of thinking, “Can I do this by myself?” you should be thinking “Do I have to do this by myself? Or would someone else benefit by taking this on?”

Emily Anhalt

Founders work for 10 years like no one else will so they can live a life no one else can. They take smaller salaries and sacrifice relationships for the 1% chance that their company will exit.

0-$5M: How to Nail Founder-Led Sales

First Round partner Meka Asonye sits down with founders and first sales hires to unpack 6 specific tactics for learning to embrace founder-led sales instead of avoiding it.

Derek Lidow, Tom Ehrenfeld

Entrepreneurs invent and create enduring change in one of three ways: by scaling supply, scaling demand, or scaling simplicity.

Bill Gurley

Stephen Covey used to talk about your circle of influence, and Buffett talks about your circle of competence. Macro things are not things that start-ups can impact or control. So there’s not much reason for them to affect your thoughts about whether you would start a company or not. They might add anxiety, but I don’t know that they have any real impact.

Do Accelerators Improve Startup Success Rates?

Accelerator programs boost startup performance across the board, but maximizing that success depends on program design, Wharton research shows.

Jonah Berger

A startup’s biggest competition isn’t an established player, it’s inertia.