451 Posts found for Source: First Round Review

Great meetings don’t just happen, they’re meticulously crafted. At its best, an executive meeting strengthens the bonds of your leadership team, surfaces mission-critical problems facing the business, and carves out plans for the future. But as you wade into the executive meeting waters, there are waves that can toss you around.

The executive team’s time is worth a lot, so it’s a shame to waste it. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Communication, Management, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

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If I ask you to take one for the team now, next time I’m giving you what you want. I always put the business first in the short-term and the employee first in the long-term. […] Meaning, when there’s that misalignment, I’m not going to let that misalignment last too long.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jean-Denis Grezè | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

If you’re a hiring manager, this is the perfect time to check in and rededicate yourself to running an even better process, whether that’s by doubling down on your existing approach or trying out new hiring tactics that break the mold. In particular, there’s an opportunity to reconsider the very qualities you’re hunting for.

Over the years, we’ve interviewed hundreds of startup leaders, collecting their go-to … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Hiring, Human Resources

If a manager gives me a task, I like to say, “Here’s all the other priorities on my plate — where does this new task fall?”

Content: Quotation | Author: Rosa Hamalainen | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Career, Management

People often wonder how startup CEOs spend their time. Sam Corcos, the co-founder and CEO of Levels, shares a little about how he spent his time for the first two years, backed up with data. The goal? For folks out there with hopes to become a startup CEO, you can get a behind-the-scenes deep dive into how you might actually spend your time on the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Sam Corcos | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

If you want to quit because you want to do something else or it’s not for you anymore, that’s a good reason. People aren’t going to work at your company forever. But if you’re quitting because the environment is driving you crazy, as CEO that’s something I can control and shape.

Content: Quotation | Author: Steve El-Hage | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

Be very thoughtful about who’s in the interview loop, and make sure everybody in the loop has veto power. If you don’t care what somebody thinks, don’t put them on the panel. And if you do care what they think, make sure that you empower them to have responsibility in the process.

Content: Quotation | Author: Steve El-Hage | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Hiring, Human Resources

Before a founder starts building their castle, they have to make sure they’ve picked the right piece of land. To help aspiring builders survey potential plots, we’ve gone back through our archives to surface the best advice from first-time entrepreneurs and repeat-founders. The 12 tactics they share here offer more concrete tips for reverse-engineering these fabled eureka moments, whether you’re in the wide-open ideation phase, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Stepping back to understand deeper context and underlying motivation is important because people are notoriously bad at predicting what they want.

Content: Quotation | Author: Sunita Mohanty | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Market Research, Marketing / Sales

What we’re taught when we grow up is that our outcome is 100% correlated to our effort. If I study hard for a test or work hard on a project, I’m going to get a better grade than if I don’t try. So I’ve always just assumed that when things aren’t going well, I just need to work harder. It’s ingrained a lot of habits, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ayo Omojola | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Personal Development

When assessing a low performer, the most important set of exercises to run through are: What is this person’s job? What is expected of them? Do they know that? And then once they do, do they have the desire and the energy to fix it? Then you can go to them and clearly explain, “Here’s what’s expected of you. Here’s what you’re delivering. And here’s … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Molly Graham | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Most people can be exceptional and perform way better than they are today, under the right set of circumstances. And so the question for managers is whether those circumstances can exist in the role that that person is currently in, elsewhere in the company, or if it’s just not a fit at all.

Content: Quotation | Author: Molly Graham | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

When I was managing a team I didn’t have tons of expertise in […] I first started with: Do people’s roles make sense? Do they know how they fit in? How they align to the business? Then the second piece is, do they know what’s expected of them? Do they know what success looks like? 80% of the time when I go into a team … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Molly Graham | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

As a manager, one of the best things you can do is to take your high-performers and make bets on them, stretching them and seeing what they’re made of. Sometimes people are capable of 10X of what you have them working on today. You just have to help them get there.

Content: Quotation | Author: Molly Graham | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management

I push people to focus on, “What is this person responsible for?” not, “How are they doing it?” As a manager, you can give feedback on the “how,” particularly if it’s potentially destructive to the people around them, problematic in terms of draining too many resources, or when the folks you’re managing are more junior. But goals and expectations have to be set around the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Molly Graham | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

True management is the act of making the people around you better. Management is about investing in people, figuring out who they are, what they’re good at, what motivates them, and then aligning the work a company has to do with their role and their growth areas.

Content: Quotation | Author: Molly Graham | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

Tracking the difference between ‘actual’ and ‘target’ is a really important part of your dashboarding process. My team jokingly calls this delta ‘the shame,’ because that’s what drives them to reflect and iterate.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jaleh Rezaei | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Project Management

If speed is the yin, the yang is prioritization. You can’t be fast if you don’t know what’s important.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jaleh Rezaei | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Personal Development

Last year, First Round Review started a podcast. What started as an experiment has turned into 30 episodes (and counting!) with incredible startup leaders all across the org chart at companies like Notion, Lambda School, Plaid, Segment and many more. To celebrate this milestone, they listened back to each episode and plucked out our favorite tidbits of advice from this collection of interviews.

Content: Article | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management