462 Posts found for Source: First Round Review

Tim Urban is the Bruce Lee of long-form. In his inimitable style, he tackles the most enigmatic, entangled topics, ranging from AI to procrastination, from cryonics to picking a life partner. In this exclusive interview, the Wait But Why blogger shares how he distills and presents complex ideas so they’re rich and resonant for others: an act that every startup leader and team must master … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Tim Urban | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Personal Development, Productivity / Work Tips

As a long-time product leader for Chrome at Google, Tyler Odean found himself using persuasion as a tool to herd massive organizations — engineers, designers and executives — toward product decisions and developments. He realized how powerful it was to be able to rally people to his and others’ points of view. Today, he regularly speaks on the topic and applies it in his role … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Tyler Odean | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

Jay Desai has FOMU. As a first-time founder and CEO of health technology startup PatientPing, he’s got a healthy fear of messing up. This anxiety especially bubbles to the surface when it has to do with his team — now over 100 employees — and particularly the seven who report directly to him. He’s seen too many immensely talented and productive teams stall because of … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jay Desai | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Dan Pupius set out to build an anti-fragile hiring process that would adapt to new information, wouldn’t depend on any one person, and would get stronger over time. In this exclusive interview, Pupius shares how he did exactly that by applying well-known mechanics of product development.

Content: Article | Author: Dan Pupius | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Human Resources

When you give a candidate a higher title than the one you’d intended, you’re inevitably doing one of two things: setting them up to underperform in a role they’re not qualified for, or giving them a title they don’t deserve — and sowing discord among your team in the process. Leave this lever alone. It will only come back to bite you. And honestly, if … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Adil Ajmal | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Human Resources

Closing begins with your first candidate interaction. That’s when you should start asking yourself the all-important question: What does this person want to get out of the role, and the company, and can we realistically make it happen for them? The recruiting process needs to be designed to investigate and answer this question. […] The trick is to ask targeted questions to find out what … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Adil Ajmal | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Human Resources

Dr. Jody Foster categorizes the types of people whom others find difficult at work — and shares how to identify and interact with them. She outlines the telltale signs of two of the most common profiles and suggests language to avoid and embrace to make headway with them. Whether you’re 5 or 5,000 people strong at your company, use this guide to troubleshoot these archetypes … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jody Foster | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

Whitnie Low Narcisse, who leads all of First Round’s advisory programs and more, launched its Mentorship Program in 2016. It was up to her to diagnose why mentorship usually goes sideways and design something different. After several successful matching rounds, and hoping to get even better, she wanted to understand what distinguished the most successful mentor-mentee pairs from the pack. What did they have in … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Whitnie Low Narcisse | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Human Resources

Gil Shklarski, CTO at Flatiron Health, has adapted a framework from his executive coach Marcy Swenson to serve as a tool for his team to quickly and efficiently create alignment around decision-making — and at the same time, foster a level of psychological safety that would take fear, self-consciousness and anxiety out of the process.

Content: Article | Author: Gil Shklarski | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Management, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

During the last 20 years, Kim Scott has held leadership roles at some of the biggest and most influential tech companies in the world. Most recently, she advised Dropbox and Twitter. At First Round’s recent CEO Summit, she shared what she believes to be the most important management lessons she’s learned.

Content: Article, Thought Leader | Author: Kim Scott | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

Optimizing a product is always a mix of the grand and the granular. Gina Gotthilf, VP of Growth at language education platform Duolingo, knows that anything you send out to your users — even a dot — yields valuable data. So test it all, internalize every number, and use those results to inform what you do next.

By assiduously testing every notification, app screen and line … [ Read more ]

Content: Case Study | Author: Gina Gotthilf | Source: First Round Review | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business | Company: Duolingo

Over the years here at the Review, we’ve collected and aggregated hundreds of interview questions recommended by top leaders in every field. Our goal in this piece is to present the very best questions we’ve heard for hiring incredible performers — with deep dives into interviewing technical and product candidates in particular. We hope having them all in one place will make your future hiring … [ Read more ]

Content: Career Information | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Interviewing

Scott Crabtree spent 24 years climbing the ladder in the gaming and software industries, eventually leading his own engineering team at Intel. And after observing life at companies big and small, he recognized one commonality: The happiest people are the most productive. The difference was so striking to him that he retired and rebooted his career, founding Happy Brain Science to surface and share the … [ Read more ]

Content: Thought Leader | Author: Scott Crabtree | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Career, Personal Development

When Ciara Trinidad left her post as Lever’s Head of Diversity and Inclusion, the numbers made her understandably proud: The startup’s team of 125 people was 59% women, 39% men, and 2% gender nonconforming. Even the sales team — historically a male-dominated group — had a 50/50 gender split. “The product team was at about 40% white; the majority was a mix of every other … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Ciara Trinidad | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Diversity, Human Resources, Women in Business

To a large extent, brand is built on consistently setting and meeting a defined set of expectations. Make sure everyone on your team is setting and meeting the same ones. And make it easy for them to be successful, by providing the right assets and guidelines a simple cut and paste away.

Content: Quotation | Author: Leslie Ziegler | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Brand, Marketing / Sales

A lot of companies don’t decide how they want to grow until they’re well into their growth phase. For a long time, your actions pull your company along, and then all of a sudden it switches — your existing business starts pushing your behavior. External forces like feature requests, the need for more customer support, the need to create a team to do X when … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Claire Hughes Johnson | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Check in with new managers, too, and make it known that there’s an off ramp if they need it. Even people who thought they wanted the role may ultimately find that it’s making them miserable. Create check-ins along the way, say every six months. “Are you still happy? Do you want to take on more? Do you want to go back to being an individual … [ Read more ]

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

We didn’t put enough of an emphasis on hiring a diverse team in the early stages. This made it all the harder to bring on women and underrepresented minorities and backgrounds once they’d grown. If you’re interviewing your first female engineer, and she shows up and thinks, ‘Wow, this team is huge and all guys,’ that just makes the barrier even higher. That really does … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Mike Krieger | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Human Resources

Fledgling engineering teams and hundred-person juggernauts, boom times and lean years — Adil Ajmal has experienced them all. He’s hired for entry-level positions, VPs, and everything in between. Over the course of thousands (and thousands) of interviews, a curious truth emerged that informs his approach: The secret to closing isn’t offering the most equity or saying just the right thing during an offer call. It’s … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Adil Ajmal | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Human Resources

Under pressure, startups have a need for speed that makes freestyle negotiations or plug-and-play comp data resources attractive. But it doesn’t have to stay this way — and it can’t if a company wants a sound comp philosophy, one that prizes equity, transparency and employee happiness. Enter Jeremy Stanley, Udi Nir and Guissu Baier, the VPs of Data Science, Engineering and HR, respectively. They’re the … [ Read more ]

Content: Case Study | Authors: Guissu Baier, Jeremy Stanley, Udi Nir | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Human Resources | Company: Instacart