459 Posts found for Source: First Round Review

Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined. Otherwise, you waste someone else’s time instead of your own, which now wastes your hard-earned cash.

Content: Quotation | Author: Tim Ferriss | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Delegation, Management, Productivity / Work Tips

My scrapbook of things I’m proud of tests the stories I tell myself about what I care about by matching them to reality.

Content: Quotation | Author: Brie Wolfson | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Personal Development

As you consider a past decision as a team, think about what you knew before you made it. What was revealed after the fact? Could you have known about it beforehand?

We tend to only review decisions that are associated with bad outcomes, like missing a sales target by 10%. But when you exceed that same target by 10%, there’s no meeting, no post-mortem. Just congratulations … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Annie Duke | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Management, Organizational Behavior

To make great decisions, you need accountability, repeatability, and examinability. I always describe it like this: We need to create an evidentiary record, a way to Google our own decision-making.

Content: Quotation | Author: Annie Duke | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Management, Organizational Behavior

Early growth at startups comes down to a few insanely successful tactics. If you look back at the early days of any great startup, you’ll see that 90% of their early growth came from 10% of the stuff they tried.

This phenomenon is no coincidence — it’s physics. Big companies can grow by deploying heaps of cash and armies of people, using every channel, hoping one … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Matt Lerner | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

When adding a new team or role, take the time to clarify a few things: What a role is, what it’s meant to serve, how existing people have been making up for the lack of that role, and how their lives are going to be changed by new people coming in — in positive and potentially negative ways.

Content: Quotation | Author: Cristina Cordova | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Hiring, Human Resources

Don’t start with the most important partners that you could potentially work with, but at the fourth or fifth down on your list. That way you can learn exactly what the objections from a big partner might be and start solving them. If you pitch that big company five or six months from now, you’ll be in a much stronger position.

Content: Quotation | Author: Cristina Cordova | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

A big mistake early-stage companies make around launch is focusing too much on sign-ups. It’s great to have 10,000 sign-ups in one day — but are they paying you? Are they actively using your product? Are they adopting new features? Those are the things that you really need to care about.

Content: Quotation | Author: Cristina Cordova | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

Spotting folks who can become high-impact leaders at your company is exceptionally challenging in an interview setting. While you can probe IC skills with a coding test or other function-specific take-home projects, unraveling all the nuances that go into managing people can be incredibly tricky — especially with just a narrow sliver of time with each candidate.

So when sitting down with management candidates, interviewers tend … [ Read more ]

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

Culture is the set of words, actions, and behaviors of a group of people.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jess Yuen | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Culture, Organizational Behavior

Founders, here’s a good litmus test for your company values: If you took 6 months off, and left no directions other than “Follow our values to a T,” would you be happy with the outcome?

Content: Quotation | Author: Laura Del Beccaro | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Culture, Management, Organizational Behavior, Values

This first [culture] pillar is about communication within teams, between teams, and between individuals — essentially how we treat each other when we interact. The frequency with which we talk, the way we talk to each other, the tone we use, how we communicate good or bad news, whether we communicate certain things at all, and the channels we choose to use — those are … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Laura Del Beccaro | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Culture, Organizational Behavior

Culture is commonly overlooked, particularly at early-stage companies. It’s easy to think, “We’re only five people, our culture is who we hire, we don’t need to define anything until we’re bigger.” “Hire amazing people” could mean talented or kind or ambitious — which are you optimizing for? Startups are often allergic to process, but a hiring process exists whether you define it or not. It’s … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Laura Del Beccaro | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Culture, Organizational Behavior

As product leaders, every choice we make is a choice that we save our users from making. If we’re not clear about what we want our product to do, we shift that lack of clarity to the user.

Content: Quotation | Author: Ravi Mehta | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

You can’t add simplicity in. You must take complexity out.

Content: Quotation | Author: Dharmesh Shah | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Productivity / Work Tips, Products & Services

For folks looking to get started [creating a culture code] [begin] with this prompt: Who are the kinds of people that we think we want to work with? These can’t be platitudes that everyone would say yes to. Like, we want to hire smart people. Intelligence can’t be a core cultural value because no one would say they want to hire stupid people. You have … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Dharmesh Shah | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Culture, Hiring, Human Resources, Organizational Behavior

But it doesn’t have to be such a chore. When done well, performance reviews are an incredibly valuable exercise that enables a manager and direct report to track growth over time, align on how the work impacts what matters most to the business, and build a more open and trusting relationship. The conversation should flow both ways — a back-and-forth dialogue, not a lecture.

That’s why … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Coaching, Human Resources, Management, Training & Development

When it comes to recruiting you can always tell someone what they want to hear, but within six months you’ll both know whether it’s true. Listening for what a candidate is truly looking for instead of just pitching will save you wasted cycles.

Content: Quotation | Author: Ximena Vengoechea | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Hiring, Human Resources

When things feel personal and when our ego is involved, it gets really hard to listen.

Content: Quotation | Author: Ximena Vengoechea | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Communication, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

The words we use — or don’t use — impact decisions and, in turn, money. Money words are the execution arm of persuasion. If we can agree that the words we choose are persuasive levers — and our job is to pull those levers intentionally and strategically — then allow me to share with you two money words and one lose-money word. They are the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Joanna Wiebe | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Advertising, Marketing / Sales