462 Posts found for Source: First Round Review

Founders should recognize the difference between validating product/market fit and discovering product/market fit. If you can deeply understand what your customers are looking for, you can discover product/market fit without actually having to build a product.

Content: Quotation | Author: Ryan Glasgow | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

You can’t rely on your customers to figure out what to build. They can really only tell you what outcomes they’re looking to achieve.

Content: Quotation | Author: Ryan Glasgow | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Customer Related, Innovation, Market Research

Widespread “good enough” hiring processes aren’t always mindful of the candidate experience — and most importantly, may not lead you to extend an offer to the best person for the role. The advice that follows from Peoplism is to intentionally examine the pieces of your hiring cycle that are already in place (and perhaps even be able to trim down some steps in your current … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Amber Madison, Liz Kofman-Burns | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Hiring, Human Resources | Company: Peoplism

If you’re going to be successful as an entrepreneur, the biggest thing is being able to take in conflicting feedback from all these people, many of whom are jaded or have bad habits, and some who are spot on. You have to be able to sit there and distill that information into something valuable.

Content: Quotation | Author: Nat Turner | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

If you can’t think out of the box, make the box bigger. Start by relaxing constraints.

Content: Quotation | Author: Howard Morgan | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Innovation

We’ve found is that the most high-impact managers make a regular habit of setting aside moments of reflection, putting in the deliberate time and work it takes to gain a new perspective on their teams, their cross-functional relationships and their own effectiveness from a higher altitude.

It got us thinking — there’s certainly plenty of content on the questions managers should be asking others, whether it’s … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Personal Development

Adam Grant agrees that brainwriting is best, pointing to evidence that groups generate fewer and worse ideas while brainstorming than when the very same people are working on their own.

“If you know the group is nervous about ego issues or status hierarchies you should collect the ideas anonymously. It’s about leveraging the power of the group for idea selection, where people are actually better collectively, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Adam Grant | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Innovation, Organizational Behavior

Most folks aren’t honest with their feelings because they get unsolicited advice or intrusive questions — you can try to stop that cycle on your team with the culture you create and the micro-actions you take.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jessmina Archbold | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Culture, Organizational Behavior

If you have to ask if you’re in love, you’re probably not in love. The same goes with product/market fit — if you have to ask if you have it, you probably don’t.

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

In startups, there will be times you need to persist, and times you need to pivot — therein lies the founder’s dilemma. To get conviction on the right path, validate your gut feelings with logic and research.

Content: Quotation | Author: Tara Viswanathan | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Entrepreneurship

At the end of the day, the only thing that actually matters is the impact our work has on our company, our customers, our colleagues, and our professional development. And the only way to stay on top of that is to hold ourselves accountable to our higher-order goals with as much enthusiasm as we have for the dopamine rush of reaching inbox zero.

The best leaders … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Brie Wolfson | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Career, Personal Development

Metrics are, in my opinion, the least important part of an annual plan because they’re not very strategic. The metrics tell us if we’re on the right path. But charting the right path is actually the hard work.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jeff Lawson | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

While early employees help set implicit norms, building systems early in a company’s lifecycle sets explicit norms. How do decisions get made? How are meetings structured? How are goals set? These systems are much easier to build when the company is small, and very challenging to put into place as the company grows.

Content: Quotation | Author: Kevin Fishner | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Organizational Behavior

As CEO, if someone brings a problem to me, of course, I’m always anxious to solve it. But I’m always going to think, “How did this problem come to be? And how did it come to me? And should it have come to me?”

Content: Quotation | Author: Dave Girouard | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

I think a lot of managers convince themselves that the person sitting across from them is an employee and our shared interest is about what we do here in this company today and tomorrow. And I think what I’ve learned is that the best managers say “No, no, no, that person sitting across from me is a human being, and I need to play a … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Russ Laraway | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Training & Development

We’re a memo culture, not a meeting culture, and we put a lot of time into long-form documentation. Why? My belief is that content scales; your time doesn’t. I’ve personally written many hundreds of pages of strategy and documentation to align the team. Keep in mind what content replaces: taking meetings to explain the same material over and over again, emailing people, meetings, calls, seemingly … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Sam Corcos | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Communication, Management, Organizational Behavior

Your job as a CEO is to build fire departments, not put out fires. If you’re regularly putting out fires yourself, you’re doing it wrong. Focus your time on how to enable others on your team to put out fires themselves.

Content: Quotation | Author: Sam Corcos | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Corporate Governance

The problem with to-do lists is they lead to unrealistic optimism about how much you can accomplish because items on a to-do list are untethered from the constraint of reality: time.

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

The most substantial improvement in my ability to manage my time came from using my calendar as my to-do list (and subsequently killing my to-do list).

I used to have the habit of overcommitting myself, which became a major source of anxiety in my life because I was dropping balls left and right, and it led me to disappoint a lot of people when deadlines would … [ Read more ]

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

When I go to my manager asking for her to provide feedback on a resource or simply take a look at something, I appreciate that she challenges me to share my intent and clarify what I’m looking for in a response. This helps streamline communication and prevent any misunderstanding, and that clarity of thought is something I always remember when I’m making an ask.

Content: Quotation | Author: Lauren Jones | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management