First Round Review - Articles
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The most actionable, tactical company building advice around for founders and startup leaders.
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To Learn a New Market, Start by Building Your Product — Tactics From a Twitter PM Turned Healthcare Founder
Color co-founder and CEO Othman Laraki built a billion-dollar company in an industry he had zero professional experience in. Here, he shares four product-building tactics that helped him learn the...
Don’t Ship Your Pitch Deck to Your Website. Here’s How to Translate Your Story for Customers
Your customers don’t want to read your pitch deck. Marketing expert Emily Kramer explains how to turn your investor talking points into your website messaging.
The Story Behind Owner’s Pivots to a Billion-Dollar Business
Owner co-founder and CEO Adam Guild shares his unique entrepreneurial journey, featuring a six-figure Minecraft server, his mom's failing dog grooming business and a 180-degree pandemic pivot.
Linear’s Path to Product-Market Fit — Quality and Craft > Speed and Scale
Linear CEO and co-founder Karri Saarinen unpacks the $1.25B company's slow and deliberate path to product-market fit.
The Founder’s Guide to Building a V1 of Customer Success
A CS leader who has built the function from the ground up shares where founders should start — from how to hire to the most important metrics to track.
0-$5M: How to Go From Random Wins to Repeatable Revenue
When every deal closes differently, how do you build repeatability? First Round Partner Meka Asonye shares proven tactics from founders and revenue leaders who've solved this exact puzzle.
Is All Micromanagement Bad? Here's How the Best Startup Leaders Balance Details and Delegation
Founders and execs from Apple, Rippling, Carta and more share their strategies for altitude shifting as a manager.
Should You “Rent” an Exec for Your Startup? A Fractional COO Weighs In
A veteran strategy and ops leader turned fractional COO walks us through why, when and how early-stage founders can tap fractional execs to learn and grow faster.
The Art of Evals: How Figma Put People at the Center of Its AI Product
Building, testing and validating with human craft and creativity.
How to Build for a Market That Doesn’t Exist Yet — Braze’s Path to Product-Market Fit
The Braze founding team shares all the early moves they made to lay the path to IPO.
0-$5M: How to Identify Your ICP — Lessons from Vanta, Clay, Retool
How do you spot the wrong customer before they burn your roadmap? First Round Partner Meka Asonye digs into how now-massively successful startups cracked the code.
Thinking About Taking the Founder Leap? Here’s How to Prep for the Emotional Gauntlet
How to start building your emotional toolkit for the founder journey ahead, with advice from psychologist Dr. Emily Anhalt.
The Unsung Ingredient in Stripe, Square and Linear’s Success: Taste
Tactical advice for weaving craft into your product and operationalizing taste.
Mastering the Human Side of Engineering: Lessons from Apple, Palantir and Slack
Apple engineering leader Michael Lopp gives tactical advice for managers on how to empower individual engineers — and become better leaders themselves.
From Weekend Project to Fortune 10 Adoption — Reducto's Path to Product-Market Fit
Adit Abraham, co-founder and CEO of Reducto, shares how he closed millions in ARR and a Fortune 10 customer with no sales hires.
Obsessing Over Onboarding for 10+ Years — The Architect of Superhuman's Onboarding Shares His Playbook
Superhuman became known for its unique approach to onboarding: a highly-personalized, white-glove, human-led experience. Superhuman's Gaurav Vohra, startup advisor and growth leader, gives us a detailed look at how he...
How dbt Labs Built a $4.2B Software Business out of a Two-Person Consultancy
Tristan Handy, CEO and co-founder of dbt Labs, shares the unorthodox moves he made to transform a Philly-based consultancy into a billion-dollar SaaS powerhouse.
You’re Not Ready for a Head of Growth: Run This Founder-Led Growth Playbook Instead
Founders are responsible for figuring out how their business is going to grow. Use these tactics — specifically designed for founders — to uncover your most impactful growth levers.
How to Intentionally Design Your Org, From Square’s Former CEO
Former Square CEO, AWS's first GM and 12-year Microsoft veteran, Alyssa Henry, walks us through the two crucial considerations for organizational design — your business and your people — and...
The Pivot to Product-Market Fit: How Plaid, Clay, Lattice & Other Startups Broke Out
For many startups, the secret to finding product-market fit lies in the pivot. Here’s how these founders knew it was time to change directions.