First Round Review - Articles
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How Supabase became the essential infrastructure for the AI era | Paul Copplestone (Co-founder, CEO)
In this episode of In Depth, Brett sits down with Paul Copplestone, co-founder and CEO of Supabase, the open-source Postgres platform now serving more than seven million developers. Before Supabase,...
Firsthand: Seven Years Inside Applied Intuition, the Quietly Dominant Physical AI Company
I joined Applied Intuition as a new-grad engineer back in early 2019, when it was just a handful of us working above a bar on Murphy Ave in Sunnyvale. Today...
“AI-Powered” Isn’t a Position
A playbook for building a distinctive brand when too many AI products sound the same, look the same and have the same positioning.
Firsthand: How I Bet On Clay (And It Bet On Me)
I joined Clay as one of its earliest employees and a reluctant marketing hire. This is how, over the last three years, we built a role around my strengths as...
Why great product leaders should stop obsessing over the roadmap | Diya Jolly (CPO & CTO of Xero)
Diya Jolly, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Xero unpacks her three-bucket framework for delegating decisions, why the most important part of a CPO’s role is to drive team-wide ambition,...
Inside Artemis' "AI vs AI" war | Shachar Hirshberg & Dan Shiebler (Co-founders, Artemis)
In this episode of In Depth, First Round Partner Josh Kopelman sits down with Shachar Hirshberg and Dan Shiebler, co-founders of Artemis, the AI-native security platform that just emerged from...
Scaling DoorDash to market dominance | Christopher Payne (Former COO, DoorDash)
In this latest episode of Executive Function, Brett sits down with Christopher Payne, who spent a decade as President and COO at DoorDash, helping scale the company from roughly 70...
Reluctantly Influential: Inside Lenny Rachitsky’s Demandingly Chill Life
With millions of subscribers across platforms, Lenny Rachitsky is one of the most prolific people in tech media. But what drives him — and what keeps him up at night...
What nobody tells engineers about becoming a CEO | Jay Kreps (Co-founder and CEO, Confluent)
Jay Kreps is the co-founder and CEO of Confluent, the company built around Apache Kafka — the open-source data streaming platform he originally built while at LinkedIn.
Guideline's Path to Product-Market Fit — The Early Decisions That Powered Its Acquisition by Gusto
Ten years after shaking up the retirement fund industry for SMBs, Guideline has been acquired by Gusto. Here, co-founder Kevin Busque shares the early-stage decisions and pivots that put the...
Serval's Path to Product-Market Fit — Win Enterprise Buyers by Treating Them Like Consumers
Notes from an AI founder taking a swing at a hundred-billion-dollar incumbent.
Snowflake’s first sales hire on scaling from $0 to $3.5B | Chris Degnan (Former CRO, Snowflake)
Chris Degnan was the first sales hire at Snowflake and spent 11 years scaling the company from zero to $3.5 billion in revenue as its CRO, working alongside four different...
So You Want to Hire a Forward Deployed Engineer: How to Know If You Need One and How to Get the Role Right
Founders and operators who’ve successfully built forward deployed engineering teams share the nuances that make this idiosyncratic role work, along with advice for hiring your own team.
Why 90% of CROs will fall behind in the next 2 years | Stevie Case (CRO, Vanta)
Stevie Case is the CRO of Vanta, the trust management platform serving everyone from founders to Fortune 100 CISOs. A former pro-video gamer who stumbled into sales through a mentor's...
Figma is not the source of truth | Ryan Lucas (VP of Design, Rippling)
In the second Executive Function episode, Brett sits down with Ryan Lucas, VP of Design at Rippling. Before Rippling, Ryan led design at Retool and co-founded multiple startups, bringing a...
Executive Function: Building systems that can make decisions without you | Jeanne DeWitt Grosser (COO, Vercel)
In the first Executive Function episode, Brett sits down with Jeanne De Witt Grosser, Chief Operating Officer at Vercel. Before Vercel, Jeanne spent nearly a decade at Stripe, where she...
Applied Intuition’s Path to Product-Market Fit — The $15B Founder’s Formula for a Winning Company
Co-founder and CEO Qasar Younis lays out the personal and business moves he's made to build a company only he could start.
Gusto’s Path to Product-Market Fit — How Listening to Customers Built a $9.6B Company
Cold-calling from a walk-in closet taught Tomer London how to recognize what PMF really feels like.
Canva’s Path to Product-Market Fit — How a Two-Hour Founder Date Led To a $42B Design Platform
Cameron Adams goes deep on finding early evangelists, the unconventional tactics that led to massive growth, and more.
The 30 Best Pieces of Company Building Advice We Heard in 2025
A roundup of the standout startup wisdom we collected last year.