The transition from being a “Doer-in-chief” (building a product people want) to a “Company-builder-in-chief” (hiring, managing & scaling a stellar team) is certainly not the most natural progression. As a first-time founder, you’ll probably get overly excited by this brand-new CEO job.

‍@JamesCurrier). James is a Managing Partner at NFX, a seed and series A venture firm based in San Francisco. Startups that grow into transformative companies do two things: (1) they nail the basics and (2) they cultivate the right habits (core operating principles).

Welcome! The source{d} guide documentation is where you will find all information relevant for sourcerers (source{d} team members) and anyone interested in who we are, what we do, and how we do it. This documentation is open to everyone, sourcerers and non-sourcerers.

read, transparency, twitter

As we looked through what we published in 2017 to highlight the very best knowledge shared, two things stood out to us.

read, twitter

In a recent conversation with Intercom content director John Collins, I mentioned how much Animalz customers admire the Intercom blog. A number have even asked that we help make their own blogs more like Intercom’s.

communication, content, read, twitter

is a collection of actionable lessons from industry leaders who have scaled sales at companies like Intercom, LinkedIn, HubSpot, Marketo, Terminus and more.

read, sales

Building a new growth team is hard. You have to figure out the macro organizational issues – how it fits in with marketing, product, and other functions – as well as the micro, like how to measure the success of these teams.

growth, read

This article is by Rahul Vohra, the founder and CEO of Superhuman — a startup building the fastest email experience in the world. We’ve all heard that product/market fit drives startup success — and that the lack thereof is what’s lurking behind almost every failure.

consumer, growth, market fit, product, read

“When I was a young entrepreneur, board meetings were by far the worst days of my life,” says Jeff Bonforte, the veteran company-builder who just sold his latest, Xobni, to Yahoo. “Board meetings are the height of insecurity for a CEO.

board, read

I’m sure you’ve heard (and maybe experienced it for yourself), but some of the data floating around on the state of sales in the tech startup space is pretty crazy right now.

read, sales goals

We all need traffic. Targeted traffic to our sites that’ll convert. SEO, PPC ads, organic social media posts, blogs, email newsletters, a culture manifesto — you name it, content must be produced.

communication, content, read

In 2016, the CEO of a New York City tech startup that had raised over $30 million (Flybridge, Accel) called me with what initially sounded like a questionable idea.

communication, narrative, read, story

A lot has been written about the dangers that early-stage startups face. But startups face a different and equally lethal set of dangers in what we could call the mid-stage–the stage after the company has figured out what it's doing and has raised some money to go off and do it.

read, strategy, twitter, equity story

No experience or IT support required. Octoboard is 100% self-service software. It collects, visualises and automatically updates data for over 5000 business clients – in the cloud and on premise.

read, reporting, vc

In his keynote at INBOUND last year, Dharmesh Shah (Hubspot’s cofounder) shared a personal story of meeting Elon Musk and their short but powerful conversation about aligning people on a team as you would vectors in an equation.

leadership, management, people, read

I recently gave a talk to startup founders, on a topic I love: visual identity (you can find the slides here).

brand, identity, read, twitter

Culture is powerful. Culture is a unique differentiator. Culture is the only thing in complete control of the entrepreneur. Here are 12 ideas to strengthen culture...

culture, read, twitter

Growing startups and evaluating startups share common skills Earlier this year, I joined Andreessen Horowitz as a General Partner, where I focus on a broad spectrum of consumer startups: marketplaces, entertainment/media, and social platforms.

data, metrics, read, twitter

Perhaps the single greatest early challenge faced by founders in early markets is going from product to sales — specifically, a repeatable sales process.

read, sales, twitter

We hear a lot of talk about the first employee at a startup or on a team. Nikita Dyer Miller has made a specialty of being the fourth product manager. It may not sound glamorous, but that’s a uniquely challenging — and impactful — space to occupy.

product, read

Mental models are simple expressions of complex processes or relationships. These models are accumulated over time by an individual and used to make faster and better decisions. Here’s an example: the Pareto Principle states that roughly 80% of all outputs comes from 20% of the effort.

product, read

Much has been written about the benefits of organizational transparency, but some startup founders are still slow to adopt it in their businesses. It is awfully hard for an employee, investor, or advisor to add value to a business when they’re left in the dark.

read, transparency

Sometimes things don’t go according to plan. Tools break, wires get crossed, the best-laid plans fall apart. And on those occasions, it helps to know exactly what happened—so it doesn’t happen again.

ownership, read, why

Earlier in her career, Karen Rhorer was rising through the sales ops leadership ranks and working with her team to come up with an aggressive hiring plan, trying to reverse engineer the sales team capable of delivering the equally aggressive bookings numbers that their startup had set.

read, sales, twitter

Anne Raimondi was stumped. Two people she managed weren't getting along, and it was really impacting progress. In her private conversations with each of them, they had the same goals and wanted the same things. But in the room together, they'd disagree on everything.

culture, read, twitter

Hockey stick growth. Word-of-mouth. Going viral. Look beyond the jargon and find the stuff of founders’ dreams: the type of explosive growth startups covet. The most celebrated companies are lauded for swift, exponential user growth — a reality that most startups fail to replicate.

community, content, marketing, read, twitter

I watched this video about the Spotify Engineering culture last year and BOOM, my mind just exploded. Don’t forget to also read the part II here. I felt completely in love with Spotify and its culture.

culture, management, organisation, read, twitter

These comments are frequently splashed across the Glassdoor pages of startups. It’s because navigating intense growth spurts is hard.

hiring, read, twitter

There’s an all-too-common cycle in tech these days. Startup avoids management. Founder makes all the decisions. Startup gets traction. Hiring takes off. Management is suddenly needed. Founder turns to his best engineer: “I’m drowning. Can you manage this team for me?"

management, read, tech, twitter

In late December, The New York Times published a bombshell article by Brian Rosenthal about high construction costs on the New York City subway. Doing painstaking investigative work building on a set of numbers I blogged about in 2011, Rosenthal showed how, at $2.

Question for economists: Can you think of a way to tell whether headcount is more a cause or an effect of revenues? I've always suspected it's more the latter than most people think.

Steve Jobs last interview with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at the All Things Digital: D8 Conference in 2010. Steve Jobs died a year later in 2011.

apple, inspiration, read, twitter

You don’t have to look hard to find quotes expounding the need for more empathy in society. As with Barack Obama’s quote above, we are encouraged to actively build empathy with others — especially those who are different from us.

empathy, psychology, read, twitter

In Bruce Lee’s final film, his character fights his way to the top of a pagoda, vanquishing foes of different fighting styles on each floor. As he ascends, he finds opponents more challenging than the last.

complexity, read, twitter

Startup lore is peppered with tales of unconventional ideas that founders were able to push past the naysayers, riding market forces that others didn’t even see coming straight to the top.

market, read

“Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?” Elizabeth Gilbert asked in framing her catalyst for creative magic.

education, philosophy, read, twitter

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics sold over a million copies around the world. Now Rovelli is back to explore the mysteries of time. He tells Charlotte Higgins about student revolution and how his quantum leap began with an acid trip

physics, quantum, read

If you’re not learning you’re standing still. So what’s the best way to learn new subjects and identify gaps in our existing knowledge? There are two types of knowledge and most of us focus on the wrong one. The first type of knowledge focuses on knowing the name of something.

feynman, learning, read

Want to start your own SaaS company? Do it.  It is hard, harder than you can imagine.  But if you do it right, and for real — it can last 30+ years.

read, saas

16 Campuses 500+ Instructors 5,000+ Alumni Part-time courses designed to fit into your work schedule. Our instructors are Real-World Managers working at top tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Airbnb, LinkedIn, PayPal, and Netflix.

product, product management, read

One of the biggest things first-time founders intuit wrong is how much sales efficiency plummets … just as it is getting good. Usually, most SaaS start-ups follow a pattern where the CEO starts off doing founder-led sales. Then, after she hires a few sales reps, and makes a few mistakes.

read, saas

Sales is arguably one of the hardest of the power company functions to nail. Not only is it hard to hard to built out a repeatable, scalable process but it’s also scary.

read, sales, techniques

In September 2015, Molly Graham shared a new article with her Twitter followers, writing that it contained “All the things I know about scaling and how to try to do it well.

philosophy, psychology, read

Uber did not allow you to pre-book a taxi. Amazon started out by selling books only. Google was just a search engine. McDonald’s got rid of cutlery. And somehow we still believe that for a product to be successful it must do many things.

design, product, read

“We are dangerous when we are not conscious of our responsibility for how we behave, think, and feel,”―Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication All my biggest regrets as a founder are around…

management, negotiation, read

How do we get the people who have what it takes to help us believe in our mission enough to take a risk and join the cause? I’ve seen many founders make these mistakes… and I’ve even made them myself. We don’t have to do these things (and we shouldn’t).

hiring, read

One of my all-time favorite guilty pleasures is indulging in productivity porn. Productivity porn (or, for those really in the know, "productivity pr0n") consists of techniques, tactics, and tricks for maximizing personal productivity -- or, as they say, "getting things done".

productivity, read

At Correlation Ventures, we spend a fair amount of time using our proprietary database to identify the telltale signs of successful startups. One question we asked recently is whether there are diminishing returns for adding VCs to the board of directors at venture-backed startups.

board, read, vc

Over the last last 9 years I’ve been involved in 20 different boards, mostly start-up boards. Sometimes my role was lead investor, others non-lead investor, chairman, or independent director and in 1 case (at La Nevera Roja) as founder & CEO.

board, communication, read

@gigilevy). Gigi is a Managing Partner at NFX, a seed and series A venture firm based in San Francisco. NFX also builds free software tools for Founders, like Signal - the fastest way Founders find their intro paths to top VCs.‍

fundraising, read, vc

Inefficient does not mean ineffective, and it is certainly not the same as lazy. You get things done – just not in the most effective way possible. You’re a bit sloppy, and use more energy. But don’t feel bad about it. There is real value in not being the best.

efficiency, psychology, read

I work at The Family, selecting and supporting our entrepreneurs. One thing they have in common is the glint of terror (and excitement) in their eyes when the dreaded word comes up: F-U-N-D-R-A-I-S-I-N-G.

fundraising, read

The saying that “good design is obvious” is pretty damn old, and I am sure it took different shapes in the previous centuries. It referred to good food, music, architecture, clothes, philosophy and everything else.

design, product, read

Have you ever wished you could be in the room when founders present to the Andreessen Horowitz investing team? Even better, do you wish you could stay to hear the discussion after the pitch? We hear you and are thrilled to launch our latest series of videos called “The a16z Pitch Room”.

pitch, read, vc

Including a link to download a fully automated spreadsheet to make your own equity model. ? TOTEM was founded 2 years ago by 3 engineers wanting to help companies find better (=meaningful) perks and better ways to incentivise employees.

equity, model, read

100% of founders agree: raising money is a frustrating, tedious, unpredictable process. The only upside are the memories made in comically bad VC meetings, and the few standout VC encounters along the way.

fundraising, read

Two time NY Times best selling author and lecturer at Harvard Law School, Sheila Heen makes the tough talks easier by breaking down the three layers that make up every difficult conversation. On today’s episode of The Knowledge Project, I’m thrilled to welcome Sheila Heen.

communication, negotiation, psychology, read

This post originally appeared on HubSpot's Agency blog. For more content like this, subscribe to Agency. When it comes to email, it’s more important than ever that you write concise, effective communication when communicating with or trying to gain the attention of a prospect.

outbound, read, sales

In 2013, Scott Berkun authored a book called The Year Without Pants. Scott shared his experience working remotely for Wordpress. After I read the book, I wrote:

company building, management, organisation, read, remote

Each block lists the best practices to convert the most visitors to customers. There's also helpful articles and screenshots from the top landing pages! We will only send you the latest landing pages and the most relevant articles. Never spam.

benchmark, homepage, read, saas

Even the most well-planned marketing campaign achieves lackluster results without the right audience. But what if the right audience can be warmed up to your message before they even see it?

marketing, persuasion, read, sales

The importance of executing on the product side of the business has long been a primary focus for countless successful founders and notable startup advisers.

growth, product, read

A new take on retrospectives for progressive teams. 30 minutes a week will help you build a more effective, more close-knit team.

company building, product, read, retrospective

Starting a tech company and building a good product has become easier thanks to improved connectivity, the declining costs of cloud storage and computing, and the accessibility of distribution platforms that can reach large target audiences.

data, read, science

Hiring is by far the biggest concern we hear from founders. Finding the right people to work at your company is high-stakes. Poor performers can take a catastrophic toll on your success.

interviews, read

This giant episode collects all of my interviews with Nivi on How to Get Rich. These interviews are based on my tweetstorm. The individual interviews are here. The podcast is available on Apple, YouTube, Spotify, Overcast, Google, and other podcast apps. Here we go.

read, self

@PeteFlint). Pete is a Managing Partner at NFX, a seed-stage venture firm based in San Francisco. NFX also builds free software tools for Founders, like Signal - the fastest way Founders find their intro paths to top VCs.

fundraising, read

Last year I interviewed over 100 engineers in 3 months. Before that, the same number across a larger variety of roles. This is a summary of hiring best practices for early stage startups.

hiring, read

Special thanks to Miriam Richter, Adelina Irimia and Adina Mic for helping compile this guide. It’s easy to forget that SaaS product management is a relatively new, and still emerging, function.

product management, read

Talk in one click, co-work, and jump into a collaboration session on your favorite apps.

read, remote

When our startup failed, I didn’t know what to do next. I’ve always been busy running somewhere but never had the time to think hard about where I was heading.

development, read, self

When First Round launched its Mentorship Program in 2016, we didn’t know what to expect. We’d heard from a number of people in our community that mentorship remained an elusive, missing piece in their careers. Younger people said it was intimidating and difficult to find a mentor.

mentorship, read

Preface: This is part of a longer private memo analyzing Zillow and its recent shift towards Opendoor’s model. May publish rest of memo at some later point. But wanted to share first part, on Rich Barton and Zillow’s initial rise.

read

This article is by Lenny Rachitsky, a former product lead at Airbnb. Back when I was a young PM, one of my managers altered the trajectory of my career. It was my second year at Airbnb. I was doing okay, but not great.

okr, performance, read, review

Brian Rothenberg’s career has spanned every stage of startup growth, from scrappy zero to triumphant IPO.

read

A founder’s life leaves little time for pause. From the moment that the next big startup idea strikes, the tempo is set by the breakneck quest to scale.

career, read