In Depth
Episodes
Deepak Rao on how X1 pivoted, launched, built a +600K-long waitlist and fundraised in tough times
08 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Todd Jackson is back on the mic to guest host another product-market fit focused episode this week. He chats with Deepak Rao, co-founder and CEO of X1...
How to lower barriers to change when building and selling products — Jonah Berger’s advice for founders
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Our guest today is Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the bestselling author of “Contag...
How Retool reached $2M in ARR before launch by focusing on developers — David Hsu
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Todd Jackson is back on the mic to guest host another product-focused episode this week. He chats with David Hsu, founder and CEO of Retool, a low-cod...
How to approach GTM with an engineering lens — Rich Rao’s advice from Google & Meta
03 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Our guest is Rich Rao, the VP of the Small Business Group at Meta, where he manages the global revenue and operations for properties including Faceboo...
What startups can learn from enterprise corporate messaging — Sara Varni’s lessons from Salesforce & Twilio
27 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Our guest is Sara Varni, CMO of Attentive, a conversational commerce platform. Before joining Attentive, Sara was Twilio’s CMO and spent 10 years as...
Finding product-market fit twice — Alma’s Harry Ritter on pivots and staying close to customers
13 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Todd Jackson’s back on the mic this week. (As a reminder, he’s guest hosting a few product-focused episodes this season — all about finding prod...
Why everything we’ve been taught about quitting is wrong — Annie Duke
06 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Our guest is Annie Duke, a retired pro poker player and First Round’s Special Partner focused on Decision Science. She’s also the author of the be...
How to scale your co-founder relationship alongside your startup — Manu Sharma & Brian Rieger of Labelbox
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Our guests are Manu Sharma and Brian Rieger, co-founders of Labelbox. In this interview, we take a microscope to their co-founder DNA, exploring the ...
A crash course on founder-led customer success — Sydney Strader’s lessons from Catalyst & InVision
22 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Sydney Strader, VP of Customer Success at Catalyst. Prior to joining Catalyst, Sydney was the VP of Customer Success at InVi...
The founder’s guide to making your first few hires — Steven Bartel on recruiting at Gem & Dropbox
15 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Steven Bartel, co-founder and CEO of Gem. Before building the talent acquisition platform, Steven was an early engineer at ...
From product roadmapping to sprint planning: How to ship software at scale — Snir Kodesh
08 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Snir Kodesh, Head of Engineering at Retool, which is a development platform for building custom business tools. Before joini...
The 5 phases of Figma’s community-led growth — Claire Butler
01 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Claire Butler, Senior Director of Marketing at Figma, and one of the company’s first 10 employees. In today’s conversat...
Airtable’s path to product-market fit — co-founder Andrew Ofstad on building horizontal products
18 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Todd Jackson’s filling in as host again this week. (As a reminder, he’s hosting a few product-focused episodes this season — all about finding p...
Operations vs. Algorithms: Advice for scaling startups, from Opendoor CTO Ian Wong
11 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Ian Wong, co-founder and CTO of Opendoor. Before founding Opendoor, Ian was Square’s first data scientist, where he develo...
Want to go totally asynchronous? Repeat founder Sidharth Kakkar on building a remote team & autonomous culture
21 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Sidharth Kakkar, founder and CEO of Subscript, a subscription intelligence platform that empowers B2B SaaS leaders to better...
Why COO is the most fluid role in the C-Suite — Sara Clemens, former COO of Twitch & Pandora
07 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Our guest is Sara Clemens, most recently COO of Twitch and former COO of Pandora. In this interview, we explore the nuances of the COO role, which ca...
From PM to VP of Product: Jiaona Zhang’s career advice from Webflow, Airbnb & Dropbox
23 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For our 60th episode, we’re doing things a little bit differently — with a new guest host! Welcome to Todd Jackson, who’s filling in for Brett B...
“When They Win, You Win”: Russ Laraway unpacks his new guide for the modern manager
26 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Russ Laraway, a seasoned leader who's been at Google, Twitter, Candor Inc, Qualtrics, and is now the Chief People Officer fo...
Building a highly-technical enterprise product? Essential advice for product leaders — Nate Stewart of Cockroach Labs
19 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Nate Stewart, CPO of Cockroach Labs, the creator of database product CockroachDB. In today’s conversation, we cover his e...
Building & selling a product into government is tricky — Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins shares critical advice for getting it right
28 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, co-founder and CEO of Promise, a modern government payment solution. In today’s conversation, Phaed...
The art of starting a startup — Gagan Biyani’s advice for generating, validating, and executing on ideas
21 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Gagan Biyani, co-founder and CEO of Maven, a company that empowers the world’s experts to offer cohort-based courses direc...
How to handle comp challenges at every startup stage — Kaitlyn Knopp’s advice from Pequity, Instacart, Cruise & Google
14 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Kaitlyn Knopp, founder and CEO of Pequity, which automates HR workflows to make compensation more equitable and scalable. P...
A crash course on comms for founders — Nairi Hourdajian’s early-stage advice from Figma & Uber
31 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Nairi Hourdajian, the VP of Communications, Content and Community Marketing at Figma. Prior to joining Figma, Nairi was the...
How founders can get executive hiring right from startup to scale — advice from Lattice’s Jack Altman
17 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Jack Altman, co-founder & CEO of Lattice. There were so many topics we could have gotten into with Jack as it relates to sca...
IC? Manager? Technical Founder? How to chart your engineering career path — Stripe & Cocoon’s Amber Feng
10 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Amber Feng, who is the co-founder and CTO of Cocoon, and was previously an engineering leader at Stripe for eight years. In...
Never done sales before? Meka Asonye shares GTM playbooks from Stripe, Mixpanel, and backing founders at First Round
03 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Meka Asonye, a Partner at First Round Capital. This week marks the one year anniversary since he joined, making the transiti...
The startup playbook for expanding internationally — Advice from Faire CEO Max Rhodes
10 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Max Rhodes, the co-founder and CEO of Faire, an online wholesale marketplace that connects independent retailers and brands....
Usage-based? Hybrid? Tiered? Which pricing model is right for you? — Stripe’s Jeanne DeWitt Grosser
27 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Jeanne DeWitt Grosser, Head of Americas Revenue and Growth for Stripe, where she’s responsible for all sales functions and...
The Product Strategy Playbook that Powered Growth at Tinder & TripAdvisor — Ravi Mehta
20 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Ravi Mehta, who is formerly the Chief Product Officer at Tinder, and taught product strategy as an Executive in Residence at...
After building hundreds of startup brands, Arielle Jackson shares 6 early marketing missteps to avoid
13 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Arielle Jackson. For the past 7 years, she’s helped hundreds of companies build their positioning and brands from the grou...
Buy or build? Focus on the core product or innovate? Zendesk CTO Adrian McDermott's advice for scaling
09 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Adrian McDermott, CTO of Zendesk. Adrian started at the company back in 2010, when they were only 50 employees. Since then,...
The biggest lessons from building Hubspot, from co-founder harmony to engineering the culture — Dharmesh Shah
02 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Dharmesh Shah, the co-founder and CTO of Hubspot. In today’s conversation, we deeply explore some of the marquee moments a...
The story of why Canva worked: Zach Kitschke shares his lessons from early hire to current CMO
18 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Zach Kitschke, CMO of Canva, an online design and publishing tool. Since launching in 2013, Canva has grown from an Australi...
Take your design org from good to great with these principles from Segment to Twilio — Hareem Mannan
11 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Hareem Mannan, who was a product design leader at Segment for nearly four years, and joined Twilio as a Senior Director of P...
Instacart co-founder Max Mullen gets tactical on crafting company values and intentionally building culture
04 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Max Mullen, co-founder of Instacart. He started as a generalist, running everything from product to payroll, but as the com...
Growing from founder to CEO: Executive coach Alisa Cohn on how to get better feedback
28 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Alisa Cohn, an executive coach with nearly 20 years of experience working with companies like Etsy, Venmo, InVision, The Wir...
Executive hiring is incredibly difficult to get right — Robinhood COO Gretchen Howard shares her playbook
21 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Gretchen Howard, COO of Robinhood. Gretchen joined Robinhood in early 2019 as the company’s COO and just its second execut...
Building a hybrid go-to-market motion — GC Lionetti’s lessons from Confluent, Dropbox & Atlassian
07 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Giancarlo 'GC' Lionetti, the former CMO of Confluent and VP of Self-Serve Growth at Dropbox. (GC also previously spent 6 yea...
Creating physical products and getting feedback from toddlers — KiwiCo’s Sandra Oh Lin
30 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Sandr Oh Lin, founder and CEO of KiwiCo, which creates hands-on learning kits for children. Sandra started KiwiCo over ten y...
How to hire the right marketer at the right time for your startup — Mux & Segment’s Maya Spivak
16 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Maya Spivak, the Head of Marketing at Mux, which is an API for developers to build video experiences. Maya recently jo...
From developer to CMO — Archana Agrawal’s marketing lessons from Airtable & Atlassian
09 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Archana Agrawal, CMO of Airtable, a low-code platform for building collaborative apps. Archana joined Airtable last year aft...
How to pivot your way to product/market fit & other 0-1 lessons — Rupa Health CEO Tara Viswanathan
02 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Tara Viswanathan, co-founder and CEO of Rupa Health. Tara started Rupa Health in early 2018, but the product vision today lo...
Building an operationally-intensive business and avoiding upside down unit economics — Thirty Madison’s Steve Gutentag
19 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Steve Gutentag, the co-founder and CEO of Thirty Madison, a healthcare company focused on widening access to specialized car...
Don’t have a UX research team? Jane Davis’ tips from Zoom, Zapier & Dropbox to get you started
12 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Jane Davis, the Director of UX Research and UX Writing at Zoom. She previously led UX Research and Content Design at Zapier,...
Getting startup employees to stick around & learning from couples therapy — Flatiron’s Alex Buder Shapiro
29 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Alex Buder Shapiro, the Chief People Officer at Flatiron Health, a company that focuses on accelerating cancer research and ...
How to find product/market fit before you start building — UserLeap’s Ryan Glasgow
22 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Ryan Glasgow, the founder and CEO of UserLeap, a product research platform that helps PMs, user researchers, and growth mark...
Nick Caldwell on the engineering cultures that power Microsoft, Reddit, Looker & Twitter
15 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Nick Caldwell, VP of Engineering at Twitter. Previously, Nick was at Microsoft for 15 years, eventually becoming GM of Power...
“Everyone wants a silver bullet” — Selling lessons from Sam Taylor, of Dropbox, Quip & now Loom
08 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Sam Taylor, VP of Sales and Success at Loom. Previously, Sam was Dropbox’s first enterprise sales rep, and also served as ...
The do’s and don’ts of scaling from dozens of employees to thousands — McKenna Quint
24 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with McKenna Quint, who was most recently the Head of People at Plaid and also built and led the people team at Cruise Automation...
A look at one repeat founder’s frameworks for validating ideas — Pilot’s Waseem Daher
17 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Waseem Daher, co-founder and CEO of Pilot, a company that specializes in bookkeeping, tax prep, and CFO services for high-gr...
Killing stories and creating categories — Comms tips from Shannon Brayton’s 25+ years in tech
10 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Shannon Brayton, a Silicon Valley veteran with more than two decades of experience shaping corporate narratives and leading ...
People leaders aren’t the CEO of culture, they’re product managers — Credit Karma’s Colleen McCreary
03 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Colleen McCreary, the Chief People Officer at Credit Karma. With more than 20 years of experience in HR, operations, ...
Go unreasonably deep on complex problems and build with naivety — Bowery Farming’s Irving Fain
26 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Irving Fain, founder and CEO of Bowery Farming. Bowery is a modern farming company that grows produce indoors, free from pol...
The story behind Slack’s marketing and the leap from marketer to CEO — Abstract’s Kelly Watkins
20 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Kelly Watkins, CEO of Abstract, a platform for structure and transparency in the design process. In joining Abstract last ye...
Ask why it won’t work — Rick Song’s lessons from Square and building from 0 to 1
13 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Rick Song, the co-founder and CEO of Persona, a platform that enables companies to create the ideal identity verification ex...
Product Pitfalls From 0 Customers to the Messy Middle and IPO — Eric Berg on Okta, Intel & Fauna
06 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Eric Berg, CEO of Fauna, which is an adaptive operational database platform. In joining Fauna as its CEO in the summer of 20...
After leading product & growth teams at Instacart, Wealthfront & LinkedIn, Elliot Shmukler is tackling zero to one as founder & CEO of Anomalo
29 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s conversation is with Elliot Shmukler, founder and CEO of Anomalo, which is a platform that validates and documents all of your data. Elliot ...
A deep-dive into product-led growth & self-serve strategies — Notion’s & Dropbox’s Kate Taylor
22 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Kate Taylor, who recently joined Notion as their Head of Customer Experience. Previously, Kate spent 8 years at Dropbox, lea...
Setting up the people function and training for empathy — Lambda School’s Mark Frein
15 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Mark Frein, the Chief People Officer & Head of Alumni Programs at Lambda School. Previously, Mark served as the Chief People...
How Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta Parses Through Mountains of Advice as a First-Time Founder
08 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Marco Zappacosta, co-founder and CEO of Thumbtack. He’s spent the last 13 years building the company into a billion-dollar...
Building engineering orgs and new products at Segment, Dropbox & Facebook — Tido Carriero
01 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Tido Carriero, the Chief Product Officer at Segment, a customer data platform which was recently acquired by Twilio. Before ...
Essentials to engaging employees & developing high-quality managers — Qualtrics’ Russ Laraway
18 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Russ Laraway. After starting out in the Marine Corps, Russ made his way into the world of startups, joining Google in 2005 w...
CEO Jeff Lawson Reflects on the Peaks and Valleys of Twilio’s Growth Story
11 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Jeff Lawson, co-founder and CEO of Twilio. He’s spent the last 13 years building and running the company, including leadin...
Treat Operational Debt like Tech Debt — Leah Sutton on Elastic’s Distributed Work Playbook
04 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Leah Sutton, SVP of Global HR at Elastic. Leah’s been in the HR space for over 20 years, and now leads everything from HR ...
“My product is the company” — Kevin Fishner on how startups can build better systems
25 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Kevin Fishner, Chief of Staff at HashiCorp. As the first business hire at the cloud infrastructure automation company, he pr...
Growing a consumer product from scratch to 1 billion users — Google Photos’ David Lieb
18 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with David Lieb, the Director of Google Photos. Previously, he was the founder/CEO of Bump, an app that allowed users to swap con...
An inside look at the system that will outlast Bezos—Bill Carr & Colin Bryar on lessons from Amazon
09 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Bill Carr and Colin Bryar, two long-time Amazon executives who just published a new book, “Working Backwards,” which pro...
From exec roles to board seats — Anne Raimondi’s leadership lessons for the startup C-Suite
04 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Anne Raimondi, Chief Customer Officer at Guru, and independent board member at Asana, Gusto and Patreon. Previously, she was...
Plaid & Dropbox’s Jean-Denis Grèze’s playbook for building an engineering culture of ownership
14 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Jean-Denis Grèze, Head of Engineering at Plaid, which securely connects your bank to your apps. Before joining Plaid, Jean-...
Upstart just went public — CEO Dave Girouard shares why it isn’t a typical success story
22 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Dave Girouard, the CEO and co-founder of Upstart, an AI-powered lending platform that recently went public. Before founding ...
Unpacking all the non-consensus moves in Atlassian’s story — Jay Simons
17 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Jay Simons, who’s currently a partner at Bond and serves on the boards of Hubspot and Zapier. But before that, he had a lo...
Partnerships lessons from Stripe & Notion — Cristina Cordova on creating win-win deals
10 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with Cristina Cordova, Notion’s Head of Platform & Partnerships. Previously, she was the 28th employee and the first partnershi...
Start with the story — Drift’s David Cancel on lessons he’s learned as a 5X founder
03 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode is with David Cancel. David has been a CEO and founder of multiple different companies throughout his career. He’s also been a sof...
Lessons from a first-time CEO — Steve El-Hage on learning everything the hard way
19 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Our third episode is with Steve El-Hage, co-founder and CEO of Drop, an electronics company that creates products powered by feedback by a massive com...
Product lessons from Cash App & Carbon Health — Ayo Omojola on going “unreasonably deep”
12 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Our second episode is with Ayo Omojola, VP of Product at Carbon Health. Previously, he was the founding product manager on the banking team for Cash A...
Molly Graham’s management lessons from Google, Facebook, Quip & Lambda School
29 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Our first episode is with Molly Graham, a seasoned exec and builder who particularly excels at helping startups to go not from 0 to 1, but from 1 to 2...
Preview of In Depth from First Round
15 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to In Depth, a new podcast from First Round Review that’s dedicated to surfacing the tactical advice founders and startup leaders need to gr...