First Round Capital

Most people describe finding PMF as an art, not a science. We're here to change that. Introducing PMF Method. After 20 years and 500+ investments in pre-product-market fit companies, we've drawn on our data and worked with some of the world's most iconic enterprise founders, distilling what they did in their first 6 months into a free 14-week intensive experience that helps sales-led B2B founders build epic companies. In tactical sessions, we help early founders discover what customers really want, build the right v1 product, and close your first sales — all while keeping 100% of your equity. You'll work alongside a tight group of other builders at your same stage, and get to learn from the hard-earned insights from founders of $1B+ B2B companies, like Vanta's Christina Cacioppo, Looker's lloyd tabb, Plaid's Zachary Perret, Ironclad's Jason Boehmig, Lattice's Jack Altman, and Verkada's Filip Kaliszan. The Summer 2024 session of PMF Method runs from 5/29 to 8/28. Any early founder working on a new B2B SaaS company is welcome to apply — just get your application in by 5/7 (or tag a founder friend below!) More details, FAQs, and application link in the comments below 👇

What does extreme product-market fit look like? For Adam Guild, co-founder and CEO of Owner, it was hundreds of demo requests every week. He had so many that he had to group a handful of restaurant owners into a single demo, and spent 12 hours a day for weeks showing them the product. Learn more about his post-COVID pivot to find product-market fit in the comments.

The key to effective engineering leadership is figuring out which scenarios are worth defying conventional logic and when to simply follow the rules. Will Larson — CTO at Carta and former engineering leader at Calm, Stripe, and Uber — calls these pieces of logic "anti-patterns:" 1️⃣ "Shy away from micromanagement" → This can create disengaged and context-free leadership. Instead: • Mine for conflicts: When joining a new company, find controversial topics and have conversations with senior engineers who disagree with you. These conversations reveal hidden context that reports and presentations never will. • Document the right things: Most companies have unwritten strategies that new leaders miss. Don't assume your previous company's approach applies. After careful investigation and thinking through fresh benchmarks, use this framework to apply a new strategy: write down the diagnosis (current reality), guiding policies (decision parameters), and coherent actions (what you're doing today). Even imperfect documentation creates alignment. 2️⃣ "Push back on flawed metrics" → This can slow down organizational learning and hamper alignment with leadership. Instead: • Focus on improving mental models: At Stripe, Larson tracked reliability as a measure of his team's success, specifically how many high-severity incidents occurred. Was it perfect? No. But it started crucial conversations that changed the mental model of how executives understood his team's success. • Pull your CEO into the details: Many executives are interested in volume as an engineering metric. Larson pulls this data, but always talks through it with executives. Instead of pushing back, he creates alignment by bringing executives into the details and educating them about its nuances. 3️⃣ "Serve as the umbrella for your team" → Protecting them from reality just makes things worse for them in the long-term. Instead: • Use "navigators" to speed up decision-making: Appoint one person per business unit to act as the mini-CTO who gets final call on their area's technology. Leaders must be highly intentional about who they put conviction in, and ensure there's alignment by documenting strategy (to help navigators make decisions) and doing a post-mortem after a decision has been made. Read more about Larson’s anti-patterns (and how to change them) on The Review article in the comments: 

“For deep tech founders, it can be a company-killing move to just copy-paste advice for B2B SaaS.” Loyal founder Celine Halioua is building a biotech startup that's developing the first drugs to extend healthy lifespan in dogs. So as she's confronted unique hurdles, like a complex regulatory approval process and near-constant delays, she's found that there wasn't much for her to pull from in the established company-building playbooks. To fill that gap, she sought out counsel from experts in seemingly unrelated deep tech industries, like Blake Scholl. The Boom Supersonic founder has helped her navigate rigorous scenario planning and milestone-based development — which is something that dog drugs and supersonic airliners have in common. On The Review, she shares more of her frameworks for building a deep tech company.

Square’s former CEO, Alyssa Henry, thinks about organizational design as two complimentary parts: business context 🤝 human condition Both must work together — anchored by communication — when thinking about how to intentionally build structures in your company that support its growth. This one is for founders thinking through org design for the first time, or executives who are revisiting it. Read more below.

Here's a number that should break everything we know about scaling startups: Sam Corcos tripled his direct reports from 6—>20, but his time spent on team management didn't budge much at all. How? By taking inspo from NVIDIA's Jensen Huang (who manages 60+ reports). Corcos deleted all weekly 1:1s and instead focused on crafting meetings that matter. A product lead wrestling with feature direction. A support manager making the case for team expansion. 1:1 time is ad-hoc, reserved for real decisions that move the business forward, not status updates masquerading as management. More lessons from the Levels founder & CEO from analyzing 5 years (or 17,784 hours, if we're being exact) of building the business: https://lnkd.in/g-sF52Hj

To find a winning startup idea, look for the worst part of someone’s week. That’s what pointed founder Christina Cacioppo towards Vanta. She was in early idea discovery conversations when she sat down with a Product Security Lead at Dropbox: “What he told me when we looked at his calendar was, ‘The best parts of my week are when I get to work with product teams on security issues. The worst part is when I have to pull together reporting on the things I've done to show my manager or executives, or get on the phone with customers and explain what security we do in basic terms.’” It was a small moment that would set her on the path to building a product with strong market pull. Read more lessons from different paths to PMF through the link in the comments.

What are the challenges of building a dog longevity company? Hear from our Founder & CEO Celine Halioua, who recently sat down with First Round Capital to chat about all things deep tech. Celine shares advice on innovating and building a complex and technical company like ours. Check out the full conversation → loyal.com/FRC-interview

Most founders go through an invention phase and then an execution phase. The best founders never stop inventing -- and Celine Halioua is world class at this. Loyal is a complex business with a big ambition: “Imagine if” we had more time with the dogs we love. Celine mapped every scenario, milestone, and contingency on the path to making that possible, and while there’s still more road to travel, she’s gotten further than anyone ever has (securing the FDA's first- and second-ever acceptances that a drug could extend lifespan). There wasn’t much advice for her to pull from, so she’s had to come up with her own frameworks along the way. Today on the First Round Capital Review she shares the deep tech company playbook she wishes she had when she was first starting out. Article below.

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