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PODCAST

In Depth

Welcome to In Depth, a podcast from The First Round Review that’s dedicated to surfacing the tactical advice founders and startup leaders need to grow their teams, their companies and themselves. Hosted by Brett Berson, a partner at First Round, In Depth will cover a lot of ground and a wide range of topics, from hiring executives and becoming a better manager, to the importance of storytelling inside of your organization. But every interview will hit the level of tactical depth where the very best

business management

All Episodes

59:57

Snowflake’s first sales hire on scaling from $0 to...

In Depth ·

2026/02/26

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 CEOs and learning from each one. In this episode, Chris breaks down what it actually takes to scale an enterprise sales organization, why MEDDIC is the methodology every founder should know, and what working under Frank Slootman taught him about firing fast, taking feedback and finding the fakers in your team.In today's episode,

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71:15

Why 90% of CROs will fall behind in the next 2 years...

In Depth ·

2026/02/19

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 bet, Stevie has built one of the most unconventional paths to the C-suite in tech. In this episode, she unpacks why early revenue hires fail, what separates a true CRO from a VP of Sales, and why she believes fewer than 10% of current CROs will thrive by 2028.In today's episode, we discuss: Why early revenue

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66:14

Figma is not the source of truth | Ryan Lucas (VP of...

In Depth ·

2026/02/12

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 rare founder's perspective to design leadership. A trained industrial designer, Ryan traces the roots of modern software design back 2,000 years to make the case that products must be useful, usable, and desirable - and above all, used.In today's episode, we discuss: Why design leaders who stop designing

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75:51

Executive Function: Building systems that can make...

In Depth ·

2026/02/05

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 built and scaled global revenue teams and led product partnerships. In this conversation, she unpacks what separates good executives from extraordinary ones, shares her rigorous executive hiring process, and reveals the brutally honest performance review feedback she'll never forget.In today's episode, we

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74:53

Building Meter for decades, not an exit | Anil...

In Depth ·

2025/12/10

Anil Varanasi is the co-founder and CEO of Meter, which provides full-stack networking infrastructure as a service for businesses. Since founding Meter with his brother Sunil in 2015, Anil has been playing a distinctly long game in one of the most entrenched markets in technology, betting on vertical integration, business model innovation, and a multi-decade time horizon. In this conversation, he unpacks Meter’s origin story, from four-plus years of heads-down R&D, and shares how his unconventional

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65:17

How Harness runs 16 “startups within a startup” at...

In Depth ·

2025/11/19

Jyoti Bansal is the co-founder and CEO of Harness, the software delivery platform used by thousands of engineering teams, and previously founded AppDynamics, which he led from inception to a multibillion-dollar acquisition by Cisco. In this episode, Jyoti unpacks what it really takes to move from mid-market to enterprise, why he thinks in terms of “product-market-sales fit,” and how he structures Harness as a collection of “startups within a startup” to launch multiple “best-of-breed” products.In

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84:09

How to build a company you’ll run forever | Zack...

In Depth ·

2025/11/06

Zack Kanter is the founder and CEO of Stedi, an API-first healthcare clearinghouse. After bootstrapping a wildly profitable auto-parts business, he sold it to tackle "the most complicated problem" he'd ever encountered: business-to-business transaction exchange. He spent years building EDI infrastructure, threw away the entire codebase eight times, and found extraordinary traction in healthcare. Stedi recently raised a $70M Series B co-led by Stripe and Addition. In this conversation, Brett and Zack

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83:01

Go hard early: How lessons from Verkada shaped...

In Depth ·

2025/10/23

Jake is the founder and CEO of Serval, an AI-driven IT automation and service management platform that just raised $47M in Series A funding this week. Before founding Serval, Jake spent over five years at Verkada, where he led multiple products from 0-1 and helped scale the company across hardware and software. His years at Verkada taught him that winning in enterprise means delivering consumer-quality experiences to business buyers — a lesson that shapes how Serval turns complex IT automation into

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59:18

The pivot that paid off: How fal found explosive...

In Depth ·

2025/10/22

Gorkem Yurtseven is the co-founder and CTO of fal, the generative media platform powering the next wave of image, video, and audio applications. In less than two years, fal has scaled from $2M to over $100M in ARR, serving over 2 million developers and more than 300 enterprises, including Adobe, Canva, and Shopify. In this conversation, Gorkem shares the inside story of fal's pivot into explosive growth, the technical and cultural philosophies driving its success, and his predictions for the future

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69:07

From dorm room to life-saving AI | Prepared’s story |...

In Depth ·

2025/10/01

Michael is the co-founder and CEO of Prepared, the AI assistant for 911 calls that helps dispatchers capture information faster, translate emergency calls in real time, and deliver lifesaving context to first responders. Founded out of Yale in 2019, Prepared grew from a school safety app into a critical platform for emergency communications, disrupting a notoriously tough market. This mission-driven journey just reached a major milestone: Prepared was acquired by Axon, the global public safety

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68:57

Saying yes to everything: How customer obsession...

In Depth ·

2025/09/11

Kiren Sekar is the CPO of Samsara, a company that brings real-time visibility, analytics, and AI to physical operations. Before Samsara, Kiren was an early leader at Meraki, which was acquired by Cisco for $1.2B.In this episode, he walks us through Samsara’s origin story: from hardware hacking in a basement to scaling a cross-industry IoT platform. He shares how early customer feedback loops led to the company’s first product, why starting with the mid-market was a deliberate choice, and how

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72:29

Starting an edtech giant in a “bad market” |...

In Depth ·

2025/09/03

Sam Chaudhary is the co-founder and CEO of ClassDojo, a multi-product education platform used in 95% of U.S. schools and over 180 countries globally to connect teachers, students, and families. In this episode, Sam shares the full arc of building ClassDojo, from early skepticism about edtech and a failed group-making tool, to creating a communication platform loved by millions. In this episode, we discuss: Why ClassDojo was built for consumers (teachers, students and parents) instead of

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66:20

From Chrome extension to $5B platform | Postman’s...

In Depth ·

2025/08/28

Abhinav Asthana is the co-founder and CEO of Postman, the world's leading API collaboration platform used by millions of developers and thousands of companies. What began as a personal itch, a simple Chrome extension Abhinav built to make his own API work easier, became a global phenomenon within weeks.In this episode, we discuss: Making the leap from India to Silicon Valley The moment Abhinav realized Postman could win His principles behind building for developers and non-developers

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64:26

How Canva leveraged unconventional growth levers to...

In Depth ·

2025/08/20

Cameron Adams is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Canva, the design platform valued at $42B as of August 2025, used by over 230 million people every month.Before starting Canva, Cameron was a designer and engineer at Google and co-founded Fluent, an email startup. In this episode, Cameron walks through Canva’s earliest days — from the remarkably fast courtship with co-founders Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht, to the counterintuitive product decisions that helped Canva instantly

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65:35

Twitter's former CEO on rebuilding the web for AI |...

In Depth ·

2025/08/14

Parag Agrawal is the co-founder and CEO of Parallel, a startup building search infrastructure for the web’s second user: AIs. Before launching Parallel, Parag spent over a decade at Twitter, where he served as CTO and later CEO during a period of intense transformation, as well as public scrutiny.In this episode, Parag shares what he learned from his time at Twitter, why the web must evolve to serve AI at massive scale, how Parallel is tackling “deep research” challenges by prioritizing accuracy

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61:52

Ignoring Silicon Valley advice to build a $3B fintech...

In Depth ·

2025/08/06

Immad Akhund is the CEO and co-founder of Mercury, a digital banking platform that’s become the go-to financial infrastructure for startups. Before Mercury, Immad spent nearly two decades founding companies, learning the hard way what separates a good idea from a great business. In this episode, Immad shares the hard-earned lessons from launching Mercury as his third startup. He unpacks how he recognized this was the right idea to pursue, what strong product-market fit feels like, and why trying

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60:25

Inside the ex-YC partner’s $15B self driving car...

In Depth ·

2025/08/01

Qasar Younis is the co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition, a leading vehicle intelligence platform that helps companies develop and deploy autonomous systems at scale. In June 2025, the company raised $600M at a $15B valuation. Before Applied Intuition, Qasar was the COO and a group partner at Y Combinator, and earlier founded TalkBin, which was acquired by Google. He’s also held engineering roles at General Motors and Bosch. In today’s episode, we discuss: • The two founder traits Silicon Valley

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70:04

What Braintrust got right about product-market fit |...

In Depth ·

2025/07/24

Ankur Goyal is the founder and CEO of Braintrust, an end-to-end platform for building AI apps. Before that, he founded Impira, a data management platform that was acquired by Figma, where he went on to lead the AI team. Ankur kickstarted his career when he dropped out of college to join the founding team at SingleStore (formerly MemSQL), a formative experience that shaped his views on building for high-bar users.In today’s episode, we discuss: • Ankur’s early lessons on quality from MemSQL •

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55:01

How Gusto built a $9.5 billion company by identifying...

In Depth ·

2025/07/01

Tomer London is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Gusto, the payroll and people platform used by over 400,000 businesses. He grew up helping run his dad’s clothing store in Israel — an experience that sparked his mission to build better tools for small business owners. After moving to the US for a PhD at Stanford, he met his co-founders and started Gusto.In today’s episode, we discuss: Reinventing payroll without any prior experience Why you should hire for humility, not just

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101:24

How rejecting conventional wisdom grew Sentry to a $3...

In Depth ·

2025/06/19

David Cramer is the co-founder of Sentry, the leading open-source error monitoring tool used by over 90,000 companies. A self-taught engineer, he went from 9th grade high school dropout and Burger King manager to building one of the most widely adopted developer tools in the world — by working hard and rejecting conventional wisdom. As of 2022, Sentry is valued at over $3 billion. David now serves as Chief Product Officer, after previously holding roles as CEO and CTO.In this episode, we

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170 results

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