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 advice is found. We hope you’ll join us. Subscribe to “In Depth” now and learn more at firstround.com

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Most frequent guests

Jack Altman 2 episodes
Jeanne DeWitt Grosser 2 episodes
Steve Blank 2 episodes
Rick Song 2 episodes
Russ Laraway 2 episodes
Ryan Glasgow 2 episodes

Every guest on In Depth

180 guests, ranked by how many people never want them back.

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Annie Duke
Why everything we’ve been taught about quitting is wrong — Annie Duke · Oct 2022

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Adam Nash
Building products that delight customers | Adam Nash (Daffy, Wealthfront, LinkedIn, eBay, Apple) · Apr 2024

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Alisa Cohn
Growing from founder to CEO: Executive coach Alisa Cohn on how to get better feedback · Oct 2021

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Amjad Masad
The secret lever Replit pulled to scale ahead of its competition | Amjad Masad (Co-founder and CEO) · Feb 2024

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Anneka Gupta
Shifting Career Altitudes: Insights from a CPO’s Journey Leading in Nearly Every Function | Anneka Gupta (Rubrik, ex-LiveRamp) · Oct 2024

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Arielle Jackson
After building hundreds of startup brands, Arielle Jackson shares 6 early marketing missteps to avoid · Jan 2022

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Ayo Omojola
Product lessons from Cash App & Carbon Health — Ayo Omojola on going “unreasonably deep” · Nov 2020

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Bill Carr
An inside look at the system that will outlast Bezos—Bill Carr & Colin Bryar on lessons from Amazon · Feb 2021

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Cameron Adams
How Canva leveraged unconventional growth levers to grow to $42B | Cameron Adams (Co-founder & CPO) · Aug 2025

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Casey Winters
How to build and scale winning marketplaces | Casey Winters (Eventbrite, Pinterest, Grubhub) · May 2024

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Chris Degnan
Snowflake’s first sales hire on scaling from $0 to $3.5B | Chris Degnan (Former CRO, Snowflake) · Feb 2026

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Christina Cacioppo
How Vanta’s founder bet big on startup security and found product-market fit — Christina Cacioppo · Mar 2023

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Claire Butler
The 5 phases of Figma’s community-led growth — Claire Butler · Sep 2022

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Claire Hughes Johnson
Claire Hughes Johnson on being a “learning organism” during Stripe’s growth, and more scaling advice for leaders · Apr 2023

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Dan Siroker
AI Hot Takes and Unusual Twitter Fundraising Strategies with Dan Siroker (Rewind AI) · Sep 2023

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Dave Girouard
Upstart just went public — CEO Dave Girouard shares why it isn’t a typical success story · Dec 2020

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David Hsu
How Retool reached $2M in ARR before launch by focusing on developers — David Hsu · Nov 2022

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David Lieb
Growing a consumer product from scratch to 1 billion users — Google Photos’ David Lieb · Feb 2021

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Dharmesh Shah
The biggest lessons from building Hubspot, from co-founder harmony to engineering the culture — Dharmesh Shah · Dec 2021

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Eeke de Milliano
What makes (or breaks) executive hires | A deep dive with Eeke de Milliano (Head of Global Product at Stripe) · Mar 2025

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Eilon Reshef
A masterclass in founder conviction | Eilon Reshef (Co-founder and CPO at Gong) · Mar 2024

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Eoghan McCabe
Rebooting Intercom: Eoghan McCabe on Defying Silicon Valley Orthodoxy | Co-founder & CEO · Sep 2024

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Gagan Biyani
The art of starting a startup — Gagan Biyani’s advice for generating, validating, and executing on ideas · Apr 2022

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Guillermo Rauch
How Vercel found extreme product-market fit by focusing on simplification | Guillermo Rauch (Vercel's CEO) · Nov 2023

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Immad Akhund
Ignoring Silicon Valley advice to build a $3B fintech unicorn | Immad Akhund (Co-founder and CEO of Mercury) · Aug 2025

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Jack Altman
Lessons in leadership | Scaling an org, developing yourself, and tactical management advice | Jack Altman (Lattice) · 2 episodes

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Jay Simons
Unpacking all the non-consensus moves in Atlassian’s story — Jay Simons · Dec 2020

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Jean-Denis Greze
Plaid & Dropbox’s Jean-Denis Grèze’s playbook for building an engineering culture of ownership · Jan 2021

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Jeanne DeWitt Grosser
Executive Function: Building systems that can make decisions without you | Jeanne DeWitt Grosser (COO, Vercel) · 2 episodes

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Jeff Lawson
CEO Jeff Lawson Reflects on the Peaks and Valleys of Twilio’s Growth Story · Mar 2021

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Jiaona Zhang
From PM to VP of Product: Jiaona Zhang’s career advice from Webflow, Airbnb & Dropbox · Jun 2022

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Jyoti Bansal
How Harness runs 16 “startups within a startup” at scale | Jyoti Bansal (Co-founder and CEO) · Nov 2025

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Kareem Amin
Clay’s path to product-market-fit: Building vertical, creating power users, and understanding founder psychology | Kareem Amin (Co-founder and CEO) · Jan 2024

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Karri Saarinen
Inside Linear: Why craft and focus still win in product building | Karri Saarinen (Co-founder and CEO) · Jun 2025

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Kyle Parrish
Inside Figma’s early days: How to build a world-class sales org | Kyle Parrish (VP of Sales) · Jan 2024

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Laura Behrens Wu
How young outsiders changed the shipping industry by finding product-market fit again and again | Laura Behrens Wu (Shippo) · Sep 2023

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Marco Zappacosta
How Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta Parses Through Mountains of Advice as a First-Time Founder · Apr 2021

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Matt Lerner
How to find and pull startup growth levers | Matt Lerner (Founder and CEO at SYSTM, Author of Growth Levers) · Sep 2024

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Matt MacInnis
How to be effective up and down the org chart | Matt MacInnis (Rippling, Inkling, Apple) · Apr 2024

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Max Rhodes
The startup playbook for expanding internationally — Advice from Faire CEO Max Rhodes · Feb 2022

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Recent episodes

185 episodes from the feed, newest first.

The fastest way to learn is to run two competing bets | Jay Parikh (EVP CoreAI, Microsoft)
with Jay Parikh

Aug 2026
What startups get wrong about enterprise | Lindsey Scrase (COO, Checkr)
with Lindsey Scrase

Jul 2026
How Gamma pulled off their AI pivot | Jon Noronha (Co-founder and CPO of Gamma)
with Jon Noronha

Jul 2026
Why Plaid’s COO cold-calls new hires | Eric Sager (COO of Plaid)
with Eric Sager

Jul 2026
How Supabase became the essential infrastructure for the AI era | Paul Copplestone (Co-founder, CEO)
with Paul Copplestone

Jun 2026
How to build a beloved tech brand | Sheila Joglekar Vashee (CMO, Figma)
with Sheila Joglekar Vashee

Jun 2026
Why old-school sales work still wins in the AI era | Graham Moreno (Head of GTM, Parallel)
with Graham Moreno

May 2026
Why founders should bet on first-time executives | Praveer Melwani (CFO, Figma)
with Praveer Melwani

May 2026
Why great product leaders should stop obsessing over the roadmap | Diya Jolly (CPO & CTO of Xero)
with Diya Jolly

Apr 2026
Inside Artemis' "AI vs AI" war | Shachar Hirshberg & Dan Shiebler (Co-founders, Artemis)
with Shachar Hirshberg

Apr 2026
Scaling DoorDash to market dominance | Christopher Payne (Former COO, DoorDash)
with Christopher Payne

Apr 2026
The most politically dangerous role in the C-suite | Katie Burke (COO, Harvey)
with Katie Burke

Apr 2026
What nobody tells engineers about becoming a CEO | Jay Kreps (Co-founder and CEO, Confluent)
with Jay Kreps

Mar 2026
The product wisdom every CPO should ignore | Jeremy Epling (CPO, Vanta)
with Jeremy Epling

Mar 2026
Building Zipline: From launch disaster to drone-delivery giant | Keller Cliffton (Co-founder, CEO)
with Keller Rinaudo Cliffton

Mar 2026
Snowflake’s first sales hire on scaling from $0 to $3.5B | Chris Degnan (Former CRO, Snowflake)
with Chris Degnan

Feb 2026
Why 90% of CROs will fall behind in the next 2 years | Stevie Case (CRO, Vanta)
with Stevie Case

Feb 2026
Figma is not the source of truth | Ryan Lucas (VP of Design, Rippling)
with Ryan Lucas

Feb 2026
Executive Function: Building systems that can make decisions without you | Jeanne DeWitt Grosser (COO, Vercel)
with Jeanne DeWitt Grosser

Feb 2026
Building Meter for decades, not an exit | Anil Varanasi (Co-founder and CEO)
with Anil Varanasi

Dec 2025
How Harness runs 16 “startups within a startup” at scale | Jyoti Bansal (Co-founder and CEO)
with Jyoti Bansal

Nov 2025
How to build a company you’ll run forever | Zack Kanter (Founder and CEO of Stedi)
with Zack Kanter

Nov 2025
Go hard early: How lessons from Verkada shaped Serval's AI agents for IT teams | Jake Stauch (Founder and CEO)
with Jake Stauch

Oct 2025
The pivot that paid off: How fal found explosive growth in generative media | Gorkem Yurtseven (Co-founder and CTO)
with Gorkem Yurtseven

Oct 2025
From dorm room to life-saving AI | Prepared’s story | Michael Chime (Co-founder & CEO of Prepared)
with Michael Chime

Oct 2025