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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Every guest on In Depth

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

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Eric Berg
Product Pitfalls From 0 Customers to the Messy Middle and IPO — Eric Berg on Okta, Intel & Fauna · May 2021

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GC Lionetti
Building a hybrid go-to-market motion — GC Lionetti’s lessons from Confluent, Dropbox & Atlassian · Oct 2021

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

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Gretchen Howard
Executive hiring is incredibly difficult to get right — Robinhood COO Gretchen Howard shares her playbook · Oct 2021

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Hareem Mannan
Take your design org from good to great with these principles from Segment to Twilio — Hareem Mannan · Nov 2021

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Harry Ritter
Finding product-market fit twice — Alma’s Harry Ritter on pivots and staying close to customers · Oct 2022

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Ian Wong
Operations vs. Algorithms: Advice for scaling startups, from Opendoor CTO Ian Wong · Aug 2022

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Irving Fain
Go unreasonably deep on complex problems and build with naivety — Bowery Farming’s Irving Fain · May 2021

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Jane Davis
Don’t have a UX research team? Jane Davis’ tips from Zoom, Zapier & Dropbox to get you started · Aug 2021

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Jeanette Mellinger
The early user research playbook for founders — Jeanette Mellinger’s expert advice for validating your idea with high-quality interviews · Apr 2023

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

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Jessica McKellar
What this 3-time founding team did differently to find product-market fit faster — Jessica McKellar, CTO of Pilot · May 2023

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Kaitlyn Knopp
How to handle comp challenges at every startup stage — Kaitlyn Knopp’s advice from Pequity, Instacart, Cruise & Google · Apr 2022

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

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Kellan Elliott-McCrea
How to supercharge your engineering org | Kellan Elliott-McCrea (Adobe, Dropbox) · Aug 2023

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Kelly Watkins
The story behind Slack’s marketing and the leap from marketer to CEO — Abstract’s Kelly Watkins · May 2021

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Kesava Kirupa Dinakaran
How to pull off the ‘zoom-in pivot,’ and other lessons in early-stage building with Luminai’s Kesava Kirupa Dinakaran · May 2023

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Kevin Busque
Inside Guideline's mission to modernize 401(k)s | Building from first principles, finding strategic edges, and rewiring retirement | Kevin Busque (Co-founder and CEO) · Feb 2025

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Kevin Fishner
“My product is the company” — Kevin Fishner on how startups can build better systems · Feb 2021

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Kevin Mandich

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Krithika Muthukumar
Inside marketing at Stripe, OpenAI and Retool | Krithika Muthukumar (VP of Marketing at OpenAI, ex-Stripe, Retool, Dropbox, Google) · Aug 2024

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Leah Sutton
Treat Operational Debt like Tech Debt — Leah Sutton on Elastic’s Distributed Work Playbook · Mar 2021

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Marcel Weekes
Why is the transition from IC Engineer to Manager so tricky (and how to get it right)? — Marcel Weekes, VP of Product Engineering at Figma · May 2023

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Mark Frein
Setting up the people function and training for empathy — Lambda School’s Mark Frein · Apr 2021

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Maya Spivak
How to hire the right marketer at the right time for your startup — Mux & Segment’s Maya Spivak · Sep 2021

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McKenna Quint
The do’s and don’ts of scaling from dozens of employees to thousands — McKenna Quint · Jun 2021

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Michael Cieri
Lessons from Gusto & Square on finding your product wedge | Michael Cieri · Feb 2024

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Michael Lopp
The human side of world-class engineering leadership | Michael Lopp (Apple, Palantir, Slack) · Jan 2024

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Mike Boufford
How to scale your career alongside your startup: Mike Boufford’s lessons after 10 years at Greenhouse · Jan 2023

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Milin Desai
Lessons from Sentry on scaling DevTools and finding product market fit (again) | Milin Desai (Sentry, VMware, Riverbed) · May 2024

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Nadia Singer
What makes someone a truly remarkable talent evaluator — Nadia Singer, Figma’s Chief People Officer · Mar 2023

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Nairi Hourdajian
A crash course on comms for founders — Nairi Hourdajian’s early-stage advice from Figma & Uber · Mar 2022

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Nate Stewart
Building a highly-technical enterprise product? Essential advice for product leaders — Nate Stewart of Cockroach Labs · May 2022

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Neha Narkhede
Winning with open and closed source products | Neha Narkhede (Co-founder at Confluent and Oscilar) · Dec 2023

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Noah Desai Weiss
Lessons from Slack on decision making, product-led growth, and taking big swings — Noah Desai Weiss · Jul 2023

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

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Peter Kazanjy
Founders: Here’s how to get your sales pitch in ship-shape — Peter Kazanjy · Dec 2022

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

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Rachel Hepworth
Notion’s Head of Marketing on building a growth marketing engine at a PLG company — Rachel Hepworth · Apr 2023

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Rich Rao
How to approach GTM with an engineering lens — Rich Rao’s advice from Google & Meta · Nov 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