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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Rick Song
From reluctant founder to $2B valuation: The story of Persona | Rick Song (Co-founder and CEO) · 2 episodes

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Russ Laraway
“When They Win, You Win”: Russ Laraway unpacks his new guide for the modern manager · 2 episodes

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Ryan Glasgow
A guide to building product in a post-LLM world | Ryan Glasgow and Kevin Mandich from Sprig · 2 episodes

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

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Sam Chaudhary
Starting an education giant in a “bad market” | ClassDojo’s story | Sam Chaudhary (Co-founder and CEO) · Sep 2025

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Sara Clemens
Why COO is the most fluid role in the C-Suite — Sara Clemens, former COO of Twitch & Pandora · Jul 2022

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Saumil Mehta
An org-design masterclass from a Square GM | Saumil Mehta · Aug 2023

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

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Shannon Brayton
Killing stories and creating categories — Comms tips from Shannon Brayton’s 25+ years in tech · Jun 2021

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

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Sidharth Kakkar
Want to go totally asynchronous? Repeat founder Sidharth Kakkar on building a remote team & autonomous culture · Jul 2022

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Snir Kodesh
From product roadmapping to sprint planning: How to ship software at scale — Snir Kodesh · Sep 2022

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Stephanie Berner
A customer success masterclass | How to design, build, and scale a CS org | Stephanie Berner (LinkedIn) · Feb 2024

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Steve El-Hage
Lessons from a first-time CEO — Steve El-Hage on learning everything the hard way · Nov 2020

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Steve Gutentag
Building an operationally-intensive business and avoiding upside down unit economics — Thirty Madison’s Steve Gutentag · Aug 2021

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Steven Bartel
The founder’s guide to making your first few hires — Steven Bartel on recruiting at Gem & Dropbox · Sep 2022

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Sydney Strader
A crash course on founder-led customer success — Sydney Strader’s lessons from Catalyst & InVision · Sep 2022

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Tara Viswanathan
How to pivot your way to product/market fit & other 0-1 lessons — Rupa Health CEO Tara Viswanathan · Sep 2021

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Tido Carriero
Building engineering orgs and new products at Segment, Dropbox & Facebook — Tido Carriero · Apr 2021

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Varun Anand
Inside Clay's unconventional path to $1.25B: Rethinking GTM, pricing, and enterprise sales | Varun Anand (Co-founder and Head of Operations) · Jan 2025

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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