Find people who've been there

Lorraine on getting noticed for your work“Doing great work doesn’t guarantee recognition. Make your impact easy to explain so people can advocate for you when you’re not in the room.”

Guillermo on building Vercel and Next.js“The best things we've done for our brand is the things that we did without thinking we're working on our brand.”

Pedro on where machine learning is headed“The same basic paradigms have been used since the 1950s. At the end of the day, we’re going to need some new ideas.”

Vinod on which jobs AI will replaceLed KV's first OpenAI investment and juniper Networks: 2,500x return.

Suzanne on what happens behind closed doors in a layoff“I've personally been involved in laying off well over a thousand people, and the part no one talks about is how fast the dignity gets stripped away: one minute you're trusted, the next a manager you've never met is reading you a script while someone cuts your computer access.”

Spencer on life inside an NBA organization“I used to think pushing past your body meant toughness, but the league taught me that the hardest skill is staying on the floor.”

Vanessa on sexual expectations couples never say out loud“I don't believe in a universal normal for any stage, but I do think it's completely natural for that early honeymoon frequency to taper off after about a year.”

Céline on protecting your health in a noisy information world“I protect my health the same way I protect my patients: by curating my information diet the way I curate my food. I go to the source, I follow people who've been right before and correct themselves when the evidence changes, and I stay open to changing my mind. Certainty that cannot bend is not strength; it is a vulnerability.”

Deena on raising venture money as an underestimated founder“Do your homework on who you're pitching. Most founders spray and pray, but that wastes everyone's time. And bring your full self to the conversation. The intersectional, the immigrant, the nontraditional founder, those backgrounds are not weaknesses. They're edges. The data shows diverse founding teams build better businesses. But you have to own it.”

Soleio on designing products people love“Good design starts with knowing what matters. If your team can’t agree on the problem, polishing the interface won’t fix it.”

Julian on using a system to curb phone distractions“I don't try to restart at full speed; I drop back to the mínimo viable version of each habit until the momentum returns, because a 20-minute workout and one focused block on the side project beats another day of zero.”

Andrej on how far we are from AGILed Tesla Autopilot computer vision team and founding member of OpenAI.

Lenny on breaking into product management“A few paths actually work. The safest is transitioning internally, partnering closely with a PM until you can make the case. The second is joining an early-stage startup where everyone does everything. Regardless of path, become the person who deeply understands the customer and can translate that into product insight.”

Jim on enjoying competition when teammates are more intense“I stopped enjoying baseball when I was chasing what everyone else valued, and I found my game again only when I started competing to raise my own level, not to beat theirs.”

Matthew on finding the right partner“You want to be happy enough that the right thing doesn’t become your everything.”

Jeffrey on why treating symptoms is the wrong place to start“Symptoms are late signals, not first causes. In chronic illness the biology starts drifting years before a diagnosis. If you start at the symptom, you are downstream. You may mute the alarm without finding the fire. The body is a network, so ask what shifted in the person's story and physiology that made the symptom possible, then address that.”

Joshua on hiring an operations manager before you feel ready“Hiring my first employee scared me because it felt like a massive expense, but I learned your first hire should be operations, not another you.”

Madhavan on pricing for profitable growth“Don’t build a product and then ask what to charge. Find out what customers will pay for before you decide what to build.”

Tiago on turning knowledge into action“Saving information isn’t the goal. Organize it around what you’re trying to accomplish, so the ideas you collect become things you actually create.”

Lin on scaling computeRaised $300M+, incl. $250M Series C and led PyTorch team at Meta.