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.”

Brian on scaling a company“The leadership style that gets you to ten employees won’t get you to a thousand. Your company can’t evolve unless you do.”

Peter on which AI tools are worth paying forLed product teams at Meta, Amazon, Roblox and reddit product 0 to 1M+ users.

Nyree on why you crash at 2 p.m. after a full night's sleep“Eight hours in bed means nothing if your brain never entered deep restorative sleep, and by 2 p.m. your adenosine tank is still full from incomplete overnight clearance.”

Roelof on what separates enduring companies from others“The enduring ones are willing to have what I call multiple founding moments. We have a wall at Sequoia that says, 'We're only as good as our next investment.' You have to stay paranoid. Never get crater-lazy.”

Nir on the science of living longer“To delay the biology of aging, we don't prevent just one disease, we prevent many of them. We used to think each age-related disease was separate, but they share common roots. Longevity becomes a side effect of staying healthy longer.”

Kathryn on negotiating higher pay and getting it“I watched my own mom retire dramatically underpaid after 30 years, so I teach women to frame the ask around what they’ve already delivered and what they’ll deliver next, not just what they need.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

Zack on a post-AI worldBuilt OpenAI's sales and partnerships teams and honorary Dean, HKUST AI Leadership School.

Peter on taking back your evenings from your phone“I stopped checking messages after 6 pm and told my team to call twice if it was truly urgent; nothing broke, and I got ten hours back every week.”

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.”

Nick on metabolic health, nutrition, and brain healthHarvard MD, Oxford PhD, Dartmouth valedictorian and #2 Science Bestseller on Substack.

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.”

Moses on making it to the top when you started with nothing“I had love for the game, parents who kept me grounded, and a city that taught me how to compete. What kept me going was consistency and curiosity. You control what you can control, stack good days, and let the game reward you when it's time.”

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

Ali on spotting talent before it's obvious“It's mostly about being intentional with the pattern matching you already have from a lifetime of interacting with people, rather than suspending judgment the way polite society trains us to do.”