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.”

Kirsten on understanding what consumers want“Before you ask whether the market is big enough, ask what’s changing in people’s lives. The best opportunities start there...”

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.”

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

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.”

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.”

Kit on cutting a huge to-do list to three big things“I used to write forty-item lists and call it ambition, but it was just avoidance dressed as hard work.”

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.”

Alisa on growing from founder to CEO“The habits that made you a successful founder can become your biggest obstacles as CEO. Growth starts with seeing how others experience you.”

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.”

Stanley on finding initial traction“Your first customers don’t need a scalable solution. They need their problem solved. Do it manually until you understand what’s worth building...”

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.”

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

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.”

Jim on learning faster and remembering more“Before you decide you’re bad at learning, look at how you’re learning. Give yourself a method, remove distractions, and practice recalling what matters.”

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.”

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.”

Grant on growing an AI startup“When growth stalls, doing more of the same won’t save you. Sometimes your small team needs to make one bigger bet.”