Find people who've been there

Nir on why we reach for our phones without deciding to“Your brain has learned that opening social media relieves a quick pang of boredom, loneliness, or uncertainty, so it now cues the habit before you consciously decide.”

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.”

Spenser on turning user behavior into growth“Users tell you what they want, but their behavior shows you what matters. Understand the difference before deciding what to build...”

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.”

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.”

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

Guy on keeping customers from churningSold Brightback to Chargebee and CMO at Chargebee.

Hal on keeping a morning routine alive after a bad night“I learned the hard way that my routine survives only when I make it so small that a bad day can't break it, like doing the 6-minute Miracle Morning instead of an hour.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

Tim on picking investors for a first raise“Start with angels and seed funds who actually write checks at the idea stage, because most VCs won't touch you until you have traction or a warm intro.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

Alina on turning inbound interest into sales meetingsChili Piper valued near $1B and serves Gong, Airbnb, Rippling.

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.”

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