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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

Stanley on turning a scrappy experiment into a public company“We saw a macaroon shop in Palo Alto with orders they couldn't fulfill, so we built a static HTML site with a phone number and took orders by hand. The scrappy part isn't a phase you graduate from; it's a discipline. You automate after you understand the problem deeply, not before. Change everything except the mission if the data says so.”

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

Julie on leading when AI changes the nature of work“Your job as a manager is to get better outcomes from a group of people (or agents) working together”

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.”

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

Guillermo on building Vercel and Next.js“I want people to write these verification loops because it's gonna give me conviction in the product that it'll deliver to my customer.”

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.”

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...”

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.”

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.”

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.

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.”

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.”