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    Best Practices by @ttunguz

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    Best Practices

    2024

    The Class Missing from Business School

    January 18

    2020

    Why Fast Learning Curves are So Important to Startups

    December 21

    What is the Structure of the Typical SaaS Company as it Scales?

    June 21

    How to Transform Your Board Meeting with Written Narratives

    June 15

    2019

    Product Launches Become the Operating Cadence of a Startup

    December 2

    On Humility and Making Better Decisions

    October 17

    The Early Discipline of Remote Startups

    October 4

    If You Have Great NDR Retention, Should You Increase Your Marketing Spend?

    September 2

    The 37% Rule: How to Decide When to Stop Wondering and Start Deciding

    August 5

    One Call to Make Before Picking Your Startup's Headquarters

    August 2

    Notes from Office Hours with Guillaume Cabane

    July 22

    Theory SaaS Startup Key Metrics Template

    June 18

    Define the What But Delegate the How

    May 20

    Hustle As Strategy

    April 8

    Should Your Startup Differentiate On Pricing?

    February 19

    A Common Mistake in Hiring Plans

    February 8

    How Many Managers Will You Need This Year?

    January 28

    2018

    Creative Selection - An Inside Look at Some Key Moments at Apple

    December 4

    Why Your Startup Doesn't Invest Sufficiently in its Differentiators

    July 20

    Timing Cashflows of Your Sales Commissions and Your Customers

    July 15

    When You Hire an Executive, You're Hiring a Network

    June 7

    An Ode to the OKR - How to Motivate Greater Ambition in Teams

    May 9

    The Challenge of Uncertainty

    May 4

    Why I Overestimate My Contribution to My Team

    April 22

    An Often Forgotten Characteristic About Your Startup's Ideal Customer Profile The Ideal Customer Profile. The perfect customer. Can you describe it for your startup? The more precisely you can describe it, the better. That will simplify disqualification. But articulating the ICP well isn't enough.

    March 25

    Why Does Your Sales Team Lose Deals?

    March 4

    Startup Best Practices 27 - How to Use Options to Retain Key Employees in Your Startup

    February 16

    Clarity of Purpose - The Competitive Advantage of Focus

    February 11

    The Best Bit of Advice on Writing I've Received

    February 2

    2017

    Managers Must be Insane to Brainstorm in Groups

    November 30

    Disagree and Commit - A Management Principle for Highly Functioning Teams

    November 11

    How to Decide With Speed and Conviction

    October 15

    Hiring for a Discipline You Know Little About

    August 31

    Maximizing Productivity on My Commute

    August 27

    How to Tell If You're a Great Manager

    June 16

    Startup Best Practices 26 - Choosing Your Startup's Competitive Strategy

    May 26

    Startup Best Practices 25 - Bounding the Unknown Unknowns

    April 7

    Startup Best Practices 24 - Marketing Your Product with Novel Framing to Maximize Sales Success

    March 6

    Startup Best Practices 23 - Leveraging The Illusion of Explanatory Depth in Interviews

    February 26

    2016

    How to Create Competitive Advantage for Your Startup with Proxy Metrics

    November 16

    Startup Best Practices 22 - Explicit Risk Bundles and Mitigations

    September 7

    Hacking Your To Do List with Your Calendar

    February 23

    2015

    Startup Best Practices 21 - Your Startup's Recruiting Scorecard

    December 3

    Startup Best Practices 20 - Managing Oneself

    November 24

    Startup Best Practices 19 - Recognizing the Breaking Points of Your Startup's Management Structure

    October 25

    Startup Best Practices 18 - Collaborating with Your Customer During Your Sales Process

    October 11

    Startup Best Practices 17 - Strategic Planning Using Your Startup's Fundamental Equation

    October 1

    Startup Best Practices 16 - Option Pool Planning

    August 13

    Startup Best Practices 15 - Start With the Why

    July 12

    Startup Best Practices 14 - Slash and Burn Your Calendar

    June 24

    Startup Best Practices 13 - Patience with Unit Economics

    June 14

    Startup Best Practices 12 - Customer Success Compensation

    June 11

    Startup Best Practices 11 - The 9 Box Matrix Talent Model

    June 2

    Startup Best Practices 10 - Building Your Startup's Institutional Memory

    April 2

    A Simple Tool to Organize, Remember and Deliver Your Important Presentations

    February 3

    Five Bits of Management Wisdom from Pixar

    January 29

    The Characteristics of the Most Successful Teams

    January 20

    2014

    The Importance of Segmentation for Your SaaS Startup

    December 15

    The Importance of Mindfulness When Managing a Startup

    December 12

    Brutal Intellectual Honesty

    December 2

    Why Your SaaS Startup Needs a VP of Customer Success Sooner Than You Might Think

    November 12

    Using Statements of Work to Accelerate Sales Cycle and Align Sales, Customer Success and Marketing

    October 24

    Startup Best Practices 9 - Structuring One on Ones to Maximize Your Team's Success

    September 26

    Startup Best Practices 8 -Getting the Most from Your Team By Preventing Burnout

    September 17

    Not A Conventional Company

    August 21

    The Four Kinds of Social Capital that Matter When Building Products

    August 20

    The Most Important Investment a Startup Can Make

    August 14

    The Secret Ingredient to the Best Startup Fundraising Pitches

    August 1

    How to Retain Your Startup's Best Employees

    July 29

    The Best Advice I've Ever Received

    July 25

    One of the Greatest Opportunities to Learn

    July 11

    An Exceptional Story with Exceptional Data

    July 2

    The Marketing Math Behind Scaling a SaaS Salesforce

    June 30

    The 3 Minute Technique for Brainstorming Your Startup's Product Roadmap

    June 17

    Startup Best Practices 7 - How to Use Andy Grove's Stagger Chart to Build Predictability into a Startup

    May 12

    9 Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read

    May 8

    A Framework for Maximizing Startup Marketing Effectiveness

    May 5

    Quantifying the Cost of a Bad Hire

    April 28

    Quantifying a SaaS Startup's Revenue at Risk

    April 23

    The Power of a Coach

    April 16

    Startup Best Practices 6 - Avoiding the Bike Rack Effect

    March 24

    The Things You Do Often Create the Things You Believe

    February 27

    Military Strategy Applied to Startups

    January 31

    How One Startup's Engineering Team Cut their Engineering Release Times in Half

    January 22

    The Two Key Skill Sets Startups Must Develop To Grow

    January 14

    Startup Best Practices 5 - Effectiveness, not Productivity

    January 2

    2013

    Startup Best Practices 4 - Managing Monkeys

    December 20

    The 10 Most Important Metrics in a Startup's Financial Statements

    December 16

    Using Price & Demand Curves to Inform Startup Product Roadmaps

    December 11

    Startup Best Practices 3 - How to Structure a Sales and Marketing Team

    December 3

    The Most Effective Way of Visualizing Funnels

    November 22

    Startup Best Practices 2 - Startup Team Sizes

    November 20

    Startup Best Practices 1 - Situational Management

    November 15

    The Missing Startup Design Pattern

    November 14

    What a Dog and a Monkey Taught Me About Management at Google

    October 21

    Using Gaming Product Hacks to Maximize Freemium SaaS Growth

    October 17

    The 3 Competitive Defenses of Enduring SaaS Companies

    October 1

    Using The Friend Paradox to Maximize Your Effectiveness at Startup Networking Events

    September 24

    How To Take Exceptional Notes and Be Productive with Paper

    September 18

    Interpreting Cohort Data - The 3 Key Analyses for Measuring Your Startup’s Product Performance

    September 17

    How Wordpress Used VideoConferencing and IRC to Change the World

    September 16

    The One Best Metric for Your Startup to Maximize

    September 9

    Not Sharing the Opportunity to Learn is a Cardinal Sin

    September 5

    Cohort Analysis for Startups - Six Summary Reports to Understand Your Customer Base (With Code)

    August 12

    Maximizing the Value of Investor Referrals

    July 29

    Your Startup’s Office Is Missing a Room

    July 18

    The Most Under-Appreciated Startup Team Member

    June 6

    Hiring Your Startup’s First Salesperson

    May 3

    Mastering Feedback Loops in Startups

    April 18

    Your Startup’s Top 3 Priorities

    April 1

    How to Align Founder and VC Incentives - Why Fund Size Matters

    March 27

    Which Data Biases Challenge Your Startup?

    March 19

    2012

    End of the year startup checklist

    December 14

    The software customers don’t see

    December 12

    A Startup’s Two Financial Plans - the Board Plan and the Stretch Plan

    November 26

    Financial planning for startups

    November 21

    Partnerships for startups - Key deal terms

    November 14

    Distribution partnerships for startups

    November 13

    No startup is an island - The three ecosystems startups should develop

    October 22

    The value of a patent to a startup

    October 11

    Founders, teach your employees statistics

    October 4

    A six-step framework to make strategic decisions

    September 30

    Segmenting the SaaS Market for Sales

    August 20

    All Great Managers are Alike

    August 19

    Are We Investing Enough in Our Managers?

    May 30