Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World

One final, unorthodox tip: if possible, build your expertise before you build your network, and build your network before you build your company. Each one leads elegantly into the next.

Transparency can’t just be a tactic, though. It has to be a core value

let’s be real: phone calls are terrifying). This approach has been historically uncommon

The problem with MVPs, and with the “something > nothing” model, is that if you launch to a large customer base or a broad community, you build brand association with that first version.

What criteria should be applied to people we hire, those we promote, and those we let go? What makes someone a good person versus a bad person? How should hard-to-resolve conflicts be handled at our organization? What’s your preferred form of communication and why? What enables you to deliver your best work? What stops you from it?

Project Aristotle, an internal Google research project, looked at thousands of teams at the company with years of empirical data on performance and concluded that empathy between team members and a group norm of emotional support was the best, most consistent predictor of a team’s success.

Finally, and perhaps most broadly, in a design review of the first version of Moz Analytics, one of our software tools,

Clarity and shared understanding of goals (i.e., everyone gives the same answer to the question “Why are we building this and what do we hope to achieve with it?”). Unity around the specific work required and how each person will contribute to it (i.e., everyone can give an answer to the question “What am I supposed to be doing and how does that fi

What traits and behaviors should be rewarded and recognized in our employees? Which ones should be discouraged?