May 8

Video

Mar 5

BizOps Salary Trends

Data-Driven Operations with Zoltan Patai

Event

Feb 1

Data-Driven Operations with Zoltan Patai

The General Manager Role and Career Path with Rebekah Rombom

Event

Jul 22

The General Manager Role and Career Path with Rebekah Rombom

Product Ops Lunch and Learn with Andrew Shipman

Event

Jul 14

Product Ops Lunch and Learn with Andrew Shipman

Here’s How to Wield Empathy and Data to Build an Inclusive Team

Article

Jun 13

Here’s How to Wield Empathy and Data to Build an Inclusive Team

Article

Jun 13

Fundraising Dos and Don'ts

Ensuring Diverse and Inclusive Interviews at Startups

Guide

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Ensuring Diverse and Inclusive Interviews at Startups

Jun 13

The Process for Sourcing Talent

Playbook

Jun 13

LifeLabs Learning: DEI Playbook - Google Docs

You Aren't Getting the Most Out of Your Investors

Article

Jun 13

You Aren't Getting the Most Out of Your Investors

Jun 4

How to Delegate Responsibilities When Launching Your First Startup

Jun 4

Mastering The Team Meeting

Jun 4

Interviewing

Jun 4

How to run a User Interview

Jun 4

This 90-Day Plan Turns Engineers into Remarkable Managers

Jun 4

What We Can Learn About Unity from Hostile Takeovers

President-elect Joseph Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris say they want to unite a divided America. That’s a monumental task, not only because of the high level of partisanship in the United States but also because of the universal dynamics of losing — and the temptations of winning. Switching which party is in control is a lot like a hostile takeover. For all the differences between politics and business, the human and organizational dynamics are strikingly similar. So are the leadership lessons.

Being on the losing side of anything can be a painful blow to pride. People fear reduced status, punishment, and loss. This can lead to destructive anger and negativity. Being on the winning side has its own traps. Those whose group “wins” can be tempted to gloat while monopolizing the spoils, marginalizing the other side, and letting followers call for crushing opponents.

In the takeovers I’ve studied, the transition of power is rarely smooth. Often there’s a parade of disgruntled employees, defecting customers, and legal battles fought on behalf of entrenched management. Some became international incidents, with governments weighing in to protect their own nation’s companies, as happened when Kraft Foods acquired Cadbury or InBev took over Anheuser-Busch. To avoid destructive divisiveness, leaders of the winning team must act quickly to heal wounds and create one enterprise.

Career politicians might feel that there are incentives to encourage wide divides. But if leaders can make it worthwhile for people to unite across divides and get to work, everyone wins. A culture of fear and division depresses overall performance. Ponder the fate of “Chainsaw” Al Dunlop, the cost cutter whose book was appropriately titled Mean Business. He was drummed out of Sunbeam, a hostile takeover gone wrong. (Sunbeam failed to survive as an independent company.) Being mean doesn’t raise productivity. Anger and resentment don’t improve anyone’s quality of life.

Some leaders manage hostile transitions with less carnage than others. They remain laser-focused on uniting people to do the work at hand, rather than continuing on a destructive path. If their counterparts at the top of the other side refuse to cooperate, they find allies below the top and include them in a new coalition of decision makers. These unifying CEOs don’t focus on revenge, even if their followers fantasize about it. The political model is President Nelson Mandela in South Africa, who reached out to whites to join him in creating one nation, even when some members of his Black party called for revenge.

Consider a classic success story involving dramatic protest and resistance: the takeover of a proud Asian bank by what its employees saw as an upstart acquirer. Upon getting the news, thousands of workers and managers shaved their heads and took to the streets to leave piles of hair in front of the acquiring bank’s headquarters. The acquiring bank’s leaders could have retaliated with massive firings, but they didn’t. Instead, they committed to a rare power-sharing agreement, with equal representation on management teams. They emphasized the talent that the other side brought. They also agreed to delay full integration so that the target could keep its name, and they increased compensation for the bank. Numerous retreats and strategy discussions, all focused on the larger goal of future growth, softened differences and created agreement about what problems needed to be solved.

Some on the “winning” side thought that this bending over backwards to appease the “losing” side was foolish. But it turned out to be the foundation for an enviable united force that integrated on its own, well before the formal process. Each group put the other’s flag in its branches, and together they developed joint plans for innovation. With disparities reduced and a focus on shared values and prosperity, the bank went on to become a regional leader.

Across numerous industries, the same positive pattern can prevail. When a once-unsuccessful, now profitable consumer products company was bought by a larger, less profitable company, employees in the target firm didn’t like the feeling that their accomplishments were diminished. They denigrated the culture of the acquirer. Key people announced that they wouldn’t move to the new headquarters. On the acquiring side, employees were equally frank about their disdain for the target’s operating practices. After the “losing” CEO and some of his team left, leaders of the “winning” team identified a set of principles for uniting the two sides. These included finding the best talent, wherever it came from, and adopting successful practices from the target company. Leaders invested in new, better offices that neither side owned, so that everyone could start fresh and develop new relationships.

Leadership that unites people and bridges divides emphasizes three key elements.

Identity. Help people develop a new, shared identity by emphasizing big goals for the future that they can participate in and benefit from. In the planning process, create occasions for personal connection. Meet on the other side’s territory.

Inclusion. Start new projects with mixed groups. A little power sharing goes a long way. A common task goes even further. Don’t waste time trying to convert those who remain recalcitrant. Find potential sympathizers and pick up their support. Let them see that there is another, more positive path.

Investment. Nothing demonstrates commitment more than visible showcase projects. Building new infrastructure and improving facilities in areas that would otherwise feel left behind signals to skeptics that the future holds promise.

Avoiding harsh rhetoric, treating people with dignity and respect, finding common ground, and investing in improvement for everyone — this sounds like the moral thing to do. It is also highly pragmatic. As the history of growth enterprises shows, in the long run uniters create more value than dividers. Biden and Harris say that they want to govern for the benefit of everyone. Their actions can demonstrate that.

HBR

Jun 4

Bryan Stevenson on the Frustration Behind the George Floyd Protests

Jun 4

Focus on Your First 10 Systems, Not Just Your First 10 Hires — This Chief of Staff Shares His Playbook | First Round Review

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Employee Equity

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Reference Checks for Exec Hiring

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Make Stronger Eng Offers

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Hiring at Stripe and the Role of a Product-Focused CEO

Jun 4

The Burn Multiple

Jun 4

A startup's guide to hiring: Interviewing

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Wherever You Go, There You Are

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A founder’s guide to vision and strategy- Shippo

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Hiring executives

Jun 4

A Brief Guide To Startup Pivots (4 Types Of Pivots)

Jun 4

The Strategic Value of Onboarding

Jun 4

10 Lessons For Entrepreneurs on Building Trust

Jun 4

Investment Memo Template

Here's High Output's template for an in-depth investment memo that's used as a tool to validate decisions and ensure full conviction. These are likely the categories that potential investors will be looking for when making their own funding decisions.

It can be valuable for an investor or a founder to use this template to shape their thinking around an opportunity, or to clearly enumerate why their company should get funding.

[

🗺 Company Overview

](#086f518d10894040ba5883b9babfc439) - [

🛍 Customer & Product

](#fe682640013d4b92a5da3a6a99ae0ba8) - [

🏬 Market

](#c705ac1ab2ff42c1baf1919254bcc3a7) - [

🚘 Traction

](#ec76d98f5b3b4d39b1ee5ec69fdd5026) - [

🤜🏽 Team

](#e75f3c8f536d4424a3dcb84f3f0d25f4) - [

💵 Fundraise

](#28235a7d2f6f456081681ed958d20ed0) - [

🤔 Decision Sanity Check

](#a2dcf0dcbc624a2fa85a5daef8f100a3) - [

📝 Pitch Notes

](#b214fc8562054a6582d2886f3646ccec) - [

📞 References

](#8d84503642114f049dffb8834f1e9531)

🗺 Company Overview

[What is the company one-liner?]

Mission / Vision

[What guides the organization and team?]

Highlights

Bullet 1
Bullet 2

Key Risks

Bullet 1
Bullet 2

🛍 Customer & Product

Target Market / Customer

[Who specifically is the initial customer]

Problem / Need

[What's the problem or void? How does the team know?]

Product & Wedge

[What is the product? Does it solve the pain point / need? Any dependencies?]

Defensibility

[What is defensible today or in the future?]

Go-To-Market

[What's the go-to-market? Is it feasible?]

Monetization

[How does the company plan to make money in the short and/or long term?]

🏬 Market

Why Now / Macro Trends

[What trends make this company and product possible?]

Market Size

[Is the market large, growing rapidly or emerging?]

Competition

[Who is the indirect / direct competition?]

Advantage

[Why do we like this company relative to the field?]

🚘 Traction

Product

[What has been built and shipped?]

Metrics

[What quantitative progress has been made so far?]

Unique Insights

[What unique insights has the team learned?]

🤜🏽 Team

Core Team

[Who is on the team?]

Super Powers

[What's truly unique about the team?]

Core Traits

Can they ship and build product?

Are they leaders?

Do they understand the customer?

Do they love to experiment / learn?

Do they have tenacity, grit, hustle?

Do they have self-awareness?

Do they have unwavering conviction?

Are they on a mission?

Notes

💵 Fundraise

Round Dynamics

[How much is the company raising, what are the terms, who else is involved?]

Roadmap & Milestones

[What are key business and product milestones over the 12-24 months?]

🤔 Decision Sanity Check

Do I have unwavering conviction?

Will I be proud to be an investor?

Can this be a category creator or leader?

Is this already great/awesome?

Can this be 100x?

Do I deeply believe in the founders?

Is this wedge / GTM feasible?

Can I add value?

Notes

📝 Pitch Notes

[Enter call notes]

📞 References

[Enter call notes]

High Output

Jun 4

Carta’s Covid-19 Layoff

Jun 4

Measuring D&I in the Workplace

General Methodology on Developing Diversity Metrics

All content from articles included below

Step 1. What do you want diversity to help you achieve?

In order to quantify diversity’s return on investment, diversity metrics need to be aligned with key organizational values and goals. The goals have to be linked directly to business goals or they won’t resonate with senior leadership. It’s also important to be concise and to only select relevant goals. You need three to five key points that are easily understandable. Examples: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/jSfGuzF3z8My0H2LKg7mzT1igfwxupUKiTiYj2_84xm9jaUOsje_oIY78vwMVKyj8f4FbB940OByZMTyxbLpHxNY4es_XsdlB8YeL5E8HLdHpPVVrd4joTHkx_vo1WbS1gvQDIj_

Step 2: What programs do you need to implement based on these goals?

At strategic level: (1) Establish business-aligned diversity plans/goals, and systematically launch diversity programs/activities. (2) Integrate diversity into performance review, enhance commitment and involvement at all levels of management. At tactic level: (1) Choose clear measurement forms to track diversity programs and activities. (2) Provide managers with coaching, education, and tools to help reach the goals. (3) Constantly review measurements and change them over time to ensure close alignment with business strategies and goals.

Step 3: How can we measure the effectiveness of these programs?

Quantitative: takes a variety of forms, such as headcount, percentages, rates, proportions, ratios, etc.
Qualitative: used to evaluate quality of efforts and results of business. Focus Areas Example 1 https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/sedyom43iuNAL2lZAaNuHSlft_DYd07esWgkBAUPAOHuFCxyotfJDcCXGNv3Xwt0UqRyOfFf-KeALv2hKYXjLMkEjDnvOb8cdOdbvEpf0U25CoNOtNHMRhs_-WZagfCh4xAEsECR Focus Areas Example 2
Pipeline (Recruiting and Hiring): The ability to recruit successfully both internally and externally and to develop a sustainable group of diverse people. Comparing new-hire demographics to the existing workforce, or assessing involuntary versus voluntary turnover by race, ethnicity and gender.
Equitable talent development: are people being promoted fairly across the organization regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, sexual orientation or disability? Examples of metrics used here would be promotions within management versus overall management demographics and the use of diversity initiatives proven successful for promotion, such as mentoring (plus assessing the percentage of managers in mentoring).
CEO/upper-management commitment: This includes factors such as representation at the top three levels, accountability measures such as diversity goals linked to compensation, and corporate sustainability/transparency measures, such as philanthropy.
Supplier-diversity: Percent of procurement spent with minority- and women-owned suppliers, as well as suppliers owned by LGBT people, people with disabilities and veterans with disabilities. It also assesses means of helping suppliers grow.

Qualitative Measurement: Employee Climate Survey:

Employee climate surveys help capture the perceived benefits of programs and allow for employee input to effectiveness of diversity initiatives, and provides invaluable insight into which diversity programs are most critical to staff and might yield the greatest efficiencies. The most effective employee climate surveys ask questions pertaining to perceptions of diversity, welcomeness, trust, transparency, and fairness, etc. Note it is important to establish a baseline. Sample Survey Questions My team has a climate in which diverse perspectives are valued. At _____, employees can voice their opinions without fear of retribution. At _____, people are rewarded according to their job performance and accomplishments. At _____, employees are treated with respect, regardless of their job or level. I know how to address disrespectful and/or intolerant behavior. I can succeed at _____ without sacrificing aspects of my personality or culture. My manager ensures fair treatment for everyone on my team. Senior leadership emphasizes the value of a diverse workforce.

Jun 4

Burn Rate - AVC

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Four Fits For $100M+ Growth

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Status as a Service

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Recruiting Calculator

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A Startup's Guide to Hiring

Jun 4

eBay’s First Chief Diversity Officer on Humanizing Diversity and Inclusion | First Round Review

“I'm not going to give you the solution to diversity and inclusion in tech.”

“I don’t have any D&I data for you.”

“I'm going to ask you to leave your ‘representative’ behind today.”

These are not the disclaimers you might expect from eBay’s first Chief Diversity Officer, who held roles at Google as its Diversity Strategist and at Uber as its first Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion. But Damien Hooper-Campbell isn’t your traditional leader when it comes to his approach to diversity and inclusion. Each step in his life and career — from front-of-the-house manager at an organic Chinese food restaurant in Harlem to Assistant Director of Admissions at Harvard Business School to Vice President at Goldman Sachs — has shaped how he views diversity and inclusion, whether it’s through hospitality, education or its manifestation in some of the most influential industries.

Drawing from his First Round CEO Summit talk (which received a standing ovation) and follow-up conversations, Hooper-Campbell shares how he believes we can humanize an increasingly popular discussion that’s otherwise at risk of becoming a rote phrase in tech: diversity and inclusion (D&I). He shares a snapshot of the state of affairs of D&I in technology and suggests how it can be approached differently to generate more authentic, effective and — wait for it — inclusive conversations. Lastly, he offers a few exercises and tactical takeaways that every leader can try at her organization.

(Literally) Searching for Diversity in Tech

Let’s start by getting a quick, unscientific pulse of how D&I is being covered before jumping into what should be discussed. If you've ever Googled “diversity in tech,” you’ll get a smattering of headlines, such as these:

Imagine how entangled this issue can be if there’s this level of contradiction and questioning in the headlines. “It took just minutes of searching to come up with these titles and more. What's happened with this conversation? It's supposed to be about people and something good. In many ways it's become a bastardized, sticky conversation to have,” says Hooper-Campbell. “Add in the backdrop of the United States and the racially polarizing acts that we're seeing happening across all of our cities. Add in the backdrop of what's happening in the UK with Brexit. Add in the backdrop of what's happening in Germany with refugees. This has not become the most fun discussion to have. It's not for lack of trying to start the conversation.”

The Current State of Affairs

The intensity and complexity of the issues involved in conversations around diversity and inclusion has sent the tech sector in a number of different directions in search of meaningful change. Hooper-Campbell has noted some common patterns:

D&I leadership roles. “We hire a Chief Diversity Officer.”
Progress via percentages. “We double down on recruiting because there is a narrow and almost singular definition of progress as having a higher percentage of women, of Blacks and Latinos than you had last year.”
Formal trainings. “Many of us do D&I programs. Usually it’s in the form of trainings. For example, unconscious bias has become the buzzword of the last few years. Training after training takes place. People who are underrepresented minorities feel forced to speak up and represent more than their individual feelings, and people who might not self-identify as underrepresented minorities are sometimes scared to speak at all in fear of saying the wrong thing.”

Take A Different Step First

It’s not that Hooper-Campbell believes that investments of money, resources and time is ineffectual — it’s just usually that they’re often applied in a silo without considering the human element that is at the foundation of this conversation. “It will seem cliché to some or too simple to others, but the first — and most often skipped — step is to humanize this issue. This is not just about metrics and percentages. Yes, ultimately, those are absolutely necessary for progress. But what I'm going to ask us to do is to put the trainings aside for today. Toss out the money for a second, too,” says Hooper-Campbell. “For those of you who have been afraid to talk about it with your teams, go through the following steps so you can encourage them to join you, too. This is especially important for leaders of early-stage startups because you have the best opportunity to make a change here. I'm going to push you to have a conversation, so you can push them to have a conversation. It’s not rocket science. Let's kick this off.”

Damien Hooper-Campbell at First Round's CEO Summit

Redraw the Circle of Trust

This phrase, Circle of Trust, became most popular thanks to Robert De Niro’s character in “Meet the Parents.” As a reminder, De Niro plays the cynical father — and former CIA agent — who believes no one is good enough for his daughter, especially her current boyfriend who is meeting him for the first time. “The boyfriend, played by Ben Stiller, is desperately trying to make a good impression, but he stumbles all over himself. The most infamous scene is when Robert De Niro corners him and introduces the ‘Circle of Trust’ concept. He talks about how his entire family is in it, how he knows Ben Stiller is trying to get in the circle and that he’s watching him,” says Hooper-Campbell. “The point of bringing up this movie is twofold. First, go see it — it’s hilarious. But second, most of the time, we don’t know each other. Whether it’s at conference, at a company that skyrockets from 20 to 2,000 people or on a commuter train, we are often in environments where we see but don’t know each other.”

The goal is to draw wider Circles of Trust — faster. “The challenge is that even among those we see every day — for hours and hours at a time — we don’t get beyond those surface-level conversations,” says Hooper-Campbell. “Even among those we know, we choose not to dive deeper when we’re at work. Most of us join companies and bring ‘our representatives.’ You know what I'm talking about. What we need to do is push beyond the boundaries of surface-level conversations. We need to do what we very rarely do as human beings when we first meet each other. We need to be okay being politically incorrect for the moment as long as we’ve established an assumption of good intent. That allows us to get our real views out there and gives us permission to call BS when we see it.”

Being in the Circle of Trust is like being in the exit row on a plane. You need verbal confirmation before proceeding.

The point of the Circle of Trust is to quickly create an environment that is conducive and safe for open conversations about diversity and inclusion. The first thing you want to do is define the topic in your own terms: What does diversity actually mean to you?

It doesn’t have to be perfect prose — the process of sharing definitions is what’s powerful. Break your team into pairs of people to do this definition exercise. “What I'm not looking for is what does it mean as defined by the dictionary. Or what it means as defined by what you think people want to hear or what the media says,” says Hooper-Campbell. “What does it actually mean in your world? That’s where I want you want to start.”

Reconvene your team and ask for volunteers to share. Let there be moments of silence, if they’re needed. As the leader, give your definition, too, but not before a handful of your people do. The answers will range. Here are some sample responses that your people may share:

“It means to me a people who come from a wide, diverse background and places. Diverse backgrounds mean various experiences, whether that's life experiences, job experiences or regional experiences.”
“We all have cognitive biases. We all have things that we carry with us. It’s our baggage. Diversity to me means I want people to bring that wide variety of baggage.”
“It means not letting your culture be defined by a single or few narratives.”

Come on, folks. Let’s define ‘diversity.’ Remember, we said Circle of Trust. We said no BS. We said no surface level stuff.

Here’s what I’ve noticed: conceptually, most us get what diversity means. “It's everything,” says Hooper-Campbell. “Oftentimes, this conversation narrows to be about only race and gender. While, yes, race and gender are very important aspects, diversity goes well beyond them. It absolutely should include them, but goes even further into hundreds of attributes.”

Damien Hooper-Campbell

Next, define the other word: inclusion. “What does this word actually mean? Again, I don't want you to do what we typically do which is just define ‘inclusion.’ Forget Merriam-Webster,” says Hooper-Campbell. “Again, break into groups of two — make sure people are paired with new partners — and give them this prompt to ask each other: Dial back in your own life to a personal event when you felt excluded — regardless of when or why.”

Now these conversations don’t have to be about race or gender or age or sexual orientation, but they absolutely can be — no judgement here. “This could be from when you were four-years-old and you didn't get picked for the kickball team. This could be from earlier today when you realized that people at your company held a meeting and didn't invite you. It doesn't matter what it is,” says Hooper-Campbell. “I just want you to talk openly and candidly with the person across from you about a time in your life when you felt excluded. Before you finish, come up with a couple of adjectives that describe how you felt at that moment. Go!”

There’ll be buzz in the room. You’ll find that most will be so engaged that they won’t hear you say that time is up. But, again, regroup as a team and ask for a few brave volunteers. These answers won’t just be responses — they’ll be stories of the human condition. Let them unfold and don’t tolerate interruptions. Here are some sample responses that Hooper-Campbell has heard:

“I was fat as a kid. The things that I thought were important, like school, weren’t what others thought were important, like sports. The majority didn’t care about what I did. Whatever everyone thought was important was how people judged popularity. That was a multi-decade recurring theme for me. My adjectives are ‘loser’ and ‘lonely.’”
“We shared very similar stories, which is why I feel confident or comfortable sharing. We both recently had friends — not close, but not acquaintances — who had weddings recently, to which we weren’t invited. Both of us expected we might be invited to them. It wasn't necessarily a deep exclusion — compared to what’s been said — but it still prompted some insecurity. It made us wonder if we weren’t as good of friends with those people as we thought. My adjectives are ‘insecure’ and ‘fear of not being missed.’”
“My experience was in high school. I was on our soccer team. There would be these big parties over the weekends when someone's parents were out of town. It was really awesome except I would always hear about it on Monday after they happened. Nobody told me or invited me. It was always one of these things. My adjectives are ‘sad’ and ‘unwanted.’”
“I went to high school in Japan. I was on the math field day team. I was the only girl. I was the only non-Japanese person. My teammates would literally just speak Japanese in front of me like I wasn't even there. This exercise reminded me of that and the feeling of just not even mattering that I was there.”
“Mine’s about age. In the first few internships I had, I walked in the front door and said, ‘I have a million ideas on how to make everything better.’ I immediately got shut down. It happens a little bit less now, but I still remember it. I was the youngest person around and getting shut down. My adjectives are ‘crippled’ and ‘demotivated.’”

What’s Being Shared, What’s Being Said

The experiences shared through these exercises will naturally bring your team together — maybe in ways you can’t immediately diagnose. To conclude, ask yourself a few questions:

How would you describe the type of exclusion shared? “Notice something about the experiences mentioned. They won’t necessarily have to do with race and gender only,” says Hooper-Campbell. “Those experiences were about human beings regardless of backgrounds or attributes — it was about those who have felt excluded.”
What were the words you heard? “Insecure, fear, lonely, right? Crippled, demotivated,” says Hooper-Campbell. “These adjectives aren’t mutually exclusive to any one category of people.”
From when did these stories come? “It’d surprise me if a handful of the stories told were not from childhood or teenage years,” says Hooper-Campbell. “In the previous examples, there were stories from grade school, high-school and early in one’s career. These are clearly long-lasting, strong feelings that have made a deep impression.”

The power of these exercises is that suddenly the stories that get voiced belong to the people you see often. It’s a step toward truly knowing them — and making them feel welcome. It’s also a step towards getting more people involved in the conversation on and commitment to diversity and inclusion. While an experience of being overweight may never be the same experience to being excluded because of the color of your skin or gender, it should help all of us get a bit closer to making ‘inclusion’ less of a buzzword and more of a human experience. “Folks, the point of this is there are people who are working for you right now or are trying to work for your company who feel this way,” says Hooper-Campbell. “If you ask for a show of hands of those who have ever felt excluded, you’ll see many, many more. Nearly every person has felt excluded at least once in their life. Now ask your team: How many of you have ever been responsible — intentionally or unintentionally — for excluding someone else? If people are really in the Circle of Trust, you’ll see just as many hands go up.”

Ask your team to keep their hands up for a few minutes more. “That’s what you want to fix at your organization. I'm not asking you to start with a training. I'm not asking you to take money and throw it at the problem. I'm asking you to simply start with a human conversation and a commitment to use your positions of leadership to never knowingly — either directly or indirectly — allow anyone in your sphere of influence to feel the adjectives of the excluded,” says Hooper-Campbell. “If you still aren't getting this diversity and inclusion idea, consider this metaphor — which is not mine, but I love it and so I continue to use it: Diversity can be likened to being invited to the dance party. We all open up our texts or email and have received an invitation to the party.”

“So fast forward and now we're all standing around at the party and there's tons of diversity in the room. Awesome. But that’s only part of the equation,” says Hooper-Campbell. “So what if only people of a certain weight are dancing? Or only certain people who are close enough friends to be invited to the wedding who are dancing? Or only people of a certain age who are dancing? Or only people who speak a certain language who are dancing? Or only people who are cool enough from the soccer team who are dancing? Inclusion is getting asked to dance when you’re at the dance party.”

Folks, diversity alone isn’t enough. If diversity is getting invited to the dance party, inclusion is being asked to dance when you’re at the party.

The message here is that diversity alone isn’t sufficient. “As leaders, it’s great if you're trying to recruit people from diverse backgrounds. But that’s just table stakes as one of my colleagues says,” says Hooper-Campbell. “I challenge you all to get rid of the noise that focuses all of this conversation on recruiting and statistics alone. That's a major part of it. We call that workforce. We've heard it already. We've heard it tons of times. A diverse workforce helps with profits and business because many of our customers and end users reflect a broad array of diversity. Okay. Got it. But what about the workplace? How do you actually feel when you're there? Have you only been invited to the dance or are you also being invited to dance when you're actually in the workplace?”

Damien Hooper-Campbell at First Round's CEO Summit

Run these exercises at your startup — start with this conversation to gain important ground if you value diversity and inclusion. “This type of thinking will blossom throughout your company as it grows. You’ll likely give voice to employees you’ve been missing out on. Or customers you’re not welcoming onto your platform,” says Hooper-Campbell. “Because you're now thinking in a more inclusive way.”

In summary, here are a couple takeaways to try immediately with your people:

Start with a conversation. “You can bring in experts to talk about unconscious bias all day long. You can hire a Chief Diversity Officer — for the record, I’m grateful. But have you actually had a real conversation to understand what diversity and inclusion means to your people and peers?” asks Hooper-Campbell. “Do you know? Maybe it is about physical appearance. Or about languages. It's probably also about race and gender, but don't miss out on bringing people into the conversation because, by yourself, you’ll narrowly define diversity and inclusion.”

Demand that inclusion be inclusive. “Diversity and inclusion can easily become a very U.S.-centric conversation. Just because you start to decipher what diversity and inclusion may mean in the U.S. does not mean you’ve identified what D&I means in France or Ghana,” says Hooper-Campbell. “By having the conversation and listening, you get what you need to figure out where to meet people in the dialogue.”

Keep the aperture wide to counteract polarization. Diversity and inclusion is an all-encompassing set of ideas — and participants. “We've gotten to a place in this discussion around diversity and inclusion where we have awesome initiatives that are focused on certain populations,” says Hooper-Campbell. “But what good are those initiatives if people in the majority don't feel welcome in that conversation? If it's simply an initiative inside of your company that's focused on women, that’s fantastic. But include and encourage men to participate! Otherwise, they say, ‘I'm not going in that room.’ How will the needle move with that type of fragmentation?”

Own D&I language before you own metrics. If you are intent on measuring the efforts and efficacy of these conversations, there’s a good early litmus test. “If you are at a place in your organization where you don't know if you should call me Black or African-American, get to a place by having a conversation where it's okay to ask that question,” says Hooper-Campbell. “Also, if you don't know if you should say homosexual or gay, get to a place where you can ask that question. The worse thing you can do is say nothing at all.”

Find the business case. “I want you to find the business case for diversity and inclusion in your company. I’m telling you, it exists. Diversity and inclusion drives revenue. Forget any research study for a second. This should be foundational. Find the opportunity in your business model,” says Hooper-Campbell. “At eBay, diversity and inclusion is core to our business model. We’re driving economic empowerment for sellers from every corner of the world while also offering over 1 billion selections to meet the needs of an extremely diverse set of buyers. If we don’t focus on this, our business doesn’t grow.”

Progress comes with vulnerability. “I’ve coached leaders for years. The biggest Achilles heel I see with senior leaders — those with big salaries and titles — is an inability to be vulnerable and a pressure to appear perfect,” says Hooper-Campbell. “With these inclusion conversations, that has to change. Folks, it’s that conversation — that exchange about exclusion — that’s the real takeaway. In less than an hour, you can fast forward past political correctness and surface-level conversation. You can talk to each other about something that we all have in common and can connect with each other on immediately: feeling excluded.”

Whatever you do, include. Commit to never ever, doing anything — knowingly — to let the people who are in your sphere of influence feel excluded. The health, happiness and longevity — of your people, business and industry — is in the balance.

First Round

Jun 4

Intro to Gusto Equity Guide

Joshua Reeves, CEO of Gusto (YC W12), discusses Gusto’s new guide to employee equity.

Craig : Why did you guys create this?

Josh : This guide was derived from a doc I created and shared inside our company. Many employees don’t understand the value and financial implications of stock options. This stuff can be confusing, so I felt like the right thing to do was to empower our employees with the knowledge to gain the most upside of our success. The concepts in the guide are basically the things I went through when I made employee offers and then realized it would help other entrepreneurs as well.

Whenever we’ve done financing, or whenever I’ve made offers here for candidates to join and I dove into a lot of the detail, I didn’t agree with a lot of the “standard terms.” So we created our own equity structure that makes sense for our future, and pulled together central guidelines and questions to help other founders as they navigate these same decisions.

Craig : Gotcha. Ok, so what are the main points of contention for you?

Josh : There are a lot but three jump out most.

I think the first one is around the actual offer process. A lot of times people don’t know the details of their equity, so there are really three things that need to be communicated in every offer. People need to know the number of shares they’re being offered, they need to know the price of their shares, and they also need to know the valuation of the company or the number of shares outstanding in the company – once you have one of those, you can calculate the other ones.

A lot of people who get offers know they have a number but they don’t know what it represents. So just those basic details should always be communicated and I find companies don’t always do that.

Craig : Makes sense. What’s the second point?

Josh : The second point, which is a bigger one, is around exercising. With vesting schedules there’s a cliff attached. At Gusto, we do five years because we’re building for the long term, so we give more equity and it’s a longer vesting cycle. But companies can choose.

Exercising means the ability to exercise options – to spend money to purchase options and turn them into actual equity. Most companies don’t allow their employees to early exercise. It’s always the choice of the employee. There is no guidance that companies should give here, but in my opinion, companies should always give their employees the choice to early exercise because early exercise has, if a person chooses to do it, some very clear tax benefits. I can summarize quickly if it’s helpful.

Craig : Yeah, definitely.

Josh : Sure. So there are roughly three phases when someone joins a company. When they first join, call it the first several months to a year, they get these options. If they can early exercise, that means they can take money out of their pocket, purchase those options, get the stock and in that year, if the value of the stock equals the value of the options, they basically pay no taxes at the point of exercise. They would just have to pay taxes when selling their shares.

So that has the best tax treatment, but it also has the highest risk, to be clear. It’s basically acting as an investor and that money can be lost if the company’s not successful.

The middle period is kind of a no man’s land because two years in, you can exercise and the stock value has gone up if the company’s growing, but you don’t get paid yet. However, there might be taxes due that year and the company is illiquid, so now you may have to pay taxes out of pocket. It has to be money they’re willing to not think about because it can’t be something that they depend on for living.

Then there’s the IPO timeframe where someone can exercise and then the stock value has gone up quite a bit, but they can sell right away and have the money to pay taxes that year because there are taxes based on the difference between the option price they paid and the stock value at present. That one has the most conservative approach because the company’s already liquid, but it has the highest tax rate because you’re now paying income tax, whereas in the first scenario, you pay long-term capital gains (which is a good thing) – assuming that the time delay between exercising the options and the liquidity event is more than a year.

The main point is, people should have the choice to figure out the difference. Certain paths, like paying out of pocket cash before any form of liquidity, can literally mean half the taxes. If someone is choosing to join a startup, it feels fair to them to give them that information.

From an options standpoint, exercising early creates more work for the company. If someone leaves the company, they don’t get all their options if they haven’t vested. So, if they are on a four-year grant and they leave after two years, the company basically gets back the options for the two years they haven’t vested.

To me, all the paperwork and overhead is just the right thing to do if the employee chooses that this is important to them. And a company, to be clear, can never give guidance on this because it’s a personal decision. This equity guide is just about surfacing the pros and cons and letting people make the choice.

Craig : Okay. Let’s jump to the next one.

Josh : So, this other one is around something called “golden handcuffs,” which is something that’s changing. It’s becoming more a part of the conversation but it’s still not very standard. The main point is that if someone decides to not exercise and/or is not able to exercise and they leave the company, their options typically have a three-month expiration. So, unless the person exercises them within three months after leaving, they lose those options, which is kind of crazy to think about because the person has already invested time, already contributed to the company, already meaningfully helped the business. Just because they don’t have the cash in time to pay the option price or the AMT they would have to pay on the gain, they lose their options. It doesn’t seem very fair.

They’re called golden handcuffs because a lot of times people will stay around the company simply to not lose their stock. I think that’s a whole other problem – “rest and vest,” you might say. People should be at a company because they really care about the work, they believe in the product, and they enjoy the company of their colleagues. They shouldn’t stay only because of their financial motivation.

So what I believe is important there is to give people flexibility. I don’t think it’s across the board, I think someone has to earn it. So at Gusto, for example, everyone that has stayed here at least three years, their expiration changes from three months to ten years.

The thought process is that if hypothetically, an employee has to move home to live with their family or they’re getting married to a childhood sweetheart across the country, these are all things that are great decisions that should not be punished. People should have the ability to still be honored by the business, maintain the option to point of liquidity, then exercise and not lose the stock they worked for.

Craig : Cool. Yeah, Ben Horowitz is pretty vocal on this stuff.

Josh : Yeah, definitely. People should feel appreciated for their work. They should be treated like owners in a business. We get asked a lot to give advice on this. I’m happy to give my advice, but a lot of it is also just knowledge that is not rocket science. People should spend time understanding and learning, too.

And again, it has huge implications. For example, on the early exercise piece. These are first world problems in the grand scheme of things, but if someone has early employee equity and it becomes worth $10 million, long-term capital gains versus income tax is 20% versus 40%. So, it’s $2 million difference in taxes that could have been mitigated if they had spent maybe $20,000 exercising options early on. Again, people should know the pros and cons. I’ve talked to people who said, “I didn’t even know what early exercise was. My company definitely didn’t let me do that.”

The main point I emphasize when I make offers is that this isn’t just about the transactional side. It’s also how you treat someone once they’re an owner in the company – the information your share and the respect you give them.

Y Combinator

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Your First 30 Days on the Job as a Chief of Staff | by Clara X Ma | CoS TECH FORUM | Medium

As I passed my 30 day mark as a Chief of Staff to the CEO of Hugging Face, I looked back to see how much my role and responsibilities have changed. Because this was my first foray into the CoS role and the first time my CEO had worked with a CoS, it felt a little like finding our way in the dark. We knew where we wanted to be and a general idea of how to get there, but there was still a lot of figuring it out along the way. In this blog post, I’m going to share my first four weeks on the job as an example of how a CoS might spend their time. CoS’s can have a variety of different roles and the day to day can vary from company to company but if you’re new to the role as I was, this might help as an outline of how you may want to structure your first few weeks in the role.

Your First Week on the Job:

This first week will feel very unstructured. You haven’t built up trust with your CEO, or the team, and for me, I had started a role in a field that I was highly unfamiliar with — Natural Language Processing (NLP). In addition to your onboarding paperwork (health insurance, payroll etc.), you’ll spend a fair amount of time doing self-onboarding.

Familiarizing yourself with the space is extremely important. I spent a lot of time Googling “natural language processing for dummies.” My goal for the first week was to have everything sound familiar. For example, when someone mentioned “BERT,” I didn’t immediately think of the yellow football headed Sesame Street character, but instead thought of Google’s neural network-based technique for NLP pre-training. When someone said “Transformers,” I wasn’t thinking of the Michael Bay movies, but instead knew that it was open source library by Hugging Face that had over thirty pretrained models in different languages. You should take the time to make sure you understand what your company’s product and goals are.

You’ll also begin to sit in on meetings with your CEO where you’ll be observing. There’s no expectation that you’ll need to join in on the conversation but do ask questions after each meeting. After each call, I would ask my CEO some combination of these questions:

Why are we interested in this person?
What would our follow here be?
What is our relationship with this company?
If there were any terms I didn’t understand, what did they mean?
What are we trying to accomplish with this relationship?

The goal with many of these calls is to feel comfortable enough to lead them in the future. Take note of the questions that your CEO is asking and how he answers questions by the clients. You’ll need to be able to replicate this when the responsibilities fall on you.

Additionally, familiarize yourself with the immediate team that you’re working with. If you’re a CoS at a larger organization, see who your CEO interacts with the most and make introductions to them.

While you’re learning about your new workplace, take time to learn about your company’s communication values and structure. At Hugging Face, I learned that email is preferred and Slack is mostly used for urgency.

Lastly, schedule a week 1 recap with your CEO at the end of the week. In my meeting, I asked him how he spent his time during the week and how he would like to structure his time moving forward. I told him which tasks that I observed him doing that I would feel comfortable taking on and which ones I’d like to sit in on a few more times before assuming responsibility. I also gained access to his email so that I could look through past communications to gain some context about any upcoming calls. Most importantly, I detailed my strengths and weaknesses to him on the things that I felt that I could ramp up quickly on versus where I would need support to get it right.

Your first week on the job is the best time to ask as many questions as you can. It’s the time where you’re expected to know the least so people are going to be much more giving in their answers. If you’re into month 6 of your job and you still don’t know what the company products are, your team is going to wholly lose trust in you.

Objective of week 1: Be a fly on the wall and observe as much as you can. You’re sitting in the trailer wagon in the back while your CEO bikes around.

Your Second Week on the Job:

Week 2 is going to involve more of the same observation tasks that you were doing before. You’re going to continue to listen in on meetings and ask questions. Your CEO might let you ask some questions at the end of the call directly to the clients so that you can start interfacing with them and building your own relationships with them.

You’re going to be assigned tasks that have finite goals. One of my first tasks was putting together the company’s official paid holiday schedule. Along with me being hired, my hiring class was 4 people and we essentially doubled the team overnight. We had to start putting some organizational structure in place. Things like paid holidays and vacation policies had to be written out. Administrative payments like our cleaning services had to be paid and scheduled.

Your main goals here are to take the administrative tasks off your CEO’s plate so that they can free up more time to work on the big picture. These things usually don’t take much time but 5 minutes back on a CEO’s schedule can add up quickly.

During this week, I also took time to start building out my own CoS network. I started with a straight forward search on LinkedIn, looking for people with a CoS title who had been in the role for over a year. If I ever find myself with some downtime, I’ll turn to the Cos Tech blog or Slack channel to see what other CoS’s are doing and seeing if we can implement any of those practices in our company.

At the end of this week I put a recurring weekly meeting on my CEO’s calendar and laid out an agenda with what I would want to cover:

General temperature check of what went well in the last week and what didn’t [I use this section to document what my accomplishments were for the week and what I specifically want feedback on]
Discussion topics that I wanted to talk about [I use this section as a running list during the week where I throw in things that aren’t urgent but need to be followed up with]
The CEO’s priorities [This is the section that my CEO will fill out before our meetings and we’ll take time in the meeting to talk about how I can best provide support in each of these areas. He’ll usually narrow the priorities down to 3 so that we can take impactful measures towards each item.]

Objective of week 2: Instead of just watching your CEO bike around, you’re now on a bike with training wheels.

Your Third Week on the Job:

This is where things start to pick up from a task standpoint. Your CEO should start to trust you with more responsibilities. In my experience, this is where I started to become his stand in for more low stakes meetings: intro calls, information gathering sessions, insurance approvals, new office negotiations. I also prepped his meetings with background information and followed up with the stakeholders afterwards.

You’re the main point of contact on a lot more tasks, but you need to keep your CEO informed. Remember, your job is to support your CEO and they can only do their best work if they’re informed. Just because you’re running email threads and communication doesn’t mean they should be left in the dark. My CEO asks to be cc’ed on almost every email so depending on your communication style with your CEO, do what’s appropriate here.

Continue to build out your CoS network — this task never really ends. You can ask your CEO for feedback as often as you like but in order to take new initiative and bring positive impact to the table, there’s a certain sense of proactivity that you will need to develop. While a lot of the CoS role can be reactive in nature due to your CEO’s needs and asks, where you’ll really be able to build your sense of career and direction post this role will come from what you are inquisitive and curious about. Other CoS’s will be your best resource for this as you see where their careers have taken them and what paths are open and available for you to explore. You don’t need to know where you’re headed now, but you can start to get a sense of what your options are so you can ask to be more involved in those aspects of the business if something strikes your fancy.

Objective of week 3: You’re able to balance on your own. The training wheels are still there but you’re getting more accustomed to handling things on your own.

Your Fourth Week on the Job:

This is the week where my calendar blew up. Not only was I still sitting in on meetings with my CEO, I was also having meetings scheduled with many of the relationships that I was now responsible for. You’re essentially taking on the day of your CEO as a shadow and a standin. It might even feel like you don’t have down time to do anything but jump from meeting to meeting.

The best thing for you to do at the end of this week is to reevaluate how you’re scheduling your time. While it might be exciting to feel like you have a completely full week of meetings, that leaves you with very little time to be reactive. This was feedback that my CEO gave me: leave time in your schedule to pursue non definitive tasks. Not everything you work on needs to have a deadline. That latter piece of feedback resonated with me resoundingly. As a CoS, it may feel good to have a running checklist of things that you can cross off but remember that you’re not here to be an admin and mark things as done. You’re here to support your CEO and become a resource for him in how to best spend his time and energy. While you’re not managing his every minute, you are becoming more of a gatekeeper to his decision making so as to reduce decision fatigue. Oftentimes I’m the first one to read an email and I’ll follow up on whatever I can respond to and leave my CEO with a singular decision that only he can make.

Make sure you leave time in your schedule to be reactive and also time to reflect on what tactically can be done next so that you can start to prep for the future.

Objective of week 4: The training wheels come off! You’re riding on your own with projects for you to handle from start to finish, but don’t forget to take breaks and stop pedaling every once in a while to observe your surroundings and plot where to go next.

Given the variable nature of the CoS role, not everyone’s first 30 days will look exactly the same, but if you’re looking for a way to get started, hopefully this article gives you a sense of where you can spend your time and how to allot your schedule accordingly.

For more resources on what it means to be a Chief of Staff, check out the CoS Tech Forum.

Jun 4

Product Zeitgeist Fit: A Cheat Code for Startup Success

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Airbnb Covid Layoffs

Earlier today, Airbnb Co-Founder and CEO Brian Chesky sent the following note to Airbnb employees.

This is my seventh time talking to you from my house. Each time we’ve talked, I’ve shared good news and bad news, but today I have to share some very sad news.

When you’ve asked me about layoffs, I’ve said that nothing is off the table. Today, I must confirm that we are reducing the size of the Airbnb workforce. For a company like us whose mission is centered around belonging, this is incredibly difficult to confront, and it will be even harder for those who have to leave Airbnb. I am going to share as many details as I can on how I arrived at this decision, what we are doing for those leaving, and what will happen next.

Let me start with how we arrived at this decision. We are collectively living through the most harrowing crisis of our lifetime, and as it began to unfold, global travel came to a standstill. Airbnb’s business has been hit hard, with revenue this year forecasted to be less than half of what we earned in 2019. In response, we raised $2 billion in capital and dramatically cut costs that touched nearly every corner of Airbnb.

While these actions were necessary, it became clear that we would have to go further when we faced two hard truths:

We don’t know exactly when travel will return.
When travel does return, it will look different.

While we know Airbnb’s business will fully recover, the changes it will undergo are not temporary or short-lived. Because of this, we need to make more fundamental changes to Airbnb by reducing the size of our workforce around a more focused business strategy.

Out of our 7,500 Airbnb employees, nearly 1,900 teammates will have to leave Airbnb, comprising around 25% of our company. Since we cannot afford to do everything that we used to, these cuts had to be mapped to a more focused business.

A more focused business

Travel in this new world will look different, and we need to evolve Airbnb accordingly. People will want options that are closer to home, safer, and more affordable. But people will also yearn for something that feels like it’s been taken away from them — human connection. When we started Airbnb, it was about belonging and connection. This crisis has sharpened our focus to get back to our roots, back to the basics, back to what is truly special about Airbnb — everyday people who host their homes and offer experiences.

This means that we will need to reduce our investment in activities that do not directly support the core of our host community. We are pausing our efforts in Transportation and Airbnb Studios, and we have to scale back our investments in Hotels and Lux.

These decisions are not a reflection of the work from people on these teams, and it does not mean everyone on these teams will be leaving us. Additionally, teams across all of Airbnb will be impacted. Many teams will be reduced in size based on how well they map to where Airbnb is headed.

How we approached reductions

It was important that we had a clear set of principles, guided by our core values, for how we would approach reductions in our workforce. These were our guiding principles:

Map all reductions to our future business strategy and the capabilities we will need.
Do as much as we can for those who are impacted.
Be unwavering in our commitment to diversity.
Optimize for 1:1 communication for those impacted.
Wait to communicate any decisions until all details are landed — transparency of only partial information can make matters worse.

I have done my best to stay true to these principles.

Process for making reductions

Our process started with creating a more focused business strategy built on a sustainable cost model. We assessed how each team mapped to our new strategy, and we determined the size and shape of each team going forward. We then did a comprehensive review of every team member and made decisions based on critical skills, and how well those skills matched our future business needs.

The result is that we will have to part with teammates that we love and value. We have great people leaving Airbnb, and other companies will be lucky to have them.

To take care of those that are leaving, we have looked across severance, equity, healthcare, and job support and done our best to treat everyone in a compassionate and thoughtful way.

Severance

Employees in the US will receive 14 weeks of base pay, plus one additional week for every year at Airbnb. Tenure will be rounded to the nearest year. For example, if someone has been at Airbnb for 3 years and 7 months, they will get an additional 4 weeks of salary, or 18 weeks of total pay. Outside the US, all employees will receive at least 14 weeks of pay, plus tenure increases consistent with their country-specific practices.

Equity

We are dropping the one-year cliff on equity for everyone we’ve hired in the past year so that everyone departing, regardless of how long they have been here, is a shareholder. Additionally, everyone leaving is eligible for the May 25 vesting date.

Healthcare

In the midst of a global health crisis of unknown duration, we want to limit the burden of healthcare costs. In the US, we will cover 12 months of health insurance through COBRA. In all other countries, we will cover health insurance costs through the end of 2020. This is because we’re either legally unable to continue coverage, or our current plans will not allow for an extension. We will also provide four months of mental health support through KonTerra.

Job support

Our goal is to connect our teammates leaving Airbnb with new job opportunities. Here are five ways we can help:

Alumni Talent Directory — We will be launching a public-facing website to help teammates leaving find new jobs. Departing employees can opt-in to have profiles, resumes, and work samples accessible to potential employers.
Alumni Placement Team — For the remainder of 2020, a significant portion of Airbnb Recruiting will become an Alumni Placement Team. Recruiters that are staying with Airbnb will provide support to departing employees to help them find their next job.
RiseSmart — We are offering four months of career services through RiseSmart, a company that specializes in career transition and job placement services.
Employee Offered Alumni Support — We are encouraging all remaining employees to opt-in to a program to assist departing teammates find their next role.
Laptops — A computer is an important tool to find new work, so we are allowing everyone leaving to keep their Apple laptops.

Here is what will happen next

I want to provide clarity to all of you as soon as possible. We have employees in 24 countries, and the time it will take to provide clarity will vary based on local laws and practices. Some countries require notifications about employment to be received in a very specific way. While our process may differ by country, we have tried to be thoughtful in planning for every employee.

In the US and Canada, I can provide immediate clarity. Within the next few hours, those of you leaving Airbnb will receive a calendar invite to a departure meeting with a senior leader in your department. It was important to us that wherever we legally could, people were informed in a personal, 1:1 conversation. The final working day for departing employees based in the US and Canada will be Monday, May 11. We felt Monday would give people time to begin taking next steps and say goodbye — we understand and respect how important this is.

Some employees who are staying will have a new role, and will receive a meeting invite with the subject “New Role” to learn more about it. For those of you in the US and Canada who are staying on the Airbnb team, you will not receive a calendar invite.

At 6pm pacific time, I will host a world@ meeting for our Asia-Pacific teams. At 12am pacific time, I will host a world@ meeting for our Europe and Middle East teams. Following each of these meetings, we’ll proceed with next steps in each country based on local practices.

I’ve asked all Airbnb leaders to wait to bring their teams together until the end of this week out of respect to our teammates being impacted. I want to give everyone the next few days to process this, and I’ll host a CEO Q&A again this Thursday at 4pm pacific time.

Some final words

As I have learned these past eight weeks, a crisis brings you clarity about what is truly important. Though we have been through a whirlwind, some things are more clear to me than ever before.

First, I am thankful for everyone here at Airbnb. Throughout this harrowing experience, I have been inspired by all of you. Even in the worst of circumstances, I’ve seen the very best of us. The world needs human connection now more than ever, and I know that Airbnb will rise to the occasion. I believe this because I believe in you.

Second, I have a deep feeling of love for all of you. Our mission is not merely about travel. When we started Airbnb, our original tagline was, “Travel like a human.” The human part was always more important than the travel part. What we are about is belonging, and at the center of belonging is love.

To those of you staying,

One of the most important ways we can honor those who are leaving is for them to know that their contributions mattered, and that they will always be part of Airbnb’s story. I am confident their work will live on, just like this mission will live on.

To those leaving Airbnb,

I am truly sorry. Please know this is not your fault. The world will never stop seeking the qualities and talents that you brought to Airbnb…that helped make Airbnb. I want to thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for sharing them with us.

Brian

Brian Chesky

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Why do new leaders need a mentor?

Like any high-performing individual, new leaders need to wrap a professional support team around them if they are to give themselves the best chance of success. That team must be trustworthy, objective, and acting always in the leader’s best interests. Having coached hundreds of CEOs and other leaders in startup and high growth businesses, I’m convinced that that team should include: an executive coach, a mentor and a therapist. This post unpacks what the difference between a coach, mentor and therapist is and explains why, together, they make up a such a cohesive support team.

If you are a new leader and would like more inspiration, then sign up to my Monthly Newsletter: a curation of blogs, articles, books and podcasts about the future of leadership. You can also follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Why new leaders need a mentor

The words coach and mentor are often used interchangeably, but there is an important difference. The word mentor originates from Greek mythology. When Odysseus sets out for Troy, he entrusts his house and the education of his son Telemachus to his friend Mentor. He leaves Mentor with the instruction to “tell him all you know”. Those words are significant; the essence of mentoring lies in a Directive form learning, based upon the transfer of the mentor’s knowledge and previous experience. The role of the mentor is pass on their knowledge to their mentee. John Whitmore quotes David Clutterbuck, from his book Everyone Needs a Mentor (Amazon UK, US):

In spite of the wide variety of names it is given… all the experts and communicators appear to agree that it has its origins in the concept of apprenticeship, when an older more experienced individual passed down his knowledge of how the task was done and how to operate in the commercial world.

Mentors may or may not be older, but they are always more experienced. For any leader, having the ear of someone who has been on a similar journey to them, perhaps more than once, is incredibly reassuring. It is because a mentor’s approach is more experienced based that it is referred to as being Directive, as opposed to the Non-Directive approach used in coaching.

Source: Effective Coaching: Lessons from the Coach’s Coach (Amazon UK, US), by Myles Downey

A good mentor will be an inspiring individual who you look up to and respect for their knowledge, wisdom and sense of shared values. They will pass on advice, share opinions and help you navigate tricky situations with greater ease. They’ll likely open up connections for you among their network. Because they are more directive, they may help you make decisions and reach conclusions quicker than your coach might. That’s not to say they are always right, and you might want to use your time with your coach to process their advice and arrive at your own conclusion.

Who has your back?

I’ve described these three disciplines independently. Whilst there is an important difference between them, they are interdependent. With the right skillset and background, a coach can very easily act as a mentor and vice versa. There are also many coaches who are psychotherapists. What I’ve tried to illustrate are the subtle, but important differences, that exist between the disciplines and give you a flavour for why you might want to seek out help from all three.

Such a complete and coordinated package of support might feel like a huge investment of time and money. So, whilst you might be asking yourself if you can afford to get a coach, mentor and therapist, shouldn’t you also be asking yourself whether you can afford not to?

If you enjoyed this, you might like:

What is the difference between coaching & mentoring? dives into more detail on this often confused topic.

How to find & choose an executive coach goes into more detail about the role of an executive coach, and provides helpful tips on how to find and choose the right one for you.

Leading on the job: advice for new leaders, in which I pass on what I’ve learnt coaching new leaders in venture capital and private equity backed businesses.

Sign up for my Monthly Newsletter: a curation of articles, books & podcasts about the future of leadership, and follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.

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The One Easy Trick To Build A Diverse Team

https://medium.com/@biggiesu/the-one-easy-trick-to-build-a-diverse-team-c53c992d25d5

Hire diverse leaders.

Simple as that.

Most people complain about how hard it is, and how the only way to build a diverse team is to recruit more junior talent — look for junior black engineers, or women software developers that you can “groom” into senior talent. That’s incredibly insulting and lacking in creativity or determination.

Also, it makes for a very tough environment for minority employees to thrive. We’re forced into a culture that is completely different than what we’re used to, forced to fend for ourselves, and dying of imposter syndrome, wondering if we were only hired as the engineer because we are “diverse”. You really think a 21 year old Latino Stanford grad is going to feel right at home among a frat-like environment of 20 something white male brogrammers at your startup?

No.

The answer is to hire minority leaders. Because, guess what? You know who that black woman you just hired to be VP of Engineering knows? Other black engineers. At least, more black engineers than you know. It might not be a comfortable answer. But it’s the reality we live in. We bond with people who have shared experiences. So, yes, many of my friends are Asian Americans. We share the same cultural experiences, we can relate to one another. Same with white people. Same with Hispanics, and African Americans. Facebook stalk your friends list on Facebook, and I guarantee your minority friends have more minority friends than you do on Facebook. If you’re a minority, your white friends have more white friends than you do. Certainly my children are growing up in a more diverse world than I ever was, and hopefully when they grow older that won’t be the case. But that’s the case now.

When you hire a diverse leadership team, you greatly increase your odds of finding other diverse candidates. And guess what? Your work environment becomes INFINITELY more welcoming to junior minority talent. It’s really hard for aforementioned Latino Stanford grad to stand up to brogrammer crap when you’re 21 and just figuring out this whole work thing with no frame of reference for how things should be. But if he had a Latino boss that was a role model, that would understand what he was going through, that he could gut-check against, you better believe it’d be a more attractive and comfortable environment for him.

I have not combed through Crunchbase and compiled an exhaustive list of startups and leadership teams and the underlying ethnic mix of their teams, but I do have two data points. I am currently Chief Product Officer at mitú networks, a Latino focused digital media company. As Mark Suster pointed out in our funding announcement, our leadership team is 60% Latino. Guess what? We have a lot of Latinos in the company. And Asians. Our CTO Alex Mostoufi is Persian. Guess what? Sadly, we probably have more Persian product managers/engineers than you do (we have three). I think maybe 5% of our company is Caucasian? Our leadership team members are not simply the best “Latino execs”, they are the best execs in the business. Period. My colleague Jesus Chavez, who runs our creator network, is a freaking machine. He’s been in the media business for years. Deep industry experience, natural born leader. I’ve been around a lot of startups in my day, I’d pick him above many many others, regardless of race. The list goes on.

Prior to mitú, I was Head of Product at Upworthy. Our leadership team there was over 50% female. Guess what? We had way better gender balance at Upworthy than you do. Before I left, we hired Amy O'Leary as our new Editorial Director, and Rachel Fenn as our VP of Engineering. Both of those women are forces of nature. Rachel brought a ton of insight into how to recruit and create an engineering atmosphere that is welcoming to women.

And then there’s Dave McClure and Christine Tsai and the whole 500 Startups crew who have gone one step further and proactively fund female and minority entrepreneurs. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve funded more female/minority led companies than all of Silicon Valley combined. While impressive and awesome for them, also depressing and shame on everyone else. I bet their companies as a whole are more diverse than normal.

Stil not convinced? Check this visualization out. The Bechdel Test is a simple test for movies — does the movie have at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man? Simple right? About 40% of films don’t pass this ridiculously low bar. Toy Story doesn’t. Avatar doesn’t. But all films completely written by women miraculously pass the Bechdel Test.

You mean even this movie failed? Yes, Natalie…yes.

Why does this matter? Because diversity brings diversity of perspectives, of work styles, of life experiences. And oh-by-the-way, in case you didn’t get the memo, the demographics of your customers has already shifted and is shifting more (*cough* that’s why you should come work at mitú *cough*), so it’s just good business to have your company somewhat reflect your customer base. In fact, I hate the word diversity. It implies forcing some sort of unnatural dynamic. It’s simply seeking to reflect the reality of the country, of your customers. #RealityNotDiversity #SeeThatHashTag #ButSeriouslyTho

So go forth, hire diverse leaders. Are there fewer? Sadly, yes. Might you overpay? Possibly. But let’s be honest, we’ve been overpaying white men for ages, would it be the worst thing in the world to overpay for a minority or female exec? :)

I gots mine!

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Why Retrospectives Are Crucial in Building World-Class Teams

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Why Retrospectives Are Crucial in Building World-Class Teams

It’s not enough to put a bunch of smart, accomplished people in a room and expect magic to happen.

The first time I managed other people was when I co-founded my first startup, nearly 10 years ago. In less than two years, I was leading a team of 30. And I quickly learned that people management is hard.

I expected my staff to proactively talk to me about what bothered them. I thought that the more decisions they disagreed with, the more they’d speak up about them. And when I asked for feedback and got no response, I figured that everything was going well.

So when my star-performing designer told me he was quitting, I was shocked. How hadn’t I noticed that he was unhappy?

My intuition of how teams work was wrong

I was the manager, so naturally I felt comfortable speaking up about decisions I disagreed with. Of course, if I was asked for feedback, I wouldn’t pull any punches. But it turned out that my team’s experience was different to mine.

Not everyone agreed with the decisions I made. Not everyone felt willing or able to voice their opinions. Some felt unappreciated, others felt misunderstood; others even felt disenfranchised, like my superstar designer. And all this was happening while I thought everything was going well.

Building the feedback loop

Shortly after my designer quit, I hired an Agile coach to help us with our product development process. As part of the training, we learned how to run weekly feedback sessions to review and improve upon our initial process. We called these ‘retrospectives’.

Retrospectives are simple to run. They’re regular meetings to discuss what’s going well, what’s not going well, and how to improve as a team. But the effects can be transformative. People leave feeling appreciated, listened to, and understood, in a way that one-on-one feedback can’t achieve.

Retrospectives transformed our company culture, from frustrated and antagonistic, to collaborative and proactive. We ended up with better communication between teammates, higher levels of motivation, and improved business performance.

How to run a retrospective

Many people are sceptical of spending time listening to their colleagues complain. But retrospectives are worth the investment. Taking one hour to listen to feedback is less than 2% of your week.

When leading a retrospective, I set up the following ground rules:

All teammates take part. No exceptions.
No interrupting others. Listen first.
No rambling on. For all our sakes.
No naming names. Let’s not make it personal.

I’ve found these rules to be very effective when introducing retrospectives to a new team. You can experiment with different rules to see which work best for you.

Part 1—What went well?

One-by-one, I ask each team member to share one thing that went well for them in the last week. It doesn’t have to be limited to work — if someone wants to share something that went well outside the office, I encourage it. I usually go first, to set up the tone and a fast rhythm.

After everybody’s responded, I offer a smile and words of encouragement. If someone shares something negative, I ask them to note it down and bring it up in the following section; it’s critical to get people into a positive mindset first.

I take notes of all the ideas and keep going around until everyone has run out of things to say.

Part 2—What didn’t go so well?

In this section, I ask each team member to share something that didn’t go well that past week. As I go around the room, I actively listen to what people have to say. For many teammates, this will be the first time they’ve ever vented a problem to the team.

As tempting as it is to solve problems, I delay suggestions for solutions until the next section. It’s better to focus on understanding the emotions a problem causes in other teammates. Jumping to a solution can end up trivialising someone’s feelings, or showing them up in front of the team.

As people share, I try to sympathise. Just saying, ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ or, ‘I’m really glad you shared this,’ can make someone feel validated and demonstrate that you care about them.

As with the first section, I keep going around until everyone has voiced all their concerns. If I run out of time, I ask people to save ideas for the following week, or to speak to me afterwards.

Part 3—How can we improve?

In this last section, team members reflect and write down suggestions to improve the team as a whole. I allow a couple of minutes of quiet time for people to prepare their suggestions, so that everyone can give their full attention to the ideas of others.

As teammates share their ideas, I write them up on the whiteboard. After listing all the ideas, we choose the two or three that will have the biggest impact on the team’s wellbeing. We commit to trialling them for one week — all but the most difficult of people are willing to try out a solution for a week.

This is where the magic happens. Every week, we try out a few new suggestions to improve our team. Sometimes they work straight away. Other times they fail outright and new ideas take their place. And some suggestions keep coming up, week after week, until the habit sticks. Over the course of several weeks, it’s incredible what you can achieve.

Are you running retrospectives at your startup?

It’s common for startups to have processes for product and customer development. But processes for team development are typically ad-hoc, at best. It’s not enough to celebrate a monthly milestone at the pub, or with a dress-down Friday.

To be world-class, you need to communicate well and make proactive improvements every single week. The quality of your team will determine your fate as a company. Start investing in it as early as you can.

Hi, I’m Dave and I coach founders that want to become great CEOs. Over the last 10 years, I’ve co-founded three VC-backed companies, invested in startups as a VC and Angel investor, and mentored hundreds of startups with Google and Techstars. Learn about how you can work with me at Dave-Bailey.com.

Dave Bailey

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Hey, Men in Tech: 10 Tips for Solving Your Pipeline Problem | by Katrinskaya | TheLi.st @ Medium | Medium

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Hey, Men in Tech: 10 Tips for Solving Your Pipeline Problem | by Katrinskaya | TheLi.st @ Medium | Medium

You are a tech entrepreneur and a man. You look around. You see but a sea of white guys on the stage of your last tech event or in your office. Very few women. Few people of color. You know that there are lots of talented people who aren’t white guys from all walks of life in technology — and they rock. You also know that you will be more successful if we are part of your ventures.

So here are ten tips from a (white) woman in tech on how to create a pipeline of awesome and more diverse talent.

Acknowledge that you have a problem. Determine that you are serious about solving it. It will take time and effort but as we all know, acknowledging a problem is the first step in solving it. So, take a deep breath and get real. Part of this is to be clear about your responsibility. As my friend Anthea Watson Strong points out in her excellent recent piece, it’s not our job to fix your pipeline problem. It’s yours.
This means, you have to do the work. Build a real network on your own. Develop genuine relationships with leaders in the communities that you want to reach. Do it early and do it often. Best, do it all the time. And please don’t wait until the last minute. If you ask one of us ladies in tech for ideas for women speakers for your next conference the day before it is to take place because you realize you have too many #allwhitemalepanels, we respectfully decline. If you want to reach a more diverse talent pool for your next hires, go to more diverse communities when you first put the job out, not after you interviewed ten white guys. Plan ahead. Hold your team accountable to reach out and deliver on building relationships with new communities. We can help you reach more diverse networks but realize that these are valuable — and often built painstakingly over time. We may not want to just give them away for free, especially when it is clear that haven’t done the work to built your own.
Pro-tip: We are not hard to find. Women in tech are very organized and you can definitely find us. We are on twitter: @techladymafia, @womenwhotech, @futuretechwomen, @AdasList, @railsgirls, @systers_org, @thelist, @CallbackWomen, @GeekChicPro, @WriteSpeakCode, @WITWomen, @steminist, @sheplusplus, and @thelist. And that is just for starters. We built dozens and dozens of tech women speaker lists to make it easy for you. Here are a few: www.pinterest.com/techladyp/mics-to-watch-out-for/, www.hersay.co.uk/, www.shesource.org/, geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_women_keynote_presenters_at_technical_conferences, www.mattgemmell.com/women-conference-speakers/, www.articulate-network.lanyrd.com/, www.plus.google.com/communities/101818001236662563704, www.callbackwomen.com/home.html, www.blog.bizzabo.com/the-100-speakers-who-should-be-seen-more-at-tech-conferences. As you can see, there are plenty of resources that make it really easy to get to talent. Use these resources before you come to us. Actively reach out to the people you want to recruit. Demonstrate that you have made a real effort to increase your pipeline.
Here is an important one: Give to get. Sponsor events, underwrite scholarships, pay young fellows or interns from diverse communities. Start a company mentoring program. Underwrite early-career trainings for young developers, returning workers such as mothers, and female STEM students. Provide travel scholarships to tech events. To quote Anthea: “Mid-level superstars don’t just magically appear from heaven, they are nurtured and grown.” Help grow them. That means always, always, always give more than you take. Here are some groups to support: Change the Ratio, Pipeline Fellowship, Black Girls Code, Girls Who Code, and Mother Coders, to name just a few dear to my heart.
You can always pay for professional recruitment. There are excellent recruitment consultants who will assist you in diversifying your speaker and your talent pool. They made it their life’s work to help you, so hire them instead of asking us to do this work for free. We are happy to provide lots of referrals.
Create a respectful and welcoming culture at your your conference. No self-respecting woman in her right mind will want to speak at your event, for instance, if you have models scantily clad sexualizing products in your exhibit hall at your event. Also, have a real behavior code of conduct for attendees.
Hugely important! Do the same for your company or organization. Make sure that if you diversify your pipeline that you do not stop at the door. Invest in good talent recruitment and retention staff, and in policies that help create a culture of respect for diverse talent. This is not an afterthought and no, your talent staff is not your sister or your wife, either. Professional staff who are empowered by a strong culture that values diversity can not only help you build a solid pipeline but make your talent succeed in your company. Take extra care to develop fair and clear promotion and advancement policies so that that all the awesome people you recruited stick around.
Make it visible. Fellow Tech Lady Sarah Milstein who runs Lean Startup Productions says: “Document your processes — and do it publicly.” She rightly notes: “If you look like every other hiring org/business conference/VC portfolio/etc, potential candidates/speakers/entrepreneurs/etc from under-represented groups have no reason to think you’re going to take them seriously. (Same goes for new orgs/events/funds/etc.) One of the most important things you can do to change your own ratio—and to Anthea’s original point, convince us that you’re committed—is to write publicly about your understanding of why there’s been a problem with your entity in the past and what you’re doing now to try to change it.” Incidentally, Sarah also wrote a great piece with more tips for diversifying your conference that is a must-read.
Throw out the boilerplate. If you recruit by checking boxes of qualifications, you are going to exclude a lot of people with non-traditional backgrounds. Boiler-plate job descriptions and requirements for specific degrees or backgrounds limit who even gets through the door and potentially excludes a rich group of talented people. Rather, look for signs of talent and alignment with your company values, and experiences that are outside of the traditional CS degree. Train your staff to spot the same. If you have done #4 and given support to young, early career talent, there is probably a wealth of people already whose potential you know.
Lastly, start. Get Going. Show Us. We want to help you, we really do. We have a self-interest here: We want to speak at and work in diverse, creative, ambitious, and successful endeavors. And we want to help us all get to a place where tech does not have a “white guy problem” anymore. We love real grit and effort that shows that you get it, and are serious to see change. This grit is exactly is how we got to where we are today, so we know it when we see it. We are in this together.

Thank you to a number of amazing women who tech for the many ideas and suggestions that contributed to this conversation. A big shoutout to Tina Lee, Anthea Watson Strong, Rachel Sklar, Erika Owens, Aki Braun, Leah Bannon, Abigail Collazo, Rebecca Piazza, Melissa Hawks, Lorelei Kelly, Sarah Libby, Alison Monahan, Sarah Milstein, Margie Roswell, Elly Blue, Quinn Heraty, and Pam Selle (in no particular order). I learn so much from you all.

Katrinskaya