The NFX Podcast

null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. This is Valve’s new employee handbook, delivered to every new person working at the iconic gaming company. It is an abbreviated encapsulation of Valve's guiding principles. As Valve continues to grow, they hope that these principles will serve each new person joining the ranks as an employee. Read the full handbook here - https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/apps/valve/Valve\_NewEmployeeHandbook.pdf

This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. The old saying "one bad apple spoils the bunch" holds especially true for company culture. Keeping around any employee who is a bad culture fit can destroy your team's working environment. Below are some of the typical types of people who can hurt your culture: 1. The Jerk 2. The Whiner 3. Credit Taker 4. Charming Do Nothing 5. Loyalty Monger With culture fit, you should never compromise. This bar should be the highest for the most visible and most productive of your team. Read the essay here - http://blog.eladgil.com/2014/01/5-people-who-destroy-your-culture.html

In this episode, Kristen O'Brien and Iman Abuzeid explore diversity in the tech industry, discussing its benefits such as profitability, decision-making, and innovation. They delve into building diverse teams, funding for women and people of color, and the approaches notable investors take towards diverse investing. They also discuss implementing a data-driven approach to diversity, concluding with thoughts on diversity in tech and venture capital. This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. The data is clear – diverse teams win. Companies with more diverse management teams have 19% higher revenues due to innovation, and 9% higher EBIT margins. Iman Abuzeid MD (CEO & Cofounder of Incredible Health) has gone through the full diligence process of the best of the best Series A funds in Silicon Valley and shares her findings in this essay. "We are coming to terms with what we have or have not done right in tech in relation to diversity. Data is one way Silicon Valley has won this far, and it’s the way we can keep winning. The data is clear – diverse teams win." Read the essay here - https://www.nfx.com/post/frameworks-using-diversity-to-win/ (0:00) Introduction by Kristen O'Brien (0:17) Diversity in Tech Industry with Iman Abuzeid (2:02) Benefits of Diversity: Profitability, Decision-making and Innovation (6:14) Diversity as a Competitive Advantage and Increasing Customer Expectations (9:52) Framework for Building a Diverse Team (14:07) Funding for Women and People of Color in Tech (16:08) Insights on Approaches of Notable Investors to Diverse Investing (25:05) Implementing a Data-driven Approach to Diversity (27:31) Closing Thoughts on Diversity in Tech and Venture Capital (27:53) Outro by Kristen O'Brien

null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. "On Monday, October 21, 2013, I sent this letter to our entire team at Airbnb. I have decided to publish this in the event it is helpful to entrepreneurs building their cultures." In this famous memo from the early days of Aribnb, CEO Brian Chesky stresses the importance of having a succinct company outlook on culture. "Why is culture so important to a business? Here is a simple way to frame it. The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs. When the culture is strong, you can trust everyone to do the right thing. People can be independent and autonomous." Read the full letter here - https://medium.com/@bchesky/dont-fuck-up-the-culture-597cde9ee9d4

null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. Pulled from a Quora post in 2015, Greg Brockman (former CTO at Stripe, now co-founder + CTO at Open AI) answers the question, "What is the engineering interview process like at Stripe?" Greg goes into detail around the frameworks and thinking behind the Stripe technical interviewing process and why they use this formula to build a world-class team at Stripe. Read the Quora post here - https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-engineering-interview-process-like-at-Stripe

null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. Amazon has and operates by its own set of leadership principles--a set of principles referred to during company decision-making, problem-solving, simple brainstorming, and even hiring. Here are the 14 leadership principles Amazon workers refer to on a daily basis: - Customer Obsession- Ownership- Invent and Simplify- Are Right, A Lot- Learn and Be Curious- Hire and Develop the Best- Insist on the Highest Standards- Think Big- Bias for Action- Frugality- Earn Trust- Dive Deep- Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit- Deliver Results Read them here - https://www.amazon.jobs/en/principles

null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. In 2007, Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop (a former Microsoft executive) was planning radical action to revive the company's fortunes on what they will do to stem the loss of market share, notably in the smartphone market, where despite being the biggest player it has been unable to compete with incomers, notably Google's Android and Apple's iOS. "The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable."

null Gabi Shalel is an amazing games founder - he understands the type of innovation, fast iteration, and quality required to create a successful games company. These things are also very valuable for every founder, every startup. So today, NFX General Partner Gigi Levy-Weiss talks to Gabi about the lessons he's learned from starting, growing, and selling Plarium for $500M that other founders can take and apply to their own startups, including: - Psychology of ultra-fast iterations- People and Hiring- Pivoting- Social in your product- Conversion tactics- much more Read the NFX essay here - https://www.nfx.com/post/gaming-superpowers-plarium

null This introductory paper was originally published in 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, before the project's launch in 2015. It's worth noting that Ethereum, like many community-driven, open-source software projects, has evolved since its initial inception. While several years old, they maintain this paper because it continues to serve as a useful reference and an accurate representation of Ethereum and its vision. From humble beginnings, Ethereum has grown into a well-known and widely used platform. The platform has also been responsible for launching hundreds of other cryptocurrencies and decentralized projects in recent years through a new fundraising mechanism called an Initial Coin Offering (ICO). Read the full paper here - https://ethereum.org/en/whitepaper/

null This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. Amazon's Jeff Bezos announced in February that he was stepping down as CEO of the e-commerce giant later this year. Bezos said he would transition to the executive chair of the company's board of directors and will focus on "new products and early initiatives. This is the letter he sent to all employees at Amazon. “Being the CEO of Amazon is a deep responsibility, and it’s consuming,” Bezos wrote in a letter to employees announcing his role change. “When you have a responsibility like that, it’s hard to put attention on anything else.”