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High Growth Handbook
About the Author
How to use this book
Interviews
Introduction
Welcome to the High Growth Handbook
An Interview with MARC ANDREESSEN
Chapter 1: The Role of the CEO
The role of the CEO: managing yourself
Personal time management
Delegate
Audit your calendar weekly, then monthly
Learn to say no
Realize your old patterns of work can no longer apply
Take vacations & time off
Work on things you care about
The role of the CEO: managing your reports
An interview with CLAIRE HUGHES JOHNSON
Insights: Working with Claire
The changing cofounder dynamic
Chapter 2: Managing the board
“Hiring” Your Board of Directors
Choosing a VC Partner who is right for your board
Choosing an Independent Board Member
The chairman of the board
Board diversity
Ways to source diverse board candidates
Board evolution over time
Removing members from your board
Removing VC Board members
Removing independent board members
Independent board seat structures
An interview with REID HOFFMAN
The role of the CEO: Managing your board of directors
Board meeting structure
Board meeting agenda
Board observers and random people showing up to board meetings
Other board interactions
An interview with NAVAL RAVIKANT (part 1)
Chapter 3: Recruiting, hiring, and managing talent
Recruiting best practices
Write a job description for every role
Ask every candidate the same questions
Assign focus areas to interviewers prior to the interview
Work product interviews
Candidate scoring
Move fast
Check candidates’ references
Diverse candidates
Scaling a recruiting organization
Early days: your team as recruiters
Initial scaling: the in-house recruiter
High-growth: multiple recruiting org roles
Executive hires: retained recruiter
Employee onboarding
Send out a welcome letter
Buddy system
Welcome package
Make sure they have real ownership
Set goals
Old-timer syndrome & early employees
Early employees that scale
Old-timers that should move on
An interview with SAM ALTMAN
Chapter 4: Building the executive team
Hiring executives
Hire for the next 12–18 months
Traits to look for in executives
Define the role & meet with people who do it well
Know that you will screw it up once or twice
An interview with KEITH RABOIS (Part 1)
Do you need a COO?
Why a COO?
Why not a COO?
How do you choose a COO?
An interview with AARON LEVIE
Executive titles and pragmatism
Firing executives
How to hire great business development people
Great business development people
Bad business development people
How to screen for a great business development person
A great deal person is not usually a great partner manager
An interview with MARIAM NAFICY
Chapter 5: Organizational structure and hypergrowth
Organizational growth is all about pragmatism
If you are growing fast, you have a different company every 6–12 months
There is no “right answer”
Sometimes bandwidth matters more than perfect fit.
Org structure is often about tie-breaking.
Hire executives for the next 12–18 months, not eternity.
Doing a re-organization
Re-orgs at the company level and the functional level
How to do a re-org
An interview with RUCHI SANGHVI
Company culture and its evolution
Never, ever compromise: hiring for culture
Bad culture leads to pain
How to build a strong culture
Hiring for culture & values
An interview with PATRICK COLLISON
Diversity hiring
An interview with JOELLE EMERSON
Managing in a downturn
Chapter 6: Marketing and PR
Marketing, PR, communications, growth and your brand
Growth marketing
Product marketing
Brand marketing
PR and communications
Hiring marketing and PR teams
Marketing organization structure
To PR or not PR
An interview with SHANNON STUBO BRAYTON
PR Basics
Get media trained
Iterate on the company pitch
“On background” versus “off the record” versus “on the record”
Correcting factual errors
Press agendas
Hiring great PR people
Press relationship building
Engage PR early
Press does not equal success
PR & crisis management
An interview with ERIN FORS
Chapter 7: Product Management
Product management overview
What do product managers do?
Do you have the right people?
Characteristics of great product managers
The four types of product managers
Not a product manager: project managers.
Associate product managers (APMs)/rotational product managers (RPMs)
Interviewing PMs
Reference-check all your product hires
Product, design, an engineering: How they fit together
Hiring a strong VP product
Empowering the VP Product
Product management processes
Product management conversion and training
Product to distribution mindset
Chapter 8: Financing and valuation
Money money money
Late-stage financing: who should you be talking to?
Types of late-stage investors
How to evaluate late-stage funding sources
Key terms
One word of caution
Don’t over-optimize your valuation
Founder pressure
Secondary stock sales
$500 million tends to be a transition point
Founder sales
If you do not regulate secondary sales early, it may backfire on you
Types of secondary sales
Information sharing and secondary buyers
How much stock should employees be able to sell?
Investor sales: An opportunity to renegotiate
Locking up future sales
409A and RSUs
Moving to RSUs
The secondary stock sale: The employee perspective
IPOs: Taking a company public
Benefits of going public
Cons of going public
Market cycles
IPO process
An interview with KEITH RABOIS (part 2)
An interview with NAVAL RAVIKANT (part 2)
Chapter 9: Mergers & acquisitions
M&A: Buying other companies
When should you start to buy other companies?
Three types of acquisitions
M&A road map
Managing internal stakeholders
Dealing with objections
M&A interview processes
M&A: How to set a valuation for companies you buy
Valuation factors to assess for all three types of M&A
Team buys or acqui-hires
Product buys
Strategic buys
M&A: Convincing someone (and their major investors) to sell
Convincing people to sell: team & product buys
Convincing founders to sell: strategic buys
M&A: Negotiate the acquisition
Negotiate the sale: strategic asset
An interview with HEMANT TANEJA
Things to just say no to
Extra Resources
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High Growth Handbook
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