Skip to content
  • 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
Buy Now
Chapter

Appendix: Things to just say no to

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Linked In
  • Search
Subscribe
Articles
Things to just say no to
Extra Resources

Get Notified

Sign up to get notified with updates.

Tell Us What You Think

What topics would you like to learn more about? Who should we interview?

Stripe Press publishes books about economic and technological advancement.

High Growth Handbook © Elad Gil 2021

  • Home
  • About
  • Twitter
  • Search
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on LinkedIn