Gokul Rajaram on designing your product development process, when and how to hire your first PM, a playbook for hiring leaders, getting ahead in you career, how to get started angel investing, more
with Gokul Rajaram · Jun 2022
Don't hire the head of function from competitor companies—instead, identify the best-in-class companies at that function in your space and hire their lieutenants and up-and-coming leaders. Build an org chart, spend time on LinkedIn, and systematically source from proven talent pipelines.
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Gokul Rajaram on designing your product development process, when and how to hire your first PM, a playbook for hiring leaders, getting ahead in you career, how to get started angel investing, more
Jun 2022One hour on systematic outreach (LinkedIn, process development) during low-mental-energy time, and one hour meeting 1-2 people daily. Over 30 days, this yields 60 conversations and a dramatically better talent pipeline than sporadic hiring efforts.
Gokul Rajaram on designing your product development process, when and how to hire your first PM, a playbook for hiring leaders, getting ahead in you career, how to get started angel investing, more
Jun 2022The first PM should be an engineer, designer, or analyst already at the company. They understand the founder and team dynamics, are trusted by both, and can assimilate culturally. External PMs with different processes often get rejected by the organization.
What Seven Years at Airbnb Taught Me About Building a Business
Jun 2019The people you bring in determine the company you become. Only hire people you feel 'hell yes' about. A 'maybe' hire is a cultural and momentum tax that compounds over time.
What Seven Years at Airbnb Taught Me About Building a Business
Jun 2019As you move up in leadership, the most critical product to get right is how you organize people. Structure determines whether teams move autonomously toward goals or get trapped in dependencies. Org design is either a force multiplier or a hidden tax on everything you build.
Gokul Rajaram on designing your product development process, when and how to hire your first PM, a playbook for hiring leaders, getting ahead in you career, how to get started angel investing, more
Jun 2022Being the top person at a mediocre company is worse than being a junior at a category leader. The brand halo, talent quality, network effects, and learning from winners compound throughout your career in ways that far exceed title or immediate seniority.
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