Best Practices by @ttunguz

Best Practices

2024

January 18

2020

Why Fast Learning Curves are So Important to Startups	December 21
What is the Structure of the Typical SaaS Company as it Scales?	June 21
How to Transform Your Board Meeting with Written Narratives	June 15

2019

Product Launches Become the Operating Cadence of a Startup	December 2
On Humility and Making Better Decisions	October 17
The Early Discipline of Remote Startups	October 4
If You Have Great NDR Retention, Should You Increase Your Marketing Spend?	September 2
The 37% Rule: How to Decide When to Stop Wondering and Start Deciding	August 5
One Call to Make Before Picking Your Startup's Headquarters	August 2
Notes from Office Hours with Guillaume Cabane	July 22
Theory SaaS Startup Key Metrics Template	June 18
Define the What But Delegate the How	May 20
Hustle As Strategy	April 8
Should Your Startup Differentiate On Pricing?	February 19
A Common Mistake in Hiring Plans	February 8
How Many Managers Will You Need This Year?	January 28

2018

Creative Selection - An Inside Look at Some Key Moments at Apple	December 4
Why Your Startup Doesn't Invest Sufficiently in its Differentiators	July 20
Timing Cashflows of Your Sales Commissions and Your Customers	July 15
When You Hire an Executive, You're Hiring a Network	June 7
An Ode to the OKR - How to Motivate Greater Ambition in Teams	May 9
The Challenge of Uncertainty	May 4
Why I Overestimate My Contribution to My Team	April 22
An Often Forgotten Characteristic About Your Startup's Ideal Customer Profile The Ideal Customer Profile. The perfect customer. Can you describe it for your startup? The more precisely you can describe it, the better. That will simplify disqualification. But articulating the ICP well isn't enough.	March 25
Why Does Your Sales Team Lose Deals?	March 4
Startup Best Practices 27 - How to Use Options to Retain Key Employees in Your Startup	February 16
Clarity of Purpose - The Competitive Advantage of Focus	February 11
The Best Bit of Advice on Writing I've Received	February 2

2017

Managers Must be Insane to Brainstorm in Groups	November 30
Disagree and Commit - A Management Principle for Highly Functioning Teams	November 11
How to Decide With Speed and Conviction	October 15
Hiring for a Discipline You Know Little About	August 31
Maximizing Productivity on My Commute	August 27
How to Tell If You're a Great Manager	June 16
Startup Best Practices 26 - Choosing Your Startup's Competitive Strategy	May 26
Startup Best Practices 25 - Bounding the Unknown Unknowns	April 7
Startup Best Practices 24 - Marketing Your Product with Novel Framing to Maximize Sales Success	March 6
Startup Best Practices 23 - Leveraging The Illusion of Explanatory Depth in Interviews	February 26

2016

How to Create Competitive Advantage for Your Startup with Proxy Metrics	November 16
Startup Best Practices 22 - Explicit Risk Bundles and Mitigations	September 7
Hacking Your To Do List with Your Calendar	February 23

2015

Startup Best Practices 21 - Your Startup's Recruiting Scorecard	December 3
Startup Best Practices 20 - Managing Oneself	November 24
Startup Best Practices 19 - Recognizing the Breaking Points of Your Startup's Management Structure	October 25
Startup Best Practices 18 - Collaborating with Your Customer During Your Sales Process	October 11
Startup Best Practices 17 - Strategic Planning Using Your Startup's Fundamental Equation	October 1
Startup Best Practices 16 - Option Pool Planning	August 13
Startup Best Practices 15 - Start With the Why	July 12
Startup Best Practices 14 - Slash and Burn Your Calendar	June 24
Startup Best Practices 13 - Patience with Unit Economics	June 14
Startup Best Practices 12 - Customer Success Compensation	June 11
Startup Best Practices 11 - The 9 Box Matrix Talent Model	June 2
Startup Best Practices 10 - Building Your Startup's Institutional Memory	April 2
A Simple Tool to Organize, Remember and Deliver Your Important Presentations	February 3
Five Bits of Management Wisdom from Pixar	January 29
The Characteristics of the Most Successful Teams	January 20

2014

The Importance of Segmentation for Your SaaS Startup	December 15
The Importance of Mindfulness When Managing a Startup	December 12
Brutal Intellectual Honesty	December 2
Why Your SaaS Startup Needs a VP of Customer Success Sooner Than You Might Think	November 12
Using Statements of Work to Accelerate Sales Cycle and Align Sales, Customer Success and Marketing	October 24
Startup Best Practices 9 - Structuring One on Ones to Maximize Your Team's Success	September 26
Startup Best Practices 8 -Getting the Most from Your Team By Preventing Burnout	September 17
Not A Conventional Company	August 21
The Four Kinds of Social Capital that Matter When Building Products	August 20
The Most Important Investment a Startup Can Make	August 14
The Secret Ingredient to the Best Startup Fundraising Pitches	August 1
How to Retain Your Startup's Best Employees	July 29
The Best Advice I've Ever Received	July 25
One of the Greatest Opportunities to Learn	July 11
An Exceptional Story with Exceptional Data	July 2
The Marketing Math Behind Scaling a SaaS Salesforce	June 30
The 3 Minute Technique for Brainstorming Your Startup's Product Roadmap	June 17
Startup Best Practices 7 - How to Use Andy Grove's Stagger Chart to Build Predictability into a Startup	May 12
9 Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read	May 8
A Framework for Maximizing Startup Marketing Effectiveness	May 5
Quantifying the Cost of a Bad Hire	April 28
Quantifying a SaaS Startup's Revenue at Risk	April 23
The Power of a Coach	April 16
Startup Best Practices 6 - Avoiding the Bike Rack Effect	March 24
The Things You Do Often Create the Things You Believe	February 27
Military Strategy Applied to Startups	January 31
How One Startup's Engineering Team Cut their Engineering Release Times in Half	January 22
The Two Key Skill Sets Startups Must Develop To Grow	January 14
Startup Best Practices 5 - Effectiveness, not Productivity	January 2

2013

Startup Best Practices 4 - Managing Monkeys	December 20
The 10 Most Important Metrics in a Startup's Financial Statements	December 16
Using Price & Demand Curves to Inform Startup Product Roadmaps	December 11
Startup Best Practices 3 - How to Structure a Sales and Marketing Team	December 3
The Most Effective Way of Visualizing Funnels	November 22
Startup Best Practices 2 - Startup Team Sizes	November 20
Startup Best Practices 1 - Situational Management	November 15
The Missing Startup Design Pattern	November 14
What a Dog and a Monkey Taught Me About Management at Google	October 21
Using Gaming Product Hacks to Maximize Freemium SaaS Growth	October 17
The 3 Competitive Defenses of Enduring SaaS Companies	October 1
Using The Friend Paradox to Maximize Your Effectiveness at Startup Networking Events	September 24
How To Take Exceptional Notes and Be Productive with Paper	September 18
Interpreting Cohort Data - The 3 Key Analyses for Measuring Your Startup’s Product Performance	September 17
How Wordpress Used VideoConferencing and IRC to Change the World	September 16
The One Best Metric for Your Startup to Maximize	September 9
Not Sharing the Opportunity to Learn is a Cardinal Sin	September 5
Cohort Analysis for Startups - Six Summary Reports to Understand Your Customer Base (With Code)	August 12
Maximizing the Value of Investor Referrals	July 29
Your Startup’s Office Is Missing a Room	July 18
The Most Under-Appreciated Startup Team Member	June 6
Hiring Your Startup’s First Salesperson	May 3
Mastering Feedback Loops in Startups	April 18
Your Startup’s Top 3 Priorities	April 1
How to Align Founder and VC Incentives - Why Fund Size Matters	March 27
Which Data Biases Challenge Your Startup?	March 19

2012

End of the year startup checklist	December 14
The software customers don’t see	December 12
A Startup’s Two Financial Plans - the Board Plan and the Stretch Plan	November 26
Financial planning for startups	November 21
Partnerships for startups - Key deal terms	November 14
Distribution partnerships for startups	November 13
No startup is an island - The three ecosystems startups should develop	October 22
The value of a patent to a startup	October 11
Founders, teach your employees statistics	October 4
A six-step framework to make strategic decisions	September 30
Segmenting the SaaS Market for Sales	August 20
All Great Managers are Alike	August 19
Are We Investing Enough in Our Managers?	May 30