Non-obvious lessons from 100+ angel investments

Maximizing Developer Effectiveness

One of the best things about this article is the clear outline of what the author calls "key developer feedback loops," including micro-feedback loops that developers do 200 times a day. His main point: These loops should all be optimized so that they are quick, simple, and impactful for developers. The clear description of what a developer's job looks like in a highly effective environment versus a low-effective environment alone makes this worth reading. Check it out here. 

Non-Obvious Lessons From 100+ Angel Investments

This read is so good. Tod Sacerdoti, the CEO of Pipedream, recently made his 100th investment as an angel. He's decided to "invest in public," shedding light on his investment performance, mistakes, successes, and all of the lessons in between. This kind of share is so important because most investing work happens in stealth mode, in a community that tends to share only its successes. I thoroughly enjoyed this read and think you will, too. 

The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2020

At the beginning of every year, the First Round Review team pours over each article they published in the previous year and synthesizes the best pieces of advice. This year's recap was full of amazing gems and is worth a read. Here are a few that stood out to me:

• Pick the right growth lane—and don't let up on the gas. 
• Solicit impactful feedback with scaling questions.
• Set a cultural North Star to patch up the gaps of remote work.
• Build an outcome-obsessed product org.

The Hierarchy of User Friction

Product designers spend much of their time trying to understand and solve user friction. Sachin Rekhi notes that sometimes, the focus is on perceiving only the most basic forms of user friction and often not on the higher-level forms of friction users face. He outlines a hierarchy of three types of friction and explains what happens at each level. This is a must-read for anyone who works on their company's product—designers and beyond.

15 Ways to Increase Your Team's Velocity

Lenny Rachitsky comes through with a great, succinct tweet thread this week. It's a simple list of 15 ways you can increase your team's velocity, with a link to dive in further if you'd like. A few of the ones I think are very important but underrated: protecting everyone's deep work time, nurturing psychological safety, and setting up a predictable shipping cadence. Which ones resonate the most for you? 

The Email Marketing Statistics You Need to Understand

Email continues to be one of the best channels you can use to grow your audience. If you're looking to build your business faster in 2021, almost always, it makes sense to include growing your subscriber base as part of your strategy. This is a helpful run-through of how to optimize open and clickthrough rates, segment your list intelligently, and ultimately grow your audience. 

How Teachable Helped Over 100k Creators Sell $1B in Courses and Coaching in 7 Years

Ryan Gum, who works on growth at Teachable, shares how the company helped more than 100,000 creators sell over $1B in courses and coaching over the past seven years. This is a really thoughtful look inside the company's growth strategy, with embedded lessons about customer focus, affiliates, influencer creators, and company-generated "luck." 

Remote Productivity Hacks

Spurred by the pandemic, most workers in tech will move to a fully remote or hybrid work schedule even after the pandemic is over. This is a succinct overview of how Hubspot's Engineering Lead of Growth Onboarding finds flow state, manages Slack, holds effective Zoom meetings, and makes use of smart shortcuts. This was written through an engineering lens, but pretty much every remote tech worker can extract value from this.