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...

Where should PM roles sit? Could be a GM or reporting CPO to CEO structure. Once you are 4 or 5 PM, there has to be a product lead to set the culture.

The founder is authentic to themselves. the company is almost in their image, and they have not tried to change it.

Product should be remarkable, people can not stop talking about it.

advise to founders 1- planning early stage - weekly plan , quarter plan then annual 2- simple tools - no complexity 3- Company and product strategy are the same in the early stage. only once you are big there are many products and strategies.

for newbies, Mid-stage companies are good for joining because you get mentorship and room to grow at the same time.

Solo founder Gokul is nervous about it. Two-person is good, the "hustler" and a "hacker"

There are multiple paths to greatness.square design, google engineering, FB growth, and Doordash are operationally focused.

Investing for Gokul is supporting the people rather than companies. Founder centric investing like YC. he sus out the ones who are in for the money, rather than solving a problem.

Gokul thinks if you want to hire best-of-class PMs, go to best-of-class companies and hire from them rather than a person.