Elad Gil - High Growth Handbook

To my lovely wife Jennifer and son Liav. Suddenly, everything is possible again.

To my fantastic parents and my amazing sister, thank you for all the support and belief over the years.

P.S. To any children born in the future, sorry you are not in this dedication. You would be in here if you already existed.

Sam Altman

Marc Andreessen

Patrick Collison

Joelle Emerson

Erin Fors

Reid Hoffman

Claire Hughes Johnson

Aaron Levie

Mariam Naficy

Keith Rabois

Naval Ravikant

Ruchi Sanghvi

Shannon Stubo Brayton

Hemant Taneja

Thank you to the founders and entrepreneurs I have worked with over the last decade either formally or informally. Your dedication, creativity, curiosity, energy, and hope to have a lasting impact and to make the world a better place has been inspiring.

Countless people contributed their thoughts, revisions, and feedback on early versions of parts of this book.

Thanks to the entrepreneurs and investors who allowed me to interview them, and whose perspectives have added immeasurably to this book. Sam Altman, Marc Andreessen, Patrick Collison, Joelle Emerson, Erin Fors, Reid Hoffman, Claire Hughes Johnson, Aaron Levie, Mariam Naficy, Keith Rabois, Naval Ravikant, Ruchi Sanghvi, Shannon Stubo Brayton, and Hemant Taneja: Thank you for making this book smarter than I could have done on my own.

Thanks to Stripe for believing in this project and committing to it early on. Thanks to Brianna Wolfson for managing the book project, Tyler Thompson for creative direction, Kevin Wong for interior layout, Christina Bailey for transcribing the interviews and early edits, and Dylan Tweney for editing the manuscript.

Elad Gil is one of Silicon Valleys seriously knowledgeable and battle-tested players. If you want the chance to turn your start-up into the next Google or Twitter, then read this trenchant guide from someone who played key roles in the growth of these companies.

Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn,
co-author of the #1 NYT bestsellers The Alliance and The Startup of You

This book is packed with key frameworks for building your company, as well as inside knowledge gleaned from helping some of the most important new companies in tech. I have benefited from Elads advice at Instacart and this book codifies many of those learnings in book form.

Apoorva Mehta, cofounder and CEO of Instacart

Elad eschews trite management aphorisms in favor of pragmatic and straight-shooting insights on complex topics like managing a board of directors, executing functional re-organizations with as little trauma as possible, and everything in-between.

Dick Costolo, former CEO of Twitter and serial entrepreneur

Armed with observations gathered scaling some of the most successful and important companies of Silicon Valley, Elad has no-nonsense, highly applicable advice to any operator transitioning a company from the proverbial garage to the next stage and beyond.

Max Levchin, cofounder and CEO of Affirm, cofounder and CTO of PayPal

Elad first invested in Airbnb when we were less than 10 people and provided early advice on scaling the company. This book shares these learnings for the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Nathan Blecharczyk, cofounder of Airbnb, Chief Strategy Officer, and Chairman of Airbnb China

Elad is one of the best connected and respected early stage investors in the Valley - he invested in Minted when we had fewer than 50 employees and his advice was critical to us in growing our business to where we are now, in the low hundreds of millions in sales. In his book, he crystallizes all of these learnings for the next generation of companies.

Mariam Naficy cofounder and CEO of Minted

Elad is one of the most experienced operators in Silicon Valley having seen numerous companies hit their inflection point. His advice has been key for Coinbase as we go through hypergrowth, from hiring executives to improving M&A.

Brian Armstrong, cofounder and CEO of Coinbase

Elad jam packs every useful lesson about building and scaling companies in a single, digestible book. My only gripe is that he didnt write this when we were in the early days of Box as it would have saved my ass countless times.

Aaron Levie, cofounder and CEO of Box

Elad Gil is an entrepreneur, operating executive, and investor or advisor to private companies such as Airbnb, Coinbase, Checkr, Gusto, Instacart, OpenDoor, Pinterest, Square, Stripe, Wish, and others.

He is cofounder and chairman at Color Genomics. Elad was CEO of Color from 2013 to December 2016.

Previously, he was the VP of Corporate Strategy at Twitter, where he also ran various product (Geo, Search) and other operational teams (M&A and corporate development). Elad joined Twitter via the acquisition of Mixer Labs, a company where he was cofounder and CEO. Mixer Labs ran GeoAPI, one of the early developercentric platform infrastructure products.

Elad spent many years at Google, where he started the mobile team and was involved in all aspects of getting that team up and running. He was involved with three acquisitions (including the Android team) and was the original Product Manager for Google Mobile Maps and other key mobile products.

Prior to Google, Elad had product management and market-seeding roles at a number of Silicon Valley companies. He also worked at McKinsey & Co.

Elad received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has degrees in Mathematics and Biology from the University of California, San Diego.

Many of the sections of this book started life as blog posts on my website, blog.eladgil.com , where Ive been writing since 2007.

Its not meant to be read straight through, like a novel or a class curriculum. This is meant to be an active referencea book you can flip through to find useful guidance on specific topics when you need some perspective or advice.

Ive included many interviews from entrepreneurs with proven track records. Although I have worked at some of the fastestgrowing companies in Silicon Valley history, my experience is far from exhaustive. Sometimes it just helps to have different perspectives. Im honored to include these experts perspectives, even whenespecially whenit doesnt jibe completely with my own. You might find it fun to skip between interviews and read one after the otherthere are some great stories and valuable advice embedded within.

When there are online references that might prove useful, Ive included a footnote pointing to my website, where you can find more direct links to these resources.

For those links, additional resources, and updates, visit growth.eladgil.com .

High Growth Handbook

2018 Elad Gil

growth.eladgil.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

First published in 2018 in hardcover

in the United States of America

by Stripe Press / Stripe Matter Inc.

Stripe Press

Ideas for progress

San Francisco, California

press.stripe.com

Printed by Hemlock in Canada

ISBN: 978-1-7322651-0-3