I stumbled upon the Podcast called Startup by Alex Blumberg this week and it was fantastic. Anyone who wants an inside view of what the founding of a startup is all about you should definitely download it. I switched up my spotify playlists for podcasts at the start of the year and it was one of the best decisions I made. Some of my favorite currently are The James Altucher Show and Tim Ferris’s Show. Both are highly recommended.

5 Tips on Building an Amazing Team Everyone talks about the importance of building an amazing team, however few realize the amount of work it takes to build them. This post gets readers to start thinking about the problem on the right foot. The hope is that startup founders put this as a priority and lay the necessary groundwork to make it happen.

To be a great leader, rethink your default behaviors I enjoyed this post about the default behaviors that each of us develop when we are in leadership positions. There are some common archetype that we all look up to and follow blindly. Sometimes we do not realize the impact our words and attitudes have on the people around us. What may seem to be a trivial comment in our mind, could have a major impact on the person receiving it.

We inspire smart people and trust them Transferwise has experienced exponential growth in the last 12-18 months. It is during these times that the quality bar of your hiring is severely tested. This post talks about some of the methods they use to keep that bar high and what results in high performance throughout the company.

A Billion-Dollar Company’s First Marketer Reflects Back Blog posts which get a critical player in a company to replay the key aspects of what turned a single idea into a massive company are very interesting to read. This post is about a company which I really admire, Hubspot. It is not only led by exceptionally smart individuals, they have managed to grow a company while keeping their culture intact. There are some great takeaways in this article from the journey.

New Relic’s Growth Playbook from Startup to IPO Another similar post to the one above. This one is however posted on the Growth Hackers website which is a great place to get news related to marketing and growth strategies. Highly recommend adding them to your reader list.

Capturing and Scaling Startup Values Determining the values that hold your startup together are a critical to a companies success. This is a very detailed post on how one company went about this process and their learnings along the way. Lots of great insights and recommended reading links.

The Two Most Important Questions to Ask at the Start of Your Startup These two questions have to do with the vision behind your company and how clearly you can describe it. In an era where short term thinking is driving incremental innovation, we need to start looking at the bigger picture and making bold bets rather than those that do not change the status quo.

Wishing everyone a great week ahead!