People Practices

In any company, even the seemingly smallest behaviors will influence your culture, while the loudest proclamations won't.

What does it really take to start a startup (or work at one)? In this episode of the a16z Podcast -- based on a Q&A with Ben Horowitz as part of an event hosted by a16z's Technical Talent and People Practices team fo...

Everyone talks about the importance of mentorship in our professional development, whether it's networking to broaden career opportunities or learning from someone more experienced. But how does one break into an industry without established contacts or prior exposure? Are things different if mentors/mentees come from different backgrounds? If you're already more established in your career, how can you help up-and-comers... and actually, how could mentees help mentors, too?

Compensation is a topic near and dear to everyone's heart... but what does "compensation" fully mean -- and what does it include, what doesn't it include? How do entrepreneurs compete for talent in an intensely competiti...

LinkedIn may seem like a gift both for job seekers and hirers, but it's not enough. When (and how) should your company develop a process to attract -- and close -- the best people? In this segment of the a16z Podcast, Ca...

One of the ways to damage a fast-growing startup is to not have an HR person. But when is the right time to bring someone on? What qualities should you look for? How can you preserve the company culture and energy that g...

The speakers at our Connect/Enterprise event share their experiences across a range of company-building topics, from product strategy to COVID-19.

Founders and execs from Cloudflare, CrowdStrike, Databricks, Gong, and Yubico share their experiences and advice on growing enterprise startups.

Establishing trustworthiness early is a fundamental part of the interview process. Nothing else matters if you don't think you can trust someone. Hopefully, you’ll build trust by way of multiple interviews, references, w...

More than 25 million Americans were laid off in April, and that’s just the official count. Unofficially, some economists estimate that more than 52 percent of Americans under the age of 45 have lost jobs, hours, or been...

How you handle a layoff, how you communicate it to the people impacted, and how you manage and lead throughout the process really matters. It takes careful thought and planning, but it may be the most important planning you ever do as a leader.

This post presents our current recommendation for how tech startups should structure employee stock incentive programs.

Finding, nurturing, and matchmaking great talent is central to what we do at a16z. We’re always on the lookout for the best people in technology, from engineers and product geniuses to executives of all stripes.

When a group of developers met in 2001 to debate and discuss a new set of “lightweight” methods for software development, the Agile Manifesto was born. Essentially, it helped to codify the hodgepodge of learnings indepen...

1/People and studies I referenced onstage at #WSJDLive today: