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High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups from 10 to 10,000 People

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Well-known technology executive and angel investor Elad Gil has worked with high growth tech companies like Airbnb, Twitter, Google, Instacart, Coinbase, Stripe, and Square as they've grown from small companies into global brands. Across all of these break-out companies, a set of common patterns has evolved into a repeatable playbook that Gil has codified in High Growth Handbook.

Covering key topics including the role of the CEO, managing your board, recruiting and managing an executive team, M&A, IPOs and late stage funding rounds, and interspersed with over a dozen interviews with some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley including Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Marc Andreessen (Andreessen Horowitz), and Aaron Levie (Box), High Growth Handbook presents crystal clear guidance for navigating the most complex challenges that confront leaders and operators in high-growth startups.

In what Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn and co-author of the #1 NYT bestsellers The Alliance and The Startup of You calls "a trenchant guide," High Growth Handbook is the playbook for turning a startup into a unicorn.

"Elad Gil is one of Silicon Valley's seriously knowledgeable and battle-tested players. If you want the chance to turn your startup 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, co-founder of LinkedIn, co-author of the #1 NYT bestsellers "The Alliance" and "The Startup of You," and host of the podcast Masters of Scale

"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

"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 jam-packs every useful lesson about building and scaling companies into a single, digestible book. My only gripe is that he didn't 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

"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 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 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

344 pages, Hardcover

First published July 17, 2018

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Elad Gil

2 books40 followers

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5 stars
1,012 (39%)
4 stars
955 (37%)
3 stars
374 (14%)
2 stars
125 (4%)
1 star
78 (3%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 144 reviews
Profile Image for Sebastian Gebski.
1,036 reviews996 followers
July 8, 2021
Definitely not for everyone, but if you're in the target audience, there's no chance you'll be disappointed.

HGH is not about building a product. Or scaling an engineering organization. Optimizing the delivery pipeline to minimize the lead cycle. Nothing of that sort. It's a book about building a start-up organization. Written by a seasoned practitioner for people who are about to start their first business.

HGH doesn't introduce catchy conceptual models or frameworks. It's very straightforward and comprehensible. Some of the advice is very 'technical' (deeply 'in the trenches' instead of drafting the principles that should lead you to making correct decisions), but I didn't mind. I like the fact that the book is peppered with interesting interviews (with figures like Naval Ravikant or Aaron Levie) - otherwise it may have been to 'monotonous' (keeping in mind that it's not very short).

It's definitely in my Top 5 books on building startups, together with "The Hard Things ..." and "Blitzscaling". Recommended.
Profile Image for Pavel Annenkov.
443 reviews123 followers
May 28, 2023
О чем книга в целом. Элад Гил один из самых известных предпринимателей и инвесторов в Долине. Нам повезло, что он решил издать книгу, где открыто рассказывает, что делать на всех этапах создания и роста бизнеса(подбор СЕО, маркетинг, продукт, отношения с инвесторами, финансы и тд).
За основу Гил взял посты своего личного блога за последние 8 лет и интервью с ведущими фигурами бизнеса в Долине. Это вдвойне ценно, так как эти люди редко выступают и дают интервью, да и журналисты не умеют задавать качественные вопросы. А здесь Эладу Гилу удалось раскрыть в интервью сложные темы. Плотность полезного материала зашкаливает.

Книгу можно использовать, как учебник, обращаясь к определенному разделу, когда у вас что то "болит" в определенной сфере работы компании. Уверен, что буду возвращаться к работе Гила еще много раз. Для меня это пока лучшая бизнес-книга 2018.

Главные выводы из книги.
- При быстром росте вы имеете каждые 6-12 месяцев совершенно разную компанию. Поэтому хороший подход для быстрорастущей компании - это нанимать руководителя на 12-18 месяцев для исполнения задач на этот период. Дальше этого периода смотреть бессмысленно. И надо приготовиться менять до 30% сотрудников при переходе на новый этап. У меня так и было во "Флористе", например.

- Человек, которого я беру на руководящую работу должен быть магнитом для других сотрудников класса А, чтобы они хотели с ним работать. Это один из критериев приема на работу топа.

- Три крутейших вопроса для интервью:
What would you want from me as your manager?
What kind of interactions do you want?
What do you want from your peers?

- В интервью Гилу основатели компаний часто говорят совершенно разные вещи на тему успеха своих компаний. Это еще раз доказывает, что каждая компания успешна по своему, как говорил нам Питер Тиль)

- Про то, кто такой директор по маркетингу в современном бизнесе. Он все таки больше лидер, чем специалист, так как необходимо разбираться в большом количестве вещей, а это просто невозможно.
Profile Image for Emil O. W. Kirkegaard.
158 reviews341 followers
October 6, 2018
Not at all scientific. Has a bunch of interviews with big name people, who share some anecdotes. Sometimes gives some decent advice, but mostly just fluff as one would expect from a typical business book. Could have easily been half the length without losing much content. Uses a lot of abbreviations that were never defined, making for annoying reading experience if one is without internet for looking up things.
Profile Image for Thijs Niks.
91 reviews
August 28, 2018
Spot on book about the things you’ll encounter once your startup starts growing exponentially. I kept nodding my head, as someone who has seen Uber go from 1,500 to 15,000 employees.

In true Silicon Valley style, the book is a little rough: Some of the interviews contain more information than the chapters, it should go deeper on trade offs between organizational structures, and lacks an in-depth look at international expansion. So that leaves room for improvement — a 2.0 version, if you will.

Still 5 stars, because this is the best (only?) book in its genre and I’ll hand it to every founder and employee who is on the hyper-growth rollercoaster.
Profile Image for Denis Vasilev.
681 reviews97 followers
July 31, 2018
Дельная книга про масштабирование стартапов. Раздел про менеджмент для меня особенно полезным оказался.
303 reviews217 followers
November 11, 2020
Highly tactical, full of nonobvious example. Much recommended if you work in high growth environments. Some parts are very SV. Some universal.
Profile Image for Peter Boyce II.
18 reviews163 followers
October 23, 2020
Elad delivers on the promise of unpacking fundamental factors for enabling company growth. Earns the rare right to be a desk-side handbook for ongoing reference.
Profile Image for Manas Saloi.
277 reviews839 followers
September 21, 2018
Big fan of Elad Gil and have consumed all his blogposts too. This book gives a structure to his thoughts on all topics under the sun related to startups.
Profile Image for Rishabh Srivastava.
152 reviews186 followers
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November 20, 2021
This is more a book for companies that have raised a seed round or Series A round. Since I haven’t done that yet, I don’t know how much of it is actually useful vs just sounds useful. But definitely helped me think deeper about fundraising and org building

Key takeaways:
- at the seed stage, you’re focused on finding product-market fit with early adopters. But they make up just 5% of the market. You have to think beyond product and figure out how to take the market when you have initial PMF

- defensibility comes from a mixture of product innovation and distribution building. Purely product led defensibility is rare

- people emphasise network effects and data effects way too much. Very rare to see actual data moats, and network effects are a double edged sword. They unwind just as fast

- being able to raise prices and not lose customers means that you actually have a moat, and can start do focus on funding more distribution and R&D

- the role of the CEO is to decide what the company should do, and make sure it does that. CEO has to relentlessly say, “this is what we’re doing, this is why, and this is how we will do it”

- since the product causes initial success, founders of breakout companies think product development is their primary competency and asset. But in reality, the distribution channel and customer base derived from the first product is the biggest “go-forward” advantage and differentiator

- build a product so good that customers will use it over an incumbent => build a large user base on the back of this first product => grow relentlessly => build new products and monetise them with your product costing customer base and sales channels
Profile Image for Ahmad hosseini.
281 reviews66 followers
December 29, 2019
A great book for startups!
Scaling and growth is an important and exiting step at lifecycle of a startup. But for founders, there are a lot of challenges at this stage. How to organize employees? How to hire new employees? How to manage the board? How to do marketing?
This book is packed with key frameworks for building and scaling your company. Author packs every useful lesson about building and scaling companies in a single, digestible book. Book includes many interviews from entrepreneurs with proven track records.
Book could be useful for founders, CEO, and employees who are facing hypergrowth and scaling for the first time.
Profile Image for Shreef A.
21 reviews35 followers
February 12, 2019
A collection of interviews with people who started, invested in, and scaled up companies. The interviews are organized into sections so you can jump directly to the interviews with the topics you want to focus on.

I would have found this book very useful during my first try to start a company. Back then I had to collect these insights and advice from different sources spread all over the internet.

So basically, the book delivers on its promise that it is a handbook for people starting or scaling up companies.
Profile Image for Anthony Douglas.
7 reviews2 followers
January 30, 2021
This is definitely one to read with a notebook on your side. Lots of learnings in here (even if you are not into “high growth”) which are helpful for any founder or Operations person at a growing organisation. Beyond the interviews, the tips and exaples were extremely useful in helping rethink how to organise my day-to-day operations of my own business.
Profile Image for Andrus.
43 reviews32 followers
May 28, 2019
Some of the content is useful, but the format of featuring mostly interviews is inefficient (for my taste). As an audiobook listener I ended up feeling that although I got a couple of good ideas, the amount of hours spent wasn't worth it.
Profile Image for Adrian .
60 reviews4 followers
August 27, 2018
Really good managment book. Would put this book on the same level as management classics like 'High Output Management' (Andy Grove) and 'The effective executive' (Peter Drucker)
Profile Image for Corina.
135 reviews10 followers
January 8, 2022
I read a First Round Review post about spotting nonobvious markers that featured Elad Gil, and it was both insightful and tactical, so I checked out this book, and it did not disappoint.

The book focuses on later stage startup growth (what do you do after product market fit and are trying to scale), which is interesting in and of itself since most entrepreneurship books focus on starting out, early stage stuff.

The interviews are really good, and I skimmed the rest of the handbook and found it concise, actionable, and credible. So all-in-all, a useful book if you are trying to figure out, e.g., how to build out a marketing function, or what does a COO do. It’s geared toward CEOs and cofounders but you’ll probably find parts of it helpful or at least interesting if you’re working in a growth stage startup and want to understand more of what’s going on.
Profile Image for Emily.
377 reviews7 followers
July 14, 2021
Excellent guide to running a high-growth start-up that focuses a lot on operational strategy, funding and that aspect of a business rather than, say, growth hacking. Not going to lie though, I'm so used to reading fiction for leisure that it took me a long time to get through this, and parts of it were a little boring, but it was nevertheless pretty insightful. While I mostly enjoyed this book, it also made me realize that I don't have any ambitions to start a high-growth business on my own any time soon.
Profile Image for Dan.
29 reviews7 followers
January 29, 2019
This book covers a wide range of interesting topics regarding companies, not necessarily their growth, but their overall management and development. It's good for adding 'common-sense fillers' if you already know a bit about startups. You should like this even more than 'Hard Things About Hard Things' book, due to the more expansive scope.
Profile Image for Potluck Mittal.
103 reviews42 followers
May 17, 2021
Some decent takeaways. Largely skimmable. Well-organized so you can easily find & reference the sections that are most relevant to you.
Profile Image for Srdjan.
27 reviews7 followers
July 25, 2018
Inconsistent. Nothing spectacularly insightful. Mostly solid and worth reading for an understanding of what going from 10 - 10'000 employees really means and an insight into the capital structures underlying some of the largest firms in the world.
Profile Image for Azhar.
73 reviews9 followers
December 25, 2018
Super dry read but I found it to be incredibly informative!
Profile Image for Phi Unit.
106 reviews14 followers
April 21, 2022
Essential reference book for building a fast growing startup, but also useful tidbits for building a small business
Profile Image for Anu.
391 reviews64 followers
April 3, 2021
Elad Gil has a good collection of writing on his blog of various facets of a high growth company. He also interviews some interesting people. Handy compilation of it all in one place
Profile Image for Robt..
94 reviews3 followers
July 22, 2018
A lot of excellent insights here.
Profile Image for Joao  O.
28 reviews4 followers
August 2, 2018
After working for a few of these hyper growth companies, this is probably the best book on the mechanics of company building, Highly recommended for entrepreneurs or startup employees!
Profile Image for Bill de hÓra.
10 reviews41 followers
July 26, 2018
A must read for founders, and I think also for engineers and product specialists for the insight it gives to all the other functions needed to make it really work.

As someone who's worked as an engineer and a product manager, it was wonderful to read a book that barely focused on product and technology when it came to growth, but on growing the other critical functions needed to build out a real business (so many startups begin from product/engineering foundations and it can be difficult for those functions to accept they are not the centre any more).

Mixing the author and interviewees in a single book felt sometimes like reading two books and at times I found myself sometimes wanting to buy both books, one written entirely by Elad Gil (great) and one collection of interviews from people who’ve been there (also great), rather than context switch.

The primary value of the book is less the specific advice on growing startups - that was hugely informative - more on the insight it gives into the mindset of those who are growing or have grown startups, and the how they think about operations. One amusing thing in that respect was the emphasis on hard metrics and KPIs for the business itself, but at the board management level, it's more about personalities and feelings.
Profile Image for Alok Kejriwal.
Author 3 books587 followers
February 24, 2019
If Moses spoke 10 commandments, Elad Gil gives you TOP commandments to run, scale, fund & exit a startup.

For a few weeks I resisted buying the book due to the high price; now I regret every day I lost.

The High Growth Handbook has a unique format. It clearly lays out the most important aspects of a start-up business & then includes real-life interviews of the who's who of the world (mainly silicon valley) who have attempted & achieved those principles that are enshrined inside.

The book has amazing insights, knowledge points & most importantly (for me), "Ahhh... so this IS the right way it's done - like the way we do it" moments. It's a checklist to feel good :))

Some amazing nuggets:

- Founders should write a guide for working with them

- It's OK to be an 'individual' contributor even as a Founder (Wozniak)

- "A startup is throwing yourself from a cliff and assembling an aircraft on the way down" (R. Hoffman)

- "The nos of people who approach a managers desk is indicative of how good they are"

- Give 'low titles' to new joiners

- WHY diversity works!

- DON'T get obsessed with PR

- Zuckerberg's M&A strategy

A MUST READ!
Profile Image for Seyfeddin.
17 reviews170 followers
January 24, 2022
More of a reference book than something that needs to be read cover-to-cover. I’ve read all parts that were related to me and it contained very valuable insights and advice. I see myself referring to sections of this book from time to time.

Highly recommended for tech startup founders.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 144 reviews

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