Cristina Cordova
@cjc
Followers
30K
Following
17K
Media
300
Statuses
3K
COO at @linear. previously building at @stripe, @NotionHQ & @firstround. angel investor/advisor to early-stage startups
Joined March 2009
Remember folks, you can only lose the holiday party. You can’t win the holiday party.
26
219
2K
📣 After spending 12 years at startups like @stripe & @notionhq, I’ve joined @firstround as a partner! I knew I wanted to make supporting founders my life's work and am thrilled I get to do that as part of an incredible team. Sharing more on that. 1/7
161
56
2K
The current LAFD Fire Chief has 22 years of experience at LAFD including as a firefighter, and personally saved 9 homes from total destruction in the Woolsey Fire, but because she doesn't look the part, she somehow doesn't deserve the job?.
On the left you have my grandfather, who was a career LAFD fireman. He spent the summer when he was 13 living in the LA Forest with a friend, hunting and trapping to survive. On the right you have the current LAFD Fire Chief & the Head of “Equity and HR”
42
133
2K
Instead of searching for startup ideas, search for unsolved problems.
71
215
1K
Just in case this wasn’t clear, it’s entirely inappropriate for a VC to reach out to a company that’s competitive to an unannounced investment in their portfolio and extract information under the guise of investing. 😏.
81
98
1K
As a startup employee, you’re investing the vast majority of your time in a single startup with the hope of a significant financial outcome. VCs can place multiple bets in a short period of time and hope one pays off. Employees get one bet—just one. Choose wisely.
22
146
1K
A lot of early-career startup employees are afraid of getting layered with a more senior leader hired above them. So was I when it happened to me. It took me awhile to look back and understand it from the founder/CEO perspective. A quick thread on getting layered. 🧵.
29
102
918
I just wired my 50th angel investment today! 🎉. A friend asking for advice on getting started with angel investing was told, "I never had to think about building my network, deals just came to me.". Well, that's not exactly how it went for me. 🤷🏻♀️ . So, I'll share my advice. 🧵.
33
60
871
I’m hearing a lot of small startups say, “Well, Stripe didn’t have PMs until they had hundreds of employees, so we’re thinking we’ll do the same.” A couple thoughts. 🧵.
20
118
843
At @stripe, I crushed some quarterly goal and walked into a business review feeling pretty satisfied with myself. Instead of praise, @patrickc and @collision simply said: "Hmm. maybe we didn't set the right target here." However dissatisfying in the moment, the best leaders.
Perpetual dissatisfaction. I've now closely worked with/for several founders of $25B+ companies, and one characteristic I've observed in all of them: PERPETUAL DISSATISFACTION WITH THE STATE OF THE COMPANY. They are not satisfied, even as the company hits its goals, scales and.
17
24
800
I've been having lots of conversations with folks looking to join an early-stage startup (Seed to Series B) and negotiating their offers. A few thoughts based on my experiences. 🧵.
13
94
687
I can’t get paper towels delivered until June, but magically this arrived right to my doorstep in no time! 💁🏻♀️
15
17
659
Employees joining startups 10-12 years ago had the default assumption that the startup would fail. Employees joining startups more recently have the default assumption that they've joined a rocketship. As a founder, this makes it much more difficult to deal with hard times 🧵.
19
42
654
I met with some students from Stanford's undergrad venture capital club today (this did not exist back in my day). One student had started their own fund before the age when I knew what the terms "startup", "software engineering" or "venture capital" even meant.
27
28
594
Less than 5 years ago, Salesforce (SF’s biggest employer) led the charge to pass Prop C which disproportionately affected financial services businesses. Today, Stripe, Block and Schwab have all left SF and Salesforce continues to dump office space.
SCOOP: @salesforce is pulling out of its remaining space at a San Francisco office tower that carries its name, per a new listing for the property. SF’s largest employer has given up over 1M SF of office space in the city. #sanfrancisco #Salesforce.
16
66
539
Finally, some good news in 2020! @daniel_levine and I welcomed Simone to the family! We’re looking forward to many socially distanced meet and greets ahead! 😷
48
2
531
In joining a startup, you are choosing how to invest your most valuable asset—your time. ⏰ . I had a few career chats this afternoon and was asked how I’ve chosen startups to work for. Here’s my answer in hopes it might be helpful to more of you out there🧵.
11
69
522
"What did Stripe do in the early days to build a strong brand?". Building a strong brand as an early-stage technology company is incredibly difficult and it goes far beyond simply building a great product. Getting it right makes everything—sales, recruiting, press—easier.
12
42
460
📬 Some personal news. This month is my last at @NotionHQ. I loved building @NotionAPI, getting our growth team off the ground and working with wonderful people. Thanks to @ivanhzhao & @akothari for bringing me on. I'll be cheering the team on from the sidelines!
15
3
467
My husband is currently unpacking his new coffee grinder while playing “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt and singing to the coffee grinder. 😐.
27
4
442
Signals a startup truly cares about the financial outcomes of their employees: . ✅ Offer ability to early exercise stock.✅ Extend the option window to exercise to 10 yrs.✅ If founders want to sell equity in secondary rounds, offer the same opportunity to tenured employees.
12
27
379
Best fried chicken sandwich spot in SF? . I’ve had:.- The Bird.- Proposition Chicken.- Starbird Chicken .- Village Rotisserie .- Mendocino Farms .- Popeyes .- Miss Mazy’s.
201
9
376
.@Calendly has a fantastic story and they also happen to be incredibly capital efficient. • 9M monthly active users .• $60M in revenue, profitable since 2016.• $500k in funding.• Founded by @TopeAwotona, who emigrated from Nigeria to the US for college.
7
24
375
What's something you believe about product management that very few people agree with you on?.
124
32
324
The CEO at the first startup I ever worked for took out the trash at night before he went home. Regardless of your role, there is no job that is beneath you.
12
21
331
I want to return to the camaraderie and optimism of tech startups in the early 2010s in Palo Alto. This old post about startups doing user testing at Coupa Cafe really brings back the memories.
12
16
316
1/ Don’t mistake not having a function (product management) for not having a role (PM) played by a team member. Many folks wore the PM hat in the early days of Stripe without the company having a PM function.
3
18
312
Good worldly wisdom from Charlie Munger. I’ve generally never had problems finding (1) and have left companies because of (2) and (3).
9
25
317
Today, @linear announces a $35M Series B led by @Accel. We’re thrilled to include investors in the round who have built incredible products & businesses for developers: @rauchg, @chughesjohnson, @krithix, @leeerob, @auchenberg & more!
We’re excited to share that we raised a $35M Series B led by @Accel, with participation from @sequoia and @01Advisors, to help Linear build the best-in-class project and issue tracking system.
17
9
325
Excited to start our beta of the Notion API today! 🥳.
Hello, Notinos. We're excited to share that a public beta of the API is launching early next year 🎊. You've been waiting a long time, so we wanna get this right, and nail the functionality you want most! Sign up below and follow @NotionAPI for updates.
16
5
311
It’s been 14 months of this, and with each passing month, I hate working from home even more than the last. 😑.
11
7
301
I highly encourage you to turn this into an opportunity to help the company find a new leader/future manager who you believe you can learn from. The only thing worse than getting layered is getting layered with a terrible manager.
13
9
302
18 years ago, I lost a bet with my high school debate coach. The price of losing? I had to apply to @Stanford. This past weekend, I gave his daughter (now a senior in high school) a tour of the college that I was incredibly lucky to go to. Thanks @MillerErikr for believing in me!
11
7
303
I’ve felt this for awhile, but the worst thing about working at Stripe was not being able to invest in Shopify. 🤤.
8
2
285
I've angel invested in nearly 60 companies before joining @firstround and I'd consider myself a pretty helpful angel investor. But there are certainly companies who have gotten more out of me than others. 💡Here are some tips on how to get the most out of your angel investors.
11
25
288
As for what's next, I'm excited to get back to something smaller. starting on Monday. I've never taken more than a weekend off between jobs. So, why would a pandemic change that? 😂.
32
0
277
3/ It’s easy for developers to understand what they’d want in the product and build it for customers like themselves. When Stripe’s customer base grew and we needed to build for accountants, customer support and other teams using the product, we hired PMs.
4
13
268
I spoke to a woman about to go on parental leave worried about the effects on her career. I shared advice someone gave me before I had my first child: . Don’t feel guilty about not being 100% when you come back to work. You at 80% is often the equivalent of a mediocre man at 100%.
6
7
272
Newsflash: Most FinTech companies are at the whim of legacy service providers, who have the power to quickly limit the capabilities of products like Robinhood and Public. Or else, they’re out of business entirely.
16
30
260
“We just need to make it to Monday” . - parents on holiday break.
7
10
259
7pm: “We made it to bedtime! The kids are asleep. Phew!”. 7:30pm: *looking at photos and videos of my kids*.
8
3
251
Never underestimate the ability to write a good cold email. Sharing this anonymized one sent to me by someone in business school. She definitely got the meeting. ✓
6
6
247
I love speaking with folks early on in their careers, but I know that not everyone feels comfortable reaching out for advice. ☕ I've set aside time every Friday afternoon to connect with folks who may be at an inflection point. Book here
15
9
234
"At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. It costs you relatively little to do this, but.
18 years ago, I lost a bet with my high school debate coach. The price of losing? I had to apply to @Stanford. This past weekend, I gave his daughter (now a senior in high school) a tour of the college that I was incredibly lucky to go to. Thanks @MillerErikr for believing in me!
6
13
221
@jrichlive I think there are a good number of women CEOs (especially outside of consumer) who never aim to get press. If you can run a perfectly strong business with no media attention, no need for personal security, no people coming after you for your wealth… wouldn’t you?.
4
2
212
Hiring in early stage startups is hard. We've found at @Linear, that the best way of determining whether someone is a builder, has good taste and judgment, can take initiative and approach problems productively—is to just simply work with them. We shared a bit more on why we.
How do you identify the right people to hire?. At Linear, every hire goes through a work trial. In this new post, we share the thinking and the mechanics behind them. →
7
9
214
We're building our marketing team at @linear and I want to share why I believe it's an amazing opportunity to join right now. 1/ We're a company of <50 people with a marketing team of 2! We're profitable with negative lifetime burn (the most efficient business I've ever been.
12
23
211
While there are some good arguments here, this Coinbase post is the tech equivalent of Colin Kaepernick's coach telling him he can't kneel during the national anthem.
11
20
199
It boggles the mind that so many people didn’t know that employees are paid (at least in part) based on what the market will pay for a skill set in a given location. Often, there’s a disconnect between this and cost of living.
7
15
208
Working in AI right now is a true test of one’s ability to remain focused on their own game in an incredibly fast-moving environment. At any given moment, in addition to thinking about what you’re shipping, every day you’re bombarded by news about what competitors (both large.
16
4
205
Excellent internal comms > Hot twitter takes.
Patrick shared this note internally about the Financial Connections/Plaid kerfuffle. Glad to put it behind us, and I'm look forward to continued vibrant competition in fintech (which customers benefit from!) in the future.
2
3
195
My oldest kid (3) screams “Team Family!!!” as her call for the whole family to stop everything they’re doing because it’s time for a group hug 🤗 . How’d I get so lucky?.
8
0
197
I don't know about you, but I can't wait to return to stuffy conference rooms, mediocre coffee served all day long, a sea of women's restrooms, having a need for a bag that holds a laptop, and noodling over twenty varieties of sparkling water.
10
2
199
The great thing about not handing out bonuses for recruiting referrals is that an employee's sole motivation in referring someone is that the referral would be a stellar colleague.
8
6
194
Trying to understand how you're performing as an individual in early stage startups is oscillating between thinking you're crushing it one moment and thinking you're going to get fired the next.
10
3
192
When a founder sends an investor update email with several concrete asks (referrals for specific roles, sales leads, advice on topics) and an investor replies all with, "Amazing work! Let me know if there's anything I can help with!"
8
14
190
My mom passed away last year and I finally printed a book of all the answers to questions I had for her before she got sick. Her answer to "What is your best advice when it comes to work?" is good advice no matter the industry. 1. Start early. My first job was selling cards.
10
7
197
Once your employees start to become great at latte art on your in-office espresso machine, you’ve probably lost the employee engagement war.
10
6
181
1) Write the email. 2) Discover that every sentence ends with an exclamation mark❗️ . 3) Remove 50% of the exclamation marks to sound optimistic, but not so ridiculously excitable . 4) Send
5
6
183
Fun to go back to what was written about Stripe in 2014 when some claim we were invincible: . “Braintree appears bigger than Stripe by every visible metric”. “We’d even go so far as to say an exit in the $500 million to $1 billion range is likely.”.
10
2
181
"Leadership loves your annual plan! Only some minor feedback… you’ll need to double the revenue target with half your requested headcount.". Happy planning season, everyone!.
4
8
175
I've been thinking a lot about how organizations tune people to their way of working, speaking and writing. When I joined Stripe at ~30 people, you would BCC nearly all external emails to an internal email list that anyone in the company could subscribe to. You would then.
13
8
183
I joined a conference call today with 20 people in the same room in South Korea. 51 million people.511 Covid cases yesterday. Oh what we could have been. .
14
7
176
Here's the note @rishi_tripathy_ sent his team at @beondeck to convince them to adopt @NotionHQ after he joined. It's amazing to see our power users share their love for Notion.
4
10
176
@DanielleMorrill - Start now. The sooner you have them, the sooner you’re done.- Have a partner who is willing to do 50%+ of the childcare work.- Get a night nurse 5+ days/wk for the first 3 months post-birth.- Ideally live near family willing to help.
9
6
174
I grew up with a single mom who supported our family working multiple jobs to put me in private high school. I’m happy to support several organizations today that can help support women and young girls. #InternationalWomensDay
7
2
173
Excited to finally get the @NotionAPI out the door! 🚀 @NotionHQ users can now build the kinds of automations, integrations and enhancements they want to see in the world. Can’t wait to see what you all build!👷♀️.
🚧 Notion's API is now in public beta 🚧. It's the first step towards a brand new set of building blocks, so that you can tailor software to your own workflows. We can't wait to see what you build!
3
8
171
Every great founder I’ve worked for has been in the details. It would actually be deeply concerning to work for a “looks good to me” founder — that’s a founder who either simply doesn’t care or who has been manipulated into giving too much power away.
4
15
171
4+ startups later, I put together my thoughts (some old, some new) about how to think about compensation when considering a startup offer.
3
20
170
Nike principles written in 1977 by marketing executive Rob Strasser.
4
24
166
2/ This worked for Stripe (in the early days, a developer product built by developers) at that point in time and may not necessarily work for you, in your market, at this point in time.
1
2
154
At @linear, our early product planning process starts with generating ideas:. ∙ What are we uniquely good at right now? .∙ What are we bad at?.∙ What are we not doing today that would be game-changing?.∙ What should we be paranoid about? . More in our new FigJam template 👇.
In @lennysan's recent newsletter on how we build product at Linear, we shared how we generate ideas as part of the early product planning process. Here’s our FigJam template, which you can use to organize your team's thoughts on what to build and improve.
2
12
159
My ballot for the SF Special Election arrived! 🇺🇸 Here’s how I’ll be voting 🗳 . ⭐️ Vote to elect @bilalmahmood for CA Assembly .✅ Vote YES on Prop A to recall Alison Collins.✅ Vote YES on Prop B to recall Gabriela López.✅ Vote YES on Prop C to recall Faauuga Moliga.
1
9
162