High Growth Handbook

Silicon Valley veteran Elad Gil provides the definitive playbook for scaling startups from 10 to 10,000 people, focusing on later-stage growth after achieving product-market fit—a rarity since most entrepreneurship books focus on early stages. Drawing from his experience scaling companies like Twitter, Airbnb, Google, Stripe, and Square, Gil covers CEO role evolution, board management, executive recruitment, M&A, IPOs, and late-stage funding with painfully tactical advice. The book features crystal-clear guidance informed by interviews with Reid Hoffman, Marc Andreessen, and Aaron Levie, helping founders navigate hypergrowth's most complex organizational challenges.

8 sections · 25 lessons

Course outline

CEO Fundamentals

  1. CEO Role Evolution
  2. Time & Delegation
  3. One-on-Ones
  4. Board Management
  5. CEO Fundamentals

Executive Hiring

  1. 70% Hiring Rule
  2. Hiring Unknown Roles
  3. Executive Failure Signs
  4. Hiring Mistakes
  5. Executive Hiring

Organizational Design

  1. Reorganizations
  2. Culture Evolution
  3. Finance, HR, Legal
  4. Matrix vs. Business Units
  5. Organizational Design

Talent Strategy

  1. Scaling Recruiting
  2. Dunbar Number
  3. Product Management
  4. Talent Strategy

Financing

  1. Late-Stage Investors
  2. Secondary Stock Sales
  3. Hypergrowth Metrics
  4. Financing

Going Public

  1. IPO Benefits
  2. IPO Timing
  3. Going Public

Mergers and Acquisitions

  1. Acquisition Types
  2. M&A Valuation
  3. M&A Integration
  4. Mergers and Acquisitions

Global Scaling

  1. Centralized vs. Decentralized
  2. Sales & Marketing
  3. Global Scaling

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