May 3, 2022 by Sarah E. Brown

Announcing my new book Lead Upwards

In my new book Lead Upwards: How Startup Joiners Can Impact New Ventures, Build Amazing Careers, and Inspire Great Teams, learn how to maximize your impact and deliver results in a startup leadership role. Get insights into how to prepare for, earn, and succeed in an executive role at a startup company.

The book describes every step on the way to realizing your goals—and the goals of your startup—as you navigate the gap between a management role and the executive team. It covers what to do in your first 90 days, how to build and sustain a healthy team culture, and the art of communicating results to your leadership team and board. You’ll also learn:

How to manage the challenges posed by leading a remote, distributed, or hybrid team
Management strategies based on inclusive and diverse teambuilding, alignment with business objectives, and inspirational leadership
Effective ways to level up your skills and stay current as your company grows

Written for current and aspiring executives at startup firms, Lead Upwards is also a guide for startup board members, founders, funders, and managers seeking a singularly insightful discussion of business leadership. Available now!

Order your copy

May 10, 2020 by Sarah E. Brown

Join Us For Boulder Startup Week 2020

Life has changed a lot in the past few months. In personal news, I moved back to Boulder late last year, and am thrilled to share I recently started a new role as the head of marketing at Intricately, the leading provider of product adoption, usage, and spend intelligence for cloud sales and marketing teams.

While this is a time of hardship for so many in our community in Boulder and beyond, I’m inspired by the resilience of the Boulder Startup Week team, who have been working hard to ensure the success of this year’s online-only festival. A special shout-out to Ben Travis, who runs the Boulder Marketing Meetup, and Rendl Clark, Director of Boulder Startup Week, for their amazing organizing efforts!

I’m looking forward to hosting two events (all-remote!) during this year’s Boulder Startup Week:

BSW ’20 Panel discussion: How To Grow Your Startup Marketing Career

A panel of marketing leaders from the startup ecosystem (Rachel Beisel, Simone Johnson, and Victoria Stitt, MBA. ) will discuss the topic of how marketers can level up and achieve their goals along their startup career path. Watch the Recording

BSW ’20 Film Screening: Chasing Unicorns (“Ükssarvik”)

One of the most successful Estonian movies of 2019, Chasing Unicorns is a semi-satirical narrative feature about a female founder trying to make it a male-dominated tech world, from Estonia to Silicon Valley. RSVP to join us

Why an Estonian startup film? After traveling to Tallinn, Estonia in February, I was inspired by Estonia’s thriving startup ecosystem, including their innovative e-residency program. After watching the satirical Estonian startup film Chasing Unicorns, I reached out to the filmmakers Tõnu Hiielaid and Rain Rannu about the possibility of sharing the film with our Boulder startup community. Several months later, we’re partnering to host a virtual film screening during this year’s BSW. While Tallinn and Boulder are distant, I’m grateful for this opportunity to connect our startup communities through the film.

Looking forward to seeing folks (virtually) at BSW! For those interested, consider supporting Colorado’s COVID Relief Fund.

October 16, 2018 by

Introducing my new book Power to the Startup People: How To Grow Your Startup Career When You’re Not The Founder

I’m thrilled to share that my new book Power to the Startup People: How to Grow Your Startup Career When You’re Not The Founder launches today! This book has been two years in the making and would not have been possible without the incredible help and support of so many of my friends, family, and members of our startup community.

In today’s tech startup world, career paths are nonlinear. A startup career can be rewarding, but it often can be challenging and confusing. While a ton of ink has been spilled on how to “crush it” as a founder or startup leader, there’s very little in the way of guidance for how employees can hack our own careers. If we’re lucky, we find mentors who have had careers we admire. But we may never find these people. Or, if we do, it may be too late, or their expertise in the particular area with which we need help may be limited.

Entrepreneurs get the lion’s share of glory, but much of the work is done by us: the contributors, the team. This book was born out of my desire to find answers to my own questions about how to have the best startup career possible, while ideally avoiding some pitfalls that, unfortunately, are hard to foresee unless you have a direct mentor relationship with someone who has experienced a similar situation.

I wrote this book from the vantage point of being a startup employee who wants to navigate my career as successfully as possible, while enjoying the journey along the way. While this book is not by any means exhaustive, it will hopefully help readers make more sense of the world of tech startups and make better decisions about their careers along the way.

I have a greater purpose for sharing this information. I truly believe that we, the startup people, hold the power of the tech industry in our hands. By taking command of our own startup careers, we will make a greater impact at the companies that are shaping our future. As the world grapples with questions about the nature of technology in our lives, with concerns about privacy and data and our looming automated economy, we, the employees who make this ecosystem work, will have to decide which companies deserve our time, sweat, and tears. My goal for publishing this book is to give us more choices and more power to shape our own destiny, so that we can in turn enrich the tech ecosystem with our talents. Power to the startup people!

Order now on Amazon

Thank you for reading! I look forward to hearing what you think of the book. If you enjoy the book and find it to be helpful, please leave a review on Amazon–it truly helps. Thank you! Sarah