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Ladies: Let’s aim to be a little mediocre
Bethany Crystal – May 27, 2019
This year, on International Women’s Day, Reshma Saujani, CEO and founder of Girls Who Code, shared an interesting charge for women around the world: “Be a little mediocre.” At a book release event in NYC last night for her new [...] Read more
How to Answer the Question, “How Are You?”
Bethany Crystal – May 27, 2019
I’ve never liked the question, “How are you?” For one, it’s an empty greeting. Most people who ask don’t care about the response. Second, it’s the most open-ended question in the world. There’s no right way to answer it. In [...] Read more
The Role of the Peanut Gallery in a Boardroom
Bethany Crystal – May 22, 2019
Stop me if this sounds familiar: You’re in a meeting at work listening to a colleague present an idea. In the middle of their pitch, they mention something — a person, another company, an example of a problem — that [...] Read more
Lessons in Change Management: Navigating Penn Station
Bethany Crystal – May 19, 2019
I’ve recently been thinking a lot about “in flux” stages at work. Maybe you have new people joining, senior people leaving, a shift of product focus, or a change in direction. We’ve had a little bit of this happening lately [...] Read more
Learning & Development at USV
Bethany Crystal – May 15, 2019
A few years ago, in a survey of 500+ employees across USV portfolio companies, we were surprised to see questions about best practices in management and leadership bubbling to the top. When we asked people what they expected to spend [...] Read more
Sharpening the Saw
Bethany Crystal – May 12, 2019
How you end big projects We hosted our annual USV CEO Summit at this week. In its aftermath, I thought I’d take a few minutes to write about the “denouement” process of refreshing yourself after a big project. In his [...] Read more
Pushing Through Hour 20 of a 30-Hour Marathon
Bethany Crystal – May 6, 2019
Back in college, I used to do this crazy thing every year called Dance Marathon. Here’s the premise: Dance for 3o hours with 800 other students on campus as part of a massive fundraising drive. “It’s for the kids,” we’d [...] Read more
Unspoken House Rules
Bethany Crystal – May 3, 2019
My husband and I have a blind cat who needs eye drops twice a day. Sometimes he’s home to give her eye drops. Sometimes I am. But it has become a chore that we alternate between ourselves, without any particular [...] Read more
Coffee Chat: How do you start a community?
Bethany Crystal – Apr 30, 2019
About this Series: There’s a list of questions that I get asked a lot about my career and my job, so I’ve decided to turn these into a short series of blog posts that I can use for reference in [...] Read more