Common Room
company on 4 shows · 13 statements across 2 episodes · said 32 times in 6 episodes since 2020
Acquired 16 
20VC 12 
Top Founders 3 
the a16z Podcast 1
Mentions by year, every show
tap a year for its mentions
Acquired 1620VC 12Top Founders 3the a16z Podcast 1
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 16 mentions in 1 episode
2021 14 mentions in 3 episodes 5 per episode
- 20VC: How To Deliver Feedback with Compassion and Clarity, WTF Are Values Really and How To Instill Them & Raising $50M+ From Index and Greylock but Remaining in Stealth for 12 Months with Linda Lian, Co-Founder & CEO @ CommonRoom
- Tribe Hits $2.4m ARR, 300% Yoy Growth, $42m Valuation Helping Businesses Manage Their Communities
- Lemlist CEO Guillaume Moubeche: Gives Employees this bonus when 5x revenue growth target hit
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2020 1 mention in 1 episode
every mention on every show, scene by scene, with the transcript →
13 statements about Common Room, every show
Boschwitz: Vanta uses Clay, Koala, and Common Room for lead enrichment
“So we've got tools like Clay, we've got tools like Koala and Common Room that very much are allowing us to get even more and deeper information.”
Common Room raises over $50M from Index, Greylock, and 20VC
“To date, Linda has raised over fifty million dollars with Common Room, from the likes of Danny Reimer at Index, Sarah Grew at Greylock, Dylan Field at Figma, Dick Costolo, and of course, TwentyVC Fund.”
Linda Lian: Startup aha moments unfold over years, not single instances
“Aha moments aren't really a moment, and for me, I think there were really three ingredients to my aha moment in building common room that happened over the course of probably years.”
Common Room sends candidates company values ahead of dedicated values interviews
“So we do a core values-based interview where we send the candidate our values, and we say, we're going to ask you questions as part of this interview process that map directly to figuring out whether or not you have these values, whether or not you share these…”
Common Room considers changing two company values rarely used in daily operations
“So right now we're actually thinking about changing two of them because we don't use them very much in our day to day life.”
Lian: Transparently speaking truth is an act of workplace compassion
“One of the most compassionate things you can do in life or in work is to speak the truth and to speak it transparently.”
Lian: Common Room bans the 'shit sandwich' method of giving feedback
“One of the things that I'm not a huge fan of is the shit sandwich. Which is this notion that you want to say something nice, and then, you know, give a direct piece of feedback, and then say something nice again. That's not really how I want to communicate, an…”
Lian: Common Room will hire exclusively senior talent through year end
“Yeah, so it's definitely not a perpetual plan. It is our near-term plan and our plan so far, so probably until the end of this year we'll be looking to bring on board folks who are experienced”
Lian: Common Room co-founders initially ignored her cold LinkedIn outreach
“I reached out to Francis and Baraj on LinkedIn, and they ignored me. I didn't hear back from them at all.”
Common Room operated without a website or marketing until Series B
“We didn't have a website. We hadn't updated our LinkedIns. We had done zero marketing up until we announced Our Series B.”
Lian: Never ask customers for features, only for their problems
“We never ask our customers for features. We ask them to tell us their problems, and that's how we always start.”
Lian: Common Room's true competition is inertia, not rivals
“I genuinely don't think for what we're trying to do, any company at all is the competition. I really see our competition as inertia, as the way that companies are already doing things, as human nature.”