
Executive Function: Building systems that can make decisions without you | Jeanne DeWitt Grosser (COO, Vercel)
From In Depth by First Round
February 5, 2026 · 1h 16m
About this episode
Jeanne DeWitt Grosser discusses executive decision-making and her hiring process at Vercel.
In the first Executive Function episode, Brett sits down with Jeanne De Witt Grosser, Chief Operating Officer at Vercel. Before Vercel, Jeanne spent nearly a decade at Stripe, where she built and scaled global revenue teams and led product partnerships. In this conversation, she unpacks what separates good executives from extraordinary ones, shares her rigorous executive hiring process, and reveals the brutally honest performance review feedback she'll never forget. In today's episode, we discuss: What it takes to operate at 30,000 feet and ground level simultaneously The leap from frontline manager to manager of managers Inside Jeanne's executive interview process The inherent value of driver trees for metrics Why context is everything References: Akamai: https://www.akamai.com Claire Johnson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claire-hughes-johnson-7058/ Culture Amp: https://www.cultureamp.com Guillermo Rauch: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rauchg John Collison: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbcollison/ Next.js: https://nextjs.org Nike: https://www.nike.com OpenAI: https://www.openai.com Patrick Collison: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickcollison Stanford Graduate School of Business…
People in this episode
Host: Brett
Guest: Jeanne DeWitt Grosser
Topics covered
- executive function
- decision making
- leadership
- performance review
- hiring process
- management
Keywords
- executive hiring
- performance review
- leadership skills
- management strategies
- metrics
- driver trees
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Vercel, Stripe, Akamai, Culture Amp, Nike, OpenAI, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Next.js
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