THE BONFIRE MOMENT

This book brings people management to teams in a straightforward way. It can appeal to even the most technical founders and was developed for early stage companies, but has proven to be useful for corporate innovation teams, social enterprises, and community groups. It's for anyone with big goals who needs a tight, focused and resilient team to run with.

Decades of research shows that 65% of tech startups fail not because of bad product or poor market fit but because of people problems: What do you do when the team gets into conflict over the direction of the company, how cash is spent, or how much equity is fair? How do you fire a loyal friend that's not up to par? How do you get your team to work as hard as you do? The answer is to bring the team together for vulnerable and productive conversations, as if you were sitting around a fire after a long trek. Companies are after this "Bonfire Moment'', and Googlers Martin Gonzalez and Josh Yellin have created a highly effective one-day workshop to set a leadership team on the path to success. Their method has been proven with thousands of founders from all over the world in their highly sought after accelerator program within Google. Now, this book will teach anyone to run their own Bonfire Moment workshop where they can identify growth opportunities, design the kind of team culture that has scaled the most successful tech companies, and anticipate future hurdles. This book is Radical Candor meets Sprintbringing people management to teams in a straightforward way that can appeal to even the most technical founders. It was developed for early stage companies, but has proven to be useful for corporate innovation teams, social enterprises, and community groups. It's for anyone with big goals who needs a tight, focused and resilient team to run with. Martin Gonzalez is the Head of Organization Development for Google's Compute Businesses (think Chrome, Android, Play, Pixel, Nest, Fitbit, AI/Machine Learning/Quantum Computing research groups). He works with Google's senior leaders to shape their team's culture, grow their people and build cool things that matter. Martin and Josh Yellin cofounded the Google for Startups PeopleLab in 2015 where they worked with startup founders and CXOs and where they created the Bonfire Moment workshop content. Today, Josh is a Chief of Staff in Google Brain, supporting organizational strategy and operations for one of Google's foremost Machine Learning research teams.