Convoy VP of Operations Kristen Forecki discusses the future of shipping and logistics with Greylock Partner Simon Rothman. Local and regional shipping is considered one of the largest and most antiquated industries in the United States. The multi-trillion dollar industry in many ways is the backbone of commerce, yet much of the logistics are still being processed manually with ample opportunity for human error. This episode of Greymatter features a discussion on the future of shipping and logis...
Jul 31, 2018•24 min
The rise of new technologies has created an opportunity for enterprises to innovate, improve efficiency and provide differentiated customer experiences. For faster technology adoption and better service and support, enterprises often partner with startup companies to maintain competitive advantage. However, the path to a successful partnership involves several learning lessons. At Greyscale, our annual conference that connects CXO leaders with enterprise founders, Greylock's Sarah Guo discusses ...
Jul 26, 2018•12 min
Throughout history, technology has enabled transportation to meet the shifting demands of society. Advancement in AI and ML technology is helping the industry get one step close towards an automated future. In this episode of Greymatter, we share a panel discussion from Greylock's Future of Transportation event. Greylock's Reid Hoffman, Aurora co-founder and CEO Chris Urmson and Nauto founder and CEO Stefan Heck discuss the opportunities and challenges, including driver insurance and the digital...
Jul 12, 2018•33 min
"Your only job is to continue to grow, learn and evolve as fast as you possibly can," says Molly Graham. And, she knows hypergrowth. Molly has helped scale several leading technology companies as an early employee at Facebook, COO at Quip (which was acquired by Salesforce for $750M) and most recently the VP of Operations at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. In this episode of Greymatter, Molly and Greylock Partner John Lilly share how to define company culture, what to look for in a new hire and a...
Jun 07, 2018•50 min
For startups, it's all about being the first to get to scale in a competitive market. Startups that build solid company practices around speed, transparency and market discovery can rapidly go to market and quickly defeat larger incumbents. This episode of Greymatter features Rubrik CEO Bipul Sinha (https://www.rubrik.com/company/about/#founders-modal) and Greylock partner Asheem Chandna (https://www.greylock.com/team/#asheem-chandna). The two enterprise tech leaders share actionable advice to i...
May 02, 2018•38 min
Research advances over the past five years in artificial intelligence and machine learning have caused organizations of all kinds to look for ways to apply these powerful algorithms and techniques in their businesses. Eventually, AI could have the same impact that electricity had across all industries a hundred years ago by transforming industries, displacing existing jobs and creating new ones, and requiring massive policy changes. In this episode of Greymatter, Greylock’s Sarah Guo and Dr. And...
Apr 24, 2018•39 min
Poker is a game of variants and probability. You can be dealt the best cards and play every hand perfectly until the river, the final card dealt in a poker hand, is played and shifts the game completely to the opponent. Similarly, startups constantly manage and learn from unpredictable experiences. Scaling a startup requires quickly learning from the wins and losses, focusing on the long term goals, and having a framework in place to help you make educated risks. This episode of Greymatter isn’t...
Mar 22, 2018•35 min
This episode of Greymatter comes from Stanford University's Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Series podcast. Greylock Partner Josh McFarland shared with students his presentation The First Derivative of Startup Life. In this lecture at Stanford, Josh charts the ups and downs of entrepreneurship through his personal story with TellApart. He opens up about the lessons he learned as a founder and CEO, offers fundraising advice for startups, and shares the untold story of TellApart's acquisition by T...
Mar 07, 2018•58 min
Are B2C companies starting to see a decline in viral growth responsiveness? That’s what Greylock’s Growth Advisor Casey Winters and Head of Rider Growth at Uber, Andrew Chen believe. Andrew coined the term The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs to describe the idea that every ad channel and every marketing platform eventually sees a decay in responsiveness. Due to increased consolidation and competition, viral growth is now much harder to break through and in the long term will see a break down in effe...
Jan 31, 2018•1 hr 37 min
Traffic accidents are one of the leading causes of death in the United States. Fully automated vehicles promise a new era in car safety, but completely self driving cars on roads are still in the future. With this in mind, Nauto is rethinking transportation by using AI technology to learn how to best equip automated vehicles for a future of safe and trusted transportation. In this episode of Greymatter, Nauto CEO Stefan Heck and Greylock partner Reid Hoffman discuss a blended environment with hu...
Dec 14, 2017•1 hr 1 min
Companies that have successfully managed crisis realize that how they behave in the minutes, days and weeks following a crisis is even more important than what actually happened. A company’s ability to successfully manage a challenging news cycle is paramount to maintaining company value. While working in the White House during the Obama Administration, Eric Schultz was the person you wanted in the trenches with you during times of crisis. As the former White House Principal Deputy Press Secreta...
Dec 06, 2017•29 min
In the latest Greymatter episode, we welcome back Twitter’s former Head of Revenue Engineering, now Greylock Executive In Residence, Wade Chambers. He sits down with Greylock partner Josh McFarland to discuss what characteristics make a great engineering leader and the best environment to foster leadership. Wade helped scale product and build out TellApart’s engineering, product, and services team at a time when the company was on track to almost triple revenue to over $50M. The two startup vete...
Nov 09, 2017•30 min
The startup environment is chaotic. Resources are limited and the hours are grueling. But it can also be one of the most rewarding experiences for an entrepreneur. They must get creative and think fast when it comes to building a team that will excel in this type of environment. The same is true in a presidential campaign. Stephanie Hannon was the Chief Technology Officer for the Hillary for America campaign and was tasked with building a team from scratch. In under 20 months, she built an 80 pe...
Sep 25, 2017•44 min
The rise of social network giants Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn paved the way for the world to connect online and showed the power of people sharing their own ideas, thoughts and images. Today, people share their personal moments billions of times a day yet these platforms are still largely considered asynchronous, meaning you post to your followers and they interact later. The advancement in mobile communication technology has, in many ways, detached the human aspect of communication with the ...
Aug 31, 2017•39 min
Historically, there has been a clear divide of how to grow a B2B company and a consumer business. However, in the past 5 years, we have seen B2B companies shift from the traditional sales growth practice to techniques used by consumer startups, such as product driven growth initiatives, distribution through mobile App stores, free trials and lower price plans. Today’s leading companies like Atlassian and Twilio reached IPO levels without a traditional sales-specific approach and startups like Dr...
Aug 09, 2017•36 min
Engaging with customers is one of the most difficult challenges for most companies. With the growing number of ways consumers interact with brands — from phone calls, to texting, to social media messaging — it’s becoming increasingly hard for companies to aggregate interactions into useful information. Even today, customer service products focus on individual communication channels and treat customers as case numbers or tickets. The founders of Gladly think this standard needs to change. They ar...
Aug 01, 2017•33 min
We’re still many years away from computers being able to write and create content at the level that humans can. But today there are a number of ways we can leverage artificial intelligence to help us write and publish smarter. This is the belief of AJ Frank, the chief executive of Verst. AJ is a technology and product veteran who’s worked at Uber, Twitter (Vine), and Google (YouTube) before coming on to lead Verst in 2016. Based in New York, Verst is building an intelligent, modern publishing pl...
Jul 17, 2017•43 min
In this panel, Greylock's Josh Elman talks with Y Combinator Partner and former Airbnb Product Lead for Growth Gustaf Alströmer and former Uber Head of Product and VP of Growth Ed Baker about establishing a north star metric, growing in local markets, and how to measure the things that can't be measured. This panel was recorded at The Scaleup Offsite, an event focused on scaling companies co-hosted by Greylock Partners and YC Continuity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adcho...
Jun 22, 2017•33 min
In our latest podcast, our Growth Advisor in Residence Casey Winters invites Eventbrite VP and GM Brian Rothenberg to riff on starting and scaling marketplaces. Brian has a deep background in marketplaces — he was a PM at Yahoo! for their local marketplaces businesses, founded a local services marketplace called SkillSlate, and served as Taskrabbit’s Co-Head of Marketing before joining Eventbrite as VP of Growth. Before heading growth at Pinterest, Casey ran marketing for Grubhub. The pair dive ...
Jun 21, 2017•49 min
Redfin’s CEO Glenn Kelman joined us at The Scaleup Offsite to share how his relationship with the board of directors has evolved over the year. He speaks from the heart about how to think about building a pipeline for your board, how to interview potential candidates, and how to leverage their skills and knowledge for the success of the company. This talk was recorded at The Scaleup Offsite, an event focused on scaling companies co-hosted by Greylock Partners and YC Continuity. Learn more about ...
Jun 13, 2017•30 min
Bringing on world class leadership is incredibly valuable for a scaling company, but executive hiring can be a long and delicate process. In this talk, Greylock Talent Parter Jeff Markowitz breaks down five steps of hiring executives, starting from planning all the way to making the final offer. This fireside was recorded at The Scaleup Offsite, an event focused on scaling companies co-hosted by Greylock Partners and YC Continuity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 08, 2017•26 min
The Rhumbix inception story is unlike most in Silicon Valley. It’s a story of two navy veterans on seemingly parallel paths. Before founding Rhumbix, co-founders Zach Scheel and Drew DeWalt both served in the navy, as a civil engineer and a submarine pilot respectively, and eventually crossed paths at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. In the summer of 2013, both Zach and Drew were working in Northern Chile. Zach was working at a copper mine, and Drew was at a startup that was building a no...
Jun 07, 2017•41 min
Since its founding in 2008, Airbnb has changed the way people travel and stay in new places around the world. In this fireside, Greylock's Reid Hoffman sits down with Airbnb co-founder and Chief Product Officer Joe Gebbia to talk about doing things that don't scale, designing for trust, and creating a company culture that inspires their team and community. This fireside was recorded at The Scaleup Offsite, an event focused on scaling companies co-hosted by Greylock Partners and YC Continuity. Le...
Jun 06, 2017•30 min
In the early days of a startup, founders can maintain control of company culture. But as the company grows, how can they ensure the DNA and values of the early team scale with it? Jason Kilar has worked at a number of iconic companies, including Disney and Amazon, before joining Hulu as the CEO and later founding Vessel. In this talk, he shares mechanisms some of these companies used to scale their culture as they grew to thousands of employees. This presentation was recorded at The Scaleup Offs...
Jun 01, 2017•26 min
Silicon Valley is home to many of the fastest growing and most well known startups in the world. In this fireside, Reid Hoffman from Greylock Partners and Sam Altman from Y Combinator share their perspectives on how Silicon Valley companies effectively blitzscale, how to think about hiring when a startup is growing quickly, and why culture is so connected to the success of a company. This fireside was recorded at The Scaleup Offsite, an event focused on scaling companies co-hosted by Greylock Pa...
May 31, 2017•38 min
Forming a well crafted communications strategy is part action, and part reaction. It’s about developing and telling your brand story in a deliberate way, while at the same time understanding the macro media landscape and thoughtfully responding to the narratives about your industry. Aaron Zamost, the Head of Communications at Square who led comms through the company’s IPO, has done an amazing job at synthesizing how the tech press works in his blog posts including “What’s Your Hour in ‘Silicon V...
May 11, 2017•43 min
The term “brand” is often misunderstood in business. Many attach it to your company aesthetic — logos, fonts, colors, and website design. But thoughtful and strategic brand represents so much more. Few people in the world understand building and maintaining brands better than Heidi Hackemer, the founder of Wolf & Wilhelmine — a New York-based brand strategy shop that has worked with clients ranging from small startups to the White House to iconic companies like Google and Nike. In our latest...
May 02, 2017•31 min
Snapchat’s public offering marked the biggest U.S. tech IPO since Alibaba in 2014. This milestone has put a spotlight on the social media company, with public investors digging into their long term growth potential and path to profitability. One of the increasing concerns about Snap is user growth. While Snapchat boasted 50M new daily actives users in 2016, their growth slowed down considerably at the end of the year, only adding 5M new users in Q4. This halt coincided with the launch of Instagr...
Mar 31, 2017•37 min
We talk about growth all the time in the context of startups. How they grow, how they attract users, how they engage users. In this episode of Greymatter, two of the top minds in growth, Greylock Partner Josh Elman and Greylock Growth Advisor Casey Winters, talk about scaling Grubhub and Pinterest, starting growth teams, how to think about SEO, and optimizing user onboarding. The podcast is packed with full-stack growth marketing strategy and tactics Casey has implemented in his career, and thes...
Mar 15, 2017•38 min
Demand for designers is higher than ever. Great products — the outcome of thoughtful design — are a result of stellar user experience. As design becomes a higher priority for startups, we are seeing a fundamental shift in how designers work. In this episode of Greymatter, John Lilly of Greylock catches up with Figma CEO and co-founder Dylan Field to talk about how he got started as a entrepreneur, the Figma product, and the shift they’re seeing in the design space. Learn more about your ad choic...
Feb 28, 2017•37 min
