Entrepreneurs and executives will do all sorts of things to improve themselves, from taking a class on a particular technology, to reading a book about venture deals, to practicing intermittent fasting. Yet very few of them stop to ask the simple yet powerful question, “How can I make my decision making better?” In a discussion with Blitzscaling co-author Chris Yeh, Greylock general partner and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman describes his approach to decision-making. You can read the essay bas...
Mar 23, 2021•33 min
Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman and former Stockton, CA mayor Michael Tubbs discuss how can technology be a force for good for all members of society. Hoffman and Tubbs – who was recently named by CA Governor Gavin Newsom to serve as the state's Special Advisor for Economy Mobility and Opportunity – discuss how a pervasive lack of diversity among tech founders, investors, and operators has translated to a disconnect between the industry and the rest of the world. To change the power dynami...
Mar 16, 2021•48 min
As Roblox makes its public market debut, we are re-sharing the Greymatter episode featuring Roblox CEO David Baszucki and Greylock partner David Sze. Baszucki and Sze discuss the future social gaming landscape, share advice for scaling the company vision, and how to build company culture early on. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mar 10, 2021•44 min
Greylock general partner and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman looks back on the career of his friend and fellow entrepreneur Jeff Bezos. Recently, Bezos announced that he would be stepping down as CEO of Amazon, the iconic blitzscaling company that he has led since 1994. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mar 09, 2021•26 min
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi sat down with Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman to discuss the past, present and future of the mobility and delivery business that now operates in 71 countries around the world and employs around 20,000 people globally. He also shared his perspective on M&A (including Uber’s recent acquisitions of Postmates and Drizly), autonomous vehicles, the complexities of working in highly regulated industries, and how his personal and professional background shaped the way he...
Mar 02, 2021•52 min
In the second installment of Greylock’s podcast capsule series on commerce, general partner Mike Duboe talks with two experienced operators in the logistics side of the sector: Casey Armstrong, who is the Chief Marketing Officer at ecommerce fulfillment services provider Shipbob, and Aaron Schwartz, the co-founder of cross-border shipping services provider Passport Shipping. In this episode, Mike, Aaron and Casey discuss strategies and tools that ensure brands can deliver a frictionless experien...
Feb 25, 2021•46 min
Consumers now expect the option to buy now and pay later for countless products they purchase on ecommerce platforms. But paying for in-person services like home and auto repair has remained stuck in the past of credit cards and high-interest loans. Until Wisetack came along. The company developed a suite of APIs for software used by in-person service businesses, allowing them to offer consumer-friendly financings options. Greylock general partner and Wisetack board member Josh McFarland talks w...
Feb 23, 2021•42 min
Obsidian Security co-founder and CTO Glenn Chisolm, whose company protects SaaS and cloud services, and New York Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth, whose book “This is How They Tell Me the World Ends:The Cyberweapons Arms Race” published in February 2021, discuss the ever-evolving cybersecurity risk landscape and how businesses and governments can proactively protect their data. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feb 16, 2021•45 min
Are diversity and inclusion efforts making a difference in the male-dominated VC and tech industry? Pam Kostka, CEO of the equality-focused nonprofit All Raise, discusses the current landscape with Greylock marketing partner Elisa Schreiber. All Raise, which was launched in 2018, connects women with resources, mentorship, and a network to help them excel in the VC and tech world. Today, All Raise is a community of more than 20,000 people across four major U.S. tech hubs, and has launched a new p...
Feb 09, 2021•32 min
A look at the current state of innovation in transportation and mobility featuring Jennifer Haroon. Jennifer was on the early team at Google's self-driving unit that later became Waymo, and most recently worked as the CFO and COO of Nauto, a Greylock-partnered startup working on AI for driving safety. She is now an EIR at Greylock. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feb 02, 2021•28 min
Part 2 of a two-part series. Greylock general partner and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman continues his discussion with Blitzscaling co-author Chris Yeh on the all-important topic of startup boards. Building off of the previous conversation on how and why boards function, Reid advises entrepreneurs on how they might choose their board members, and provides notable examples of great board members he has worked with in the span of his career. You can read the essay based on this conversation here...
Jan 26, 2021•36 min
Part one of a two-part series by Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman on strategies to build a successful startup board. Too often, the conventional wisdom imparted to entrepreneurs is to treat board meetings as a necessary evil, part of the price you pay for raising money. True, many boards are dysfunctional, but when you build a great startup board, it will be a powerful tool that can help the CEO make the company successful. You can read the essay based on this podcast here: https://greylock...
Jan 19, 2021•41 min
Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman in conversation with Harry Stebbings, host of the popular podcast The 20 Minute VC. In this episode, Reid and Harry pick back up from their conversation in November 2020 on Harry's show, discussing everything from Reid's earliest lessons as a young entrepreneur; investing in startups such as Airbnb; and up into the current environment of navigating political issues (and a pandemic ) while running a company. You can read the transcript from this interview her...
Jan 13, 2021•42 min
Cloud native is the new order of business. But most existing monitoring technology is insufficient to contend with the complex, dynamic, and ephemeral nature of the modern cloud environment. That's why Martin Mao and Rob Skillington formed Chronosphere, a purpose-built platform to monitor cloud-native infrastructure and apps and enable organizations to make precise, data-driven decisions. In this episode of Greymatter, Martin and Rob sit down with Greylock general partner and Chronosphere board ...
Jan 05, 2021•1 hr 17 min
The investing team from Greylock Partners looks back on 2020 and how it has impacted entrepreneurship. While it’s been difficult, the past year has also been a time of great progress in the startup ecosystem. Not only have entrepreneurs made extraordinary efforts to advance technology and experiment with new business models, there have also been many individuals and organizations taking important strides towards building a more sustainable, equitable and inclusive future. Learn more about your a...
Dec 22, 2020•50 min
Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman and Blitzscaling co-author Chris Yeh, discuss why it’s so lonely to be an entrepreneur. In this podcast, Hoffman shares how he dealt with this challenge through both success (LinkedIn) and failure (SocialNet), and how entrepreneurs can find allies and aid in their struggle against loneliness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 15, 2020•30 min
As Airbnb makes its public debut, Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman looks back on the past decade of working with the company. Greylock led Airbnb's Series A in 2010. Hoffman initially heard the company described as "renting couches," so he passed at the first opportunity to invest. But later conversations with early investors prompted Hoffman to meet with Airbnb founders Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk. Within two minutes, he decided to partner with the company. Learn more a...
Dec 10, 2020•41 min
While third-party apps like Shopify have made it possible for a company to get a virtual store up and running quickly, scaling that company requires higher levels of flexibility and control. Enter headless architecture, which allows companies to decouple the front end of the commerce platform (where the virtual storefront and content lives) from the back end, where all the data resides. Greylock general partner Mike Duboe sat down with Builder.io CEO and founder Steve Sewell, whose company provi...
Dec 01, 2020•43 min
This is the audio version of "The Evolution of Cloud," written by Greylock general partner Jerry Chen and read by Greylock marketing partner Elisa Schreiber. The essay is available to read at https://greylock.com/jerry-chen-the-evolution-of-cloud/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nov 24, 2020•12 min
Innovation happens fast in the cloud-first era of today. Yet the tools and processes that allow software developers to ensure their products are secure were designed for a different era. apiiro was formed to reinvent the secure software development life cycle, by creating a unified platform that allows developers to embed security at the earliest stages. Idan Plotnik, CEO and co-founder of apiiro, joins Greylock general partner Saam Motamedi and Imperva CISO Samir Sherif to discuss the new chall...
Nov 17, 2020•26 min
If you can find a valuable market which has been overlooked, or where your competitors are lazy or stuck in their ways, you can beat that competition, no matter how big or rich those other players might be. Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman and his Blitzscaling co-author Chris Yeh discuss why entrepreneurs are far better off pursuing a high-value opportunity with bad competition over a low-value opportunity with no competition, highlighting case studies of SpaceX, Tesla, Virgin Atlantic and ...
Nov 10, 2020•45 min
Ahead of election day, we're re-broadcasting our episode featuring Blitzscaling co-authors Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh discussing the changing cultural norms around mixing business and politics. As Greylock partner and LinkedIn co-founder Hoffman says, "In an increasingly politicized world, it’s harder and harder for CEOs to keep business and politics separate. And in an increasingly politicized world, they shouldn’t." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nov 02, 2020•49 min
The ability to derive insights and take action from an ever-increasing volume of data has become a critical success factor for organizations across every industry. But as business operations become increasingly digitized and move to the cloud, first-generation analytics systems struggle to deliver insights at the scale and speed necessary to build modern data applications. That's why Rockset built a distributed SQL database that can return queries in milliseconds, but has a storage architecture ...
Oct 27, 2020•31 min
Alice Bentinck and Matt Clifford founded Entrepreneur First in 2011 with a mission to expand the global network of entrepreneurs and investors – so that one's geographical location doesn't make or break whether they have the opportunity to participate in the startup ecosystem. The "talent investor" organization recruits and backs individuals at the very earliest stage: before they have a team, or often even an idea. Greylock general partner and Entrepreneur First board member Reid Hoffman sat do...
Oct 20, 2020•44 min
Working remotely often means back-to-back scheduled meetings and a constant barrage of text and email notifications. The result is exhaustion. But that doesn't mean coworkers don't want to talk to one another. Ad-hoc conversations are energizing and foster stronger team connections, which is why Remotion built a video workspace designed to enable colleagues to virtually "glance over" at one another and just start talking. Remotion CEO and co-founder Alexander Embiricos Greylock general partner a...
Oct 13, 2020•37 min
Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman discusses the ABZ planning framework, a key concept from his book The Startup of You. Hoffman revisits the concept for 2020 - which he refers to as "The Age of the Inconceivable" – offering a systematic approach to adaptation that allows for the pursuit of goals while also maintaining the ability to quickly course-correct when external shocks or unexpected discoveries occur. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oct 06, 2020•27 min
The technology industry is home to an unacceptable paradox: the sector is both the epicenter of wealth creation and wealth disparity. This gap begins in the early stages of company-building, among venture capital-backed startups and the people who found, build and invest in them. People of color have largely been left out of this group. Changing that reality is the mission of career advancement nonprofit Management Leadership of Tomorrow (MLT), which works to put people of color in leadership po...
Sep 30, 2020•45 min
Enabling efficiency has always been at the heart of Zapier’s mission: the automation software startup was founded specifically to serve as the lynchpin platform between myriad web apps, allowing people to focus on their core projects without getting bogged down with mundane tasks. Moreover, the company has been distributed from the get-go, and has found that the requisite digital tools, meeting structure and business strategies that make remote work possible also happen to be the most proactive,...
Sep 22, 2020•39 min
At the SaaStr Annual event (held virtually this year) Greylock general partners David Wadhwani and Sarah Guo discussed the key elements to successfully navigating operational phase shifts, which David has experienced numerous times over the course of his two-decade career as a software executive at companies such as AppDynamics and Adobe. David detailed 5 things every company and founder should do to navigate phase shifts successfully, illustrated by examples of how they played out during his ow...
Sep 15, 2020•44 min
Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman shares his experience during PayPal's numerous pivots, and outlines how pivots have built some of the iconic tech companies in modern history. Hoffman describes how pivots are an integral part of the entrepreneurial process for startups: Whether you're pivoting in the early days because you haven't yet found product-market fit, or you're pivoting by reinventing yourself later on, all companies – if they're going to become and stay successful – are going to h...
Sep 08, 2020•1 hr 4 min
