Greymatter

From the 2019 SFELC Summit, Facebook's Head of Engineering James Everingham on management philosophies that foster innovation. Creative people and teams can build valuable and unpredictable innovations. Effectively fostering these creative ideas in the workplace though, requires its own style of management. In this episode of Greymatter, we share a presentation from the2019 SFELC Summit featuring...

From the 2019 SFELC Summit, Affirm Founder and CEO Max Levchin on leadership qualities and the early days of PayPal. What does it take to be a real leader? It's not about your title or past experience. Leadership is about taking care of the people within your organization and leading by example. In this episode of Greymatter, you'll hear from Ben Jun, CEO of HVF Labs and Max Levchin, Founder and C...

All leaders experience difficult conversations at some point in their career. Whether it's discussing poor employee performance or an organizational change, any conversation that involves human emotions is hard. These conversations become even more challenging when the delivery is muddled. In this episode of Greymatter, we share a presentation from the 2019 SFELC Summit on best practices for manag...

From the 2019 SFELC Summit, Square exec Alyssa Henry on leadership, career development, and building teams at scale. Leading an organization of 10 employees is considerably different than leading an organization of 10,000+ employees. As teams increase and communication becomes more challenging, a lot can break down. In this episode of Greymatter, we share a fireside discussion from the 2019 SFELC...

Recruiting and hiring great employees is a priority for every company at any stage of their growth. Yet, without question, recruiting is difficult to master. In this episode of Greymatter, we share a fireside discussion from the 2019 SFELC Summit on recruiting and hiring. In conversation with Dan Portillo, Dropbox's former CTO Aditya Agarwal shares his thoughts on how to recruit without having an...

Caffeine CEO Ben Keighran on building a new social broadcasting platform. The rise of mobile technology and social platforms has created a massive shift in the way we consume, interact with, and share media. Today's consumers expect deeper and more meaningful interactions, specifically with content creators and streamers. Enter Caffeine, the social broadcasting platform connecting users, streamers...

The explosion of on-demand consumer services have transformed the way millions of us interact with the businesses and people around us. Immediate, transparent, and personalized experiences are characteristics that have become central to everyday life. The modern workforce has similar expectations for how they connect with the teams, tech and tools that help them do their jobs productively. This ha...

Notable CEO Pranay Kapadia and Greylock Partner Jerry Chen on building a health care company for the next generation. The healthcare industry is undergoing a digital transformation as emerging technologies are revolutionizing patient care in new and exciting ways. Artificial intelligence, specifically, is poised to become a transformational force in health care. As data becomes more available, mac...

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Greylock Partner and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman share lessons learned from scaling Microsoft, LinkedIn and PayPal.   Blitzscaling is the strategy that leading entrepreneurs have implemented to build strong, enduring companies. The techniques allow for startups and incumbents across any industry to scale at rapid rates and outdistance the competition.     This...

Blitzscaling is often associated with high-tech companies in Silicon Valley, but the principles can be applied to organizations of any size, and at any stage. Incumbents can adopt strategies to outdistance their competition and create strong, lasting competitive advantages. Greylock partners Reid Hoffman, Sarah Guo and Blitzscaling co-author Chris Yeh share advice for established companies looking...

Blitzscaling is the ultimate test for managers and company builders. As employee count increases and communication becomes harder, a lot can break down. Founders that can weather these challenges and evolve their management practices build strong, enduring companies. Greylock's John Lilly experienced this hypergrowth first hand as CEO of Mozilla, the organization behind Firefox, the open source We...

The lessons of blitzscaling to achieve market dominance are counterintuitive. The strategy requires a shift from the traditional thinking of growth to a prioritization of speed over anything else. Greylock Partner Josh McFarland founded and scaled TellApart (which was acquired by Twitter in 2015), and he will be the first to tell you the risks and rewards of blitzscaling. In this discussion with B...

The dot-com era saw the failure of numerous startup companies due in part to the strategy of copying and pasting existing business models, created for the offline world, to the Internet. To achieve market dominance and beat out incumbents, companies need to create an innovative business model that is designed to scale alongside your company. Greylock PartnerJerry Chen and entrepreneurChris Yeh sha...

Entrepreneur Chris Yeh and Greylock Partners Reid Hoffman and Sarah Guo on what it takes to scale to global dominance. Blitzscaling is the secret by which Silicon Valley and China have built startups into global, category-defining businesses at lightning fast rates. This strategy utilizes a set of techniques to grow a customer base, revenue, financing and ultimately create a dominant global positi...

Advancement in technology has created a "disrupt or die" notion among large enterprises. To remain one step ahead of their competitors, leading CEOs understand that they need to bring in new technology and seek out partners who can help them achieve that goal. In this episode of Greymatter, Delphix CEO and President Chris Cook and Greylock Partner Asheem Chandna discuss how to lead during times of...

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 f...

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 a...

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...

"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 G...

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://...

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, a...

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 goal...

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,...

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,...

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 Grey...