Greymatter

Filmmaker J.J. Abrams joins Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman for a discussion on the ways science fiction and real-world technology take inspiration from one another; how to recognize a good idea when you see one; and the gravity of being behind any innovation that affects society on a large scale. This interview was part of Greylock's Iconversations virtual speaker series. You can read the e...

Audio version of the essay by Greylock investors Corinne Riley and Jerry Chen entitled "Funding the Cloud Challengers." This essay, which is part of Greylock's Castles in the Cloud series, analyzes the top venture capital cloud investing trends since 2019. You can read the essay at https://greylock.com/greymatter/funding-the-cloud-challengers/, and find the entire project at greylock.com/castles....

Audio version of Greylock general partner Jerry Chen's essay "How to Break Up Big Cloud's Dominance," read by Greylock Head of Editorial Heather Mack. This essay, which outlines strategies startups can take to compete with the Big 3 cloud providers, is part of our Castles in the Cloud project. You can read the essay at https://greylock.com/greymatter/how-to-break-up-big-clouds-dominance/, and find...

The audio version of Greylock general partner Jerry Chen's essay introducing Castles in the Cloud, which is Greylock’s interactive project to map multiple data points of the cloud computing ecosystem — and plots new opportunities for success. Greylock marketing partner Elisa Schreiber reads the essay. You can read the essay at https://greylock.com/greymatter/castles-in-the-cloud/, and find the ent...

A re-broadcast of our episode featuring Ariel Investments president and co-CEO Mellody Hobson, who spoke with Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman as part of Greylock's Inconversations speaker series. Hobson is also the chair of the board of Starbucks Corporation as well as a director at JP Morgan Chase, and is an avid philanthropist and educator. Hobson, who is the only Black woman to chair a Fo...

Very few startups set out to compete with the biggest leaders in their industry - let alone those who are among the biggest companies in the world. But that doesn't mean it's not possible. In 2020, Greylock investor Sridhar Ramaswamy (who joined the firm following 15 years at Google) launched Neeva, a new kind of search company. The differentiator? Neeva is an ad-free, subscription-based search en...

PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada and Greylock general partner Sarah Guo discuss the importance of empathetic leadership, the value of automation in service of people, the effectiveness of trust and transparency as a means of corporate communication — and shares advice on how to build good relationships with your current and former employees, your executive peers, and your board of directors. This dis...

Greylock investor Christine Kim shares the top five lessons she learned scaling product while working at Uber. Prior to joining Greylock in 2020, Christine spent five years at the ride-hailing business. where she led the product team that launched and scaled Uber Eats. The app started as a small pilot project that quickly caught on, and Uber Eats now generates $50 billion in revenue annually. Read...

Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman and his Blitzscaling co-author Chris Yeh pick up their conversation from last week on how philosophical study can have a great impact on an entrepreneur's career. This week, they focus on how a philosophy degree compares to a much more conventional business background: the MBA."There are two things that need to be explained away in order for me to invest in yo...

Greylock general partner and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman talks with his Blitzscaling co-author Chris Yeh about how a fundamental understanding of philosophy can be a powerful tool for entrepreneurship. Hoffman, who holds a master's degree in philosophy from Oxford University, outlines how studying philosophy helps people develop new frameworks for grappling with truth, humanity and decision-m...

If AI is to serve the collective needs of humanity, how should machine intelligence be built and designed so that it can understand human language, feelings, intentions and behaviors, and interact with nuance and in multiple dimensions? Stanford University computer science professor Dr. Fei-Fei Li and Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman discuss the ethical considerations researchers, technologis...

A rebroadcast of our episode featuring Coda CEO and co-founder Shishir Mehrotra. The company, which saw a surge in usage during the Covid-19 pandemic and the widespread shift to remote work, recently closed $100 million Series D round. In this episode, which was recorded last year as part of Greylock general partner Sarah Guo's Work From Anywhere podcast series, Shishir talks about the way collabo...

From dealing with the notorious cold start problem of insufficient data to train models, to identifying the right business model for the product and the crucial need for early partnerships, applied ML companies grapple with an additional set of challenges from the beginning. Cresta CTO and co-founder Tim Shi and Abnormal Security Head of Machine Learning Jeshua Bratman join Greylock partner Saam M...

The second part of our two-part conversation on working with the media. Forbes senior editor Alex Konrad joins Greylock marketing partner Elisa Schreiber and Greylock director of communications Kaitlin Durkosh to discuss how startup founders should think about building relationships with journalists; how journalists see their role amid the always evolving media landscape; and what impact founders...

Forbes senior editor Alex Konrad has been covering venture capital and startups for nearly a decade. While many founders have learned how to work well with media, the learning curve is steep, and Konrad sees persistent miscommunication, misunderstanding, and misinformation between the two. Compounding the issue, today’s startup founders have to navigate the increasingly blurred lines of journalism...

While many CEOs choose to stay out of the public eye during times of crisis, Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky has always opted for the opposite. It was no different during the Covid-19 pandemic, when travel came to a standstill and the company was forced to restructure. Chesky remained open, candid and transparent throughout the experience, and the company was able to navigate the crisis in...

Greylock partner Saam Motamedi is joined by engineering team leaders to discuss the wide-reaching topic of company culture. Wade Chambers, CTO and SVP of Engineering at Grand Rounds Health; Kevin Wang, VP of engineering at Abnormal Security; and Wei Gan, the co-founder and CTO of Ribbon Home, talk about the various ways they define and apply culture; how they differentiate between company-level an...

Stanford University economics professor Nicholas Bloom has been researching remote work and management for decades. The Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on the workplace provided a rare opportunity for a world-wide case study. Bloom joined Greylock general partner Sarah Guo on Greymatter’s Work From Anywhere podcast series to talk about the evolving workplace, what the data shows on both employee...

When people ask Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman how he learned strategy, his answer is not that he studied in business school and earned an MBA, or that he read (and re-read) Machiavelli and Sun Tzu. His answer is this: “I played a lot of games.” The best games, Hoffman says, not only require skill and tactics, but they also incorporate uncertainty and randomness, which teaches you to be str...

To keep growth and user engagement up, most social platform avoid any features that could cause friction to the user. But Nextdoor is willing to take some risks. The company, which has taken on a greater role during the pandemic, has deployed tools that CEO Sarah Friar admits may impact growth, but are ultimately, "the right thing to do in order to build communities." These tools include the Kindn...

To understand how some of the strongest brands are thriving with the omnichannel approach, Greylock general partner Mike Duboe hosted a wide-ranging discussion on Greymatter on what it takes to build the next generation of commerce companies with Color Capital co-founders Jaime Schmidt and Chris Cantino. The husband-wife team partner with companies creating the future of CPG, marketplaces, ecommer...

The shift to ecommerce has been a natural progression for companies that sell everyday, approachable items like clothing and beauty products. But brands that sell pricey, technical and often highly variable products like skis, golf clubs and camping gear have historically struggled to make the online transition, as consumers tend to prefer in-person consultation at physical stores. Enter Curated....

When finance teams have a greater influence on everyday operations, companies can more nimbly respond to economic events – both good and bad. That's why TraceHQ developed a platform that functions as a service desk for finance; providing visibility for teams to immediately see how their financial decisions impact their budget. It then gives finance the committed forecast – a real-time financial pl...

Cresta CEO Zayd Enam and Greylock general partner Saam Motamedi discuss how AI can help – not replace – humans at work. Seeing the limitations of AI that simply automated the routine aspects of work performed by many, Cresta developed a platform that effectively scales the skills of the top few employees, whose job functions require heavier cognitive lifting and expertise. Cresta, which has initia...

Ariel Investments President and co-CEO Mellody Hobson, who was recently named the chair of the board of Starbucks Corporation, joins Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman. Hobson, who is the first black woman to chair a Fortune 500 board, shares highlights from her career as an investor, board member, financial educator and philanthropist, and discusses the fundamental changes necessary to diversi...