Greymatter

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."

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 more closely related to a search engine like Google or Facebook newsfeed. In this episode of Greymatter, Venkataramani sat down with Greylock general partner and Rockset board member Jerry Chen to discuss how his team is approaching the new era of cloud-only infrastructure.

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 down with Alice and Matt to discuss how the organization has evolved over the years, the surprisingly positive impacts of the pandemic on company-building, and what they see for 2021 and beyond.

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 and Remotion board member Sarah Guo talk about how Remotion is helping companies build a talk-live culture even while remote; how early customers are using the product; and his vision for the future of work. This episode is part of the #WorkFromAnywhere podcast series.

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.

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 positions. A major part of MLT’s work is dispelling the myth that the lack of diversity in the tech industry comes from a so-called pipeline problem of talented African American, Latinx and Native American science, engineering and computer science grads. In actuality, the problem is a network gap, which is why MLT and Greylock have recently launched a new partnership to accelerate change for POC in the venture and startup ecosystem. Additionally, MLT has established a fund to provide further financial resources, and the organization is also a limited partner in Greylock’s newest fund. MLT CEO and founder John Rice and Greylock general partner David Sze sat down with Greymatter to discuss the new partnership.

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, pragmatic and productive ways to run a business. Zapier CEO and co-founder Wade Foster sat down with Greylock general partner Sarah Guo to discuss what he’s learned in the nine years since the company was founded, and how he sees the widespread shift to remote work affecting the way companies operate in the future. This episode is part of the #WorkFromAnywhere series hosted by Sarah Guo and David Thacker.

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 own experience.

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 have to pivot.

The nature of work today is increasingly dynamic, distributed, flexible, and digital-first. Relying on the extended workforce is more than a short-term, stop-gap solution: businesses are finding this population to be an efficient, viable source of talent instrumental to their core operations. That's why Utmost developed the first ever extended workforce system (EWS) to help enterprises source, engage, pay, and optimize their entire non-employee workforce, including freelancers, consultants and more. The company, which was founded in 2018 by former Workday and Groupon executives, has been a distributed organization from the start and has a unique vantage into the fast-changing nature of work. Utmost COO and co-founder Dan Beck sat down with Greylock partner Saam Motamedi to discuss. This episode is part of Greymatter's #WorkFromAnywhere series.

This episode of Greymatter features Reid Hoffman in conversation with Peter High, president of business and IT strategy firm Metis Strategy. In the context of the current pandemic and economic crisis, Reid and Peter discuss strategies and insights for entrepreneurs on building, developing and strengthening their ecosystem (while offering the same level of support and insight back); the importance of co-design in go-to-market strategy; how blitzscaling applies to large companies; and how the pandemic has caused previous market failures to move to market readiness. The conversation took place in front of a live virtual audience during the Metis Strategy Digital Symposium.

Productivity software startup Coda was founded to empower anyone to make a document as powerful as an app, no engineering required. Now that many businesses have no choice but to be distributed, Coda has seen accelerating adoption as a central collaboration hub within companies. Coda CEO and co-founder Shishir Mehrotra discusses with Greylock general partner Sarah Guo why he believes “the world runs on docs, not apps,” why the core metaphors for productivity systems are stagnant, solving the “tragedy of the commons in enterprise software,” the most commonly pressed three buttons in SaaS, why you want structured participation in your board meetings, lessons learned from the in-office (and not) cultures of Microsoft and Google, and his predictions for the future of productivity. This episode is part of the #WorkFromAnywhere series hosted by Sarah and fellow Greylock partner David Thacker.

Greylock general partner and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and his Blitzscaling co-author Chris Yeh discuss one the most common outcomes of startups: Failure. But although failure is often the default state for startups, it is neither inevitable nor is it necessarily the end of the story. Even if you are able to bring yourself to look failure in the eye, you can take steps to maximize your chance of success. And even if you fail despite your best efforts, if you behave ethically and demonstrate that you've learned from the mistakes you might have made along the way, failure is definitely not the end. In fact, it may be the beginning.

Since Covid-19 first hit, Solv Health has played an instrumental role in helping healthcare organizations connect virtually with patients to provide telemedicine and same or next-day clinic appointments (as well as myriad administrative services such as contactless payments and digital paperwork). CEO and co-founder Heather Fernandez said the sudden, widespread shift to telemedicine meant Solv went from hosting about 9,000 virtual visits in all of 2019 to hosting half a million since March of 2020. The company is also now facilitating Covid-19 testing across its partner organizations. Fernandez sat down with Greymatter to talk about the complexity – and opportunity – in scaling a health tech startup during a public health crisis.

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. When an issue creates risks that are severe, broad in scope, and systemic in impact, business leaders have an obligation to speak up, especially if the issue clashes with the company’s ethics, culture, and vision for the future. Reid Hoffman and Blitzscaling co-author Chris Yeh outline a set of principles that can help decide when, how, and why CEOs should speak out.