Greymatter

This episode of Greymatter is part of a series of conversations between Blitzscaling co-authors Reid Hoffman (who is also a general partner at Greylock) and Chris Yeh. While the disruption and turbulence associated with the Covid-19 pandemic is broadly negative and unpredictable, it does open up new opportunities. Even during a pandemic, there will still be blitzscaling opportunities. They’ll just look different from the opportunities that emerged during the long economic expansion. It’s more critical than ever to focus on and enable entrepreneurship.

This episode, which features Grand Rounds CEO and co-founder Owen Tripp, is one in a series of Greymatter podcasts with health tech startup executives. While the coronavirus pandemic has caused a significant downturn in business for many companies, health tech startup Grand Rounds has had the opposite experience, and has risen to meet demand with new technology and resources including an online symptom checker, telemedicine appointments, and guidelines for safe return back to the office. The company is also supporting employers as they rethink healthcare spending in uncertain economic times.

In May 2020, Jeff Weiner stepped down as CEO of LinkedIn after 11 amazing years. In this episode of Greymatter, Greylock partner and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman shares his favorite memories and most valuable lessons learned from working with Jeff.

This episode of Greymatter features a portion of a virtual town hall held in May with Greylock general partner and LinkedIn co-Founder Reid Hoffman, moderated by general partner David Thacker. Portfolio company founders joined the session to hear Reid’s assessment of the current economic, political and public health landscape. He answered questions about how entrepreneurs, investors and new graduates can adapt to the new market and societal conditions.

How do you scale a consumer brand company to profitability without losing the human touch? Moreover, since marketplace platforms like Shopify have made it relatively simple to launch an ecommerce business, how do you stand out among the noise and reach customers in the first place? And how do you measure how well those methods are working? This episode of Greymatter is one in a series of growth discussions featuring Greylock’s Mike Duboe. In this conversation, Mike chatted with Moiz Ali, the founder of personal care company Native Co. (acquired by Procter & Gamble) and Nik Sharma, the CEO of CPG advisory and marketing firm Sharma Brands.

This episode of Greymatter is the third in a series of growth discussions featuring Greylock investor Mike Duboe. Lenny Rachitsky, former growth lead at Airbnb, and Dan Hockenmaier, founder of Basis One and former director of growth marketing at Thumbtack, join Mike to share lessons learned when growing marketplaces from startup to scaleup. They discuss how to design a growth org, processes and frameworks around experiments, building growth models, understanding marketplace liquidity, how to think about disintermediation, and parallels between B2C /B2B marketplaces.

Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman, and Wences Casares, Greylock portfolio company CEO and founder of Xapo, are back for their second conversation. This time to discuss how blitzscaling works when you’re not in Silicon Valley or China. In this episode of Greymatter, Wences and Reid talk about some of the learnings and tools he’s found that help him make remote work at Xapo more effective (Xapo has 275 employees scattered across 62 different countries). Wences explains how he uses always-on Zoom videoconferencing to implement a virtual “open door” policy that generates serendipitous meetings between employees on different continents, and why hiring employees without ever seeing their face or hearing their voice is actually a competitive advantage.

Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman, and Wences Casares, Greylock portfolio company CEO and founder of Xapo, discuss what diverse entrepreneurial ecosystems like Argentina can teach Silicon Valley. This episode of Greymatter digs into how assumptions about the world that hold true in America don’t in most other places around the globe. It also explores how being outside of Silicon Valley helped Wences realize early on the importance of a global, nation-independent, reliable monetary ecosystem, and the story that led Wences to become a Bitcoin user and investor. It also explores how childhood and family can prepare you for life as a tech entrepreneur.

This episode in the Greymatter Blitzscaling capsule series, with Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh, discusses the role of the founder in a blitzscaling startup. Reid shares practical advice for choosing your co-founders and key characteristics of successful founders.

Greylock Investor Mike Duboe, Right Side Up CEO Tyler Elliston, and KeepTruckin VP of Data Science Kim Larsen discuss frameworks and tactics for successful growth marketing. This episode of Greymatter is the second in a series of growth discussions featuring Greylock investor Mike Duboe. In this discussion, Right Side Up CEO Tyler Elliston and KeepTrucking VP of Data Science Kim Larsen chat with Mike about the foundational concepts and tactics to build and measure effective growth marketing strategies. Mike, Tyler, and Kim discuss the importance of diversification in marketing channels, best practices for measurement including incrementality testing, how to avoid common pitfalls of budget allocation, and building a growth marketing team in-house versus partnering with an agency. This podcast goes into many more concepts and frameworks, but below are just a few takeaways from the discussion.

This episode in the Greymatter Blitzscaling capsule series, with Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh, provides an overview of some of the main people issues you might encounter when blitzscaling. Indeed, while many of the articles in the popular press that mention blitzscaling focus on the financial capital involved, in most cases, the greatest constraint on blitzscaling is your ability to find, develop, and retain the human capital needed to manage hypergrowth.

Greylock Investor Mike Duboe, Reforge CEO Brian Balfour, and Mulesoft SVP of Product Shaun Clowes on developing a healthy and successful growth strategy. Growth is fundamental to a company's survival. To compete in today's crowded business environment, it is vital for founders to implement powerful strategies that drive healthy and sustainable growth. Successful growth strategies start with a methodical framework tailored to your product and target audience that will increase your user base and activation rate. This episode of Greymatter is the first in a mini-series of growth discussions featuring Greylock Investor Mike Duboe. In this discussion Reforge Founder and CEO Brian Balfour, and Metromile Chief Product Officer Shaun Clowes chat with Mike about frameworks and foundational concepts needed to develop a successful growth strategy. The three growth/product leaders discuss the skills and traits to look for in a startup's first growth hire, why growth should be a cross-functional discipline vs a set of channels or tactics, how to assess healthy vs unhealthy growth, conceptualizing loops vs funnels, and the applicability of B2C growth concepts in B2B organizations.

This episode in the Greymatter Blitzscaling capsule series, with Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh, digs deep into the question of globalization. When should an entrepreneur start to think about globalization? When is globalization a good idea, and when is it a bad idea? And when should a company first hire a head of international?

This episode in the Greymatter Blitzscaling capsule series, with Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh, takes you deep inside the mind of Reid Hoffman. You’ll learn his frameworks for making key decisions, and hear about how he developed and applied them at PayPal and LinkedIn. The key decisions entrepreneurs face belong to four layers: Capital, Talent, Market, and Product.

This episode in the Greymatter Blitzscaling capsule series, with Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh, focuses on the major threats that blitzscalers need to watch out for as they scale. Like a whack-a-mole game, new threats are constantly popping up to keep entrepreneurs busy! Fortunately, this episode offers practical tips on how to identify the true threats and address them before they derail your company. You'll learn about the central threat of blitzscaling, and what it has to do with Alec Baldwin movies from the early 1990s. "The central threat that Blitzscaling addresses is the threat that another competitor gets the scale before you. As we say in the book, these are Glengarry Glen Ross markets. First prize, Cadillac, second prize, steak knives, third prize, you're fired." To address this threat, you need to act with urgency, and commit to your strategy hard enough that it'll hurt - often badly - if you're wrong. You'll hear how the story of Uber illustrates this lesson. Uber responded so aggressively to the threat of Lyft's new alternative to black car service that many people erroneously believe that Lyft is the copycat, rather than vice versa. This was despite the new UberX service strongly upsetting Uber's existing network of black car operators, who correctly viewed it as competition.   Yet Uber also illustrates just how dangerous internal threats can be to blitzscaling. Blitzscaling companies need a strong, resilient culture to effectively respond to existential threats to the business.   "Company culture is one of the things that if you get wrong, you just may never be able to go back and get right." Uber was ultimately able to fix its broken culture, but at great cost, especially in the wasted time that allowed others to establish a stronger foothold in the market.   Finally, you'll hear why these lessons continue to be important, no matter what the size and age of your organization. "All companies need to start thinking like startups in the sense that they need to understand that by default, every business will eventually come to an end. And instead of thinking to themselves as by default, we're going to win and let's just proceed majestically on our way, I think it's that by default someone's gonna take our lunch, how do we make sure we're the ones who take the lunch?" Greymatter shares perspectives and stories from some of the world's top technology entrepreneurs and business leaders. Subscribe here and never miss a new episode.