Greymatter

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 with company co-founders Bobby Tzekin and Liz O'Donnell.

Greylock general partner Sarah Guo discusses the ever-evolving cybersecurity risk landscape and how businesses and governments can proactively protect their data. She is joined by 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.

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 program to support women seeking board positions at fast-growing tech companies.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 member Jerry Chen to discuss the company’s growth, the current state of cloud technology, and the challenges and advantages of starting a company just before the global crisis of 2020.

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.

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.

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.

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 provides a headless CMS with full drag and drop editing, and Carthook founder Jordan Gal, whose company offers a checkout optimization tool for stores in the Shopify ecosystem. This episode is the first in a series of Greymatter conversations focused on the evolving ecommerce ecosystem.

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/

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 challenges of software development and security.

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 LinkedIn. This podcast is the first in a multi-part installment looking at the fundamental laws of entrepreneurship.