The Greylock Minute | Spring 2018
A quick update of our recent investments, portfolio news, and partner perspectives.
Sarah Guo is now a general partner at Greylock. She is focused on helping entrepreneurs create and scale the next generation of important b2b companies. In the five years Sarah has been with Greylock, she has worked closely with every investment partner and helped us invest in, incubate and operationally support multiple companies including Awake Security, Coda, Docker, Innovium, and Rubrik. She also represents Greylock as a director on three boards and has led two series As, both in stealth.
Greylock announced new investments in Aurora, Solv and Callisto. And Both Dropbox and Zuora made their Wall Street debut.
In partnership with AWS, Sarah Guo and Jerry Chen wrote a white paper on the opportunities around serverless, complete with with case studies on Nextdoor and Skyhigh Networks. Both Asheem Chandna and Reid Hoffman were named to CBInsights top 100 venture capitalists and Sarah Guo and Saam Motamedi were listed to Business Insider’s top Silicon Valley investors under the age of 30.
Finally, we encourage you to subscribe to the Greymatter podcast to hear personal stories from company builders. We just added talks from Blend Co-Founder and CEO Nima Ghamsari, Rubrik CEO Bipul Sinha and AI Fund’s Andrew Ng, the foremost leader in AI and ML. Subscribe to Greymatter here: Apple Podcasts | Soundcloud | Casts | Stitcher
New Investments
Recently announced companies joining our portfolio
Founded by an elite team in self-driving technologies, Aurora is bringing autonomous technology to the driving mass. (Forbes)
Solv provides access to high-quality same-day health care and in less than a year has become the #1 online destination for patients. (Forbes)
Callisto is an online platform that allow tech founders to privately report sexual coercion and assault committed by investors. (Wall Street Journal)
Portfolio News
A selection of top news from our active portfolio
Dropbox made it’s Wall Street debut in April (NASDAQ: DBX). Learn how the company’s vision pushed Greylock’s John Lilly to invest. (TechCrunch)
Blend announces a partnership with the country’s largest home builder, Lennar Corp., to increase housing accessibility. (Wall Street Journal)
Figma announces the launch of Figma Platform, a way to improve design workflows by connecting Figma to other tools and web apps. (Fast Company)
Co-Founder and CEO Chris Urmson talks building the new driverless tech company Aurora and current state of the self-driving car business (The Atlantic)
In March, Airbnb launched Airbnb Plus, a brand of high end accommodations guaranteed to meet a 100-point quality checklist. (New York Times)
Subscription biller company Zuora made it’s Wall Street debut in April (NASDAQ:ZUO). Learn about their story from startup to scaleup. (TechCrunch)
GoFundMe acquired personal fundraising site YouCaring, furthering the company’s mission to help people turn compassion into action. (TechCrunch)
Rubrik debuts Polaris, a new cloud-based platform to help organizations better manage the information scattered throughout their networks. (SiliconAngle)
Co-Founder and CEO Ben Rubin, shares his experience building Houseparty and lessons learned battling big tech. (Financial Times)
Co-Founder and CEO Brian Armstrong shares a framework developed at Coinbase to help organizations make decisions effectively. (Medium)
Mammoth Media, the studio behind the micro-storytelling platform, announced a new partnership with AMC and Archie Comics. (Video Ink)
Learn how autonomous-tech startup Nauto is using AI and ML to build a data platform that makes driving safer and fleets smarter. (AWS Startups)
CEO Ray Reddy discusses why data collection will be valuable to restaurants and talks building the social ordering app, Ritual. (SF Business Times)
Helping businesses organize their internal processes through an automated ticketing system, Spoke exited beta in March. (VentureBeat)
Learn how Gixo Co-Founder and CEO Selina Tobaccowala built the fitness app to promote healthy living after learning a life lesson. (PopSugar)
From fingerprint scanners to blast doors, learn what makes Xapo the world’s most secure bitcoin wallets and how much bitcoin they protect. (Bloomberg)
Greylock Perspectives
Some of the things we’re thinking about
Is this a business? Do my customers think this is a good idea? Sarah Guo shares the five steps to diligence your b2b startup idea. (Medium)
VC investment requires taking strategic risks. Jerry Chen explains his investment strategy around possibility, probability and uncertainty. (Medium)
“It’s vital to launch a product early and then change it on the fly.” Reid Hoffman shares learning lessons from an early failure. (Wall Street Journal)
Josh McFarland spoke at Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series. Hear the highs and lows of building TellApart. (Stanford)
Our Sr. Director of Technology Manuel Bernal shares how founders should think about IT as their company goes from startup to scaleup. (Medium)
Greymatter Podcast
Stories from company builders
Subscribe: iTunes | Soundcloud | Stitcher | Pocket Casts
Learn how to inject speed and transparency into your startup from Rubrik CEO Bipul Sinha and Greylock’s Asheem Chandna. (Medium)
Sarah Guo and AI Fund’s Andrew Ng discuss AI in startups and big business, the cutting edge of AI research and its societal impact. (Medium)
Jerry Chen and Blend’s CEO and Co-Founder Nima Ghamsari discuss taking educated risks in startups and what it takes to move fast. (Medium)
Masters of Scale
Reid Hoffman shares founder advice and stories
In a captivating Masters of Scale interview with Starbucks’ Howard Schultz, Reid Hoffman set out to prove his theory: I believe you can scale positive social impact along with your business. But only if you’re as creative and cash-conscious about doing good as you are about your business itself.”
Our friends at Masters of Scale created a downloadable PDF of the 3 most important ideas from the episode for its email subscribers. You can get it here.
