Greymatter

By Greylock PartnersBusiness Entrepreneurship Technology

Greymatter episodes

December 12, 2019 Chile, Entrepreneurs, Endeavor, and Global Lessons w/ Reid Hoffman Wences Casares
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.

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28 min
December 06, 2019 Argentina Entrepreneurship, Endeavor, and Global Lessons w/ Wences Casares and Reid Hoffman
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.

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32 min
August 01, 2019 The Role of the Founder | Greymatter Podcast
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.

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33 min
July 30, 2019 Building & Measuring Sustainable Growth Marketing Strategies | Greymatter
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.

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50 min
July 25, 2019 Greymatter Blitzscaling | People with Reid Hoffman & Chris Yeh
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.

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18 min
July 23, 2019 Frameworks For Driving Sustainable Growth w/ Mike Duboe, Brian Balfour, Shaun Clowes | Greymatter
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.

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42 min
July 18, 2019 Greymatter Blitzscaling | Going Global with Reid Hoffman & Chris Yeh
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?

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20 min
July 11, 2019 Blitzscaling Strategy: Making Key Decisions with Reid Hoffman & Chris Yeh | Greymatter
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.

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31 min
June 27, 2019 Blitzscaling Strategy: Major Threats with Reid Hoffman & Chris Yeh | Greymatter
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.

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26 min
June 25, 2019 Building The Next-Gen Entertainment Platform with Roblox | Greymatter
Roblox founder and CEO David Baszucki and Greylock partner David Sze on the power of imagination.
The gaming industry has undergone a transformation driven by technological advancements including mobile and cloud, and new gaming tools and platforms. Historically, consoles and PCs dominated the gaming market, but the rise of mobile and online games and live streaming services have ushered in a new generation of players and game creators.
This episode of Greymatter features Roblox founder and CEO David Baszucki and Greylock Partner and Roblox investor, David Sze. Baszucki and Sze discuss the future social gaming landscape, share advice for scaling the company vision, and how to build company culture early on.
Roblox's Imagination Platform is ushering in the next generation of entertainment, enabling kids of all ages to imagine, create, and play together in immersive 3D worlds. Prior to founding Roblox, Baszucki was an angel investor and previously, he founded and led Knowledge Revolution, the leader in educational physics and mechanical design simulation. Sze invests in entrepreneurs building companies focused on consumer mobile and internet services, and media convergence. His investments include LinkedIn, Facebook, Roblox, Pandora, and Nextdoor and many more.

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41 min

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How do tech startups go from idea…to iconic? Greymatter’s weekly podcast features interviews with VCs, founders, and tech visionaries on everything from AI, marketplaces, and cybersecurity as well as…