Greymatter

From the 2019 SFELC Summit, Square exec Alyssa Henry on leadership, career development, and building teams at scale.

Leading an organization of 10 employees is considerably different than leading an organization of 10,000+ employees. As teams increase and communication becomes more challenging, a lot can break down. In this episode of Greymatter, we share a fireside discussion from the 2019 SFELC Summit on building and managing scaling teams. NodeSource VP of Engineering, Chanda Dharap talks with Square's Head of Seller & Developer Business Units & Infrastructure Engineering, Alyssa Henry. Alyssa shares lessons from scaling companies at hyper-scale including Square and AWS, how to bring purpose to your employee's work, and advice for building company culture.

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Recruiting and hiring great employees is a priority for every company at any stage of their growth. Yet, without question, recruiting is difficult to master. In this episode of Greymatter, we share a fireside discussion from the 2019 SFELC Summit on recruiting and hiring. In conversation with Dan Portillo, Dropbox's former CTO Aditya Agarwal shares his thoughts on how to recruit without having an established brand, advice to effectively sell your company to candidates and guidance for closing hires.

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Caffeine CEO Ben Keighran on building a new social broadcasting platform.

The rise of mobile technology and social platforms has created a massive shift in the way we consume, interact with, and share media. Today's consumers expect deeper and more meaningful interactions, specifically with content creators and streamers. Enter Caffeine, the social broadcasting platform connecting users, streamers and publishers to share live broadcasts of gaming, sports and live entertainment.

In this episode of Greymatter, Caffeine CEO and Co-Founder Ben Keighran and Greylock Venture Partner John Lilly discuss building a sustainable business model, what to look for in strategic partnerships, and what's next for the future of live broadcasting.

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The explosion of on-demand consumer services have transformed the way millions of us interact with the businesses and people around us. Immediate, transparent, and personalized experiences are characteristics that have become central to everyday life. The modern workforce has similar expectations for how they connect with the teams, tech and tools that help them do their jobs productively. This has created a need for innovative tools and services that adapt to today's increasingly distributed and fragmented workforce.

In this episode of Greymatter, Greylock partner Jerry Chen and Spoke co-founder and CEO Jay Srinivasan discuss the organizational value of an “on-demand workplace”, the employee workplace expectation versus the reality, and trends in the on-demand enterprise.

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Notable CEO Pranay Kapadia and Greylock Partner Jerry Chen on building a health care company for the next generation.

The healthcare industry is undergoing a digital transformation as emerging technologies are revolutionizing patient care in new and exciting ways. Artificial intelligence, specifically, is poised to become a transformational force in health care. As data becomes more available, machine learning and AI solutions can automate repetitive tasks to increase productivity and allow doctors to focus on what matters most: the patient.

In this episode of Greymatter, Notable Health CEO Pranay Kapadia and Greylock partner Jerry Chen discuss characteristics to look for in a founding team, how to successfully partner with large enterprises, and AI trends in the healthcare industry and beyond.

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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Greylock Partner and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman share lessons learned from scaling Microsoft, LinkedIn and PayPal.

 

Blitzscaling is the strategy that leading entrepreneurs have implemented to build strong, enduring companies. The techniques allow for startups and incumbents across any industry to scale at rapid rates and outdistance the competition. 

 

 This episode of Greymatter is a discussion from Greylock's Blitzscaling Dinner with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Greylock partner Reid Hoffman. The two visionaries discuss the importance of consistency when scaling company culture, tactics to push forward new strategies with your board of directors, and steps to mitigate the unintended risks of blitzscaling.

 

Greylock's invite-only event hosted CEOs, company founders and top CXOs to discuss the impact of blitzscaling across today's leading companies and ways that Microsoft is applying these techniques as an established company. Below are key takeaways and quotes from the discussion.

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Blitzscaling is often associated with high-tech companies in Silicon Valley, but the principles can be applied to organizations of any size, and at any stage. Incumbents can adopt strategies to outdistance their competition and create strong, lasting competitive advantages. Greylock partners Reid Hoffman, Sarah Guo and Blitzscaling co-author Chris Yeh share advice for established companies looking to apply blitzscaling techniques, defense strategies for leaders facing blitzscaling competitors (such as startups), and steps to responsibly blitzscale.

This episode of Greymatter is the fifth in a five-part series on “blitzscaling” where general partners from Greylock discuss their experience building tech companies from startup to scaleup. The themes of these episodes are covered in Chris and Reid's new book, Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies. You can listen to the other episodes in the series, here.

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Blitzscaling is the ultimate test for managers and company builders. As employee count increases and communication becomes harder, a lot can break down. Founders that can weather these challenges and evolve their management practices build strong, enduring companies. Greylock's John Lilly experienced this hypergrowth first hand as CEO of Mozilla, the organization behind Firefox, the open source Web browser used by more than 450M people. In this discussion with Blitzscaling co-author Chris Yeh, John shares tactical advice to navigate key team transitions, hire for fast decision making, and build a strong company culture.

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The lessons of blitzscaling to achieve market dominance are counterintuitive. The strategy requires a shift from the traditional thinking of growth to a prioritization of speed over anything else. Greylock Partner Josh McFarland founded and scaled TellApart (which was acquired by Twitter in 2015), and he will be the first to tell you the risks and rewards of blitzscaling. In this discussion with Blitzscaling co-author Chris Yeh, Josh encourages founders to throw out the conventional approach of decision making and embrace the art of fast decision making and willingness to experiment.

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The dot-com era saw the failure of numerous startup companies due in part to the strategy of copying and pasting existing business models, created for the offline world, to the Internet. To achieve market dominance and beat out incumbents, companies need to create an innovative business model that is designed to scale alongside your company. Greylock PartnerJerry Chen and entrepreneurChris Yeh share advice on how to avoid growth limiters, target the right customer and build defensible moats.

This episode of Greymatter is the second in a five-part series on “blitzscaling” where general partners from Greylock discuss their experience building tech companies from startup to scaleup. The themes of these episodes are covered in Chris Yeh and Reid Hoffman's new book, Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies.

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