Greymatter

Greylock investor Corinne Riley reads her essay "Fintech Infrastructure: Abstracting Bank Relationships."

Despite the considerable expansion of fintech in the past decade, there are still many workflow impediments that make it difficult for fintechs to successfully comply with regulations while building a modern tech stack. Bank workflows are not easily programmatic: they are unable to fully capture data across money movement, which creates error-prone, manual workflows across the ecosystem. To this end, a number of fintech infrastructure companies are focused on abstracting painful integrations with banks, allowing fintechs to trace data in real time, execute transactions programmatically, and automate related workflows.

You can read the essay here:

Greylock general partner Jerry Chen speaks with HashiCorp CEO David McJannet about the proliferation of cloud services that requires a multi-cloud approach.

Founded in 2012, HashiCorp is an provider of products that are foundational to mission-critical cloud applications and infrastructure. As such, the company has become an essential partner to numerous organizations ranging from startups to the Big 3 cloud providers. It is both a competitor and a collaborator, and is perhaps the best representation of the open-source, multi-cloud paradigm in which almost all companies now operate.

You can read a transcript of this interview here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/powering-the-multi-cloudparadigm/

You can find the entire Castles in the Cloud project here: https://greylock.com/castles/

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Convoy CEO and co-founder Dan Lewis discusses the current shipping landscape and how his company is upgrading the long-antiquated trucking industry. Convoy, which has developed a platform that puts drivers, shipping companies, and freight brokers on the grid has allowed all parties to operate more efficiently, resulting in saved costs and time as well as reducing pollution. Founded in 2015, Convoy now works with about 80,000 registered trucking companies (which collectively have some 400,000 trucks in their network), and in April raised $260 million in Series E funding. Greylock has been an investor since 2015, and general partner Reid Hoffman sits on the company’s board.

You can read a transcript of this interview here: https://greylock.com/firm-news/convoy-transporting-innovation/

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Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman and his Blitzscaling co-author Chris Yeh discuss the current crisis and its impact on startups.

Entrepreneurship assumes an innate degree of optimism and perseverance. But even the most determined founders can feel subdued when faced with yet another crisis. That’s why adaptability is a startup’s strongest asset. As recent global events push us into a new era of market volatility and economic uncertainty, companies must be prepared to recalibrate their business to the new reality. Whether that means pausing their hiring plans, tempering their expansion efforts, redirecting resources, or any other number of operational activities, today’s startup leaders should have a set of defensive and offensive tactics they can quickly deploy during times of crisis.

You can read a transcript of this episode here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/crisis-management/

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In his commencement speech to Vanderbilt University's graduating class of 2022, Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman discusses the impact and importance of friendship. "Not the Hallmark kind – not all sunshine and roses and bunny rabbits," says Hoffman. "I mean real, substantial friendship – that’s sometimes really hard – and that shapes and changes our lives."

In this speech, Hoffman shares some of the key decisions and actions that friends helped him figure out to take, and which significantly impacted the course of his professional and personal life. You can read the full text of the speech here: https://greylock.com/firm-news/reid-hoffman-the-importance-of-friendship/

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Audio version of Greylock investor Jason Risch's article "The Next Cloud Data Platform."

As part of Greylock's interactive data project Castles in the Cloud, we've analyzed new areas of opportunities for startups. Platforms within the modern data stack pose multiple points of entry for startups to innovate. VCs are already looking for “the next Snowflake” – companies that find success in the shadow of Big Cloud by reimagining the modern data stack. To solidify their staying power, the next chapter for Snowflake and other cloud data warehouses is to continue to expand as a platform company and challenge the cloud providers as the dominant cloud platforms for developers.

You can read the text of this essay here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/the-next-cloud-data-platform/

You can find the entire Castles in the Cloud project here: https://greylock.com/castles/

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Audio version of the latest essay by Greylock investors' Jerry Chen and Jason Risch. As part of our ongoing Castles in the Cloud project, we’ve compiled and analyzed VC funding data into cloud-focused startups in 2021 and Q1 2022. We are mapping the activity in the venture capital-funded startup ecosystem with that of the Big 3 Cloud providers: AWS, Azure, and GCP.

You can read the essay here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/vc-funding-for-the-cloud/

You can find the entire Castles in the Cloud project here: https://greylock.com/castles/

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As the saying goes, "Never let a good crisis go to waste." While running a business during times of economic and/or societal crisis is difficult, these moments can also pose opportunities for many companies. David Wadhwani, who is the Chief Business Officer of Digital Media at Adobe and a venture partner at Greylock, outlines his top strategies for staying afloat during times of crises. This episode is an audio version of the essay David first published in April 2020, shortly after the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Greylock's Head of Content and Editorial Heather Mack reads the essay. You can read the full version here:

https://greylock.com/greymatter/finding-opportunity-in-crisis-what-ceos-should-do-right-now/

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There are a million different ways things can go wrong when running a startup. Most founders learn the hard way. Frederic Kerrest’s experience was no different. The early days of Okta, which he co-founded with Todd McKinnon in 2009, were rife with challenges. From flawed go-to-market strategies and missed sales targets to struggles with hiring, Kerrest and McKinnon dealt with it all. On top of it all, it was in the midst of the Great Recession. That experience is why Kerrest wrote Zero to IPO, a collection of some of the best actionable advice from some of the world’s most influential entrepreneurs. The book, which was published earlier this year, details his early days at Okta as well as those of other iconic entrepreneurs. As part of our Iconversations speaker series, Kerrest joined Greylock board partner Sarah Guo to discuss the key themes of the book and share detailed examples of how they played out at Okta.

You can watch a video of this interview on our YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/reEECmJ4uxU

You can read a transcript of this interview here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/instructive-experiences/

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How do you advance society as a whole while still making sound business decisions? Kenneth Chenault, the celebrated former chairman and CEO of American Express who is now an investor and board director, says, "If you really are thoughtful, you should be able to have a better economic model by doing good.” Chenault is also the co-founder of OneTen, a coalition of leading executives coming together to upskill, hire and advance one million Black Americans over the next 10 years. Kenneth joined Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman as part of our Iconversations speaker series to discuss responsible innovation, what leadership looks like in times of crisis, and the reinventive potential of technology.

You can watch the video from this interview here: https://youtu.be/GMPunQtyFkU

You can read a transcript from this interview here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/venture-for-change/

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