Greylock talent partner Holly Rose Faith, who works with startups to find, recruit, and place executive team members, outlines smart strategies to deploy when checking references. From having a plan of what you are looking to validate at the outset, to the specific questions depending on the role or stage of company, all hiring managers should go into referencing with a reliable, repeatable, formal system in place. This episode is part of Greylock's Brain Trust series. You can read a transcript of the interview here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/holly-rose-faith-greylock-executive-reference-checklist/
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Holly Rose Faith | Executive Reference Checklist

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 company-building strategies like growth, finding product-market-fit, and recruiting top talent. Founders and VCs offer candid accounts of success, failure, and adaptation. Greymatter delivers practical insights mixed with the bold optimism that defines entrepreneurship.

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Greylock general partner Jacob Andreou reads his essay on how to build valuable products during moments of technology transitions. Having previously led product and growth for one of the iconic native apps of the mobile era (Snap), Andreou developed a perspective on some of the best (and worst) strategic and tactical decisions companies can make during tech shifts. It starts by asking an important question: Are you building a novel solution to an enduring need, enabled by new technology?
Using lessons learned from his hands-on experience at Snap and observations across other companies, Andreou provides a framework for evaluating your product and company to ensure you are building a transformative product and not a toy.
You can read the full essay, "From Ports to Transformations: Strategies for Building Enduring Consumer Products During Tech Shifts here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/building-enduring-consumer-products-during-tech-shifts/
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Jacob Andreou | From Ports to Transformations

Building a defensible system of intelligence at a time when LLMs are becoming commoditized (and when all the classic moats like economies of scale are more important than ever) isn’t easy. But Instabase, which provides an applied AI platform for enterprise organizations to run various operational processes, has managed to accrue a large customer base and recently hit $2 billion valuation. The company has gained traction largely because they've taken cues directly from customers since day one while incorporating the latest technology advances to continually expand their product, making it useful across hundreds of different use cases for a range of industries.
Greylock general partner and Instabase board member Jerry Chen spoke with Instabase CEO and founder Anant Bhardwaj about the company’s journey amid the fast-changing AI landscape.
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Jerry Chen and Instabase CEO Anant Bhardwaj | Building a System of Intelligence

Greylock general partner Jerry Chen discusses key takeaways from his essay "The New New Moats: Why Systems of Intelligence are Still the Next Defensible Business Model." The essay is a fresh take on his "New Moats" blog from 2017, in which he postulated that startups would be able to build defensible moats using AI. With the explosion of AI activity in recent times, Chen revisited this analysis to see what holds true, what he got wrong, and what is still too early to tell.
You can read the 2023 essay here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/the-new-new-moats/
You can read the original 2017 essay here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/the-new-moats/
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Jerry Chen | The New New Moats

As anyone who has experimented with the latest artificial intelligence tools that generate human-like responses to text, every interaction with technology is increasingly becoming a conversation. Beyond pre-programmed responses based on specific key words, interacting with AI trained on large language models is beginning to feel like a natural back and forth dialogue.
"In the future, I think there will be an ever-present relationship that you have with an AI that helps you to make sense of the world around you," says Inflection AI CEO and co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, whose company recently released Pi, or "personal AI", designed to listen, talk, and provide support like a companion.
Listen to Suleyman and his Inflection co-founder Reid Hoffman on the Greymatter podcast discuss how they approached building the "AI sidekick" that is Pi, and share their vision for the future of the technology.
You can read the transcript of this conversation here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/inflectionai-the-ai-friend-zone/
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Inflection AI | The AI Friend Zone

Greylock general partner Jerry Chen analyzes top trends impacting funding, company creation, product launches, and partnerships throughout the cloud ecosystem for 2022 and the first part of 2023. This analysis is based on data compiled for Greylock's Castles in the Cloud project, which maps the activity of VC-backed startups as well as that of the Big 3 cloud providers AWS, Google, and Microsoft Azure. AI, an increased focus on vertical specialization, and the expansion of security needs are all fueling activity in the cloud ecosystem. 
The trends in this discussion are also examined in Greylock investor Jason Risch's recent essay, which you can read here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/three-trends-in-vc-backed-cloud/
You can find the entire Castles in the Cloud project here: greylock.com/castles.
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Holly Rose Faith | Executive Reference Checklist

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