Audio version of Greylock investor Seth Rosenberg's essay "Bringing DeFi Lending Mainstream," read by Greylock's head of editorial Heather Mack.
Crypto hype and speculation got us into the current chaotic winter. But the core infrastructure remains, and is still ripe for the innovation that will take us into the next crypto summer. There are many real use cases across financial services that can not only usher us into a more secure, inclusive, and efficient financial system, but also return trust and ownership to those for whom crypto was created in the first place – the users. Rosenberg unpacks the use case of defi lending to illustrate how this can be done. 
You can read the essay here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/bringing-defi-lending-mainstream/
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Seth Rosenberg | Bringing DeFi Lending Mainstream

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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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Seth Rosenberg | Bringing DeFi Lending Mainstream

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