From idea to iconic.

In 2010, Airbnb was still in its early days. But it was clear that co-founders Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nate Blecharczyk had a transformational idea: to redefine the travel experience with a platform powered by individuals. Instead of another travel booking website, they built a living system, with human connection and a sense of belonging at the center of it all. Within a year, Airbnb was worth more than $1 billion, and in December 2020, the company went public (Nasdaq: ABNB). Today, travelers and locals alike can belong anywhere by booking one of more than 7 million listings and over 40,000 experiences across 220 countries and regions.

Founder Jason Citron and his team started their company, Hammer & Chisel in 2012. They were building Fates Forever, a MOBA game for tablets, and were increasingly frustrated by the products they were using to chat while playing their favorite PC games. So in 2015, Jason and Stan Vishnevskiy launched Discord, a communications platform that helps friends come together around the games they love, and it saw immediate adoption and growth. Greylock partnered with Discord in 2016, and today the company has more than 56 million monthly active users, with more than 1 billion messages sent each day.

Co-founders Nirav Tolia, Sarah Leary, and Prakash Janakiraman founded Nextdoor after seeing research that many people do not know their neighbors by name. They sought out to build a neighborhood hub that would cultivate a kinder world where everyone has a neighborhood they can rely on. In 2011, Greylock partnered with Nextdoor, and in late 2018 Sarah Friar was appointed CEO. The company went public in 2021 (NYSE: KIND) and today, Nextdoor is the neighborhood hub for trusted connections and the exchange of helpful information, goods, and services in 11 countries around the world.

In 2005, founder Nir Zuk set out on a mission: disrupt the network security status quo and re-invent the firewall. Greylock, along with Sequoia Capital, partnered with Palo Alto Networks at the very beginning with a $250K seed check. Nir started from a desk at the Greylock offices. Rajiv Batra and Lee Klarich joined Nir, and they delivered the first product in 2007 – a “next generation firewall” that could identify and provide fine-grained control of applications. In 2012, CEO Mark McLaughlin led the company through an IPO (NYSE: PANW) and 10x revenue growth. In 2018, Nikesh Arora joined as CEO and began transforming the company from on-premise to cloud. Today, PANW is a global cybersecurity leader with more than 70,000 customers and $3.49 billion in billings in FY19.

In 2010, co-founders Christian Beedgen and Kumar Saurabh initiated Sumo Logic on a secular bet: empower digital business through analytics delivered completely as a cloud-based service. They were joined by Bruno Kurtic, and built an offering to deliver continuous intelligence – real-time insights delivered as a service – from a cloud-native platform. Greylock invested before the company had a name. To receive the funding via wire, the founders named the company after Christian’s dog, “Sumo.” In 2014, Ramin Sayar joined as CEO.  Sumo Logic went public in 2020 (Nasdaq: SUMO), and today, the company is a fast growing leader in continuous intelligence, with more than 2,000 customers around the world.

In 2003, Reid Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn with the purpose of helping the world’s professionals to be more productive and successful, and to transform the way companies hire, learn, market and sell. Greylock partnered with LinkedIn in 2004, when the company had fewer than 1 million members. LinkedIn went public in 2011 (Nasdaq: LI) and in 2016, the company was acquired by Microsoft for $26.5 billion. Today, LinkedIn has more than 675 million members and has offices around the globe.