Greymatter.

Figma was founded in 2012 with a mission to connect designers virtually, enabling collaboration and communication no matter where they were in the world. Fast forward to 2020, and that original operational intent has paved the way for the company to expand significantly in the face of Covid-19’s impact on the working world.

The term “early-stage” covers a lot of territory in venture investing, from incubating a brand-new idea, to investing in a Series A. Moreover, the indicators that show founders are ready to take on new capital in order to progress to the next phase of company-building – be it hiring, expanding into a new market, launching a product or more – can vary from company to company. As the Greylock team has learned after decades of partnering with early-stage founders, the best approach is establishing a core set of fundamental questions that can be tailored to each individual company, rather than looking at a rigid set of metrics.

The coronavirus pandemic has rendered us reliant on technology for nearly everything we need to do these days. While that’s made a lot of us more appreciative of technology, it’s also bringing our attention to places where it could be better – or places where it doesn’t even exist yet. From audio visual technology and collaborative software platforms that could make remote working, (and learning, and socializing, and everything else) closer to the real thing, to tools that enable organizations to become more efficient and resilient (particularly in stressful times like today), now is clearly a time for innovation. But how should entrepreneurs think about product development at critical moments like now?

Although it’s been nearly six months since Covid-19 hit and upended virtually every aspect of life, we’re still in the early days when it comes to long-term business planning. Among the most pressing decisions is how to approach remote work policies and compensation. To better understand what the future of tech employment might look like, Greylock conducted an informal survey of 48 portfolio companies to get a sense of how they are approaching the new environment.

Today’s entrepreneurs find themselves falling from the cliff and assembling a plane with tools that are on fire while being attacked by a swarm of murder hornets. Yet despite the increased risks, entrepreneurs are still taking those leaps of faith, for which we should all be grateful. Greylock partner Reid Hoffman and his Blitzscaling co-author Chris Yeh explore how to help and encourage those entrepreneurs by offering some thoughts on how to mitigate – or even leverage – the present set of risks to accelerate their progress.

Software startup Clubhouse built its product specifically for distributed teams, and the company had a high percentage of employees working remotely even prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. But Clubhouse CEO and co-founder Kurt Schrader said the shift to 100% remote work has provided fresh insight into the need for more and better tools that effectively recreate the ambient intelligence of working in an office.

The fundamental choice that venture-backed entrepreneurs face is simple: M&A or IPO? The short answer is that it almost never makes sense to start a company with the intent of selling it. You incur nearly as much risk, and shed as much blood, sweat, and tears whether you sell or go public. And even though only a small set of companies succeed in going public, the value of going public is such that the expected value of going public is mammothly higher. The big problem with building to sell is that companies are bought, not sold. As a result, in a very real sense, it's harder to build your company to sell than it is to build it to go public because if you’re aiming to go public, at least you know what public market investors want to see. Fortunately, there is one approach that allows you to build to go public AND to sell.

In his latest Forbes column, Greylock partner Asheem Chandna shares his thoughts on which industries are thriving, which are struggling, and what that bodes for the future.

Okta CEO and co-founder Todd McKinnon shares leadership lessons for times of dramatic change, and how they're meeting the surge in customer demand for Okta since Covid-19 hit. Todd, who left his job leading engineering at Salesforce in 2009 to start Okta, a Greylock portfolio company, reflects on the platform shifts that convinced him to take the leap, the parallels he sees today, and what's next for Okta.

Months into the Covid-19 pandemic, one of the top questions on entrepreneurs’ minds is whether venture capital firms are still making investments. The short answer is “Yes,” but the details are important enough that the partners of Greylock thought it was worth exploring in greater depth. Reid Hoffman and Saam Motamedi discuss the topic on the latest episode of Greymatter.

Entrepreneurs must evolve with the forces shaping this new economic and cultural reality to create products and businesses that can endure throughout - and beyond - this time of great volatility. As we think about what the first wild half of 2020 has looked like, where are the entry points of new opportunity and growth that could influence what the rest of the year and 2021 look like?

Greylock general partner David Thacker sat down with Quora CEO and co-founder Adam D'Angelo to discuss his decision to make the company a remote-first organization. Adam shared the reasons for making the far-reaching change, what impact the shift has made on Quora’s productivity and culture, and how he thinks remote working will change society for the better.

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the environment for entrepreneurship. In many ways, entrepreneurship has become more challenging; in a few ways, and for a few people, it has become easier. For all of us among the broader society, it has become more important. The pandemic has shown us the harsh reality of the world as it is. That new clarity may allow entrepreneurship to make more rapid progress towards how it should be.

Box CEO and co-founder Aaron Levie sat down with Greylock General Partner Sarah Guo on Greymatter to discuss his company’s journey during the past decade leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic, how it has changed their product roadmap, and where he believes the opportunities for innovation still lie.

A handful of companies have stood out as pioneers of the remote work movement. Many of them were instrumental early on in the pandemic in transitioning to an all-remote workforce, and have been the lead adopters of long-term policies that may set the tone for many industries outside of technology. We are devoting a new podcast series to conversations with these technology industry leaders, hosted by Greylock general partners Sarah Guo and David Thacker.

While there is a tendency for pundits to say that everything has changed, and that we’re in a new world, Reid Hoffman posits that more is actually the same than different. Converting challenge into opportunity is a normal part of the entrepreneurial journey, and right now is precisely when people with entrepreneurial skills are accomplishing amazing things, because generally speaking, it's actually better in the long-run to successfully start a business during a recession than during a bull market.

Covid-19 has accelerated the digital transformation of healthcare, prompting many health systems to adopt technology that not only enables virtual visits, but provides better data visibility across all aspects of the healthcare continuum. One of those companies is Notable Health, which provides software that uses robotic process automation and natural language processing to replace manual, in-person administrative tasks in healthcare.

In 2014, Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman co-authored The Alliance with Chris Yeh and Ben Casnocha. The book argued that in the modern economy, the key to a stronger, healthier, longer-lasting employee relationship was to be honest about the temporary nature of nearly every job. Much like negotiators of a treaty of alliance, employees can work with their managers and employers to steer their careers on a track that transforms both company and employee. In 2020, the world is suffering through the Covid-19 pandemic and its economic fallout, and those alliances are under more stress than ever before. Chris and Reid discuss how the current crisis also represents an opportunity to honor and strengthen those alliances, even in cases where employers are furloughing or laying off employees.

With a high number of employees with young children, the leaders of health tech startup Cleo understand the needs of working parents. The company, which offers a platform for employers to provide family benefits and resources to their employees, was particularly attuned to the expanded needs of working parents in the time of Covid-19. In the months since the coronavirus pandemic hit and subsequently forced schools and most businesses to shift operations to the home, Cleo experienced a swell in demand for supportive tools and information from its member base.

Historically, searching the internet means handing over your private information and being tracked across the web. But it doesn’t have to. Greylock partner and former Google executive Sridhar Ramaswamy believes the public is ready for an alternative, which is why he co-founded Neeva with Vivek Raghunathan. We sat down with Sridhar to discuss Neeva’s mission to put consumers first with an ad-free search platform built on privacy.

While the disruption and turbulence associated with the Covid-19 pandemic is broadly negative and unpredictable, it does open up new opportunities. Even during a pandemic, there will still be blitzscaling opportunities. They’ll just look different from the opportunities that emerged during the long economic expansion. Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman and his Blitzscaling co-author Chris Yeh say it is now more critical than ever to focus on and enable entrepreneurship.

On average, employers spend nearly as much on healthcare benefits as they do on payroll. But the complexity of the healthcare system means many workers still struggle to find, access and understand their care options. That’s why health tech startup Grand Rounds created a navigation platform to make the process of finding and receiving healthcare easier, faster and more affordable. It’s also why the company has played a critical role in helping employers and health systems grapple with the coronavirus pandemic.

In May, Jeff Weiner stepped down as CEO of LinkedIn after 11 amazing years. Greylock general partner and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman shares his favorite memories and key lessons learned from their long partnership.

Greylock-backed founders joined our virtual town hall to hear general partner Reid Hoffman's assessment of the current economic, political and public health landscape. He answered questions about how entrepreneurs, investors and new graduates can adapt to the new market and societal conditions.

Techfair is a highly selective and curated event that brings together the best and brightest engineering students and recent grads - from undergraduate to Ph.D. - with some of the most exciting and fast-growing technology startups. This year’s Techfair will take place virtually on July 16th.

The COVID-19 crisis meant our annual CXO Advisory Council retreat took place where every other business interaction is happening now: online. Even as we are working from home, large enterprise organizations are facing and responding to change, and startups are still building the tools to be successful in a new environment for us all.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to batter the world, many have declared an end to the “Unicorn Era” in general and blitzscaling in particular. Suddenly, capital is harder to come by, customers aren’t buying, and none of us can leave our homes.

The sudden, high-volume shift to virtual work has accelerated what businesses had been dealing with prior to COVID-19: increasingly distributed workforces that need seamless integration of technology. Now that many employees have transitioned to all-virtual, all the time, the toolset critical for keeping businesses running has also expanded.

The current COVID-19 crisis has shifted virtually every aspect of life to online. With that increased internet activity comes increased risk of cyberattacks. As large enterprise organizations rush to adjust to an all- digital business, it’s been a moment of reckoning: what technology is critical to ensure companies are prepared and protected from malicious activities?

How do you scale a consumer brand company to profitability without losing the human touch? Moreover, since marketplace platforms like Shopify have made it relatively simple to launch an ecommerce business, how do you stand out among the noise and reach customers in the first place? And how do you measure how well those methods are working?

The COVID19 crisis is causing an unprecedented level of turbulence, likely across every aspect of your personal and professional life. From my experience as a CEO during two economic downturns, I’ve found that crises can actually help focus your priorities in ways that not only help you weather the storm, but ultimately make you a stronger, more enduring business in the future.

The past three years have been a period marked by high valuations, a herd of unicorns, and giant funding rounds. For SaaS and cloud companies, VC investments reached dotcom levels and valuations reached a local maximum late last year...

This episode of Greymatter is the third in a series of growth discussions featuring Greylock investor Mike Duboe. In this podcast, Lenny Rachitsky, former growth lead at Airbnb, and Dan Hockenmaier, founder of Basis One and former director of growth marketing at Thumbtack...

Silicon Valley can frequently be too provincial in its views of entrepreneurship, strategy, and markets, and can benefit from learning about a broader view of entrepreneurship where the strategies of Blitzscaling can be applied outside of Silicon Valley and China.

In this episode of Greymatter, Reid Hoffman, Partner at Greylock and Co-Founder of LinkedIn sits down with Wences Casares, CEO and founder of Xapo, a Greylock portfolio company in Patagonia to discuss a range of topics, including what Silicon Valley can learn from Argentina.

Greylock Investor Mike Duboe, Right Side Up CEO Tyler Elliston, and KeepTruckin VP of Data Science Kim Larsen discuss frameworks and tactics for successful growth marketing.

This episode in the Greymatter Blitzscaling capsule series, with Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh, digs deep into the question of globalization.

This episode in the Greymatter Blitzscaling capsule series, with Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh, provides an overview of the main team-building challenges that entrepreneurs encounter when blitzscaling.

Greylock Investor Mike Duboe, Reforge CEO Brian Balfour, and Mulesoft SVP of Product Shaun Clowes discuss developing a healthy and successful growth strategy.

This episode in the Greymatter Blitzscaling capsule series, with Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh, takes you deep inside the mind of Reid Hoffman.

This episode in the Greymatter Blitzscaling capsule series, with Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh, focuses on the major threats that blitzscalers need to watch out for as they scale.

Roblox founder and CEO David Baszucki and Greylock partner David Sze on the power of imagination.

This episode in our Greymatter Blitzscaling capsule series, with Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh, focuses on the topic of competitive strategy. In an ideal world, you won’t have any competition.

Greylock’s Reid Hoffman and Josh McFarland on the basic principles for successful blitzscaling.

There’s $7 trillion of market cap for U.S. based financial institutions. In most major industries, the “challenger” technology company is now the most dominan...

I was lucky to be a part of the Messenger team in the early days. As product manager, I worked on the Messenger Developer Platform, integrations with key partners (such as Uber, Lyft, KLM)

Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman and Blitzscaling co-author Chris Yeh on defining and developing a competitive strategy.

Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman and OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman on the transformative potential of AGI.

From the 2019 Startup Grind Conference, Greylock’s Reid Hoffman and OpenAI Co-Founder and CTO Greg Brockman on the prospects of building beneficial AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).

From the 2019 SFELC Summit, Greylock’s Sarah Guo and Reid Hoffman on blitzscaling massively valuable companies.

Originally seen on Spoke’s blog. Greylock’s Head of Technology Manuel Bernal and Casper’s Director of IT Ryan Seit on modern IT trends and challenges.

From the 2019 SFELC Summit, Google’s Advisor of Leadership Fred Kofman on the biggest drivers of motivation.

From the 2019 SFELC Summit, Facebook’s Head of Engineering James Everingham on management philosophies that foster innovation.

From the 2019 SFELC Summit, Affirm Founder and CEO Max Levchin on leadership qualities and the early days of PayPal.

From the 2019 SFELC Summit, Google’s Director of Engineering Sarah Clatterbuck on managing awkward and uncomfortable discussions.

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

From the 2019 SFELC Summit, Aditya Agarwal on the role of engineering leaders in recruiting.

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

Spoke CEO Jay Srinivasan on navigating today’s distributed enterprise workforce.

Since the launch of our book, and after the Stanford class, Chris Yeh and I have received many questions from entrepreneurs who want more details on how to blitzscale their companies.

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

(Episode 5/5) Greylock’s Reid Hoffman, Sarah Guo and Entrepreneur Chris Yeh on blitzscaling for larger companies and the importance of responsible blitzscaling.

(Episode 3/5) Greylock Partner Josh McFarland shares lessons learned from scaling TellApart and how the company could have scaled even faster.

(Episode 2/5) Greylock Partner Jerry Chen on designing innovative, scalable business models.

(Episode 4/5) Greylock partner John Lilly on navigating hiring and management transitions.

(Episode 1/5) Entrepreneur Chris Yeh and Greylock Partners VCs Reid Hoffman and Sarah Guo on what it takes to scale to enduring companies.

VC investment in any startup requires taking strategic risks. Every investor evaluates and understands the type of risk and what level of risk they are willing to underwrite and at what price.

Forming a well-crafted communications strategy is part action and part reaction. It’s about developing and telling your brand story in a deliberate way, while at the same time understanding the macro media landscape and thoughtfully responding to the narratives about your industry. In this podcast, I sit down with Aaron Zamost, the Head of Communications at Square who led comms through the company’s IPO, to talk about how a tech startup should think about communications from the early days all the way up to IPO.

The term “brand” is often misunderstood in business. Many attach it to your company aesthetic — logos, fonts, colors, and website design. But thoughtful and strategic brand represents so much more. Few people in the world understand building and maintaining brands better than Heidi Hackemer, the founder of Wolf & Wilhelmine — a New York-based brand strategy shop that has worked with clients ranging from small startups to the White House to iconic companies like Google and Nike.

Why Systems of Intelligence™ are the Next Defensible Business Model...

You are the founder of a startup. You get a call. “I am looking for your comment. I heard from my sources that your company is…” The reporter begins to fill you in on the piece. They are chasing a story leaked from a source (or two…or three…) and trying to confirm the facts. Maybe it is a negative story, or perhaps it is just something you are not yet talking about publicly. In short, it’s stuff you would rather not see in print. Oh, and they want to publish within the hour.

This is session 17 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This class features Chris Yeh interviewing Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo.

This is session 16 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh.

This is session 15 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This class features Jerry Chen of Greylock Partners interviewing Diane Greene, the Founder and former CEO of VMware and now SVP of Google’s cloud businesses.

This is session 14 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This class features Chris Yeh interviewing Elizabeth Holmes, the Founder and CEO of Theranos.

This is session 13 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This class features a guest lecture by Shishir Mehrotra, who helped guide YouTube through hypergrowth after its acquisition by Google.

This is session 12 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This class features a guest lecture by Nirav Tolia, the Co-Founder and CEO of Nextdoor, and the Co-Founder and CEO of Epinions, who is then interviewed by John Lilly.

This is session 11 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This class features John Lilly interviewing Patrick Collison, the Co-Founder of Stripe.

This is session 10 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This class features Reid Hoffman interviewing Selina Tabaccowala, the former President and CTO of Survey Monkey and Co-Founder of Evite.

This is session 9 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This lecture recaps the previous three sessions and explains how the Village stage is the inflection point for blitzscaling.

This is session 8 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This class features Reid Hoffman interviewing Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Alphabet Inc. (formerly Google).

This is session 7 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This class features Reid Hoffman interviewing Mariam Naficy, the Founder and CEO of Minted.com, and the Founder and former Co-CEO of Eve.com.

This is session 6 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This class features John Lilly interviewing Jennifer Pahlka, the Founder and Executive Director of Code for America, and Co-founder of the United States Digital Service.

This is session 5 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This lecture recaps the Family stage and introduces the Tribal stage.

This is session 4 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This class features a guest lecture by venture capitalist Ann Mira-Ko of FLOODGATE, who is later interviewed by John Lilly.

This is session 3 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This class features a guest lecture by venture capitalist Michael Dearing, the Founder of Harrison Metal, who is then interviewed by Reid Hoffman.

This is session 2 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This class features John Lilly interviewing Y Combinator President Sam Altman.

This is session 1 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This lecture lays out an overview of the course and provides a summary of the five stages of Blitzscaling.

This is session 18 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh.

This is session 20 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This lecture recaps the class and features a lengthy student discussion of the major topics of the class.

This is session 19 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This class features Reid Hoffman interviewing Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn.

Last year at Stanford University, Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Chris Yeh & I taught a class on entrepreneurship at Stanford called “Blitzscaling” — a strategy in which a company (most often technology companies here in San Francisco & Silicon Valley)...

Before joining Greylock, I spent almost a decade at VMware working on building and bringing new technologies to market. I helped create the Cloud Application Platform...

In my role at Greylock Partners, I work closely with entrepreneurs to help them shape their company’s communications strategies. No matter what the sector, I have found that the organizations who effectively tell their story are the ones who can recruit the top talent, acquire long-term customers, and build brands that endure.