Idea Map

SaaS

Greylock has a rich history investing in software applications and partnering with founders on their distribution models — from tops-down enterprise sales to product- and community-led playbooks. Across every industry vertical, applications are becoming smarter, more approachable, and easier to integrate — with deeper workflows and proprietary data forming the foundation for tomorrow’s system-of-record companies. And with a new wave of LLM-based applications, SaaS companies have a generational opportunity to revamp verticals that have yet to be touched by software.

Marketplaces & Commerce

Greylock has a long history of early-stage partnership with networks & marketplaces across consumer and b2b domains. As former growth and product practitioners, we’ve long been obsessed with building levers to establish network effects businesses. These models can be very challenging to get off the ground, but when they work, they can really work. And these learnings compound – our early investments in iconic consumer marketplaces like Airbnb and Redfin yielded more recent investments in the current wave of B2B and labor marketplaces like Instawork or Inventa.

While marketplaces are one commerce business model we love, we are also excited to partner with application & infrastructure layer projects powering the next wave of consumer & b2b commerce. And just as AI will enable the next wave of service- and vertical marketplaces, we also believe AI will amplify new sales & marketing channels like Postscript with SMS, and accelerate adoption of B2B commerce solutions in older industries, like Pepper with foodservice.

Fintech & Crypto

Lending, borrowing, and investing remain time-consuming, opaque processes largely run by traditional banks. But the world of money is on the precipice of fundamental change. Powered by rapid advances in open banking, crypto, and generative AI, money is undergoing a digital transformation that will break open the $11 trillion of market cap trapped by legacy institutions. We believe the best solutions will be those built by developers with strong domain expertise who create tools with customers as the focal point.

Consumer

With AI poised to unlock new experiences in everything from social, media, and entertainment to health and wellness, we’ll see a plethora of AI-native consumer products offering innovative solutions and enduring value in ways that previously seemed impossible. We’re seeking founders with a bold vision of what’s missing in the world and a clear perspective about why it needs to exist. 

Cybersecurity

The rise of AI will usher in a new era in cybersecurity. Bots, deep fakes, targeted attacks and ransomware are merely the beginning. In this environment, we believe there is a tremendous opportunity for innovative technologists to build companies designed to counteract the next wave of cyber threats. Greylock eagerly wants to help initiate and advance these efforts up and down the cyber stack.

Infrastructure

From client-server and mobile-cloud to big data and AI, platform shifts have been the one constant in technology. Greylock supports the founders who provide the tools, databases, and overall infrastructure that enable these ground-shaking shifts. We work with our partners to ascertain not just product-market fit but also product-go-to-market fit — understanding that great technology paired with great distribution is necessary to build the category-defining companies of the future.