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Jerry Chen

Jerry searches for ambitious founders who are redefining enterprise software.

Jerry Chen
bio bg 1

I admire founders who have a distinct point of view. They have a vision of where a market is going, a strong understanding about the impact of new technology, a differentiated insight to a problem or customer need. And they’re able to imagine what is possible.

From creative vision to category creation

My career started in 1996, just as the modern internet was born. The Netscape IPO a year earlier was this “Aha!” moment when everyone realized the massive potential of technology. I had just graduated from Stanford and jumped into working in tech. In 2003, I joined VMware, where I spent almost a decade as a product leader and executive. As an early hire, I watched the company grow from 250 to more than 15,000 employees.

At VMware, there was a premium placed on innovation and imagination, which was really the key to its success. It was about having a boundless creative vision of what a new technology could do and the confidence to will it into existence. I was the guy the founders brought in to launch new products, some failed, some succeeded. I learned the value of perseverance and the value of taking risks, eventually leading to a series of successful products and initiatives including Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Cloud Foundry, and the cloud app platform team. That experience has made me a strong partner to founders at Greylock.

Altering market dynamics

I’ve been lucky to have worked or invested through several platform shifts including the internet, cloud, mobile, and now AI. Through all the market swings only the strongest companies survived—and even fewer of them managed to thrive. The ones that did were able to build technology and business models that fundamentally altered the dynamics of a specific market. These companies were able to build great products and marry them with great distribution to bring their products to users. I’m always looking for companies and founders that want to have a similarly foundational impact.

Many of the founders who can drive that kind of change know intuitively, or through observation, where a market’s going. It was clear that Martin Mao and Rob Skillington were those founders from the day we met. Over dinner and drinks over the course of several months, the three of us discussed and debated what would eventually become Chronosphere, the cloud-native observability platform. One of the meetings with Martin was the day of the Uber IPO, where he and Rob were working at the time, and we discussed the Chronosphere business plan. I remember thinking that today was this major milestone in his life and he was already focused on “what’s next.” The most inspiring founders have that focus, that obsession, that belief that the world needs what they are building.

Realizing greatness

I set very high expectations for myself when it comes to the way I work with founders. My goal is to help founders realize their full potential. That means pushing them when necessary and supporting them when things get tough. But no matter what, I want to do it with honesty and respect. Companies are started because of “product founder fit,” companies succeed because of “product-market fit” and “product-go-to-market fit.”

I also think that finding the right “founder-investor fit” can help smooth the journey. When I meet a world-class founder with the right combination of passion and grit, I’ll pursue the opportunity as aggressively as I can. I recognize that I’m seeking to work with exceptionally talented individuals, and I want to earn the right to work with them.

Portfolio Companies

Blend Logo

Consumer lending technology platform.

Domain

Fintech & Crypto, SaaS

FIRST PARTNERED

Series D

CURRENT STATUS

Public

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

HQ

San Francisco, CA | USA

link
Bluesky Logo

Cloud data cost management.

Domain

Infrastructure

FIRST PARTNERED

Seed

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen, Jason Risch

LEADERSHIP

HQ

Menlo Park, CA

link
Cato Logo

Cloud-based secure network enterprise.

Domain

Cybersecurity, Infrastructure

FIRST PARTNERED

Series B

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

HQ

Tel-Aviv | IL

link
Chronosphere Logo

Cloud native observability.

Domain

AI, Infrastructure

FIRST PARTNERED

Series A

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

HQ

New York, NY | USA

link
Docker Logo

The cloud computer engine.

Domain

Infrastructure

FIRST PARTNERED

Series B

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

HQ

San Francisco, CA | USA

link
gladly logo

Reinventing customer service for the 21st century.

Domain

SaaS

FIRST PARTNERED

Series A

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Joseph Ansanelli, Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

HQ

San Francisco, CA | USA

link
instabase logo

Providing a broad technology platform for operational efficiency.

Domain

AI, Infrastructure

FIRST PARTNERED

Seed

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

HQ

San Francisco, CA | USA

link
LlamaIndex Logo

The data framework for LLMs.

Domain

AI, Infrastructure

FIRST PARTNERED

Seed

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen, Jason Risch

LEADERSHIP

HQ

San Francisco, CA

link

Artificial intelligence automating and structuring every physician-patient interaction.

Domain

AI, SaaS

FIRST PARTNERED

Seed

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

HQ

San Mateo, CA | USA

link
oak network logo

The Web 3.0 hub for automated DeFi and payment.

Domain

Fintech & Crypto

FIRST PARTNERED

Seed

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen, Seth Rosenberg

LEADERSHIP

HQ

San Francisco, CA

link
Onehouse Logo

The universal data lakehouse.

Domain

Infrastructure

FIRST PARTNERED

Seed

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

HQ

Menlo Park, CA | USA

link
Rhumbix Logo

Mobile tools designed for the blue-collar workforce.

Domain

SaaS

FIRST PARTNERED

Series A

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

HQ

San Francisco, CA | USA

link
Rockset Logo

Search and analytics for the AI era.

Domain

Infrastructure

FIRST PARTNERED

Seed

CURRENT STATUS

Acquired

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

HQ

San Mateo, CA | USA

link
truera logo

Analyze Machine Learning. Improve Model Quality. Build Trust.

Domain

AI, Infrastructure

FIRST PARTNERED

Seed

CURRENT STATUS

Acquired

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

HQ

Redwood City, CA | USA

link
WarpStream Logo

Cloud native data streaming infrastructure

Domain

Infrastructure

FIRST PARTNERED

Series A

CURRENT STATUS

Acquired

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen, Corinne Riley

LEADERSHIP

HQ

Remote

link
Blend Logo

Consumer lending technology platform.

Blend stands for better lending. We’re transforming the $40+ trillion consumer lending industry by creating a fast and simple approach to getting mortgages, consumer loans, and deposit accounts. Our Digital Lending Platform helps financial institutions increase productivity, deepen customer relationships, and deliver exceptional customer experiences. With Blend’s technology, lenders can make the journey from application to close fast and easy for consumers anytime, anywhere.

DOMAIN

Fintech & Crypto, SaaS

FIRST PARTNERED

Series D

CURRENT STATUS

Public

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

Nima Ghamsari, CEO

HQ

San Francisco, CA | USA

Bluesky Logo

Cloud data cost management.

Founded by Google and Uber data and machine learning tech leads, Bluesky provides data-driven enterprises with intelligent workload optimization and cost governance tools that help them innovate while keeping costs under control. Bluesky’s first product provides unprecedented visibility into Snowflake workload usage and costs as well as actionable insights and workload specific recommendations for maximum optimization. Bluesky is used by well-known brands like Coinbase.

DOMAIN

Infrastructure

FIRST PARTNERED

Seed

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen, Jason Risch

LEADERSHIP

Mingsheng Hong, Co-founder and CEO

HQ

Menlo Park, CA

Cato Logo

Cloud-based secure network enterprise.

Cato is the world’s first SASE platform, converging SD-WAN and network security into a global cloud service. Cato optimizes and secures application access for all users and locations. Cato replaces legacy security products and network services with an agile and secure global network that is ready for whatever’s next.

DOMAIN

Cybersecurity, Infrastructure

FIRST PARTNERED

Series B

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

Shlomo Kramer, CEO & Co-Founder

Gur Shatz, CTO & Co-Founder

HQ

Tel-Aviv | IL

Chronosphere Logo

Cloud native observability.

Chronosphere is on a mission to redefine monitoring for the cloud-native world by building the world’s most scalable, reliable and cost efficient monitoring platform. Chronosphere’s product is built on top of the proven at scale metrics engine, M3, which was developed and open sourced by the founding team while they were at Uber.

DOMAIN

AI, Infrastructure

FIRST PARTNERED

Series A

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

Martin Mao, CEO and Co-founder

Rob Skillington, CTO and Co-founder

HQ

New York, NY | USA

Docker Logo
DOMAIN

Infrastructure

FIRST PARTNERED

Series B

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

Scott Johnston, CEO

HQ

San Francisco, CA | USA

gladly logo

Reinventing customer service for the 21st century.

Gladly is a radically personal customer service platform. Unlike legacy customer service platforms that are case centric, only Gladly is designed with people at the center and uniquely enables a single lifelong customer conversation from voice to modern messaging. Gladly powers some of the most innovative consumer companies like JetBlue, Porsche, Tory Burch, JOANN, and TUMI to deliver exceptional customer experiences and makes customer service a competitive advantage

DOMAIN

SaaS

FIRST PARTNERED

Series A

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Joseph Ansanelli, Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

Joseph Ansanelli, CEO & Co-Founder

Michael Wolfe, VP Products & Co-Founder

Dirk Kessler, Principal Engineer & Co-Founder

HQ

San Francisco, CA | USA

instabase logo

Providing a broad technology platform for operational efficiency.

Instabase provides customizable solutions, and the building blocks to make them, for companies seeking to automate document-driven business processes.

DOMAIN

AI, Infrastructure

FIRST PARTNERED

Seed

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

Anant Bhardwaj, CEO & Founder

HQ

San Francisco, CA | USA

LlamaIndex Logo

The data framework for LLMs.

LlamaIndex offers a practical toolkit that empowers any developer to unlock the full capabilities and use cases of LLMs on top of their own data. It can be used with any LLM and offers an easy to use and optimized experience. The toolkit can handle a diverse range of data sources, from structured to semi-structured to unstructured text or even image data, and includes data ingestion, data indexing, and a query engine layer on top.

DOMAIN

AI, Infrastructure

FIRST PARTNERED

Seed

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen, Jason Risch

LEADERSHIP

Jerry Liu, CEO & Co-Founder

Simon Suo, CTO & Co-Founder

HQ

San Francisco, CA

Artificial intelligence automating and structuring every physician-patient interaction.

As health care shifted from paper to digital, administrative overhead grew to 8x that of any other industry – plagued by clicks, manual tasks, error prone workflows, and systems that don’t interoperate. Notable helps forward thinking health organizations automate from the front desk to the back office, using digital assistants and intelligent automation.

DOMAIN

AI, SaaS

FIRST PARTNERED

Seed

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

Pranay Kapadia, Co-Founder and CEO

Adam Ting, Co-Founder and CPO

Justin White, Co-Founder and CTO

HQ

San Mateo, CA | USA

oak network logo

The Web 3.0 hub for automated DeFi and payment.

OAK Network’s innovation, the event-driven transaction, allows users to create bespoke on-chain automation not possible today. Incumbent “automation” solutions are not consumer-friendly, requiring coding knowledge, AWS servers, and private key delegation. OAK’s more powerful transaction shifts the paradigm of automation from centralized servers to the blockchain. With OAK, users are empowered to schedule future and recurring payments, engage in trustless auto-trading, and place decentralized limit and stop-loss orders on AMM DEXs all without smart contract middlemen or compromising the security of a user’s wallet.

DOMAIN

Fintech & Crypto

FIRST PARTNERED

Seed

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen, Seth Rosenberg

LEADERSHIP

Chris Li, CEO

HQ

San Francisco, CA

Onehouse Logo

The universal data lakehouse.

Onehouse delivers a new bedrock for your data, through a cloud-native managed lakehouse service built on Apache Hudi, which was created by the founding team while they were at Uber. Onehouse makes it possible to blend the ease of use of a warehouse with the scale of a data lake, by offering a seamless experience for engineers to get their data lakes up and running.

DOMAIN

Infrastructure

FIRST PARTNERED

Seed

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

Vinoth Chandar, CEO & Founder

HQ

Menlo Park, CA | USA

Rhumbix Logo

Mobile tools designed for the blue-collar workforce.

Rhumbix is transforming the way construction teams capture, share, and analyze project performance in the field. The Rhumbix Field Data Platform enables teams to simplify and streamline critical field workflows like timekeeping and time & materials tracking, eliminating static, paper-based reporting. Through these data-rich field insights, construction teams have easy access to centralized project reporting, connected workflows, and software integrations built for the way they work. Save time and increase productivity on the jobsite with the Rhumbix Field Data Platform.

DOMAIN

SaaS

FIRST PARTNERED

Series A

CURRENT STATUS

Active

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

Zach Scheel, CEO & Co-Founder

Drew DeWalt, COO & Co-Founder

HQ

San Francisco, CA | USA

Rockset Logo

Search and analytics for the AI era.

Rockset is a real-time database in the cloud. It builds real-time converged indexes on transactional data from other databases and event data from streams, and supports schemaless ingest, built-in transformations and declarative SQL over REST. It is used for building data applications that make intelligent decisions on real-time data.

DOMAIN

Infrastructure

FIRST PARTNERED

Seed

CURRENT STATUS

Acquired

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

Venkat Venkataramani, CEO & Co-Founder

Dhruba Borthakur, CTO & Co-Founder

HQ

San Mateo, CA | USA

truera logo

Analyze Machine Learning. Improve Model Quality. Build Trust.

Truera provides the first Model Intelligence platform, to help enterprises analyze machine learning, improve model quality and build trust. Powered by enterprise-class Artificial Intelligence (AI) Explainability technology based on six years of research at Carnegie Mellon University, Truera’s platform helps eliminate the black box surrounding widely used AI and ML technologies. This visibility leads to higher quality, explainable models that achieve measurable business results, address unfair bias, and ensure governance and compliance.

DOMAIN

AI, Infrastructure

FIRST PARTNERED

Seed

CURRENT STATUS

Acquired

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen

LEADERSHIP

Anupam Datta, Co-Founder, President, & Chief Scientist

Shayak Sen, Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer

Will Uppington, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer

HQ

Redwood City, CA | USA

WarpStream Logo

Cloud native data streaming infrastructure

WarpStream provides a drop-in replacement for Apache Kafka that runs directly on top of object storage, with no local disks.

DOMAIN

Infrastructure

FIRST PARTNERED

Series A

CURRENT STATUS

Acquired

INVESTORS

Jerry Chen, Corinne Riley

LEADERSHIP

Richard Artoul, CEO and Co-Founder

Ryan Worl, CTO and Co-Founder

HQ

Remote

Previous Investments

Insights

The New New Moats
Greymatter // Jerry Chen

The New New Moats

link
WarpStream Logo
post image

Streaming Data for Everyone

link
Congrats Blend NYSE

Congrats, Blend! (NYSE: BLND)

link
Onehouse Logo
post image

Faster, Easier, and Cheaper Data Lakes

link
Chronosphere Logo
post image

Next-Level Observability

link
truera logo
post image

Building Trust in AI

link
Chronosphere Logo
post image

Our Investment in Chronosphere

link
Cato Networks Logo Grey
post image

Our Investment in Cato Networks

link
Blend Logo
post image
Portfolio News // Jerry Chen

Our Investment in Blend

link
Bluesky Logo
post image

Visibility and Optimization for Cloud Data

link
oak network logo
post image

Payment Automation for web3

link
pine logo
post image

Digital Home Ownership

link
The New Moats

The New Moats

link
Castles in the Cloud
Castles in the Cloud // Jerry Chen

Castles in the Cloud

link
The Evolution of Cloud
Greymatter // Jerry Chen

The Evolution of Cloud

link
Open Source vs. Cloud Castles
Greymatter // Jerry Chen

Open Source vs. Cloud Castles

link
How to Break Up Big Cloud’s Dominance
Greymatter // Jerry Chen

How to Break Up Big Cloud’s Dominance

link
Powering the Multi Cloud Paradigm
Greymatter // Jerry Chen

Powering the Multi-Cloud Paradigm

link
VC Funding for the Cloud
Greymatter // Jerry Chen, Jason Risch

VC Funding for the Cloud

link
Cloud Native Monitoring At Scale
Greymatter // Jerry Chen

Cloud-Native Monitoring at Scale

link
Funding the Cloud Challengers

Funding The Cloud Challengers

link

In the News

TechCrunch // 03.14.24

WarpStream is building a cheaper, cloud-native data streaming service

link
Business Insider // 09.09.24

44 of the most promising AI startups of 2024

link
Business Insider // 08.07.24

85 of the most promising startups of 2024

link
Stackoverflow // 07.16.24

The framework helping devs build LLM apps

link
Bloomberg // 07.20.23

Greylock’s Chen: It’s AI or Die

link
TechCrunch // 06.21.23

TechCrunch Live with Greylock and Chronosphere

link
SiliconAngle // 12.01.21

Greylock investor Jerry Chen assesses the second act for AWS and the cloud industry

link
TechCrunch // 06.27.23

4 VCs illustrate why there’s good reason to be optimistic about the machine learning startup market

link
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