Seth Rosenberg

No need to fit a mold

I learned from an early age that the entrepreneurial spirit transcends generational and geographical boundaries. Growing up in Winnipeg, Canada, I was surrounded by successful entrepreneurs who were cut from a different cloth than the typical tech founder. They tended to be people from humble backgrounds who made an impact through sheer perseverance. As a kid, I’d spent my summers starting businesses.

During college I realized that software is the entrepreneurial opportunity for my generation. I joined Facebook as a product manager and helped spin off Messenger as a standalone app and launch the AI bot platform.

At Greylock, I try to combine both of these formative experiences. I look for potential in entrepreneurs from non-traditional backgrounds. And I seek to make bold bets on tech that can shape the world.

A new vision for AI

I joined Facebook in the wake of the Arab Spring, a moment where society was still optimistic on the impact of social media giving individuals a voice. Today we’re facing a similar moment with artificial intelligence. AI has the potential to meaningfully augment our work and our lives. I’m extremely optimistic that it isn’t a threat to jobs overall. On the contrary, I believe AI will create an explosion in demand, in part, because the cost to serve customers in a personalized way is going to go down significantly. I wrote about the three greatest opportunities I see for product-obsessed founders to build category defining AI companies.

Advisors that don’t get in the way

As an advisor to founders, I view my role as an accelerant to their trajectory. We partnered with the AI-powered storytelling startup Tome, for example, since the very beginning. CEO Keith Peiris and I had worked together at Facebook, and one day he told me he wanted to start his own company. We bought a whiteboard at Staples and spent the next few months iterating on ideas and building prototypes. My goal was not to force any single idea on him.

Instead, I helped him to zero in on the things he was naturally passionate about and to think through how to turn those into a business. Along the way, I introduced him to his co-founder Henri Liriani, helped with their first engineering hires, led their seed round, and joined the board. Today, Tome has surpassed over 10M users in just 9 months since launch.