Greymatter

This episode in the Greymatter Blitzscaling capsule series, with Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh, discusses the role of the founder in a blitzscaling startup. Reid shares practical advice for choosing your co-founders and key characteristics of successful founders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 of Greymatter is the second in a series of growth discussions featuring Greylock investor Mike Duboe. In this discussion, Right Side Up CEO Tyler Elliston and KeepTrucking VP of Data Science Kim Larsen chat with Mike about the foundational concepts and tactics to build and measure effective growth marketing strategies. Mike, Tyler, and Kim discuss the importance of diversification in marketing channels, best practices for measurement including incrementality testing, how to avoid common pitfalls of budget allocation, and building a growth marketing team in-house versus partnering with an agency. This podcast goes into many more concepts and frameworks, but below are just a few takeaways from the discussion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode in the Greymatter Blitzscaling capsule series, with Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh, provides an overview of some of the main people issues you might encounter when blitzscaling. Indeed, while many of the articles in the popular press that mention blitzscaling focus on the financial capital involved, in most cases, the greatest constraint on blitzscaling is your ability to find, develop, and retain the human capital needed to manage hypergrowth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Greylock Investor Mike Duboe, Reforge CEO Brian Balfour, and Mulesoft SVP of Product Shaun Clowes on developing a healthy and successful growth strategy. Growth is fundamental to a company's survival. To compete in today's crowded business environment, it is vital for founders to implement powerful strategies that drive healthy and sustainable growth. Successful growth strategies start with a methodical framework tailored to your product and target audience that will increase your user base and activation rate. This episode of Greymatter is the first in a mini-series of growth discussions featuring Greylock Investor Mike Duboe. In this discussion Reforge Founder and CEO Brian Balfour, and Metromile Chief Product Officer Shaun Clowes chat with Mike about frameworks and foundational concepts needed to develop a successful growth strategy. The three growth/product leaders discuss the skills and traits to look for in a startup's first growth hire, why growth should be a cross-functional discipline vs a set of channels or tactics, how to assess healthy vs unhealthy growth, conceptualizing loops vs funnels, and the applicability of B2C growth concepts in B2B organizations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode in the Greymatter Blitzscaling capsule series, with Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh, digs deep into the question of globalization. When should an entrepreneur start to think about globalization? When is globalization a good idea, and when is it a bad idea? And when should a company first hire a head of international? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode in the Greymatter Blitzscaling capsule series, with Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh, takes you deep inside the mind of Reid Hoffman. You’ll learn his frameworks for making key decisions, and hear about how he developed and applied them at PayPal and LinkedIn. The key decisions entrepreneurs face belong to four layers: Capital, Talent, Market, and Product. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Like a whack-a-mole game, new threats are constantly popping up to keep entrepreneurs busy! Fortunately, this episode offers practical tips on how to identify the true threats and address them before they derail your company. You'll learn about the central threat of blitzscaling, and what it has to do with Alec Baldwin movies from the early 1990s. "The central threat that Blitzscaling addresses is the threat that another competitor gets the scale before you. As we say in the book, these are Glengarry Glen Ross markets. First prize, Cadillac, second prize, steak knives, third prize, you're fired." To address this threat, you need to act with urgency, and commit to your strategy hard enough that it'll hurt - often badly - if you're wrong. You'll hear how the story of Uber illustrates this lesson. Uber responded so aggressively to the threat of Lyft's new alternative to black car service that many people erroneously believe that Lyft is the copycat, rather than vice versa. This was despite the new UberX service strongly upsetting Uber's existing network of black car operators, who correctly viewed it as competition.   Yet Uber also illustrates just how dangerous internal threats can be to blitzscaling. Blitzscaling companies need a strong, resilient culture to effectively respond to existential threats to the business.   "Company culture is one of the things that if you get wrong, you just may never be able to go back and get right." Uber was ultimately able to fix its broken culture, but at great cost, especially in the wasted time that allowed others to establish a stronger foothold in the market.   Finally, you'll hear why these lessons continue to be important, no matter what the size and age of your organization. "All companies need to start thinking like startups in the sense that they need to understand that by default, every business will eventually come to an end. And instead of thinking to themselves as by default, we're going to win and let's just proceed majestically on our way, I think it's that by default someone's gonna take our lunch, how do we make sure we're the ones who take the lunch?" Greymatter shares perspectives and stories from some of the world's top technology entrepreneurs and business leaders. Subscribe here and never miss a new episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Roblox founder and CEO David Baszucki and Greylock partner David Sze on the power of imagination. The gaming industry has undergone a transformation driven by technological advancements including mobile and cloud, and new gaming tools and platforms. Historically, consoles and PCs dominated the gaming market, but the rise of mobile and online games and live streaming services have ushered in a new generation of players and game creators. This episode of Greymatter features Roblox founder and CEO David Baszucki and Greylock Partner and Roblox investor, David Sze. Baszucki and Sze discuss the future social gaming landscape, share advice for scaling the company vision, and how to build company culture early on. Roblox's Imagination Platform is ushering in the next generation of entertainment, enabling kids of all ages to imagine, create, and play together in immersive 3D worlds. Prior to founding Roblox, Baszucki was an angel investor and previously, he founded and led Knowledge Revolution, the leader in educational physics and mechanical design simulation. Sze invests in entrepreneurs building companies focused on consumer mobile and internet services, and media convergence. His investments include LinkedIn, Facebook, Roblox, Pandora, and Nextdoor and many more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. But the world is far from ideal. How should a blitzscaling company think about and respond to the competition? You'll hear about how Reid, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk used speed to lead PayPal to victory in a contest with eBay's own payments system (you can also hear Reid and Peter discuss competition and many other topics on Reid's podcast, Masters of Scale). You'll learn why the most important factor in a blitzscaling business model isn't a traditional business school metric like gross margin, but rather the speed at which the model allows the business to grow and adapt. And you'll get specific advice on how to find, test, and hone your competitive edge. Finally, you'll hear why the ideal competition isn't the small or weak. Small and weak competitors are often the result of a small and unappealing market. Rather, the ideal competition is strong but inflexible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Greylock’s Reid Hoffman and Josh McFarland on the basic principles for successful blitzscaling. Blitzscaling is a set of practices for igniting rapid growth to accelerate to the stage in a startup’s life cycle where the most value is created. Bitzscaling prioritizes speed over efficiency in an environment of uncertainty, and it allows a company to go from “startup” to “scaleup” at a furious pace to capture the market. In this episode of Greymatter, Greylock partner Josh McFarland moderates a discussion with Reid Hoffman at Recode’s 2019 Code Conference. McFarland and Hoffman outline the rationale for the Blitzscaling set of practices and the counterintuitive rules necessary to scale up super fast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices