Masters of scale

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. Aaron Zamost, the Head of Communications at Square who led comms through the company’s IPO, has done an amazing job at synthesizing how the tech press works in his blog posts including “What’s Your Hour in ‘Silicon Valley Time’?” and “The Invisible Force That Warps What You Read in the News.” 

In this podcast, Greylock Marketing Partner Elisa Schreiber sits down with Aaron to talk how a tech startup should think about communications from the early days all the way up to IPO.

Master Class in Communications with Square’s Aaron Zamost | Greymatter

Engaging with customers is one of the most difficult challenges for most companies. With the growing number of ways consumers interact with brands — from phone calls, to texting, to social media messaging — it’s becoming increasingly hard for companies to aggregate interactions into useful information. Even today, customer service products focus on individual communication channels and treat customers as case numbers or tickets. The founders of Gladly think this standard needs to change. They are reimagining the business/consumer relationship by centralizing all communications and making the atomic unit of their product what it should be: the customer. 

Gladly CEO Joseph Ansanelli and VP of Engineering Michael Wolfe have a deep history of successful ventures together. The two first worked with each other at Kana, an early customer service software company that helped managed email and web based communications. The pair later founded Vontu, a data loss prevention software that was later acquired by Symantec. In 2015, they got the band back together and incubated Gladly at Greylock with mission to change how large enterprises interact with their many customers.
 
In the latest episode of Greymatter, Joseph and Michael sit down with Greylock partner and Gladly board member, Jerry Chen. The founders share their vision for reinventing customer service, identifying spaces ripe for disruption, and what it takes to become the industry standard. Below are a few key takeaways from the discussion.

Reinventing Customer Service with Gladly Co-Founders Joseph Ansanelli and Michael Wolfe | Greymatter

This episode of Greymatter comes from Stanford University's Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Series podcast. Greylock Partner Josh McFarland shared with students his presentation The First Derivative of Startup Life. In this lecture at Stanford, Josh charts the ups and downs of entrepreneurship through his personal story with TellApart. He opens up about the lessons he learned as a founder and CEO, offers fundraising advice for startups, and shares the untold story of TellApart's acquisition by Twitter, which was the largest acquisition in Twitter history. 

Greymatter is produced by Greylock Partners and offers perspectives and lessons from some of the world's top technology entrepreneurs and business leaders.

Lessons Learned From Scaling TellApart with Greylock Partner Josh McFarland | Greymatter

"Your only job is to continue to grow, learn and evolve as fast as you possibly can," says Molly Graham. And, she knows hypergrowth. Molly has helped scale several leading technology companies as an early employee at Facebook, COO at Quip (which was acquired by Salesforce for $750M) and most recently the VP of Operations at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. In this episode of Greymatter, Molly and Greylock Partner John Lilly share how to define company culture, what to look for in a new hire and advice for dealing with constant change. 
 
At Facebook, she created Facebook's external "hacker" brand and built programs to strengthen the Facebook culture as it grew from 500 to 1,500 employees as well as a stint leading some of Facebook's long term mobile initiatives. After Facebook, Molly joined Quip three months before it launched in 2013 and was tasked with building out the business. She sold the first customers, ran sales and marketing, and ultimately hired key team members to help Quip scale. Prior to Greylock, John was CEO of Mozilla, the organization behind Firefox, the open source Web browser used by more than 450 million people. John also co-founded Reactivity, an enterprise security infrastructure company acquired by Cisco in 2007.
 
Both Molly and John share stories of their past experience scaling organizations at different levels of growth and lessons learned along the way. A few key takeaways are below.

Scaling Organizations with Molly Graham and Greylock's John Lilly | Greymatter

Today we hear David Allen interviewing General Randal Fullhart. &nbsp;Graduating from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1979, Randy has commanded at the squadron, group and wing levels. He shares insights and tips about his own journey with GTD in his very real and responsible world.

Ep: 41 - David Allen Talks with General Randal Fullhart

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi sat down with Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman to discuss the past, present and future of the mobility and delivery business that now operates in 71 countries around the world and employs around 20,000 people globally. He also shared his perspective on M&A (including Uber’s recent acquisitions of Postmates and Drizly), autonomous vehicles, the complexities of working in highly regulated industries, and how his personal and professional background shaped the way he approaches leadership today. This episode was recorded during Iconversations, Greylock's new virtual speaker series event.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi | Go Anywhere, Get Anything

How do tech startups go from idea…to iconic? Greymatter’s weekly podcast features interviews with VCs, founders, and tech visionaries on everything from AI, marketplaces, and cybersecurity as well as company-building strategies like growth, finding product-market-fit, and recruiting top talent. Founders and VCs offer candid accounts of success, failure, and adaptation. Greymatter delivers practical insights mixed with the bold optimism that defines entrepreneurship.

Scaling Organizations with Molly Graham and Greylock's John Lilly | Greymatter

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