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Month: March 2017

Scaling Up Snapchat with Casey Winters and Julie Zhou | Greymatter

by Greylock Partners
This post is by Greylock Partners from Greymatter

Snapchat’s public offering marked the biggest U.S. tech IPO since Alibaba in 2014. This milestone has put a spotlight on the social media company, with public investors digging into their long term growth potential and path to profitability. One of the increasing concerns about Snap is user growth. While Snapchat boasted 50M new daily actives users in 2016, their growth slowed down considerably at the end of the year, only adding 5M new users in Q4. This halt coincided with the launch of Instagram Stories, which many believe to be the biggest threat to Snapchat’s outlook. In 2017, Facebook has doubled down on their assault on Snap with more competitive products including Messenger Day and their new camera, featuring disappearing messages and the ability to add masks, frames and filters.   In our latest Greymatter podcast, we asked two experts to dissect different dimensions of Snapchat’s growth. Greylock Growth Advisor in Residence and former Pinterest Product Lead for Growth Casey Winters teamed up with former Yik Yak Director of Growth Julie Zhou to dig into whether Snapchat is at risk of losing their millennial core market, if they need to change their unique UX to move upmarket to older users, if they should be allocating resources to continue engaging with influencers, and what things they should be thinking about to scale on an international level.

Scaling Up Snapchat with Casey Winters and Julie Zhou | Greymatter

by Greylock Partners
This post is by Greylock Partners from Greymatter

Snapchat’s public offering marked the biggest U.S. tech IPO since Alibaba in 2014. This milestone has put a spotlight on the social media company, with public investors digging into their long term growth potential and path to profitability. One of the increasing concerns about Snap is user growth. While Snapchat boasted 50M new daily actives users in 2016, their growth slowed down considerably at the end of the year, only adding 5M new users in Q4. This halt coincided with the launch of Instagram Stories, which many believe to be the biggest threat to Snapchat’s outlook. In 2017, Facebook has doubled down on their assault on Snap with more competitive products including Messenger Day and their new camera, featuring disappearing messages and the ability to add masks, frames and filters.   In our latest Greymatter podcast, we asked two experts to dissect different dimensions of Snapchat’s growth. Greylock Growth Advisor in Residence and former Pinterest Product Lead for Growth Casey Winters teamed up with former Yik Yak Director of Growth Julie Zhou to dig into whether Snapchat is at risk of losing their millennial core market, if they need to change their unique UX to move upmarket to older users, if they should be allocating resources to continue engaging with influencers, and what things they should be thinking about to scale on an international level.

Tech Workers’ Values

by Sam Altman
This post is by Sam Altman from Sam Altman

For good and bad, technology has become a central force in all our lives.

As members of the community, we're interested in ways in which tech companies can use their collective power to protect privacy, rule of law, freedom of expression, and other fundamental American rights.  

We’d also like to discuss how tech companies can heal the divide in our country. We believe that tech companies can create a better economic future for all Americans by spreading high-paying technology jobs around the country and other measures. We also believe tech companies have an opportunity and an obligation to reduce the polarization we've helped create.

Tech companies are very receptive to their employees' influence. We believe that employees should come together and clearly define the values and policies they'd like to see their companies uphold. A tech union isn't the perfect metaphor for this, but it's not far off.

We are planning to hold a meeting on the evening of April 9th in the Bay Area. Please sign up here or message us at 415 569-2751 on Signal if you'd like to come.

We're going try to keep this first group smaller than 50 people so that everyone can actually participate. If more people than that want to attend, we'll try to select a diverse group of people from a large set of companies. If this event seems to go well, we expect to host similar meetings in the future.

--Sam Altman, Debra Cleaver, Matt Krisiloff

Tech Workers’ Values

by Sam Altman
This post is by Sam Altman from Sam Altman

For good and bad, technology has become a central force in all our lives.

As members of the community, we're interested in ways in which tech companies can use their collective power to protect privacy, rule of law, freedom of expression, and other fundamental American rights.  

We’d also like to discuss how tech companies can heal the divide in our country. We believe that tech companies can create a better economic future for all Americans by spreading high-paying technology jobs around the country and other measures. We also believe tech companies have an opportunity and an obligation to reduce the polarization we've helped create.

Tech companies are very receptive to their employees' influence. We believe that employees should come together and clearly define the values and policies they'd like to see their companies uphold. A tech union isn't the perfect metaphor for this, but it's not far off.

We are planning to hold a meeting on the evening of April 9th in the Bay Area. Please sign up here or message us at 415 569-2751 on Signal if you'd like to come.

We're going try to keep this first group smaller than 50 people so that everyone can actually participate. If more people than that want to attend, we'll try to select a diverse group of people from a large set of companies. If this event seems to go well, we expect to host similar meetings in the future.

--Sam Altman, Debra Cleaver, Matt Krisiloff

Investor Stories 61: Why I Invested (Roberts, Struhl, Verrill)

by Nick Moran

On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following investors are featured:

  • Roberts
  • Struhl
  • Verrill

Each investor highlights a situation where they decided to invest in a startup and why they said yes.        

 

To listen more, please visit http://fullratchet.net/podcast-episodes/ for all of our other episodes.

Also, follow us on twitter  for updates and more information.

131. How Amazon, Fitbit & Snap Won; Where Apple, Pebble & Google Did Not, Part 2 (Ben Einstein)

by Nick Moran

Today we cover Part 2 of hardware products that have succeeded where others failed with Ben Einstein of Bolt. In this segment we address: You’ve discussed Pebble’s inability to ‘cross the chasm’ and access the early & late majority, while Fitbit was able to. What were the key reasons why...

 

To listen more, please visit http://fullratchet.net/podcast-episodes/ for all of our other episodes.

Also, follow us on twitter  for updates and more information.

130. How Amazon, Fitbit & Snap Won; Where Apple, Pebble & Google Did Not, Part 1 (Ben Einstein)

by Nick Moran

Ben Einstein of Bolt joins Nick to cover Hardware products that have succeeded where others failed, Part 1. We will address questions including: To start off, can you talk about your thesis and approach toward investing in hardware? What are your thoughts on hardware startups designing for one use case...

 

To listen more, please visit http://fullratchet.net/podcast-episodes/ for all of our other episodes.

Also, follow us on twitter  for updates and more information.

Scaling Users, Products, and Growth Teams with Casey Winters | Greymatter

by Greylock Partners
This post is by Greylock Partners from Greymatter

We talk about growth all the time in the context of startups. How they grow, how they attract users, how they engage users. In this episode of Greymatter, two of the top minds in growth, Greylock Partner Josh Elman and Greylock Growth Advisor Casey Winters, talk about scaling Grubhub and Pinterest, starting growth teams, how to think about SEO, and optimizing user onboarding. The podcast is packed with full-stack growth marketing strategy and tactics Casey has implemented in his career, and these lessons are widely applicable to any consumer startup scaling up.

Scaling Users, Products, and Growth Teams with Casey Winters | Greymatter

by Greylock Partners
This post is by Greylock Partners from Greymatter

We talk about growth all the time in the context of startups. How they grow, how they attract users, how they engage users. In this episode of Greymatter, two of the top minds in growth, Greylock Partner Josh Elman and Greylock Growth Advisor Casey Winters, talk about scaling Grubhub and Pinterest, starting growth teams, how to think about SEO, and optimizing user onboarding. The podcast is packed with full-stack growth marketing strategy and tactics Casey has implemented in his career, and these lessons are widely applicable to any consumer startup scaling up.

Keep the Internet Open

by Sam Altman
This post is by Sam Altman from Sam Altman

The FCC has announced plans to roll back policies on net neutrality, and its new head has indicated he has no plan to stop soon.

The internet is a public good, and I believe access should be a basic right.  We've seen such great innovation in software because the internet has been a level playing field.  People have been able to succeed by merit, not the regulatory weight of incumbency. 

It seems best to keep it regulated like a common carrier. [1] Doing this allows the government to ensure a level playing field, impose privacy regulations, and subsidize access for people who can't afford it.

But this idea is under attack, and I'm surprised the tech community isn't speaking out more forcefully.  Although many leading tech companies are now the incumbents, I hope we'll all remember that openness helped them achieve their great success.  It could be disastrous for future startups if this were to change--openness is what made the recent wave of innovation happen.

We need to make our voices heard.  We won this fight once before, and we can win it again.  I really hope an activist or tech leader will step up and organize this fight (and I'm happy to help!).  It's important for our future.



[1] There's an argument that Internet Service Providers should be able to charge a metered rate based on usage.  I'm not sure whether I agree with this, but in principle it seems ok.  That's how we pay for public utilities.