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Jerry Chen

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2018-04-02
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2018-04-02
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  1. “Actually, I think this question probably should be turned around because I think it's pretty obvious when you see a great investment to say yes to. The hard part is convincing the founder to say yes to you. And so the last publicly announced investment I got the founder to say yes to me was a company named that does software for consumer applications like Morris applications. Have you ever met Nema, Eugene, and Aaron, the co-founders, you'd understand how special they were and really it was easy to say yes to them and the struggle was getting them to say yes to me.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I get really distracted pretty easily. Like, I'm not even sure what we're talking about right now. I get really, really distracted, kind of like a drop of a feather, if you will. And so I need to learn to focus a lot.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Oh gosh, superpower. Let's see. I honestly, okay, I think I can consume a ton of information, be it blogs, podcasts, data, and I can organize all those things into a framework, right? And try to look at things pretty objectively. So I would say my ability to consume a ton of information and just organize those thoughts into framework is the closest thing I have to superpower, if anything.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “As Greylock, we're really fortunate to see a bunch of great companies. I would say it's a class to good as the enemy of great. As a VC, you have to say no to a bunch of good companies, good investments, to say yes to the great ones. And that's the tough part is telling good versus great. And it sucks to say no to some projects and some founders you want to work with. But the truth of the matter is our goal is to find one or two great investments a year, not five or ten good investments a year.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Given this VC podcast, I would say that a lot of founders and investors don't think you can beat Amazon's cloud, AWS, but I actually think AWS is very beatable in certain product areas and certain markets. So I'm still bullish in finding companies that can challenge incumbents like Amazon the Cloud.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “I think growing up as a son of immigrant parents, I learned a lot about grit and hard work from them, but I would say more recently in my professional experience that was transformational was being in New York Stock Exchange when VMware went public and realizing a couple things. One, what it meant to try to build an enduring company that actually will last years and years and years, as well as building a product and a company that touched so many users out there and really making something that was impactful. And I think just sitting there with the rest of the exec team at VMware and having that realization, this thing that you were heads down working for the past X years of your life is real and enduring was pretty transformational. And I aspire to find companies and work with founders that they're going to build those enduring companies now.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Gosh, I read a lot of books, so I can't pick a favorite, but I will tell you the book I just bought was Nasim Teleb's New One Skin in the Game. I loved his previous works, like Fooled by Randomness, so I'm looking forward to reading that. So you should probably read that in our next flight and we can compare notes in our next kind of Jerry and Harry book club.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “But also, I've learned to work with my peers, right? Because you're collaborating with a bunch of other investors or some outside board members around the table. And that's been kind of fun. And that's been kind of a new skill I've learned over the past four or five years, your Greylock is how to be both an advisor and the CEO, but also a peer and a teammate to other VCs and other board members around the table, which is kind of a funny thing because you compete like hell to win a deal with these other VC firms and then all of a sudden you find yourself as peers on the board in a different company. And I think creating that mentality like, hey, you and I are on the board of this company, Harry. We're a teammate. Let's try to make each other better. Let's try to make the company better.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Surprise questions are always great, Harry. Thank you for that. I think that the goal to be a good board member is probably there's two audiences. There's one, the executive team, the CEO and the founders are working with, and there's also your peers, the other investors, other board members around the table. So I think for the executive team, you need to be what he or she needs you to be in terms of, one, just asking the tough questions. And the goal for me at any board or any company is there's only one or two issues that really move the needle for any product, any company, any strategy. And just, you know, be that honest thought partner saying, hey, Harry, here's the three questions that matter. Let's just focus on those things, not worry about the rest of the noise and the detail. So I think being that key to kind of being kind of that advisor or conciliary to the founders. And then I think over time at Greylock as again, a more boring realized different founders have different needs and are different parts of the lifecycle of the company. So you're just according.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Yeah, like I say, you kind of want your founders with a vision and you want them stubborn and right. But ultimately, I think the founders I love working with are the guys and the girls, the men and women who are learners, right? They actually have a strong vision. They're very opinionated. They have a point of view of how the world should work. They have a point of view for their company. But they're also always asking for feedback and collecting.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I would say as a founder it's interesting because the company often goes through phases like zero to 10 million or 10 to 50 or 50, 100 to a billion and you have to be thoughtful I think from the beginning how you think you create nonlinear value but realize that the early days you're still on the flat part of the curve so don't overthink about nonlinear value just make sure you're getting your product used by customers and then after you get some adoption and kind of the later second act or third after the company then be a lot more conscious about bending that curve to create nonlinear value. So I guess I would say for a founder it's a combination of being thoughtful from the beginning but also understanding timing and the evolution of your business and how this is going to change over time because you're not going to create non-learning value out of the gate. Maybe you can if you could that's awesome that's great but just being thoughtful about like okay how do I create value in this first phase second phase and third phase of my company lifecycle”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Yeah, well, the goal for any business is to create a business model that works for you. Otherwise, you're always going to be on that provable hamster wheel as a founder. And what I mean by that is I love products or businesses that the more you use it, the better it gets. And that could be in the physical world or the virtual world or the software world. But you want to create a business model that the more you're selling, the more customers you have, the more users you have, the more value you create. And that could be simple network effects, for example, like, hey, the more people on my messaging system, the more value for all the users. Or it could be kind of a platform effect where, hey, now that all my data is in this application, I can start building more applications, more features, more insights off the same product. So as a founder, if you can bend that curve, if you will, so you create nonlinear value for customers, it just encourages them to stay on your product because the more they use it, the more value they get from it. It also means the more you can probably charge.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Figure's not better, smaller is not better. It's based upon the product and the market and how you sell it. So one example I think about a lot is if your budget additive to a company, you probably want to be bottoms up selling motion and a small unit value. There's no CIO or CFO is going to wake up saying, I need your new widget. So you have to be a small unit value and kind of bottoms up. And that's individual users, developers, et cetera. If your budget replacement, hey, I'm going to be a better database, better CRM system, then you can probably go top down. And then if you're going top down for that solution motion, Harry, you want to make sure that you're getting paid for it because that's an expensive selling motion. It's a little more complex. You have to make sure your ACV is large enough to compensate for all the dollars that will flow through your channel.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “PC one phone makes sense, but it's really about the enterprise wide product, then it has to be a very large unit of value.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “So, really exactly what it sounds like is the core unit, the minimum unit that adds value to your customer, right? It's kind of a product engineer-centric view of what you're selling. And so it's basically not necessarily the bundle you sell to your customer or the combination of what you're putting through the channel or selling through the Salesforce, but it's really the smallest unit that your customer gets value from. And that can range from an individual like you or me, Harry, hey, we get value from using Dropbox to kind of share or saver files in the cloud, or it could arrange the entire company, like the unit value for HR software, ERP software, is a whole company because it doesn't make sense for a large company to have three or four different ERP systems or four or five different HR systems. So there's a range there depending upon the product, depending on the buyer. And also, it also depends upon what makes sense for this product, right? If it's a single player product, one unit value, one server, one.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “What's the right go to market in terms of both this market, this product, this customer base, and do those things align correctly to create a scalable business model?”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Go to Market Matters because people talk a lot about product market fit or product founder fit. All those are absolutely important as a former product manager, as an investor. I care about those things, but I also care about product go-to-market fit, which means that the product you're building also fits the channel you're selling the product through and how your consumer or customer wants to consume it. And so if you have a mismatch in terms of your unit value, right? product you're selling and is mismatched with kind of your channel be it self-service inside sales direct sales force etc the economics don't work out right if you have kind of a small unit value that's low price point and have a complex direct sales force the economics would never work out no matter how hard you try and so you have to be thoughtful like oh am i designing a product for the right go-to-market channel that's actually going to be sustainable at scale and as an investor as a board member we're always thinking about okay what's this unit value”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “A browser through their home or whatnot, then you can take advantage of that shift to reach your customers because the incumbents probably own or have control over the prior generation of technology, the prior generation distribution. So it's when we see these shifts and platforms are really shifts in distribution that can create some of the biggest outcomes out there.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Gosh, yeah. That framework my partner, Neil Bush Reese, said to me many years ago around distribution technology, I think distribution matters because, A, you're actually trying to kind of leverage your technology in a way that basically the incumbents can't compete against. And the reason why I think about just platform shifts, technology shifts, is there really shifts in distribution. And what I mean by that is earlier days you sold software to the mainframes, you sold software to a PC, then software through a browser, then through an app store or ads through a browser and adds to the app store. And those are technology platform shifts, but really they're also distribution shifts, right? It's why VCs are so excited about AR, VR, or smart homes like Alexa or smart cars or whatever, because their net new nodes or distribution shifts. And so I think as a startup, if you see a platform shift that is also a distribution channel shift, a different way to reach my end users directly through an app store, through a”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Like I said, risk it from market, execution, product, adoption risk, those are all acceptable. Just make sure you're weighing them correctly. On team and founder risk, you know, I'll take a risk in a first-time founder or a technical founder that's never done this before. And that's totally fine. What I won't take a risk on a founding team is, for example, I'm doing reference checks. There's questions about integrity or honesty, right? And that's, I want cross the line because these things are long journeys and at the end of the day, you want to work with people that you trust and vice versa. So I would take risks on founders and team if they're exceptional in their domain or space. But I think if there's questions around integrity or their behavior, then I think I won't cross that line. Life's too short to kind of take a risk like that.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “You may not work for me, and what works for me may not work for the next partner you interview. And so just being conscious of what you're comfortable with, what kind of investments you're going to be good at, what kind of founders you're going to be good at. I think being self-aware of that is key. People get in trouble when they start swinging outside the strike zone, if you will, and do things that are not comfortable with or not good at. And then that's when things kind of fall apart.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Yeah, I think the hardest part of risk assessment is A, collecting the data and being a servant to the truth, if you will, saying, okay, what does the data show in terms of what's in quantify? What you're willing to underwrite for things you don't know, what risk you're willing to take, the uncertainties, or even the quantifiable risk. And so I think the hard thing is making sure that you evaluate every project correctly with the right framework and understand what kind of risk you're taking. And then as an individual partner creating a portfolio of companies that you are the risk profiler, you're okay with. And as a firm in your kind of fund, you want to also make sure you have the right portfolio mix. And every individual investor and every firm is going to be different, right? So you have individual investors that really say, hey, I like to take these high beta bets, like a lot of risk, a lot of certies, and that's fine. You have some investors that say, you know, I want to take lower beta bets and lower risk, and that's fine too. And the truth of the matter is there's multiple ways to practice the art, if you will, of being venture capitalist. And what works for you.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “People complain about price all the time, and it's hard to say when we're actually doing the investment right now, but in the fullness of time, obviously, we'll be able to look back at it and say, hey, Jerry and Harry be doing interview in five years saying, my goodness, like thousands mispriced dramatically. So I think that's one thing that you can judge in hindsight, but maybe not in the moment.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Think price more or less reflects the risk. For example, a large consumer outcome or even some of these autonomous vehicle outcomes are going to be 100 billion plus or minus companies, right, or tens of billions. If autonomous vehicles become a reality, that could disrupt a multi-trillion dollar industry. And so if you're making a bet on that market and the uncertainties whether or not this can happen, if you're right, the rewards for that founder, that entrepreneur are going to be huge. If you're attacking kind of a unknown market saying, hey, I'm going to do a better productivity app, a better email app. That's a known market, so you're not really making bet uncertainties, but you're more around, hey, can I execute? Can I build a product? Can I build a channel? Can I sell against an incumbent? In which case you'll see prices in those investments reflect more of a known market, known outcome. It's really about, hey, can this team execute? Can this product be legitimately better than the status quo? So I think you'll see the range.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Behavior change. And so you look at the gamut of stuff we invest in as a venture capital firm, there are some investments that are really all about probabilities. A lot of enterprise software is budget replacement. Can you build some of the cheaper, better, faster, a better security product, a better database, a better enterprise application? A lot of the consumer applications are really a bet around uncertainties because you really don't know how big this market can be. You really don't know how consumers would change behavior. But if you're right, you get paid for it dramatically because those outcomes can be so big. And then as we look at some of these new markets like autonomous vehicles, self-driving cars, or a lot of these kind of more frontier technologies like either bio or maybe some of the crypto investments, really a lot of that is based upon uncertainties either because there's market risk or user risk or something else out there. There's just no history to kind of underwrite that. And I think all these investments are good investments. You just have to be conscious about what kind of investment you're making.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Yeah, I mean, Harry, it's a great question. And I think the way I think about every investment is when we go in looking at a company or a project, you have to be very conscious about what risk you're underwriting and not say, hey, we're going to do this deal or invest in this company, back this founder, just be very conscious about what risks you're underwriting and what risks you're willing to bear. And that basically plays into things like how much capital you want to allocate in price and all the other details. But there's really two or three categories of risk to think about. There's probabilities and uncertainties. I think probabilities are quantifiable risks, right? So the execution risks, the market risk, and you and I, as investors can make an educated bet or guess on the quantifiable risk, the probabilities. And that's fine. That's how you agree to a price or an execution. That's why there's a range. The other thing we underwrite as investors is uncertainties. And uncertainties, in my mind, are almost unquantifiable risk. And those are a lot of new markets, market expansion, consumer.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Enable the customer to do something different. And so either you excel at one of those axes just to be dramatically better, 10x better than the status quo, or you have to do some combination of those three axes, and then if you're good enough, you're actually creating value for the customer. And then regardless of the market, regardless of the company, you'll be successful, but you're creating value for your buyer.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Gosh, yeah, I was fortunate to launch a couple products from Zero. One was something called the virtual desktop infrastructure VDI, and then our cloud foundry and app platform team. So as a young product manager, I launched a couple things from start to scale. And obviously the company went from $100 million to over $5 billion. A couple of takeaways. One, if you're not the top three priorities for your customer as a founder or executive, you either have to hit one of those top three priorities or convince her this should be a top three priority because it doesn't matter if you're the fifth or sixth wish list on an enterprise buyer's wish list. If you only have time and budget for one or two things. So it's really finding what's that urgency. The second thing I always think about is when you're selling to the enterprise, there's really three axes of differentiation. You got to do something better, do something cheaper, or do something different, right? So you're faster database or cheaper storage, better security, a better application.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Two reasons. One, it was tough being kind of a young investor and watching companies get shut down and people getting laid off and me not having experience to help, right? And I think part of venture, you have to realize is you're an advisor, an influencer, you're a mentor and a coach, but you're actually never a decider, right? So I think a lot of ventures getting comfortable with a lot of things being out of control. And I also realized that without being on the other side of the table, without shipping product, hiring employees, firing employees, I was not going to be a great board member, great advisor to these founders. And so I'm like, you know what? I kind of just want to build teams, lead teams, and ship products. And I was lucky enough to find a great company in VMware and a great mentor in form of dying green, the founder in a CEO of the company. And that kind of was really formative for me in the early part of my career, just watching that kind of hyper growth phase of that seminal company.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Me, both as an investor at Greylock and for the previous 10 years as an operator at VMware, I spent a lot of time realizing those kind of two polar powers, if you will.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “In one way, the boom is incredible because it gives you that optimism that anything can happen. And I think to be a good investor, you have to always be optimistic to see the possible because if you're always focused on what can go wrong, you're never going to put money to work. You're never going to invest. You're never going to believe the founder. And so in those boom days, you felt like anything was possible, right? Like the internet was changing the world and the reach of this technology was almost limitless. Then on the flip side, when the crash happened, you really realized like, okay, you need to temper that optimism with economics and fundamentals. Like, is this business creating value for the customers? Are there a per unit economics to this business that actually makes sense, that's scalable? And so just like technology change, domains change, there are certain laws of physics and laws of business that matter. And once you realize what that means, you take that to heart and then you layer upon that as investor what it means to be a good board member and good governance. And I carry things with you.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “My first four way was actually back in 2000. I was a young investor at Axel Partners at the peak of the dot-com days. So imagine that I saw the peak of the dot-com, the crash of the Nasdaq, and then two years are probably the worst venture climate ever. And then I got to work with the great people back then. I used to spend a lot of time with Teresa Gow, Peter Fenton, Jim Getz. And then after that, I actually never wanted to venture again. I spent almost 10 years at VMware shipping product from a couple hundred employees to 15,000 in like over $5 billion of revenue. after that long tour of duty that I reconnected with Daniel Bushry, who is one of my partners at Greylock and obviously CEO and co-founder Workday, then Neil convinced me it was the right firm and the right time to get back into venture. And that was back in 2013.”

    2018-04-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Greylock's Jerry Chen on The 2 Fundamentals To Assessing Startup Risk, Why Good Investors Have To Be Optimistic & Why VCs Get In Trouble When They Move Outside Their "Strike Zone" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source