20VC: Greylock's John Lilly on How Greylock Continues To Invest In The Next Big Markets, The Importance Of Building Tribes & Why There will Be Another Boom In Mobile

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The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2017

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

John Lilly is a Partner at Greylock Partners, one of the world's leading venture funds of the past decade. At Greylock John has led investments in the likes of Instagram (acq by Facebook), Tumblr (acq by Yahoo) and Dropbox. John also sits on the board for Quip, Figma and ClearSlide just to name a few. Prior to Greylock, John was CEO of Mozilla, the organization behind Firefox, used by more than 450 million people. John also co-founded Reactivity, an enterprise security infrastructure company acquired by Cisco in 2007, where he served as founding CEO and later CTO.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How John made his way into the wonderful world of VC following his time as CEO @ Mozilla?

2.) John has invested in the likes of Quip, Figma and Dropbox, so why are we seeing such a rise in productivity tools beyond Office and Google Apps? Will it always be a market of consolidation like we have seen with the likes of Quip?

3.) Does John believe the first boom of mobile is over? What about sensors makes John excited for the future of the phone? Does John agree with Ben Evans in viewing the phone as the sun of the solar system?

4.) Question from Sarah Guo: How does Greylock to continue to invest in the next big markets, rather than in what has made them successful before? What does the brainstorming sessions and meta-thinking look like internally?

5.) Question from Josh Elman: How does John view growing one's tribe and then growing together through all of your careers? What are the challenges and what is required in order to be successful?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

John’s Fave Book: Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC, John on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to another week in the world of the 20 minute VC with your host Harry Stebbings found most often on Snapchat at H.
0:06.6	Stebbings with 2Bs and writing some hopefully academic and provocative thoughts on MahitoVC.com.
0:12.1	I'd absolutely love to hear your thoughts on that.
0:14.0	However, to the show today and this week I'm so delighted to feature one of the best performing funds of the past decade.
0:19.6	With investments in the likes of
0:20.8	Facebook, Airbnb, Instagram, LinkedIn, and many more incredible companies. Yes, this week, we are
0:26.5	featuring Greylock partners. And joining me to stay from Greylock, I'm thrilled to welcome
0:30.2	John Lilly to the show today. John is a partner at Greylock, where he's led investments in the
0:34.4	likes of Instagram, acquired by Facebook, Tumblr, acquired by Yahoo,
0:37.9	and Dropbox, just to name a few. John also sits on the board for Quip, Figma, and ClearSlide.
0:43.2	And prior to Greylock, John was CEO of Mozilla, the organisation behind Firefox, used by more than 450 million people.
0:50.1	John was also the co-founder of reactivity, an enterprise security infrastructure company acquired by Cisco in 2007, where he served as founding CEO and latest CTO.
0:59.5	I do also want to say a huge thank you to Josh Elman at Greylock and Eric Torrenberg for the intro today, without which the show would not have been possible.
1:06.5	But before we dive into the show's day, it is January, so it's not too late for a New Year's resolution, and one of mine is sleeping more, and that's where the Simba hybrid comes in.
1:14.7	It's the most advanced match in the world, with a unique combination of 2,500 conical
1:19.6	pocket springs, and responsive memory foam.
1:21.8	It offers the perfect support for two people, a mattress that responds to you and your partner's
1:26.1	sleeping patterns, delivered for free
1:27.9	with a 100-night sleep trial, free returns and a 10-year guarantee, there's nothing to lose.
1:32.7	So start your free trial at simba sleep.com.
1:35.3	Another target of mine for the new year is productivity, and there's no better for that than
1:38.7	Serious Insight, the plugin for sales pros who use Gmail and Outlook.
	...

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