Greylock

We - Greylock - have a long history of partnering with founders starting at day one through IPO. We are excited to share new steps in that effort: 1/ Fund 17, our newest $1B early-stage fund focused on Pre-Seed, Seed, and Series A founders in enterprise & consumer software - specifically AI-first companies across Cyber, Infra, SaaS, Consumer, Marketplaces & Commerce, and Fintech & Crypto. 2/ Edge, a bespoke program to help founders initiate new companies by harnessing the full potential of Greylock’s resources & expertise. Our team works directly with founders to brainstorm & iterate foundational decisions with fully flexible financing options. (visit greylock.com/edge for more info) We are privileged to be early partners to Airbnb, AppDynamics, LinkedIn, Meta, Palo Alto Networks, Okta, Workday and more recently, Abnormal Security, Cato Networks, Discord, Figma, Lyra Health and Rubrik. We can't wait to help the next gen of founders go from idea to iconic.

Now Hiring: Companies in Stealth Greylock has a long history of working with companies from day one. We are currently working with multiple companies as they quietly build the next generation of category-defining tech. If you are interested in joining a stealth company now, take a look at some of the open roles below: Senior Product Manager - Commerce: https://bit.ly/3LKZq6z Founding Software Engineer - Greylock Incubation: https://bit.ly/3Yp65uX Founding Designer - AI Security: https://bit.ly/3zTucax Introduce yourself  We help talented engineers, designers, sales, and product leaders join the next iconic tech companies. If you are interested in joining an early stage Greylock-backed startup now, or just want to connect for future opportunities, we would love to hear from you.  >> Connect with us: https://bit.ly/4cEIkCG

In today's newsletter, we share a list of areas that we at Greylock believe are ripe for innovation. If you are starting a company in any of these areas, or if you want to introduce us to a thesis we've never imagined before, we would love to chat with you.

📣 The best identity security solution gets better!! 📣 In April, Opal Security launched our least privilege posture management feature, bringing a security workflow to identity management, and enabling teams to detect, prioritize and mitigate risks stemming from over-provisioned access as a continuous security program.  In just a few short months, we have continued to innovate and today announce some amazing new capabilities of our platform.  Read the release to learn about: 🚀 Group optimization - calibrate IDP groups to remove over-provisioned group access 🚀 Irregular access -  leveraging AI to identify access that does not conform to usual patterns, and may be risky 🚀 Snowflake first-party integration - easily manage and remediate granular access to Snowflake roles and resources such as databases, schemas and tables.  We’re proud to be leading the way in enabling companies to manage identity as a first-tier  security focus.  As our founder and CEO Umaimah Khan puts it, “We empower teams to properly mitigate more types of identity risk, move away from point-in-time audits managed by arbitrary teams, and get to an ongoing flow within a comprehensive security strategy.” Read the release for more - link in the comments!

We at Greylock are always eager to partner with founders to help initiate and/or build the next iconic technology business. Today, we’re sharing a list of areas that we believe are ripe for innovation. If you are starting a company in any of these areas, we would love to chat with you. Check out our blog for more details about what we’re looking for, and for how to get in touch. Link in comments.

In today's age of #AI, Non-Human Identities (NHIs) are driving security leaders to rethink their cybersecurity strategies. We are excited to see Natoma unveil its platform, which is designed to protect enterprise data and systems from unauthorized NHIs by establishing an authoritative source of truth for all NHIs and a control plane to secure and manage NHIs across their entire lifecycle. Greylock is proud to be partners to Natoma co-founders Paresh Bhaya, Pratyus Patnaik, Will Potter, and Zachary Hart and to have co-led the company's initial funding round. cc Saam Motamedi

No matter how experienced an executive may be, it never hurts to have a refresher on the must-ask questions that should be answered before taking on a new role at a startup. Greylock executive talent partner Holly Rose Faith shared a great list of questions executives should ask when vetting potential roles. (And if you are a startup trying to land a superstar exec, make sure you have these answers!)

Congrats, Cato Networks on achieving two incredible milestones: ✅ $200M+ ARR (doubling total ARR in under two years) ✅ 2,500+ customers (over 1,000 new customers in the past two years) Cato is revolutionizing the IT security market as the category creator and leader in SASE, and we at Greylock are proud partners to Shlomo Kramer and the team. https://lnkd.in/dT7c2ZjZ

The historically fragmented identity stack poses two challenges: a lot of tools to manage, and a lot of chances for things to fall through the cracks. "People have effectively treated the identity stack like, 'Let’s throw things at the wall and see if they stick.' And so it means that there’s a lot of resources and capital that are sunk into it without a ton of measurable results," says Opal Security CEO and co-founder Umaimah Khan. Opal was built to change that. The least-privilege IAM platform sits in the middle of the various systems – identity access and governance tools, HR systems, sensitive internal systems, business-critical apps, and more – collating identity data, providing visibility into who has authorization and access, and allowing organizations to take action. "What we really do is fill in the missing context," says Khan. "And because everything is API- first by design, it means we can also start to make changes on those things." ICYMI: Khan spoke with Saam Motamedi on the Greymatter podcast about Opal's role in the changing cybersecurity landscape, and how next-gen #IAM is the answer. Listen here: https://lnkd.in/gHcHccPG

The best SaaS companies aren’t defined by their underlying tech. It's the way they harness that tech to create something that quickly reaches a large community of users who can’t live without it – and build a deep system of record in the process. AI unlocks new ways to do that, which is why now is a great time for startups to build the next generation of SaaS, says Greylock partner Saam Motamedi. On a recent podcast discussion with 20VC's Harry Stebbings, he outlined a few of the main ways AI creates new opportunities for SaaS startup founders: - AI changes data and delivery model needs  - AI changes usage, allowing for new pricing models - AI makes for better UI/interface Check it out here!