Grit28 Elo 2023

#153 COO & CRO Weights & Biases, Yan-David Erlich: ML’s Moment

Guest: Yan-David Erlich, COO and CRO of Weights & Biases

After starting four companies, Yan-David Erlich had found happiness and success as a GP in Coatue’s venture fund — but then, after investing in the AI developer platform Weights & Biases, he realized the time was right to get back into operating. That was not a decision he made lightly, consulting with his wife before he became the startup’s COO. The challenges of entrepreneurship get easier, he explains, when you have a supportive partner in your corner. That’s why he believes he could roll with the loss of his home or his job or his money — but not her.

In this episode, Yan-David and Joubin discuss Snowflake vs. Amazon, Slack vs. Microsoft Teams, Donald Trump, charting your own destiny, regret minimization, alternate selves, Michael Dearing, chips on your shoulder, Google Glass, industrial sales, the AI & ML window, hairball problems, fixing giant messes, and fighting a bear.

In this episode, we cover:

The advantage of speed (01:06)
Competing against a massive business (05:24)
Idiocy and secrets (09:45)
Yan-David’s past companies (12:34)
His philosophy on life (17:17)
Leaving LinkedIn (22:14)
Anxiety and regret (26:27)
The failure of Happiness Engines (34:43)
Why Yan-David left Parsable after five years (38:05)
Coatue’s venture fund (46:13)
Weights & Biases and the ML moment (48:08)
Why AI is still underhyped (51:05)
From investor to board member to COO to CRO (55:20)
Being a good lieutenant (58:51)
The hidden costs of operating (01:01:33)
Successful entrepreneurs and happy relationships (01:05:55)
Who Weights & Biases is hiring & what “grit” means to Yan-David (01:10:26)

Links:

Connect with Yan-David
- LinkedIn
Connect with Joubin
- Twitter
- LinkedIn
- Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(286)

#101 CEO Google Cloud, Thomas Kurian: Competitor-Aware and Customer-Obsessed

“When I grew up in Bangalore, I’d never seen a computer,” says Thomas Kurian. The former president of Oracle, now the CEO of Google Cloud, remembers learning how to write while sitting outside his chi...

29 Elo 202251min

#100 Chairman of Kleiner Perkins, John Doerr: Getting Into Trouble with Disruptors

After Kleiner Perkins chairman John Doerr first invested in Google — $12.8 million for 13 percent of the company — he told co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin that they needed to hire a CEO to help...

22 Elo 20221h 6min

CEO Touch the Top, Erik Weihenmayer: Climbing Everest Blind

Touch The Top CEO Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind person to summit Mount Everest, climbs hundreds of mountains every year. And he’s learned over the years that sometimes, the smartest thing to do in...

15 Elo 20221h 10min

Co-founder and CEO G2, Godard Abel: Finding Opportunity in Challenging Times

After rescuing his first startup BigMachines from the brink of bankruptcy and building it to positive cash flow, Godard Abel thought the express lane of life was opening up to him. But after the board...

8 Elo 20221h

Founding CRO @HubSpot / Prof @HBS / CoFounder @Stage 2 Capital Mark Roberge: The Science and Psychology of Scaling

Mark Roberge’s first anxiety attack hit him six months after 9/11, and his second hit him in the middle of a big speech while he was an executive at HubSpot. And Roberge, who now lectures at Harvard B...

1 Elo 20221h 9min

CMO Canva, Zach Kitschke: From Employee Number 5 To $40 Billion Valuation

Canva CMO Zach Kitschke was the company’s fifth employee, joining right before the product launched to the public — or, that was the plan anyway. Emerging technologies like HTML5 and negative feedback...

25 Heinä 20221h 5min

Founder & CEO Freshworks, Girish Mathrubootham: Success Is In the Big Things, Happiness Is In the Small Things

Girish Mathrubootham is the founder and CEO of Freshworks, the first Indian SaaS company to be listed in NASDAQ — and when he’s in his home country, he gets the celebrity treatment. Freshworks’ 2021 I...

18 Heinä 20221h 13min

CMO Riot Games, Jason Bunge: Change Is Inevitable, Get Used To It

Riot Games CMO Jason Bunge knows you might roll your eyes when he says this, but he doesn’t care, because it’s the truth: Marketing doesn’t get enough respect. Although many companies have convinced t...

11 Heinä 20221h 2min