#228 Co-Founder Alinea & Tock: Selling Experience

Guest: Dan Streetman, CEO of TaniumA graduate of West Point who served in Iraq combat operations, Tanium CEO Dan Streetman can’t help but compare his business career to his military experience. Understanding huge structures and processes is a crucial skill at both Tanium and in the Army, he says, as are the skills for aligning people around a shared mission.“Before you go on an operation, you write a thing called an operations order ... [and] one of the most important things at the operations order is this paragraph called the commander's intent,” he explains, “which describes how you believe the mission is going to be accomplished and why it's important.”“You may end up doing something completely different. But as long as you understand the mission and the commander's intent, the organization can do amazing things.”Chapters:(01:05) - Election Day (02:44) - Ranger School (06:42) - Parenting and business school (09:59) - Military structures (12:27) - Serving in Iraq (15:59) - Back to normal life (21:37) - Working out (24:14) - Quality sleep (26:37) - Non-founder CEOs (31:35) - Getting the job (35:56) - Earning respect (38:49) - TIBCO (43:40) - Redline (46:37) - Going public (53:54) - Time horizons (58:35) - Free AI (01:03:11) - Whar “grit” mans to Dan (01:03:40) - Who Tanium is hiring Mentioned in this episode: Ronald Reagan, Terri Streetman, Ironman Triathlons, Jeff Bezos and Amazon, Stanley McChrystal, Jon Abizaid, Charles Jacoby, Thomas Siebel and C3, Salesforce, Bill McDermott, Carl Eschenbach, Marc Benioff, Garmin, Mark McLaughlin, Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke, World Series of Poker, Amdocs, David and Orion Hindawi, Citrix, Harvard University, Pets.com, Ben Horowitz, Vista Equity Partners, Vivek Ranadivé, Robert Smith, Operation Warp Speed, BreakLine, Bipul Sinha and Rubrik, Mikhail Gorbachev, F. Scott Fitzgerald, OpenAI and ChatGPT, and Google.Links:Connect with DanLinkedInConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

2 Dec 20241h 4min

Guest: Josh Silverman, CEO of EtsyWhen Josh Silverman joined the board of Etsy, he had one condition: “Don’t ask me to the be the CEO.” And technically, they didn’t ask. One day, he got a phone call informing him the board had elected him as the new CEO, just days before an earnings miss. He knew the odds were against him — layoffs would be necessary, and “I was going to have to be the villain” — but decided to say yes out of a sense of duty to Etsy’s users and workers. “If I can be helpful, I have a responsibility to do it,” Josh says.Chapters:(00:55) - Energy management (02:42) - Meetings (09:56) - Etsy’s strategy (13:36) - Learning to delegate (17:10) - Setting an example (24:17) - Evite’s rise and fall (27:46) - Self vs. company (30:22) - Legacy (34:21) - Control and agency (37:44) - Joining Etsy’s board (40:40) - Becoming CEO (46:16) - Culture shock (48:09) - “We need you, trust us” (51:25) - eBay and Skype (57:15) - Pushed out (01:00:40) - Accountability and family (01:03:53) - Time horizons (01:05:55) - Gen AI-supported art (01:08:29) - Who Etsy is hiring and what “grit” means to Josh Mentioned in this episode: Ken Chenault and American Express, Nick Daniel, Rachana Kumar, Ticketmaster and IAC, Etsy Studios, Silverlake, Shopping.com, Google, Microsoft, and Austin City Limits. Links:Connect with JoshLinkedInConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

25 Nov 20241h 9min

Guests: Varun Mohan, CEO & Co-Founder of Codeium; and Leigh Marie Braswell, partner at Kleiner Perkins“A lot of people are really bad at knowing what good is,” says Codeium CEO Varun Mohan. Specifically, he’s thinking of startups that hire based on a “logo” — a well-known company on the résumé — rather than exceptional talent. Codeium is based in Mountain View, CA, and Varun believes that it’s incumbent on any new startup to hire in the San Francisco Bay Area, because of how exceptional talent is concentrated there. “When you hire someone that’s 10x better,” he says, “you can’t replace them with 10 1x people. Because the the 10x person is going to be thinking of ideas that none of these 1x people are ever going to think of.”Chapters:(01:05) - Ludicrous growth (03:54) - Seizing opportunity (07:29) - Product-market fit (13:05) - Scale AI & MIT (17:42) - Coding efficiency (22:58) - Larger companies (25:20) - Varun and Leigh Marie’s working relationship (29:51) - Pivoting to Codeium (34:00) - Giving away the product (37:01) - The code-gen landscape (42:20) - Annual reinvention (45:00) - Picking a problem (47:07) - Bipul Sinha’s help (50:43) - Ambition (53:13) - Building in Silicon Valley (55:11) - Spotting talent (59:11) - Who Codeium is hiring (59:43) - What “grit” means to Varun Mentioned in this episode: Graham Moreno, Wiz, ChatGPT, Google, Nuro, Goldman Sachs, Waymo, the DARPA Challenge, Alex Wang, Douglas Chen, Safeway, Equinox, Carlos Delatorre and MongoDB, The Qualified Sales Leader by John McMahon, GitHub Copilot, Microsoft, Exafunction, Mamoon Hamid, Figma, JPMorgan Chase, Starlink, SpaceX, Rubrik, Michael Dell, Stripe, and John Doerr.Links:Connect with VarunLinkedInTwitterConnect with Leigh MarieLinkedInTwitterConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

18 Nov 20241h

Guest: Sal Khan, founder of Khan AcademyAI is poised to change nearly every business, but few are changing as quickly as education. And Sal Khan, who has spend more than a decade manually creating more than 7,000 educational videos, says that’s a good thing. He’s encouraged Khan Academy to focus on “disrupt[ing] ourselves ... more than almost any other organization that I know of.” The reason is backed up by the data: Personalized tutors — designed to help students achieve mastery in a subject, but previously thought to be unscalable — could shift the educational bell curve “significantly to the right,” Sal says.Chapters:(00:52) - John and Ann Doerr (05:20) - Khan Academy’s origins (07:42) - What it is now (12:43) - Emotional fortitude (15:25) - Generating revenue (19:36) - The two-sigma “problem” (21:31) - OpenAI and Sam Altman (24:47) - What AI can do (27:56) - Cheating and other fears (30:06) - Video production (34:08) - Standardized tests (38:36) - AI tutors’ tone (40:22) - Not leaving the closet (43:20) - Who Khan Academy is hiring (45:58) - What “grit” means to Sal Mentioned in this episode: Nasdaq, Dan Wohl, Vedic and Buddhist literature, Microsoft, Benjamin Bloom, ChatGPT, the Turing Test, Greg Brockman, Donald Trump, Bing Chat and Sydney, Khanmigo, the SAT and ACT, Schoolhouse.world, Craig Silverstein and Google, John Resig and jQuery, and Angela Duckworth.Links:Connect with SalTwitterLinkedInConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

11 Nov 202446min

Guest: Matt MacInnis, COO of RipplingOne of the most important things a non-founder can do, says Rippling COO Matt MacInnis, is to learn how to operate in the context of the company they’re joining. His CEO, Parker Conrad, “spikes” in certain skill areas, and the rest of the executive team needs to maximize his ability to thrive while “taking care of the rest of it.” Matt likened the work to being a hobbyist airplane pilot, who can’t get a license without knowing all the minute details about their plane’s engine and aerodynamics. “You can’t be a good pilot if you don’t understand the engine, because if something goes wrong, you want to be able to troubleshoot it,” he says. “An executive coming in to fly your airplane better learn the engine.”Chapters:(01:08) - Telling Rippling’s story (04:27) - Founding & failing at Inkling (09:30) - Different types of hard (13:55) - Discipline and stamina (15:22) - Meeting with Steve Jobs (19:20) - Definitely, give up! (22:29) - Product-market fit (27:15) - Founders and culture (33:24) - Executive instincts (36:06) - Talent Signal and AI (40:06) - 150 former founders (44:08) - Zero to one projects (48:06) - The failure of Silicon Valley Bank (55:25) - Routines and discipline (59:37) - Disagreeing with Parker (01:02:25) - Who Rippling is hiring (01:03:37) - What “grit” means to Matt Mentioned in this episode: Parker Conrad, London Breed, Apple, Sequoia Capital, Sapphire Ventures, Tenaya Capital, digital textbooks on iPad, Oricom, Netscape, Peter Cho, Eddy Cue, John Couch, iBooks, Slack, Airbnb, Paul Graham, Brian Chesky, “founder mode,” Larry Ellison, Ivan Zhao and Notion, Intel and ARM, Salesforce, United Airlines, LLMs, GitHub, DocuCharm, Peter Thiel, Mamoon Hamid, Expensify, Navan, Costco, Comcast, HBO’s Silicon Valley, Jensen Huang and NVIDIA, and Taylor Swift.Links:Connect with MattLinkedInTwitterConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

4 Nov 20241h 5min

Guest: Jason Kilar, former CEO & co-founder of Hulu and former CEO of WarnerMediaWhen Jason Kilar was a child, he was obsessed with Walt Disney — not just as a filmmaker or the creator of Disneyland, but as an entrepreneur. He started his career at the Walt Disney Company (where else?) but then got his first opportunity to help build something new when a young startup entrepreneur from Seattle visited his business school classroom. Most of Jason’s classmates predicted the failure of this startup, Amazon.com, which elicited “this awesome laugh, the Jeff Bezos trademark laugh.” How a leader reacts to criticism or doubts, Jason learned, says a lot about their conviction and intelligence.Chapters:(01:08) - Bing Gordon and John Doerr (04:11) - Warner Bros. (06:12) - Walt Disney (11:10) - Working at Disney (14:32) - What makes it special (18:31) - Meeting your heroes (20:06) - “Walt’s folly,” Disneyland (22:45) - Harvard and Amazon (25:09) - Meeting Jeff Bezos (29:10) - “Help people understand Amazon exists” (33:25) - Amazon’s culture (38:07) - What Warner Bros. makes (40:55) - Obscurity and relevance (45:53) - Feeling the lows (50:09) - Launching Hulu (53:36) - NewCo or ClownCo? (59:13) - Over-communication (01:03:14) - The future of TV memo (01:06:46) - Innovator’s dilemma (01:08:57) - No labels (01:14:04) - Unfinished business (01:16:22) - Staying present (01:20:26) - The theatrical window (01:26:19) - What’s next? Mentioned in this episode: Amazon, The Matrix, Star Wars: A New Hope, Disney World, Diane Disney Miller, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Michael Eisner, Universal Studios and Harry Potter, Disney University, Jeffrey Rayport, Barnes & Noble, Joel Spiegel, David Risher, Joy Covey, Garry Trudeau and Doonesbury, Andy Jassy, Brian Birtwistle, Jim Kingsbury, Vessel and Verizon, HBO, Friends, Hogwarts Legacy, Sony, Netflix, NBCUniversal, Paramount, AT&T, Discovery, Richard Tom, Kara Swisher, Fox, YouTube and Google, Saturday Night Live, Peter Chernin, Jeff Zucker, Bob Iger, Andy Rachleff and Benchmark, CBS, Miracle on 34th Street, Marissa Mayer and Yahoo, Rony Abovitz and Magic Leap, House of the Dragon and Industry, Dune, Christopher Nolan, and the TSA.Links:Connect with JasonTwitterLinkedInConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

28 Okt 20241h 30min

Guests: Joe Thomas, CEO and co-founder of Loom; and Ilya Fushman, partner at Kleiner PerkinsLoom CEO Joe Thomas had a lot of things to think about before he sold his company to Atlassian for $975 million: The impact an acquisition might have on the product, how to keep the Loom brand alive, the risk of remaining independent... but it wasn’t until after the deal was announced that he really understood what it meant for his team. “I didn't know how emotional it'd be for me,” Joe says. “All of the Loom employees, current and former, that reached out when this was announced, they did their calculation and they're like, ‘Oh my God.’ That, to me, was the most emotionally transformative part of the process. I didn't fully recognize what that would be like, on the individual front.”Chapters:(01:34) - The Atlassian acquisition (05:25) - The bittersweet moment (08:15) - Transforming Loom (13:30) - Ilya’s perspective (18:04) - Life-changing (22:55) - Doing it again (25:00) - Loom’s early days (28:26) - The Series A (32:33) - Turning on monetization (35:37) - The Series B (37:05) - Loom AI (43:13) - Revenue orientation (48:18) - The acquisition landscape (52:27) - Working inside Atlassian (54:04) - Atlanta tech (55:00) - Who Atlassian is hiring (55:24) - What “grit” means to Joe Mentioned in this episode: Wilson Sonsini, Vinay Hiremath, Andrew Reed and Sequoia Capital, Zoom, Mike Cannon-Brookes, Shahed Khan, COTU Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Scott Farquhar, the Lindy Effect, SVB, Google Chrome, Dropbox, Slack, Snapchat, HubSpot, the Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter, Dylan Field and Figma, Atlassian Rovo, Palo Alto Networks, Salesforce, and Garrett Langley and Flock Safety.Links:Connect with JoeLinkedInTwitterConnect with IlyaTwitterLinkedInConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

21 Okt 202457min

Guest: Rony Abovitz, founder & CEO of SynthBeeSynthBee CEO Rony Abovitz grew up “really believing” in Star Wars and the idea that there could be benevolent, artificially intelligent beings like R2-D2 and C-3PO.“It wasn't a dystopian vision of the future,” he says. “It wasn't HAL from 2001.  It wasn't the Terminator. It wasn't Skynet.  It was this kind of friendly, empathetic, more utopian vision.” George Lucas himself told Rony to tone it down and not “take it so literally” — but he was undeterred. The way he describes today’s leading AI powers sounds like an idealistic Rebel conceptualizing the Evil Empire.“You’ve got companies that receive massive funding that want to take all the data in the world ... I feel that's a massive mistake,” Rony says. “We become serfs. They become the Lords. They become the Kings. I'm completely opposed to that. So I started to imagine for SynthBee what is a different form of computing intelligence, one that could help us, but have much more safety [and] human centrism.”Chapters:(01:12) - Fundraising (02:27) - Meeting John Doerr (07:05) - The Beast (10:06) - Unfinished business (11:47) - Apple and Meta (15:20) - The COVID-19 pandemic (21:12) - “Investors panicked” (25:28) - Shaquille O’Neal vs. digital Shaq (29:43) - Magic Leap alumni (32:45) - Financial outcomes (38:27) - Peggy Johnson (40:27) - “A weird version of hell” (44:08) - A strange intro to Google (50:42) - Larry Page and Sergey Brin (54:27) - Founder voting power (01:00:40) - Mako Surgical (01:03:04) - The 9/11 term sheet (01:06:40) - The worst pitch ever (01:09:55) - The 2008 IPO (01:16:15) - Selling to Stryker (01:18:30) - What is SynthBee? (01:26:44) - Humility in tech (01:31:44) - Who SynthBee is hiring Mentioned in this episode: Scott Hassan, Bing Gordon, Chewy, Mary Meeker, Suitable Technologies and Beam, NASA, Mark Zuckerberg, Matthew Ball, NTT Docomo, Blade Runner, Wired Magazine, CES, Dow Jones, Tesla, Zoom, OpenAI and Anthropic, Adam Silver and the NBA, John Monos, the Apple Vision Pro, Madden NFL, McLaren, Satya Nadella and Microsoft, the HoloLens, Godzilla and King Kong, Willow Garage and ROS, Trading Places, Z-KAT, Frederic Moll, John Freund, Christopher Dewey, John and Christine Whitman, Sycamore Ventures, Andy Bechtelstein, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley, Kevin Lobo, Muhammad Ali, Star Wars and George Lucas, Yuval Noah Harari, and Infosys.Links:Connect with RonyLinkedInConnect with JoubinTwitterLinkedInEmail: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner PerkinsThis episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

14 Okt 20241h 34min