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.

Congratulations to Dazz and Wiz on their merger announced today, to advance cloud security and unified cybersecurity remediation! Merav Bahat (CEO), Tomer Schwartz (CTO), Yuval Ofir (VP R&D), Jared Phipps (CRO) and Julie O'Brien (CMO) built a very fast growing cyber company, based on partnering closely with leading Global 2000 customers. The company’s very first customer PO in July 2021 was at $25K, and in the most recent quarter Dazz had seven figure architectural wins with enterprise customers that are household names. Merav and Assaf Rappaport at Wiz (both former colleagues at Microsoft) decided to combine forces on mission and serve enterprise customers together going forward, with a single integrated solution under the Wiz umbrella. It has been a privilege for us at Greylock to be a part of the Dazz journey since inception in the seed round, along with our friends at Cyberstarts. Dazz was fortunate to build out a strong investor syndicate with Cyberstarts, Insight Partners, Index Ventures and Greylock. We will be cheering as Dazz and Wiz accelerate their journey together! cc: Gili Raanan, Stephen Ward, Shardul Shah?

Congrats to Dazz and Wiz on their merger announced today! It has been a privilege for us at Greylock to be a part of the Dazz journey since inception - before the company had product idea and predicated on the impression the three founders made on us via Zoom. Merav Bahat (CEO), Tomer Schwartz (CTO) and Yuval Ofir (VP R&D) are exceptional founders who have built the industry’s leading cybersecurity remediation cloud. Greylock has been a longtime seed and early-stage investor in Israel. We continue to be very active in meeting and funding Israeli founders and startups, and have never been more bullish on the Israeli ecosystem. We will be cheering as Dazz and Wiz continue their journey together. cc Asheem Chandna https://bit.ly/491aFm6

??’?? ???????????? ?????????????? ???? ?????????? ???????? ???????? ???? ?????????????? ???????????? ???????? ??????. ? Tomer Schwartz, Yuval Ofir, and I founded Dazz to solve one of the biggest problems in security - remediation. We were a small team back in early 2021 subleasing office space in southern Tel Aviv in the midst of the COVID pandemic. We had a mission, but it was a complex problem that had been overlooked for years, and we often wondered if it was even solvable. I can’t believe how far we’ve come since then. It’s hard to fathom, and even harder to find words that express our heartfelt appreciation for the customers, investors, and most importantly our exceptional Dazzlers who joined our journey, sharing their talent, passion and hard work to achieve remarkable milestones. Dazz momentum has surged — we achieved X3.5 YoY growth in new ACV, secured multi 7-digit deals, won exciting new logos from both Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies, and raised an additional $110M from industry’s top cyber investors Greylock, Cyberstarts, Insight Partners and Index Ventures. ?“Thank you” doesn’t even begin to cover my feelings toward you all. Together, we built something amazing.?? ? It is with our customers in mind that we embark on this next chapter, which will supercharge our vision and accelerate our pace of innovation. We will remain laser focused on building the best ASPM and cloud security remediation offering in the market— only now we will be doing so as part of the leading CNAPP: Wiz.?? ? Knowing the all-star team of Wiz - Assaf Rappaport, Yinon C., Ami Luttwak, Roy Reznik and Raaz Herzberg from our joint days at Microsoft – I can’t wait to bring the magic of Dazz to Wiz. Jointly we can tackle the most pressing challenges in cloud security, and help our customers detect, prioritize, and eliminate security exposure everywhere. Excited for the next chapter. Together. ????

Resolve AI is on the ambitious journey of building an AI Production engineer. This AWS re:Invent we'll be hosting a Greylock <> Resolve AI evening geared towards engineering leaders on the topic of accelerating engineering velocity with AI. Tuesday Dec 3rd at 9PM at the Venetian. Come hang out with me, Spiros Xanthos, Mayank Agarwal, and some exceptional engineering leaders. Registration link in DMs.

This week's newsletter features the first in a?series of conversations with CIOs and CTOs at the world’s leading companies on the role Gen AI – and AI more broadly – is playing inside their organization. Greylock partner Asheem Chandna speaks with Bijoy Sagar at Bayer about what problems Bayer is trying to solve with AI, how it’s deploying the technology today, how it's partnering with startups, and more. Check out the full Q&A linked in the below ??

Seeing Upwind Through the Eyes of Our Investors ?? In this clip from the Sheva podcast, Greylock General Partner?Saam Motamedi?shares why Upwind is uniquely positioned to lead in cloud security. He highlights the transformative power of our focus: ?? Runtime production environments, where the real impact of security happens. ?? The intersection of?developer-centric operations?and?cloud-focused innovation. Hearing Saam’s perspective is a powerful reminder of the shared vision that drives Upwind’s mission forward. ?? Catch the full episode featuring Saam, Former NBA Champion?Omri Casspi's Sheva VC, and our CEO,?Amiram Shachar, discussing Greylock’s investment philosophy and GTM excellence ??https://lnkd.in/dkqgDvtH Up & Upwind! ??♂? #CloudSecurity #RuntimeProtection #Leadership #GTMExcellence

Cresta is enabling contact centers to leverage real-time insights, behavioral best practices, and virtual agents to fundamentally reimagine how they operate. Congrats to Ping Wu and the entire team on your latest business milestones: ? $125 million in Series D funding ? Nearly quadrupled ARR and nearly doubled the customer base over the last 2 years We - at Greylock - are proud to continue to support Cresta as it helps organizations redefine the way they approach customer service with human expertise + AI. https://lnkd.in/guJin9n4 cc Saam Motamedi

Too many founders "wing it" when building their teams—leading to misaligned hires, wasted time, and missed opportunities. If you’re serious about scaling, you need to be as deliberate about hiring as you are about building your product. Here are key lessons I’ve learned at Greylock about early startup hiring to help founders build world-class teams: ? Hone your pitch. The best founders clearly articulate an exciting vision for their product or business that entices candidates. ? Process makes perfect. From defining the role you're hiring for all the way through full interviews, every step should be measurable, repeatable, and scalable. Track what works, adjust what doesn’t, and document the entire process. ? Candidate experience matters. How you treat candidates affects your brand, reputation, and future hires. Treat every candidate as if they will get an offer. Even those who don’t should leave feeling positive enough to refer others. ? Take the long view. Every interview is a long-term relationship opportunity. Even if they’re not the right fit today, the candidate could become a valuable connection later. ? Quality over quantity. Don’t cast a wide net—target a relevant candidate pool. Do your homework and approach them in a tailored way. High volume creates noise and inefficiency. ? Be brutally transparent. Don’t sugarcoat the risks and challenges of a startup. The best candidates value honesty and will appreciate knowing the truth, how they’ll be supported, and how they can grow. ? Always be recruiting (ABR). Top founders dedicate time to sourcing and reaching out to candidates. Early hires often come from the founding team’s network, but as that dries up (and it will), recruiting becomes harder. Invest in recruiting activities and leverage dependable resources like VCs, agencies, and investors. ? Work with a talent partner.? A strong talent partner from your VC firm or network is more than a resume pusher; they’re a guide who can advise and deeply understand your needs while focusing on quality and fit. ? Master the preclose. When you extend an offer, don’t rush. Schedule a call to share the exciting news and intent to prepare an offer. Express enthusiasm, revisit motivations, and address open questions. This is also the time to align on comp expectations. A thoughtful approach ensures a successful close. ? Bring your best offer upfront. Lowballing or forcing candidates to negotiate can drive top talent away. Leverage startup compensation data, be transparent about your compensation philosophy, and offer competitive packages that reflect the risk and stage they’re joining. Invest in people so they become "unrecruitable." ? Onboarding and beyond. Once the offer is accepted, the job isn’t done. Onboard well, and continue to support them as they grow within the company. What’s the biggest hiring lesson you’ve learned? Let’s discuss in the comments! #startup #talent #recruiting #growth

Now Hiring: Snorkel AI One of the biggest bottlenecks in AI is the lack of labeled training data. Spun out of the Stanford AI Lab, Snorkel helps organizations build specialized AI with their data and expertise. The Series C company counts Memorial Sloan Kettering, Wayfair, and seven of the top US banks as customers, helping them shrink the time to prepare and label raw training data from months down to just weeks. Check out some of the open jobs at Snorkel: ? Principal Software Engineer: https://lnkd.in/er5K5WPN ? Research Engineer: https://lnkd.in/e-iQ6VSv? ? Staff Software Engineer — Backend: https://lnkd.in/g8c66BNg 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://greylock.com/jobs