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.

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!

Great to host a Greylock <> LlamaIndex dinner with GenAI leaders across tech, financial services, and healthcare leaders in our San Francisco office. We discussed topics like:  - The pros and cons of DIY, developer infrastructure, and packaged applications for adopting GenAI - Moving from basic RAG to advanced data and retrieval modules  - The coming advent of multi-agent task solvers in knowledge assistants If you’re interested in joining our next dinner, drop me a note! Jerry Liu Simon Suo Biswaroop Palit Jerry Chen Howie Xu (selfie credit :) )

Interested in being part of the next generation of #IAM? Opal Security is hiring! Opal’s identity security platform makes it easy for modern organizations to see every entity accessing the data, applications, and infrastructure in their entire ecosystem – and instantly act on it. With consolidated visibility and controls for on-prem to cloud and SaaS, Opal enables enterprises to balance scalable least privilege with usability. Customers include Databricks, Figma, Blend, and more. The company raised its Series B in December 2023. Check out some of their featured jobs: Engineering Manager - San Francisco - https://bit.ly/3WiGiSn Software Engineer - Front End - SF or NYC - https://bit.ly/3Wwy1eG Solutions Engineer - SF or NYC - https://bit.ly/3xXWGzD 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

Today, with the launch of Postscript AI, we're giving marketers superpowers. And we're pretty excited about it, so we went big and made a thing (check the commercial below). Today, we're releasing 4 AI features that represent some of the biggest innovation in SMS Marketing to date. These aren't poorly built GPT wrappers. These are revenue generating tools driving an average 20% revenue lift on flows for brands in our beta. Want proof? Check the True Classic case study in the comments below--they saw a 29% increase in revenue per message on their browse abandonment flow with Infinity Testing. And even tho Infinity Testing is going to get all the glory because it generates revenue, the features I'm most excited about are Brand Center & Conversation Insights. They give marketers superpowers, the first ensuring the AI is *actually* on brand and the second extracts unique insights from all the conversations happening on a brands SMS channel. And here's why I'm most excited... this is just the beginning. So much more in this arena coming soon :) We're leading with AI for SMS. And If you want to maximize your sms revenue, you need to be working with Postscript. If you want to learn more, dive in below 👇

In today's issue of the Greylock Newsletter, we dive into why data breaches are increasingly the result of inadequate identity controls, and how Opal Security is on a mission to deliver scalable least privilege from a security-first standpoint without slowing businesses down. 🎧 Listen to Opal CEO and co-founder Umaimah Khan and Greylock partner Saam Motamedi on Greymatter. Plus, we recap the latest portfolio news and recent podcasts featuring the Greylock team.

We at Greylock are thrilled to double down on our support of Dazz, and co-lead the company's latest financing. At a time when AI-powered threats are on the rise, Dazz enables security and dev teams to remediate risks and reduce exposure. Their platform has found 1.2 billion vulnerabilities and resolved close to 500 million issues at root causes, saving security and engineering time, and dramatically reducing the chance of security incidents. Co-founder and CEO Merav Bahat and her accomplished team have strong momentum underway, and we're proud to continue supporting them in their mission to help security and engineering teams reduce exposure. cc Asheem Chandna https://lnkd.in/gvZ7dncN

🚨 Massive data breaches, like the recent AT&T attack, often stem from weak identity controls. 🚨 In the latest episode of the Grey Matter podcast, Opal Security CEO and co-founder Umaimah Khan and Greylock partner Saam Motamedi discuss how security teams can and should take a security-first approach to identity, why that is hard to do in the real world, and how her insight into this problem led to her founding of Opal.  Link in the comments!

Passwords and usernames shouldn’t be the only thing standing between an organization and cyber attacks. But too often, they are. For many organizations, this happens because they’ve struggled to strike the balance of protecting against outside threats without also closing off their own employees’ access to systems they need to do their jobs. This is why organizations need an updated approach that treats identity access as a security-first issue, says Opal Security CEO and co-founder Umaimah K. Using what Khan calls “real-world” least privilege protocols, Opal fills the security gap between too little and too much access. The company’s platform ingests, normalizes, and calibrates identity and AUTHC data across all systems, so organizations can see who has access at any point in time – and have the context and workflows to act on it. Khan spoke with Greylock partner Saam Motamedi on the Greymatter podcast about the company’s mission to deliver scalable least privilege from a security-first standpoint without slowing businesses down. You can listen to their conversation here. https://bit.ly/3ydK5s3