David Sze is a General Partner at Greylock. He explains his investment framework regarding price sensitivity and valuation discipline for category-defining consumer and enterprise companies.
0:00 / 0:33exact quote · 33.9s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“So I do think that you need to have price discipline, and so you need to think about, does this have the ability to run to a huge outcome? Does this Show the potential to be a winner takes most or winner takes all kind of business. If that's the case, and you think you have the right team in place as well, which is the other critical aspect of that, and we can talk about that in terms of what you look for in a leader of a team, because I think that's critical. You have those two things together, then I think you can be more flexible on those decisions along the way, and I think it's been proven, particularly in consumer, and now increasingly with SaaS and enterprise, that you can invest at different points along the stack than we used to think and have great returns.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard
(the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from David Sze
Insight
David Sze: VCs should back category leaders over second-best alternatives
“If you think that the best company is Is this other company, and you believe that the economic rents and returns will accrue to that winner, then you should really go and back that company.”
David SzeApr 19, 2021▶ 9:0320VC: Greylock's David Sze on His Biggest Lessons Working with Mark Zuckerberg and Reid Hoffman, The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds, How To Think Through Price Discipline Today and How Truly Strong Venture Partnerships Function
“Facebook was very controversial, both internally and externally at Greylock when it was announced, because we invested at a five hundred million plus pre and wrote one of the biggest Checks that Gerlach had ever written at that time, and that was considered in…”
David SzeApr 19, 2021▶ 9:2420VC: Greylock's David Sze on His Biggest Lessons Working with Mark Zuckerberg and Reid Hoffman, The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds, How To Think Through Price Discipline Today and How Truly Strong Venture Partnerships Function
Insight
Senior venture capital partners must actively aim to become obsolete
“And the partners who are senior, one of their biggest goals is to get out of the way, to become obsolete, because that is the definition of success for the next generation, and it'll be the definition of success for Greylock in the long run.”
David SzeApr 19, 2021▶ 24:2920VC: Greylock's David Sze on His Biggest Lessons Working with Mark Zuckerberg and Reid Hoffman, The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds, How To Think Through Price Discipline Today and How Truly Strong Venture Partnerships Function
Opinion
Digg failed because its community became toxic while Reddit successfully evolved
“That was part of his success, but I think that that group of individuals actually became pretty trollish, quite honestly, by the end of it, and navigating how to succeed through that was very hard for Digg and for Kevin, and you watched someone like a Reddit c…”
David SzeApr 19, 2021▶ 29:3620VC: Greylock's David Sze on His Biggest Lessons Working with Mark Zuckerberg and Reid Hoffman, The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds, How To Think Through Price Discipline Today and How Truly Strong Venture Partnerships Function
PredictionNot checkable as stated
David Baszucki predicted early on that Roblox would surpass Minecraft
“I remember him saying, we're going to be bigger than Minecraft someday, and at that time, that was like the most laughable statement in the world, but Dave was convinced, and I just remember I'd check in with him, and he'd chip away at it, and eventually it be…”
David SzeApr 19, 2021▶ 12:1720VC: Greylock's David Sze on His Biggest Lessons Working with Mark Zuckerberg and Reid Hoffman, The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds, How To Think Through Price Discipline Today and How Truly Strong Venture Partnerships Function
PredictionNot checkable as stated
Investors doing aggressive preemptive rounds will get burned when the market turns
“On the flip side, I think it's very dangerous, and I think there's going to be people that get extremely burned when the music stops, and the music will stop.”
David SzeApr 19, 2021▶ 15:1620VC: Greylock's David Sze on His Biggest Lessons Working with Mark Zuckerberg and Reid Hoffman, The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds, How To Think Through Price Discipline Today and How Truly Strong Venture Partnerships Function
Made with StarZero
Turn any episode into a week of clips.
This entire site, over 1,200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable,
runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the
moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.