Josh Elman
Partner at Greylock. Previously Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. Seeking crazy ideas.
Discussion
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Josh Elman
@joshelman · Partner, Greylock
Hi I’m Josh Elman. I’m a VC at Greylock where I get to invest in great founders and companies building new consumer apps and products. I’m involved in Medium, Nextdoor, Operator, Jelly, Meerkat and SmartThings. Before becoming a VC, I got to help build Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Zazzle, and RealPlayer as a product manager and engineer.
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Matt Mazzeo
@mazzeo · Managing Director, Lowercase Capital
Hey @joshelman,
What's a prediction that David Sze and Reid Hoffman have for the future that you vehemently disagree with and why?
Mazz
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Josh Elman
@joshelman · Partner, Greylock
@mazzeo so the hard part is we agree alot - I got to work with them both at linkedin and facebook as they were contrarian believers in social networking. Since I joined Greylock, one area I pushed that I didn't have as much agreement on was Internet of Things / Connected Home. I'm a huge believer that every mechanical device in our home is going to get smarter and have more sensors and data, and will make our lives smoother and easier. When I proposed investing in SmartThings, there was some resistance and skepticism. Fortunately, as a partnership, I had the support to go hang myself out to dry, and even better the company made great progress quickly and we sold to Samsung last year for a nice outcome (and they have continued doing great work there).
Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
Excited to have you here, Josh. When we first met IRL about 3 years ago, I asked you for advice on which startups I should consider joining as I was considering leaving PlayHaven. I recently met up with a friend that's going through the same transition.
What advice would you give and what type of questions should young PM's, marketers, designers, etc. ask themselves when deciding where to go next?
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Josh Elman
@joshelman · Partner, Greylock
@rrhoover great question. Whenever I have thought about where I work and where else I could work, I always asked myself "what product do I love today and think should be much much bigger and used by many more people in the world?". If the product I was working on wasn't in the top 5, I'd think about trying to go work on a product that was in that list for me. I think it's really important to choose something you legitimately love and believe can be a lot bigger and more important in the world. If you convince yourself to work somewhere because you think it can pay you a lot of money, you won't be as happy working on it, and you won't go to sleep or wake up thinking about how you can make the product better nearly as often (except perhaps in nightmares)
Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
@joshelman Thanks for joining us Josh!
What advice would you give to your 22 year old self if you were 22 in 2015?
What about your 30 year old self?
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Josh Elman
@joshelman · Partner, Greylock
@eriktorenberg i would tell myself to marry the girl I'm with (fortunately I did!). And I'd tell myself to realize that everyone I was working with had good intentions -- it makes a huge difference when you trust the people you work with and vice versa.
Scott Hurff
@scotthurff · Product Manager & Lead Designer, Tinder
@joshelman great to see you on PH Live, and sorry I missed you when you were down at Tinder. Question: What's been the DNA held in common by the hugely-successful orgs of which you've been a part? In other words, why do you think Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter were so successful?
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Josh Elman
@joshelman · Partner, Greylock
@scotthurff this is a great question. What impressed me about all of the companies is the founders and in those early days pretty much all of the employees shared this optimistic belief that we could make a big difference for the world. And every decision came back to whether it would help make that more possible, and avoided any short term tradeoffs. Also all of the companies had a very healthy mix of understanding of data along with this vision so decisions were not just based on he said / she said opinions
Scott Hurff
@scotthurff · Product Manager & Lead Designer, Tinder
@joshelman thank you, sir!
Leo Polovets
@lpolovets · Partner, Susa Ventures
@joshelman I've worked with a lot of great PMs in my career, but you were the very best one. I'd love to know:
1) What do you think are the characteristics of a strong PM?
2) What advice do you have for people starting out in PM?
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Josh Elman
@joshelman · Partner, Greylock
@lpolovets aww thanks Leo - I loved working together too. I still tell stories of the name hack we figured out. I think the characteristics of a strong PM are someone who gets the team to build consensus and own the problems together. It's important that everyone on the team gets a chance to contribute to finding the best potential ideas to solve the problems they want to. For aspiring PMs, I encourage as many as I can who have engineering backgrounds to code professionally for at least a year, maybe two. You go through the entire cycle of building something, changing features along the way, shipping it, learning what worked and didn't, staying up late to fix the bugs, and building v2 on top of what you built. With at least one turn through the cycle you'll have a totally different perspective when you are in a meeting and say "can't we just do this instead?" and know how much work an engineer or few now have to do because of that. Without that empathy, it's hard to be a great PM
Alex Finkielsztein
@alfink92
If you could start a business in any industry/sub-sector tomorrow what would you choose and why?
Sydney Liu
@sydney_liu_sl · Co-Founder of Commaful
@joshelman
Hi Josh,
Loving the Medium posts and your talks (like at @jason’s Launch incubator) about product development. Keep them up :D
During the extremely early stages of a product, what should be the main things a founder should focus on and talk to the users about? Say somebody comes up with an idea that they think can be a great company and solves a killer problem. Builds a basic prototype in a day and launches on ProductHunt, has 1k users now. What’s next?
There are obviously a lot of things that need drastic improvement with the product because it’s so early, probably every piece of the funnel could use drastic improvement and the core use of the product as well. Where would you look for indicators of what to focus on/change first and what would the next 7 days of working on the product look like for you?
Thanks a bunch!
Sydney
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Josh Elman
@joshelman · Partner, Greylock
@sydney_liu_sl so if you got to 1k users, that's a huge first step. The key is to think about who is sticking around and finding the product useful, and why. Once you start to understand that, you can continue to build more features that lean into that use case. I would look less at the data from your users, and in those first few weeks talk to as many as you can to hear the early anecdotes. I like to joke that the plural of anecdote is data, but in some ways it's true - you start with a few stories and then your data shows you if those stories are happening more and more frequently even with users you can't talk to
Sameer Noorani
@sameernoorani · CEO, Roomvine
@joshelman
Scenario: A startup has a built unique product. Not based in the US. Nature of the product is such that its difficult to seed without adequate marketing capital so it has limited traction and growth. Team with a great resume but not in tech/startup. Massive market size with no competition.
Question: What would it take for you to realistically invest in such a startup?
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Josh Elman
@joshelman · Partner, Greylock
@sameernoorani i think the best way to get your first investment is to find people in your region and / or domain that understand what you are doing and are willing to make the bet. As you get more traction and growth, it becomes easier for others to understand your plan towards world domination. For me personally, I focus most of my investments on domains I have worked in and understand well, have built strong networks, and in areas where I can really help the companies succeed
Brett Watson
@brettewatson · Learner
@joshelman I am deeply interested in highly technical fields that I foresee being huge industries in the future (eg: automated vehicles, hyperloop, etc), but I am non technical (I do marketing). How can I break into companies that are reserving spots only for essential/technical people before they get big?
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Josh Elman
@joshelman · Partner, Greylock
@brettewatson great question Brett! To get into an early company, you have to hustle, network and become as much of an expert as you possibly can. I also find sharing up front work to show how much you want the job and are thinking about the problem. Just saying "hey I can market, i'd like to work with you" isn't as compelling as saying "Hey I've been studying everything i can about automated vehicles, I've done 3 studies with professors, and here is one idea I had for a campaign to encourage truckers to try trucks with new automation systems"