I have been very lucky to work on or invest in many products I use every day including this. Now finding and helping the next great consumer companies at @a16z
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Articles by Josh Elman
The World-Building Doors Are Open, Again.
America | Tech | Opinion | Culture | Charts Hi, I’m Josh, and I’m thrilled to be here. Today I’m joining A16Z as a partner to help find and support the next generation of great consumer companies. In particular, I look forward to helping founders and teams navigate the journey from an early spark to a durable platform.
Modern Animal’s ‘What’s Next’ With Chewy
True backed Modern Animal in 2020 when reimagining vet care was a bet, not a blueprint. We invest before consensus — when belief matters more than proof. Today, Chewy has entered an agreement to acquire Modern Animal's care model. And the real story is what comes next. Read my full take on what this team built, why it matters, and where it goes from here.
50
50 is a big number. Half a century. Every new lap is worth celebrating. Wasn’t sure I was ever going to make it. Having a big health scare at 12 made me feel lucky about every year. And gosh I feel lucky. At 50, I look ahead and get to (mostly) pick what I want to do most with the rest of my life. Be with family. Hang with friends I like. Go places I want to. Work on things that are fun to work on, and good for the world. Or at some point not even work, just help.
A fun Easter egg hunt puzzle idea
Home Easter egg hunts are a lot of fun. Put eggs all over the yard and house and set forth on finding them! But… what do you put inside? Candy? Little prizes? Empty so that the fun is just the finding? I came up with a way to extend the hunt for another hour or so with a great puzzle activity. It turned out to be a really great morning. I created a whole new puzzle where each egg contained a piece of a puzzle that turned into a home scavenger hunt which eventually led to one big prize.
Earning the right to do the next thing is more important than doing the right thing once
I started with a tweet about some key understanding I wish I had earlier in life I wanted to expand on the first point and asked ChatGPT to do so. It did a great job with some key insights. But it did miss the importance of making sure you build relationships with the people you work with so that you understand them, they understand you, and you want to keep working together.
A couple of questions from someone wan
Should I start angel investing? So the first thing I always tell people is venture investing is a very easy way to lose a lot of money. Most startups fail and never even return the full amount invested in them. The earlier you go, the more risk. The last few years have seen a massive rise in secondary markets that you could buy into, and valuations are quite a bit down from the go go period of 2019–2021. I guess the same is true for public markets.
Interviewing your first product manager
Interview photo from LinkedIn Sales Solutions on Unsplash A friend recently asked my advice as they are interviewing their first product manager for their company. They wanted to understand what areas to probe, what to look for, and how to craft their interview loop. Here’s what I shared: For product roles — it’s a great question.
Word of 2021: Patient
Adjective: bearing provocation, annoyance, misfortune, delay, hardship, pain, etc., with fortitude and calm and without complaint, anger, or the like. Noun: a person who is under medical care or treatment. (Source: dictionary.com) Thinking back to the beginning of 2021, no one wanted to be patient, or a patient. We had been sitting around 2020 in the swirl of a pandemic, a stock market yo-yo, a political roller coaster with the election of Trump and Biden.
The History of the Dot Com Era
I graduated from college in 1997. While at college, the Netscape IPO, Yahoo IPO, eBay IPO, and Amazon IPO all happened. When I graduated, I couldn’t wait to go join this incredible time and be part of creating the next future of the internet. I moved to Seattle and joined a private company called Progressive Networks. It quickly changed its name to RealNetworks and went public in November of that year.
Sick Week
Recently, a friend of mine took a week off for learning that he called “Think Week”. I was reading his post and his preparation and felt a little jealous that he was in a place to take a week off, be free from schedule and responsibilities, and able to do all this great learning. I saved many of the articles to read later, and wondered to myself what it would take to get a week off. It’s hard between work, commitments, and family… And then last week happened.
What a decade. Thank u. Next!
A lot happened over the past decade. As I was thinking about the impact of the past ten years, I thought about some hopes I have towards the next ten.
Durability
When my (now) wife and I graduated from college, we somehow managed to end up with a bunch of bowls and plates from our dining hall. We used to get food and eat in my room, and so they started to accumulate. We kept six of each. They were made by Homer Laughlin. 23 years later, they are still here. We still eat off of those plates and bowls almost every day. We have gotten new plates and bowls over the years — some at our wedding, some we bought at a local Japanese market.
EFH-First Product Requests (Everything From Home)
Thanks to Corona Virus, we’re quickly moving from social lives to social distancing. We’re changing work from in person / in office to WFH. This is a great window of opportunity for new products. Here are a few ideas I was thinking about. If you are building anything like this, let me know, it would be fun to jam. One of the biggest challenges with Slack,email, group messaging, and most group communication channels is what happens when you ask a question or ask for feedback.
My Blueprint
My friend Luc Levesque wrote a piece on having a personal blueprint. It’s a great way to outline your work style and your quirks. Some people have called this a “user guide” or a “personal introduction”. Luc asked me to contribute to a of others sharing them publicly and for the first time I assembled mine from a number of pieces I had written separately. I wanted to post here on my Medium too. I’m thrilled to be working with you all.
My Dad’s 1982 Program
Today I spent the whole morning making a Scratch program for my family. It reminded me of something my brother recently unearthed and that my Dad used to make cool programs on the Vic 20. Amazing how the circle continues.
What is “Growth Hacking” really?
Image borrowed from Chris Messina There is a lot of buzz around the new term "Growth Hacking", and many companies I know or have met recently are looking for a "Growth Hacker". I worry sometimes that this feels like a fad and people think "ooh, I will grow much faster if I can just find a magical unicorn growth hacker" or start to believe that you really can hack sustainable growth in any way.
Make your Product Onboarding Better by Trying It Yourself
What many products feel like without great onboarding — Photo by Patrick Hodskins on Unsplash Apps are amazing. I use at least 15–20 apps every day to get information, connect with my friends, capture memories, make memories, order food, order everything, and more. I always enjoy learning about and trying out new products. So many times though, I get let down. Here’s how it usually goes: I am excited.
My Blueprint
My friend Luc Levesque wrote a piece on having a personal blueprint. It’s a great way to outline your work style and your quirks. Some people have called this a “user guide” or a “personal introduction”. Luc asked me to contribute to a of others sharing them publicly and for the first time I assembled mine from a number of pieces I had written separately. I wanted to post here on my Medium too. This is intended mostly for people I’d be working with directly on building products together.
Durability
When my (now) wife and I graduated from college, we managed to pack up a bunch of bowls and plates that were from our dining hall. We used to get food and eat in my room, and so they started to accumulate. We ended up with six of each. They were made by Homer Laughlin. 23 years later, they are still here. We still eat off of those plates and bowls almost every day. We have gotten new plates and bowls over the years — some at our wedding, some we bought at a local Japanese market.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our goal was to keep the flow as inline as possible to slow down the slack discourse if we can,m. Point taken on modals though — there may be lots of cases where we would want to encourage people to write more thoughtfully and if that takes a better form, so be it!
Introducing ThinkingTime
ThinkingTime is a Slack App that gives your team time to think. You use the App to post a question to your channel and then collect all responses to be released at the same time. One of the best things about today’s communications tools like email, Slack, and messaging are they are incredibly fast and efficient.
The future of social is Bringing People Together
Photo by “My Life Through A Lens” on Unsplash Twenty years ago, almost no one had an online “profile”, and when we used the term “friend” to describe someone, it referred to our “mutual bond of affection”, not “I added them on Facebook”. If you said you “liked” something, it generally meant that you actually really enjoyed or appreciated that thing, not just that you double-tapped. A lot has changed. Let’s take a moment to consider what has happened over the last 20+ years.
Oh this looks spectacular.
I will love to discuss more if you are interested in some mind-boggling consumer spending on these live shows and how VR could take it to the next level!
EFH-First Product Requests (Everything From Home)
Thanks to Corona Virus, we’re quickly moving from social lives to social distancing. We’re changing work from in person / in office to WFH. This is a great window of opportunity for new products. Here are a few ideas I was thinking about. If you are building anything like this, let me know, it would be fun to jam. One of the biggest challenges with Slack, email, group messaging, and most group communication channels is what happens when you ask a question or ask for feedback.
My First Computer Program Was A Game Log For The Super Bowl
We first got a Vic-20 when I was 5 years old. My dad was a tinkering programmer, and I was so impressed when he made changes to “WordProc” — which we would then we load in from the tape. Eventually, we upgraded to a Commodore 64 and then an Apple II+ over the years. Vic-20, Commodore 64, Apple II plus were just a few of the computers my dad bought for us I learned to program, too — just a little bit at first — in Turtle Logo and then Basic.
An Acquisition Story that Continues to Thrive
This morning, I woke up to the news that the SmartThings hub technology will be shipping inside Samsung TVs starting next year. This is fantastic — as good or better than I imagined when we (I was on the board then) decided to accept Samsung’s offer to acquire SmartThings back in the summer of 2014. SmartThings was the first investment that I led as a partner at Greylock.
What a decade. Thank u. Next!
A lot happened over the past decade. As I was thinking about the impact of the past ten years, I thought about some hopes I have towards the next ten.
I think we are saying the same thing.
I think we are saying the same thing. You shouldn’t just “build what is right” without any evidence or explanation. But you should be able to synthesize all of the input and the team’s feelings to build something compelling and incredible
Let’s talk about Product Management
Published on October 27, 2015October 27, 2015 • 1,037 Likes • 97 Comments I spent over a decade as a product manager at a number of different companies. One thing I realized was how little we talked about the job of product management. I rarely met product managers from other companies. But I always felt product management was one of the most important functions that when done well, helps make companies and products much better, and when done badly, can really hurt a company and team.
With subscription products, I think the key “metric” or how to think about “really using” the…
With subscription products, I think the key “metric” or how to think about “really using” the product is something around “consciously paying for every month/pay cycle”. I think there is a fine line as you point out between “paying for something” and actually using it. For example, I pay for HBO - I don’t necessarily watch something on HBO every month, but I do consciously know I am paying for HBO and haven’t cancelled.
Growth Hack Your Way To Success, Like Facebook, Twitter, And LinkedIn
As the world prepares for Twitter’s potential IPO , many startups, founders, and investors are looking to Twitter to understand parallels to other Silicon Valley successes and want to know how it got here and what the growth potential is going forward. How did Twitter grow from a small 140-character posting service to a tech giant with more than 200 million users? Can it grow all the way to a billion users like Facebook ?
Intuitive Design vs. Shareable Design
Snapchat’s interface baffles a lot of people. Not to pick on older folks, but people over a certain age tend to have a hard time figuring out how to do the most basic things with Snapchat, like finding its face swap feature. I can’t tell you how many people have whined to me about Snapchat. “Oh, I can’t figure it out,” they cry. “Why is it so complicated?” I’m here to tell you that the obscurity of Snapchat’s design is not a bug, it’s a feature.
Building to Independence on Top of Other Platforms
Every early-stage consumer startup spends most of its energy trying to figure out how to grow from something really small to something really big. For many, it is all part of that elusive search for organic virality and spread that results in a large user base. One question founders ask me often is whether it's recommended - or even safe - to build distribution on top of Facebook, Google SEO, Twitter, Instagram or other platforms.
Our investment in Operator – Greylock Perspectives
Today from my smartphone I can talk to my friends and coworkers in so many ways — calling, texting, snapping, messengering, tweeting, slacking, and more. But if I want to talk to a business nearby, I usually have just one option — find their phone number and call them. Robin Chan and Garrett Camp have a plan to change this with their new app Operator. They want to make it just as easy to talk to businesses around us as we can talk to our friends.
Our Investment in Mammoth Media – Greylock Perspectives
There are probably 1 billion phones in the world that people have looked at in the past hour. 98% of millennials in the United States have a smartphone. While some people say “mobile is dead” (for new investments / startups) or “no one is downloading new apps”, this just doesn’t match up with the rapidly increasing numbers and time spent on mobile. Consumers are always on the hunt for new, fun ways to interact with content and each other.
The Facebook Conspiracy Theories are Wrong – I. M. H. O. – Medium
It feels like every few months, Facebook makes some changes, and some group or another rises up and declares it is a massive Facebook attack against them. Sometimes it’s developers complaining that the open graph giveth and taketh away, sometimes it’s that Facebook is hiding posts from pages/advertisers to get brands and advertisers to spend money, or its others saying Facebook is greedily just trying to hoard the social graph all for itself and block innovation.
Snap is growing up with the people that use it. – Josh Elman – Medium
Snap is growing up with the people that use it. But onboarding matters for whatever demographic you hope will adopt it Agree on the camera company. Takes away the importance of communication
Snap really isn’t that obscure. It takes under a few minutes to learn the basics at most.
Snap really isn’t that obscure. It takes under a few minutes to learn the basics at most.The key is just connecting with people who are using the product and engaging, sharing, and more with them. The fact the UI creates a conversation helped draw people in and draw them together. If you don’t have people in the product to share it with, it won’t matter at all.
I stand behind it 100%. – Josh Elman – Medium
I stand behind it 100%. It is a key reason Snapchat got to where it got to. However as products grow their userbase and evolve to different demographics they have to evolve and get easier and appropriately onboard more users. What worked for teens and college kids who are constantly around each other and able to share Snapchat in person made it grow fast and get adopted very deeply.
I lost on Jeopardy!
There isn’t a better feeling than having one of your dreams come true. And when it turns into embarrassing yourself in front of your family, friends, entire college, and a national television audience, well that’s my story. Growing up, it was a huge dream of mine to get on Jeopardy! (note the exclamation point is part of the name, not just that I exclaim a lot). I got started with trivia early — one of my favorite books as a kid (and I still have it) is “Fabulous Facts About the Fifty States”.
True. But in this case I needed the guess to start knocking out the disease and was glad to get it
One clap, two clap, three clap, forty? By clapping more or less, you can signal to us which stories really stand out.
Thank you and I hope you are far on your path to recovery too!
One clap, two clap, three clap, forty? By clapping more or less, you can signal to us which stories really stand out.
Sick Week - Josh Elman - Medium
Recently, a friend of mine took a week off for learning that he called “Think Week”. I was reading his post and his preparation and felt a little jealous that he was in a place to take a week off, be free from schedule and responsibilities, and able to do all this great learning. I saved many of the articles to read later, and wondered to myself what it would take to get a week off. It’s hard between work, commitments, and family… And then last week happened.
The analysis is helping you uncover how frequently people come back and at what likelihood.
The analysis is helping you uncover how frequently people come back and at what likelihood. I start by defining “coming back” with at least one identified session with the user in the second time period. But you really want to organize this by the number of different days they engage and then use this to predict likelihood of returning. And then to understand why.
Thanks for laying out that very clearly. – Josh Elman – Medium
Thanks for laying out that very clearly. I think the big thing we still don’t agree on is whether publishing data on a website on the internet automatically makes that data “public” where the whole world now has a right to that data. In the physical world, we have a sense of control over spaces. A store is a public place in that anyone can walk in, but if you were loitering and making customers uncomfortable, you could be asked to leave. Why is a website any different?
From Smart Phones to Smart Homes: Our Investment in Otto
We believe that over the next decade, our homes will become as digital and connected as our phones are now. In 2013, I led Greylock’s investment in SmartThings, a company building the hub and OS for connecting devices in the home. Less than a year later, Samsung acquired SmartThings and they have continued to make great progress towards that vision.
It is very hard to give specific advice without understanding your product or situation.
It is very hard to give specific advice without understanding your product or situation.
I agree 100% - Josh Elman - Medium
Product Guy. I have worked on Twitter, Facebook Connect, Zazzle, LinkedIn, RealPlayer. Partner at Greylock, looking for crazy new things.
I wrote something a few years ago about this. – Josh Elman – Medium
I wrote something a few years ago about this. I think the key is creating deep meaningful and habitual engagement and then layering on business opportunities. But it’s always a good question until the business model is more proven. That said, having a deep engagement cycle is a great first start.
i just gave you a bunch of one-handed claps. – Josh Elman – Medium
Product Guy. I have worked on Twitter, Facebook Connect, Zazzle, LinkedIn, RealPlayer. Partner at Greylock, looking for crazy new things.
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