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- 📶 14 Lessons from Asheem Chandna (Partner @ Greylock)
📶 14 Lessons from Asheem Chandna (Partner @ Greylock)
The role of being 'discoverable', finding repeatable customer acquisition strategies, and the value of building curated networks of talent
Clay Norris
August 17, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
Good morning 👋
This week’s deep dive is on Asheem Chandna (@chandna), partner at Greylock.
Asheem has been with the firm for 20 years. He has decades worth of experience investing in enterprise businesses, and he has backed companies like Palo Alto Networks, Sumo Logic, AppDynamics, and others.
Here are some of our favorite lessons, quotes, and additional reading from studying Asheem.
Read the full post below, and explore all investor deep dives here.
Lessons
The old playbook for acquiring customers is broken. The most successful companies of the next decade will find repeatable cycles that acquire and educate customers without breaking the bank.
Bottom-up sales will become standardized. Companies will need place added resources to aid free-to-paid conversion.
The IPO process is not right for most tech companies. We’ve already seen venture-backed companies look for liquidity elsewhere (secondaries + M&A). Expect this trend to continue.
Take time to build curated networks of people. The better you curate a network of people you trust, the easier business becomes.
Always be looking for world-class people to work with. Occasionally you will meet people that operate on a level you didn’t know existed. Figure out how you can do work with these people.
Market first; founder second. You can’t beat a bad market.
Too many VCs want the best opportunities served to them on a plate. This is not how the game works. You have to work for them over a LONG time.
Great recruiting is what ultimately separates good companies from great companies. Great recruiting is telling stories, understanding the candidate, crafting the experience, and working to make it a strength of your organization.
Top-down sales will not disappear, but it is clear that we are moving to a world of bottom-up adoption. More businesses are building a PLG motion, but even the most product-focused teams will need an outbound sales process eventually.
Quotes
"If you are not 'discoverable,' chances for success are dim."
"You're looking for an individual that has some privileged insight and knowledge that has given them some unique advantage."
"Mobile plus cloud is the top secular trend we are living under today."
"Most people should give additional thought to what they are doing and try to be more strategic in thinking about where these journeys go to."
"Software sales have traditionally included a trial period where the prospect can evaluate and test the product, provide feedback, and request some degree of customization. In a virtual selling environment, that will continue, but it will require more sophistication."
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