David Sze
David Sze
David Sze is an entrepreneur, investor, and managing partner at the venture capital firm Greylock Partners. His areas of focus include consumer Internet and services, media convergence, wireless data, and technology-assisted marketing services...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
CountryUnited States of America
backed concluded engine money vacuum walked
The story of Google is just when everyone concluded that a search engine would never make any money, everyone backed out of it, and Google walked into that vacuum and dominated.
company deal exam final four great scary six venture
There's a final exam in venture every four to six years. The scary thing is you need to get an 'A' in every discipline. You need to be on generational planning, need to be on great deal flow, need be on great outcomes, you need to be on great company building.
fine fork whether
We listen to the entrepreneur. We try to have a fine tuning fork to understand what they are saying and whether that makes sense and know it when we see it. We don't try to do too much predicting.
best discovered mixed result reviewed
We reviewed our process at Greylock and discovered that the best investments are non-obvious enough that they result in a mixed vote by our partnership.
force forces pattern
One of the things I like about the Internet is it does force us to realize we're all humans, and it forces us to look at the pattern of people, not one moment.
appear best capital few
The best early-stage venture capital investments appear obvious in retrospect; however, very few of them are actually obvious when you make them.
coming decisions family life market people time
It's a market where individuals are coming into their own and making their own decisions as to who they want to be, what they want to buy, what they want to do. It's the time in the life where people are the wealthiest. They don't have a family to support.
believe technology opportunity
I think that it will be the mobile technologies, both from the enterprise and the consumer side, where super unicorns will come from. I still believe that social networking in combination with mobile will create opportunities for super unicorns.
perspective stay-focused staying
For us, whether the market is skewed from a bubble perspective or not really is mitigated by staying focused on what we do best.
thinking growth hitting
I think there are a lot of companies that are staying private longer. Much more of their growth is happening while they are on the private side. So their valuations are hitting $1 billion while they are still private more often.
earth social-network social
Every social network on Earth pitches me, and I say no to nearly every single one of them.
jobs moving college
College is a magic time. Yes, youre young and fickle, but you want to be part of this college experience... Then you graduate from that. You have your first job, moving to a new city.
risk matter laurels
When you rest on your laurels is right when you have the risk. It exists for every company, no matter how big.
two years four
When I started in the business in 1999 and 2000, we had companies that were going public in two, three or four years.