John Lilly, Partner at Greylock, on 'product intentionality' and humility in venture

'The best founders are intentional around product,' says John Lilly, Partner at Greylock and former CEO at Mozilla. ‘It’s about how you understand user needs and be intentional about matching those needs, figuring out what people really truly need, and building the right thing for that.' John joined Greylock as a partner in 2011, leading their investments in Dropbox, Tumblr and Instagram. Prior to Greylock, John was CEO of Mozilla - the organization behind Firefox, the open source Web browser used by more than 450 million people. John also co-founded Reactivity, an enterprise security infrastructure company acquired by Cisco in 2007, where he served as founding CEO and later CTO. Earlier in his career, John held positions on the executive team at Trilogy Software and as a Senior Scientist in Apple’s research labs. Speaking to Seedcamp partner Carlos Espinal, John discusses the evolution of his views around product intentionality and the importance of putting users first. He discusses his transition from product, technology and operationally focused roles at Reactivity and Mozilla, to investment. At the early stage, he argues, venture capital is about betting on founding leadership teams and vision. 'In consumer internet especially you just learn this profound humility because you just can’t figure out things a priori'. Learn more about how Firefox was scaled from 3% to 25% of web browser users, why it is sensible to prioritise user needs, and why the position of COO will always be amorphous. Show notes: Carlos Medium: sdca.mp/2entVR3 Seedcamp: www.seedcamp.com Greylock: www.greylock.com Mozilla: www.mozilla.org Related bio links: Carlos: linkedin.com/in/carloseduardoespinal / twitter.com/cee Robin: linkedin.com/in/johnlilly / twitter.com/johnolilly

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This Much I Know is the podcast from Seedcamp, Europe’s seed fund. Tune into hear the inside story from startup founders, investors and leading tech voices: the people who’ve built businesses, scaled globally, failed fantastically and learnt massively. Seedcamp invests early in world-class founders attacking large, global markets and solving real problems using technology. Seedcamp provides the infrastructure to fast-track a founder’s vision and create value through immediate access to smart capital, a lifelong community of support and a global network built upon a decade’s experience backing exceptional talent.