Let’s just say it has been a year. While a few ambitious startups like InVision and GitLab built their corporate cultures and talent hiring with a remote-first mentality, the reality is that the vast majority of founders never thought they would have to be socially distant from all of their employees. And it isn’t going to change: Google recently announced that all of their employees will be work from anywhere until summer 2021. We are only getting started with this new model of work.
Culture, productivity, and speed are absolutely vital to the survival of early-stage startups, but how do you build growth and momentum in a remote-only world? And how are investors approaching this new environment and the opportunities that our changing patterns of work mean for us?
These are critical questions, which is why we are hosting a panel of VC investor superstars to talk more about them on the Extra Crunch stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2020.
First, we have Sarah Cannon, partner at Index Ventures who is perhaps best known in the Valley these days for her ambitious bet behind productivity tool Notion, which valued the relatively nascent startup at a cool $2 billion. Cannon has also backed messaging app Quill as well as Pitch, which offers collaboration around presentation documents. Future of work has been her bread and butter, and we’re excited to hear what she thinks is next in productivity and how startups will grow going forward.
Next, we have Sarah Guo, who is a general partner at Greylock. Guo also has been investing in the future of work and B2B tools including Clubhouse (not the Clubhouse you are thinking about) which helps dev teams collaborate more effectively. In addition, she has backed family benefits platform Cleo and a panoply of cybersecurity companies — an area that has become acutely important as the classic perimeter of the workplace office has been replaced with employee laptops scattered across locations worldwide.
Third and finally on this panel, we have Dave Munichiello, who is a general partner at GV. He’s backed a little social tool called Slack (I refuse to call it a productivity tool but that might be one person’s opinion), as well as that remote-first startup Gitlab, which has received upwards of a $3 billion valuation, and fintech infra company Plaid, which was sold to Visa last year for $5.3 billion in one of the biggest fintech exits of 2019.
From how to build products to how to build teams to what investors are looking for in startups in our crazy pandemic world, this panel has got you covered. Plus, since we are on the Extra Crunch stage at Disrupt 2020, we will be taking audience questions throughout the discussion. So come join the conversation as we figure out what 2020 means for the startup world this decade.
Get your pass today to Disrupt 2020. It’s 100% virtual which means we 100% want to see you there!
