Orb is on a mission to revolutionize billing infrastructure.

In this episode of Greymatter, Greylock partner Saam Motamedi chats with Alvaro Morales, CEO and co-founder of Orb, a cutting-edge billing infrastructure platform designed for the next wave of SaaS and AI companies. Orb allows businesses to implement dynamic pricing models such as usage-based and hybrid systems, empowering companies like Vercel, Pinecone, and Perplexity to evolve their revenue strategies with ease. 

Morales highlights how Orb’s flexibility transforms revenue workflows, especially in industries like AI and cloud infrastructure, by allowing businesses to shift pricing models without extensive re-engineering. He notes, “Pricing is about as customer-centric and product-centric as you get.” – and goes on to explain that it’s about understanding what value you provide to your customers and how to best meet them.

For more great conversations like this one, please follow or subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also find a link to our YouTube channel in the description. Finally, we'd like to thank the people who helped make this podcast happen, including Elisa Schreiber and Fitz Barth.

This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm.

Transcript of episode:

Orb: https://www.withorb.com/

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Too often, usernames and passwords are the only thing standing between cyber criminals and an organization's data. While it seems obvious, implementing stronger identity controls has historically been a challenge for organizations because the mechanisms that cut off access to threats can also impede employees’ ability to access the systems they need to do their jobs. Opal Security was founded to solve for that tension. Opal Security CEO and co-founder Umaimah Khan spoke with Greylock partner Saam Motamedi about about the company’s mission to deliver scalable least privilege from a security-first standpoint without slowing businesses down.

You can read a transcript of this interview here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/security-first-identity/

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Guest episode of Product-Led AI, hosted by Greylock partner Seth Rosenberg. In this episode, he speaks with AI pioneer Mustafa Suleyman, who has been at the forefront of the technology through several major leaps forward. As the co-founder of DeepMind, Google’s VP of AI Policy and Products, the co-founder of Inflection, and now the CEO of Microsoft AI, he’s seen AI’s evolution into the transformative tech it is today. He shares his perspective on AGI, autonomous agents, and opportunities for startups.

You can read a transcript of this interview at https://productledaipod.com/podcasts/defining-intelligence/

You can watch the video of this interview at https://youtu.be/cNzRviY4Ei8?si=0Drr1xNbWkkbhPJf

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Greylock partner Corinne Riley reads her essay "Code Smarter, Not Harder: Solving the Unknowns to Developing AI Engineers."

Building AI tools for code generation and engineering workflows is one of the most exciting and worthy undertakings by startups today. But there are still many open questions about the technical unlocks that must be solved to make coding tools that work as well as (or better than) human engineers in a production setting. Riley explores these core questions alongside an analysis of the current ecosystem of startups developing AI coding tools. You can read the essay here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/code-smarter-not-harder/

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App-tracking rules closed the door on user-tracking and targeted ads, but AI opened up new channels of engagement and personalization that previously weren’t possible. Commerce infrastructure company Fermat ushers businesses into this new era of online retail. CEO and co-founder Rishabh Jain talks with Greylock partner Saam Motamedi about the double impact of ATT and AI on commerce, and how Fermat is helping to build the next generation of online businesses. You can read the transcript of this interview here on greylock.com.

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Audio version of the essay "The Big 4 Era: Shifting Power Dynamics in the AI-Focused Cloud" written by Greylock partners Jason Risch and Jerry Chen (read by Greylock head of editorial Heather Mack).

It’s never been harder to compete with the Big 3 cloud providers. As the AI revolution has shifted NVIDIA into the central power broker of the tech ecosystem, AWS, Azure, and GCP have rushed to build their AI edge. In this “Big 4” era, What’s left for startups?

At Greylock, we see ample opportunities in developer tools, infrastructure, agents, apps, security, codegen, and robotics. These observations our based on our daily work, as well as our ongoing data collection and analysis for our Castles in the Cloud project. This essay outlines those areas of opportunity, as well as those that are better suited for incumbents. You can read the essay at greylock.com.

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Guest episode of Product-Led AI, a new podcast series hosted by Greylock partner Seth Rosenberg featuring conversations with leading AI builders.

Adept CEO and co-founder David Luan has been riding the LLM wave since the early days of the modern AI boom: an early OpenAI employee, he led the company’s engineering team before serving as the tech lead for Google Brain’s work on LLMs. He co-founded Adept in 2022 to develop multimodal agents built to work alongside humans in any profession. Believing computers should work more like humans and not the other way around, Adept has stood out for its human-centric approach to AGI. 

In this episode, David talks about the moment he realized building a new product (and a startup) was a faster track to AGI; breaks down the frameworks for Adept; and shares his view of a future where AI functions almost invisibly below all software we use. 

Check out the whole series at productledaipod.com

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Guest episode of Product-Led AI, the new series hosted by Greylock partner Seth Rosenberg where he chats with builders who put the power of AI into products that people love.

This week, AI visionary (and fellow Greylock partner) Reid Hoffman talks with Seth about the main opportunities in the application layer of AI, with an extra deep dive on AI-powered networks and marketplaces. Having been instrumental in building and scaling several iconic networks throughout his career, Hoffman has learned the core fundamentals of building these types of businesses don't change much - they just look different, depending on the latest tech platform shift.

About the series: Investor and former product builder Seth Rosenberg talks with founders about their inspiration and process to build, test, and continually reimagine how AI and humans work together. You can find more about the series at productledaipod.com.

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Special guest episode of Product-Led AI, a new podcast hosted by Greylock partner Seth Rosenberg. In this series, he focuses on the central question: How do you make AI useful?

While plenty of money and attention goes to large language models and GPUs, it takes a different skill set to build AI products that change the way we work, learn, and live. We’re seeing this in AI co-pilots, AI-first networks and marketplaces, and entirely reimagined software categories where AI is solving long-standing challenges in new ways. But how do they actually do it?

Investor and former product builder Seth Rosenberg talks with founders about their inspiration and process to build, test, and continually reimagine how AI and humans work together. You can find more about the series at productledaipod.com.

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Greylock general partner Jacob Andreou reads his essay on how to build valuable products during moments of technology transitions. Having previously led product and growth for one of the iconic native apps of the mobile era (Snap), Andreou developed a perspective on some of the best (and worst) strategic and tactical decisions companies can make during tech shifts. It starts by asking an important question: Are you building a novel solution to an enduring need, enabled by new technology?

Using lessons learned from his hands-on experience at Snap and observations across other companies, Andreou provides a framework for evaluating your product and company to ensure you are building a transformative product and not a toy.

You can read the full essay, "From Ports to Transformations: Strategies for Building Enduring Consumer Products During Tech Shifts here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/building-enduring-consumer-products-during-tech-shifts/

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Building a defensible system of intelligence at a time when LLMs are becoming commoditized (and when all the classic moats like economies of scale are more important than ever) isn’t easy. But Instabase, which provides an applied AI platform for enterprise organizations to run various operational processes, has managed to accrue a large customer base and recently hit $2 billion valuation. The company has gained traction largely because they've taken cues directly from customers since day one while incorporating the latest technology advances to continually expand their product, making it useful across hundreds of different use cases for a range of industries.

Greylock general partner and Instabase board member Jerry Chen spoke with Instabase CEO and founder Anant Bhardwaj about the company’s journey amid the fast-changing AI landscape.

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