The personal blog of Adam Nash
On May 22, at the age of 100 1/2, my grandmother Flora passed away. This post is transcript of the eulogy that I gave at her memorial service. My previous post about my grandfather is here. It is hard to speak about my grandmother without also speaking about my grandfather. They were such different people, Continue reading 100+ Years of Flora
Note: On September 16, 2022, I wrote a post about Figma after the announcement of a $20B acquisition offer from Adobe. As it turns out, that acquisition didn t happen, but this story deserves to live. So this post has been updated to reflect the journey to the Figma IPO (Ticker: FIG) on July 31, 2025. Continue reading Figma: A Random Walk in Palo Alto (2025)
Living a healthy financial life is far more difficult than most people believe. For most of us, our education in personal finance is relatively limited. We learn some from our parents and our friends, but for the most part, we are left to educate ourselves. This is not primarily an issue of intelligence, ambition, or Continue reading Putting Family First in Financial Planning
This blog post was also published on Daffy.org Steve Jobs famously talked about connecting the dots of your life in his now well-known commencement speech in 2005. There’s something incredibly insightful and at the same time humbling about that framing as a founder when you look at the differences between the product you set out to build, Continue reading Daffy: From Acorns to LinkedIn
One of the reasons that I am so passionate about entrepreneurship is because of my belief that companies can be highly effective agents of change. This isn’t just a feature of technology companies built in Silicon Valley. Vanguard is an inspiring example, headquartered in Malvern, PA. They are immensely successful — now responsible for over Continue reading Build The Future You Want To See
On June 25, 2013, Dylan Field, one of my favorite interns from LinkedIn dropped by Wealthfront headquarters in Palo Alto to catch up and get some advice about his new startup, Figma. At the time, I was up to ears with work as the new CEO, trying to sell the crazy idea that someday millions Continue reading Figma: A Random Walk in Palo Alto
Like many people, for most of my career, I never set an explicit goal for giving to charity. While I was raised to believe that everyone should put something aside for those less fortunate than themselves, in practice, I mostly gave only when I was asked. Sometimes it was a friend running a marathon for Continue reading A Goal for Giving
In 2020, I set off to build a new company. At the time, I never would have imagined that we d end up building one during the largest pandemic in a century. Lao Tzu said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and I count myself fortunate to have made the best Continue reading It s Time to Build in Public
A little less than four years ago, I wrote a post about home prices in Silicon Valley and how they relate to stock prices and Bitcoin. It was one of the most popular posts on my blog from 2017. The original compared housing prices in Palo Alto to a few of the largest technology companies Continue reading Silicon Valley Home Prices, Stock Prices Bitcoin (2021)
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step Lao Tzu As the year draws to a close, I wanted to share some good news: Alejandro Crosa I have started a new company, and we ve raised an initial round of funding led by Ribbit Capital. This was one of my goals Continue reading Just Getting Started
When I first joined Greylock at the end of 2011, Fintech wasn t even a word that was commonly used in the venture capital community. Less than a decade later, however, Fintech has become almost ubiquitous. The category has not only proven that it can generate real revenues and scale, but also that it can create Continue reading Fintech 2025: The Next Wave
Today, I m happy to announce that I ve joined the Board of Directors of Shift, a company that has spent the last 6 years reimagining the used car experience. Shift is a marketplace that buys and sells cars directly from consumers without all the usual shady tactics that run rampant in the industry. With Shift, buying selling Continue reading Joining the Board of Directors at Shift
Some personal news to share today. After a great tour of duty at Dropbox, I’ve decided to take the leap into something new. Having a January birthday has always added a little weight to my New Year’s resolutions, and as it turns out, 2020 was a big one for me. 45 might not be the Continue reading A New Year A New Adventure
On October 8, 2019, I was asked to give my talk, Be A Great Product Leader to a huge audience at Amplify 2019, the product management conference organized by Amplitude.* The talk is named after possibly my most famous blog post on the topic of product leadership from 2011, Be A Great Product Leader. For Continue reading Be A Great Product Leader Amplify 2019
On January 23, 2020, Clayton Christensen passed away at the age of 67. I found out about his passing during my commute home from work on Friday, and it left me reflecting deeply on my experiences with Clay. I enrolled in his class back in 2000 at HBS, and was fortunate enough to have him Continue reading How Will You Measure Your Life?
One of the fond memories I have of my first two years at LinkedIn was coming into the office almost every Sunday to spend a couple of hours with Reid Hoffman. Our conversations covered a wide range of topics, but the time ensured that we were fully aligned on the strategy of the company and Continue reading Three Types of Risk: Making Decisions in the Face of Uncertainty
Every time I go to the CODE Conference, I learn something new. There is something about watching some of the most prominent technology executives and founders responding to questions from talented journalists that gets me thinking. Four years ago, I wrote about the transition technology CEOs needed to make from economics to politics. Coming back Continue reading The Future of Drone Safety
Over the course of my career, I ve been fortunate enough to work in a variety of different functions. No matter whether it is engineering, design, product, or service, every role has its own unique set of requirements and challenges. Maybe that s why I have always believed strongly that software is a team sport. If you want to Continue reading Every Function Has a Superpower. What s Yours?
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the Continue reading Joining Dropbox
On March 8th, Dick Weil, co-CEO of London-based Janus Henderson Investors,wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that the SEC should prevent index-funds from voting on shareholder proxies. In it, he argues that index funds “have no interest in the performance of particular companies” and that index funds “lack a strong incentive to Continue reading Index Funds: Good for Corporate…
On December 25, 2017, I tweeted out a page from the World Economic Forum about Ikigai and was shocked at how broadly it spread. This post elaborates on the concept. Over the last twenty years, I ve been asked by hundreds of students for advice on how to think about their careers post-graduation. Inevitably, I ve always responded Continue reading Ikigai: How to Find Professional Success
For those looking for the course material, I’ve posted the slides for all 10 sessions on a parallel site: http://cs007.blog On September 26th, I had the great pleasure of officially kicking off a brand new course at Stanford University, “Personal Finance for Engineers“. The course was offered through the Computer Science department (CS 007), but was Continue reading Stanford CS 007: Personal…
Update: For those looking for full course material, I m posting it on a parallel site: http://cs007.blog Yesterday, I had the great pleasure of officially kicking off a new course at Stanford University, Personal Finance for Engineers . The course is offered through the Computer Science department (CS 007), but is open to undergraduate graduate students Continue reading Stanford CS 007: Personal…
As the father of young children, I can tell you that there is a special place in my heart for restaurants that provide puzzles and crayons for small children to pass the time. On a recent trip out to The Counter in Mountain View, Jordan (who is 8) was really struggling with a large maze Continue reading Solve the Product Maze Backwards
“Every day stuff happens to us. Jobs arise in our lives that we need to get done. Some are little jobs, some are big ones. Some jobs surface unpredictably. Other times we know they’re coming. When we realize we have a job to do, we reach out and pull something into our lives to get Continue reading Helping People Save is a Job Worth Doing
I m writing this post with a bit of trepidation, because talking about Silicon Valley home prices these days is a bit dicey. The surge of the last five years has been shocking, and almost no one I know feels good about how difficult it is for people to buy a new home in Silicon Valley Continue reading Silicon Valley Home Prices, Stock Prices Bitcoin
Today, Reid Hoffman shared the news that I’ve rejoined Greylock Partners at an Executive in Residence. I couldn’t be more excited to be back. This is an unusual step for me, as it is the first time in my twenty-year career that I’ve decided to come back to a firm. Then again, Greylock is an Continue reading Back at Greylock
This is an extension to my original three post series on user acquisition. Today, AirBnB announced that it had reached a settlement with the city of San Francisco on how to effectively register and monitor legal listings in the city. I am a huge fan of the company, and it seems like a positive outcome for Continue reading Spend Time Thinking About The People Who Don t Use Your Product
I've come to believe that there are two facets of product leadership that have become increasingly important for delivering a high quality product experience: curation editorial.
In 2016, voice-based interfaces exploded into the imagination of the startup community as a potential new consumer platform. Amazon deserves much of the credit for this radical shift, as the Amazon Echo seemed to jump the chasm from early adopters to a more mainstream market. Of course, voice has been a hot topic now for years, as Continue reading Forget the Turing Test. The Key to Conversational…