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The personal blog of Adam Nash

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100+ Years of Flora
Jun 9, 2026 · original
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, and yet their lives were so deeply woven together that it feels somehow complete that they are together again now. But I will try. When someone lives to be 100, you learn very quickly that they did not get there by accident. In my grandmother Flora’s case, I think part of the secret was that she wasted absolutely nothing. Not food. Not money. Not paper. Not a single rubber band. When I was little, I would come over to her house and there was a drawer that seemed magical to me. It had two things in it: piles of S&H Green Stamps and countless rubber bands from the newspapers. I would li
Figma: A Random Walk in Palo Alto (2025)
Jul 31, 2025 · original
Figma’s first conference, Config 2020. 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. 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 of people would let computers, rather than humans, manage their money. But I always take time for people, particularly students just coming out of college and embarking on a career in Silicon Valley. So I met with Dylan for an hour, and we walked around the City C
Putting Family First in Financial Planning
May 23, 2023 · original
A happy engaged couple in their 20s before they figure out how to integrate their finances… (July 2001) 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 capability. You can have an IQ over 140 and multiple degrees from incredible institutions and still not really understand the difference between a bank account and a brokerage account, what actions lead to a good credit score, or how to think about decisions like whether to rent or buy a house. This is one of the reasons why for the past six years I have invested the time and effort to create and teach a new course at Stanford University class, “ Personal Finance for Engin
Daffy: From Acorns to LinkedIn
Nov 29, 2022 · original
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, and where the journey takes you once you launch. Daffy was based on a number of fairly simple, but powerful, inspirations: The idea that we teach our children to put money aside for charity , but that as adults we rarely follow that lesson. The idea that donor-advised funds are a great financial product , but are largely unknown to most people because the incumbents cater almost exclusively to the wealthy. The idea that the same behavioral finance insights that led us to build better systems to help people to save and invest could also be used to help p
Build The Future You Want To See
Oct 4, 2022 · original
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 $8 trillion in assets, and yet their impact is far broader than assets alone might suggest. Vanguard makes just a fraction of the revenue ($6.9B) of Fidelity Investments ($24B), but this is because Vanguard focuses more on making money for their customers rather than themselves. And while Vanguard has millions of happy customers, there are tens of millions of investors who are not customers of Vanguard who pay lower fees and have more money in retirement because Vanguard exists. They have forced an entire industry to offer higher quality financial pro
Figma: A Random Walk in Palo Alto
Sep 16, 2022 · original
Figma’s first conference, Config 2020. 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 of people would let computers, rather than humans, manage their money. But I always take time for people, particularly students just coming out of college and embarking on a career in Silicon Valley. So I met with Dylan for an hour, and we walked around the City Center in Palo Alto talking about his new company. The next day, I sent him a note asking if there was any more room in his seed round , offering to help him with product, growth, and recruiting. Yesterday, that company (Figma) was acquired by Adobe for $20 Billion . From Intern to Founder In 2010, Dylan
A Goal for Giving
Feb 8, 2022 · original
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 a worthy cause they had a deep connection to. Other times it was a fundraiser for one of the schools that my children attended. But overall, it was reactive, not proactive. This all changed for me in 2011. I first learned about donor-advised funds when LinkedIn went public in 2011. All of a sudden, private wealth managers became ubiquitous on campus. Part their sales process, as it turns out, was to promote the tax-deductible benefits of giving to charity through donor-advised funds. The concept of a donor-advised fund appealed to me, but it raised an important question: how much should y
It’s Time to Build… in Public
Sep 30, 2021 · original
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 first step possible in finding a truly world-class co-founder . Alejandro is one of those rare talents that makes Silicon Valley special, a true builder and an inspiration. Together we set off on a journey to turn an audacious mission and vision into a reality. We have been very fortunate. Despite building this company during the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been joined by an incredibly talented team . Each member of our founding team has taken a leap of faith that together we’ll be able to build something out of nothing. So many investors have also been willing to take that leap with us and fund our early effor
Silicon Valley Home Prices, Stock Prices & Bitcoin (2021)
Mar 19, 2021 · original
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 in Silicon Valley, with Bitcoin added just for fun. Given the incredible rise in technology stock prices and Bitcoin in the past few years, it seemed worthwhile to update the data in the original post. Talking about home prices in Silicon Valley is always a sensitive topic, because the lack of affordable housing continues to be a both difficult and heavily political topic. As someone who grew up here, it seems painfully obvious that the primary problem is the overwhelming resistance of local city councils to approve housing unit construction that meets ever increasing demand. This post isn’t about that i
Just Getting Started…
Dec 1, 2020 · original
“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 for 2020 , and I couldn’t be more delighted to be setting off on this adventure with Alejandro. Alejandro is one of those rare talents that makes Silicon Valley special. When we first met, he was a contract engineer from Argentina, referred by Google to LinkedIn as we prepared for the Open Social launch back in 2007. But Alejandro had an unstoppable desire to learn, moving from platform to search to mobile. Together, we collaborated on a number of innovative prototypes, including a search engine for Twitter based on LinkedIn data (I still miss this one…) His passion for new technologies, design, and great products is
Fintech 2025: The Next Wave
Nov 16, 2020 · original
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 a large number of multi-billion dollar companies. Unfortunately, when you are looking at seed stage opportunities, you have to think clearly about markets where there is the potential to build new multi-billion dollar product & companies. When the bubble burst in 2000-2, there was a lot of thought put into what had worked and what hadn’t worked with Web 1.0, and those insights formed the basis of the next wave of software companies (Web 2.0 / Social). Some of those same issues have plagued Fintech 1.0, and may instruct how to think about Fintech 2.0. As 2019 drew to a close, I too
Joining the Board of Directors at Shift
Sep 10, 2020 · original
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 a used car is simple. In 1991, when I turned 16, I had my first used car buying experience. My father took me to several different lots where we looked at the almost random assortment of cars in our price range. As it turns out, my father is a surprisingly good negotiator and had no trouble walking away from a bad deal. Unfortunately, that meant we walked off each and every lot we visited that day empty handed. Fortunately for me, my uncle saved us from having to do another day of traditional used car shopping, and I drove his used Toyota pick-up all through colle
A New Year & A New Adventure
Feb 28, 2020 · original
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 biggest milestone birthday, but combined with the weight of a new decade, it had me thinking deeply over the holidays. Fortunately, I was able to spend a good deal of time with friends & family, and by New Year’s Eve I felt comfortable with a simple, but important, decision. 2020 will be different. This will be the year that I go off on my own. The hardest part of this process was telling my team at Dropbox. I feel so very fortunate to have had the opportunity to lead such an amazing group of professionals. And as proud as I am of what we accomplished in 2018 & 2019, I’m even more excited about what this team wi
Be A Great Product Leader – Amplify 2019
Feb 10, 2020 · original
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 those of you who have seen earlier renditions of this talk, this version was cut down to thirty minutes, and as a result has a subset of topics. All of the lessons in this talk started as blog posts: The Secret to Product Prioritization . Three Buckets Find the Heat . Don’t Be Afraid to Talk About Emotion. Einstein’s Razor . Make Things As Simple As Possible, But Not Simpler. Obsess About Your Non-Users . Growth Comes from Them. Solve the Product Maze Backwards . Think Back from the Future. Know Your Superpower . Product. Design. Engineering. Over the past ten years, I’ve given versio
How Will You Measure Your Life?
Jan 26, 2020 · original
Source: Deseret News, Jan 24, 2020 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 agree to be an advisor to me on an independent project on the topic of disruption. Over the years, when I would visit HBS for recruiting or for a case study, I would always try to stop by to see him. Ever gracious and thoughtful, he may have been the most influential professor in my life. There have been some wonderful pieces written about Clay in the past couple of days, mostly reflecting on his impact on management theory or his lifelong dedication to his family and his church. The list of his accomplishments is appropriately long. However, there are a few personal de
Three Types of Risk: Making Decisions in the Face of Uncertainty
Apr 9, 2019 · original
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 the priorities we were pursuing. One of the topics that I was most fond of discussing was the nature of risk, and how to best lead teams when facing the various types of risk that are commonplace at hypergrowth startups. Here, Reid never varied, and I quickly adopted his framework as my own. In the end, most of our productive discussion involved deciding which of three types of risk a particular decision involved. Three Types of Risk Categorizing the type of risk you face is incredibly useful in helping teams understand how much effort and consideration to spending on making various types of decision
The Future of Drone Safety
Sep 13, 2018 · original
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 from this year’s gathering, there is no question in my mind that this insight turned out to be true. Responsibility was a significant theme this year. As the technology industry continues to grow and mature, more and more people are looking to investors and technology leaders to think ahead about potential issues that will happen when their creations become ubiquitous. It got me thinking about drones . The Problem with Drones The FAA projects that the number of drones will reach 7 million in just the US alone by 2020. The growth rates for both
Every Function Has a Superpower. What’s Yours?
Aug 13, 2018 · original
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 build exceptional products, you have to find a way to harness the unique and diverse viewpoints of a team of professionals across a wide variety of functions. Unfortunately, even at great companies, there is a repeated pattern where people in some functions feel disempowered. This doesn’t need to be the case. Every function has a superpower. Make sure you know what yours is. Every Function Has Value Hypergrowth software companies are relentless in their pursuit of efficiency. Everyone who joins a new company dreams of building something new, something better than
Joining Dropbox
Aug 8, 2018 · original
“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 confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well worn path; and that will make all the difference.” — Steve Jobs , Stanford University, June 2005 In 2012, I was seriously considering becoming a full time investor. I’ve always loved startups and venture capital, and I had been fortunate enough after leaving LinkedIn to have a chance to work for Greylock Partners, one of the most successful firms in the industry. In May of 2012, my daughter was born. While on parental leave, I remember receiving a note about a Greylock company that was looking to add to its execu
Index Funds: Good for Corporate Governance & Good for Crypto
Mar 22, 2018 · original
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 cast informed votes .” Unfortunately, Mr. Weil misses some of the most important incentives that drive long-term equity holders, including index funds. In fact, index funds are likely to be superior to active funds for effecting good long-term corporate governance. Index Funds Are Long-Term Owners In October 2017, Jack Bogle gave an interview with Morningstar that addressed this exact issue. His argument, as usual, was clear and compelling: Benz: How about on the governance front. I know you and I have talked about this over the years, about wh

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