John Lilly, former CEO of Mozilla, announced Thursday he was stepping down as general partner at Greylock Partners, citing plans to focus on political activism, like taking a board role at VotingWorks, a startup focused on building new, secure voting systems in the U.S. (Recode)
Talking point: Founded in 1965, Greylock Partners is one of the oldest venture capital firms; the firm is famed in the tech space, known for its early investment in Facebook. Lilly is the third high-profile person—the second of Greylock’s six general partners—to leave full-time employment at the firm within the past year. Since VC firms rely on small, close partnerships to agree on which startups to back, this string of departures is a concerning sign. Though Greylock is still doing well financially—it has stakes in Airbnb, Discord and Nextdoor—it’s been having issues hiring new people to succeed ex-employees.
