General Catalyst

We back ambitious founders and help build enduring companies that create outsized financial & societal impact across every stage and sector.

Advisor

Gretel Inc

Our mission is to help developers safely and quickly experiment, collaborate, and build with customer data.

Co-Founder and Board Chair

Humu

Making work better for everyone, everywhere. Our Nudge Engine™ technology transforms organizations at scale using small, personal steps based on science, machine learning, and a little bit of love.

Co-Founder, CEO and Board Chair

Heidrick & Struggles

Board Member and Chair, HR and Compensation Committee

Google

SVP, People Operations (CHRO) / Executive Committee Member

Hachette Book Group

"The book is a true masterpiece."―Forbes
"A bold, inspiring, and actionable vision that will transform the future of work. It should be mandatory reading for everyone who leads, manages, or has a job."―Adam Grant
"A dazzling revelation: at once an all-access backstage pass to one of the smartest organizations on the planet, and also an immensely useful blueprint for creating a culture of creativity."―Dan Coyle, author of The Talent Code
"A remarkable book that reveals the secrets of becoming a talent powerhouse. He shows the many benefits of a high freedom culture with a mission that matters."―Dan Pink, author of Drive and To Sell Is Human

Author, WORK RULES!

VP, Human Resources

McKinsey & Company

Management Consultant

In 2017, Laszlo Bock co-founded Humu to make work better through machine learning, science, and a little bit of love. Humu was acquired by Perceptyx in 2023. In 2019, Laszlo co-founded Gretel.ai: Gretel's APIs automatically fine-tune AI models to generate accurate and safe synthetic data on demand.

Laszlo built and led Google's people function for more than 10 years, as the company grew from a few thousand to almost 75,000 "Googlers" and as revenue grew from $6 billion to $90 billion. During Bock's tenure, Google was named the Best Company to Work For more than 30 times around the world and received over 100 awards as an employer of choice.

His NYT-bestselling "Work Rules!" has sold more than 750,000 copies, and he has donated 100% of the proceeds to charity.

I get asked a lot about the 4-day week. It is a complex issue so a longer post. 

If you treat leisure as a good we should spend some of our ongoing productivity growth on more leisure. US productivity grows at about 2% a year, totaling 242% since 1950. So we can now produce in 11.7 hours what we could produce in 1950 in 40 hours. This productivity growth is why John Maynard Keynes famously predicted in 1930 that we would work 15 hours a week by 2030.

Average hours in the US have fallen on average from 2,300 a year in 1950 to 1,700 in 2023, a 23% drop. This is something, but not much. Only one-tenth of the productivity growth since 1950 has gone to working less. The other nine-tenths has gone to spending more. Society is using higher productivity mostly to buy larger TVs, cars, electronics and other goods and services.

So can a four-day week fix this? There are actually four-versions of the 4-day week. The first three already exist and I will call "muggle" versions for being present here and now. These "muggle" versions should be encouraged. The fourth version is more "magic" in that it is wonderful, but I'm less sure it exists. 

(1) WFH-Friday:  This is a 4-day week in the office. Friday is at home, typically working but in a more relaxed setting. 
(2) No-work Fridays:  You get paid for 4-days and work for 4-days. This is also known as part-time. Great idea - I worked a 4-day week at the IFS. 
(3) Shift changing:  For example, work 4 days for 10 hours rather than 5 days for 8 hours. Often happens in hourly pay jobs, like in Amazon warehouses.
(4) Work for 4 days, get paid for 5 days and produce 5-days of output:  Sounds amazing, but I have not seen strong evidence on this. I have seen reports sponsored by 4-day week advocacy groups, usually examining small NGOs and government agencies. So it can be done. But from talking to 100s of managers in larger private sector firms it is unclear if this extends more broadly. The typical response is "If I could easily cut hours and pointless meetings I would - I don't want to work long hours either". 

So, I think the 4-day week is a great long-run ambition. But I do not think this will come from a Politician led piece of Government regulation. The best hope is continued productivity growth. If this continues at 2% a year we can split 1% to higher pay and 1% to lower hours. In 20 years we could be earning 20% more and working a 4-day week :-)

To boost productivity we should focus on better education, research, infrastructure, training and political stability. Oddly enough good economic policy is probably our best route to a 4-day week.

Keynes essay: https://lnkd.in/gReJJKJe
Data: https://lnkd.in/gbhcHTzr

Laszlo Bock


I had a great experience at Uplift by BetterUp last week. I shared the stage (and some laughs) with Armen Berjikly, BetterUp's Chief Technology Officer, and Jeff Hancock, Director of Stanford's Social Media Lab for a discussion on AI for HR. It was a bonus to bump into so many former colleagues and friends. I love seeing the HR community buzzing with optimism and ideas for the future!

We at Gretel.ai are thrilled to roll out the largest synthetic, open-source Text-to-SQL dataset ever. This is our way of accelerating safe AI model training and making a massive dent in the universe of data quality. Because let's face it, quality data is the secret sauce behind awesome AI. This approach enables us at Gretel to increase our model training and experimentation from 4/wk to 200+/wk, and demonstrate significant quality improvements for our models.

Quality Over Everything: Turns out, it’s super crucial for teaching AI models all the smart stuff – from common sense to the mysteries of the universe. And yeah, we’re proving “garbage in, garbage out” wrong, one dataset at a time.

Synthetic Data for the Win: This isn’t just any data; it’s like the Swiss Army knife for AI – boosting reasoning, coding, you name it. We’re all about mirroring the real world’s chaos but in a way that makes sense to our AI pals.

What We’re About: Spending 80% of your time cleaning data? Not cool. We’re here to change the game by making top-notch data easy to get your hands on, so you can focus on the cool stuff.

Cheers to better data and even better AI achievements.

gretel.ai • 8 min read

Introducing world's largest synthetic open-source Text-to-SQL dataset

We need a viable LinkedIn competitor.  Pricing has become absurdly expensive for LI Recruiter. LinkedIn's Monopoly with little to no competition to counter balance has caused runaway pricing. 

Call For Research Papers: Conference on Remote Work

Stanford CA, from October 9th to 11th

Please submit research papers on the measurement, cause and effect of hybrid and remote work. Conference will be in person with a live zoom broadcast (and recorded for presenters that give permission). 

To get an idea of the types of papers that would fit please check out the last two years of conferences: https://lnkd.in/gfnkuHyK

Submission portal: https://lnkd.in/g6aAQDbV
Full call for papers: https://lnkd.in/gQ7y7D_9

With Jose Maria Barrero Emma Harrington Natalia E. Prithwiraj Choudhury and Steve Davis

Gretel just open sourced the largest Text-to-SQL dataset available in the wild. It's made exclusively with high quality synthetic data generated by our compound AI system, Gretel Navigator. 🚀 

Read more about the news: https://lnkd.in/e_PQgRc3
Get the dataset on Hugging Face: gretelai/synthetic_text_to_sql

We are thrilled to have the community leverage this synthetic data in a truly open-source fashion.

Break-break! Major news from from Gretel.ai!

They’ve just announced a partnership with Google Cloud, which expands the capabilities and reach of their synthetic data generation platform. 

This is BIG for developers on Google Cloud: with Gretel’s integration, they can easily access their privacy-first model for use across industries. Gretel has been bringing similar wins to Microsoft Azure and AWS as well, and make no mistake: synthetic data is key for responsible, secure AI development the world needs.

Co-founders Ali Golshan, Alexander Watson, John Myers, and Laszlo Bock are extraordinary leaders making a real difference. Kelly Perdew, Moonshots Capital, and myself are proud to support them as they take the AI revolution to the moon! 

Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gB8NAz6K

#GretelAI #syntheticdata #generativeai #dataprivacy #AI #startups #GoogleCloud #VC #innovation #BigQuery

New: Google CFO Ruth Porat told the company’s finance teams that their groups would see restructuring, including relocations and layoffs, according to an internal memo I've viewed. 

The cuts will impact some employees in the U.S. and abroad. Porat also noted the company will be using a “hub” model to locate finance teams, including in India and Mexico.

“The tech sector is in the midst of a tremendous platform shift with Al,” Porat wrote in the memo, obtained by CNBC, that was sent to employees in finance. “As a company, this means we have the opportunity to make more helpful products for billions of users and provide faster solutions to our customers, but it also means we collectively have to make tough decisions, including how and where we work to align with our highest priority areas.”

The latest cuts follow a broader effort by Google to rearrange its workforce and resources to accommodate further investment in new technologies like AI as advertising growth slows. CEO Sundar Pichai told employees in January that more job cuts were likely coming in 2024, though he didn’t specify which teams would be affected.

Porat ended her note saying, “We are sad to say goodbye to some talented teammates and friends we care about, and we know this change is difficult.”


cnbc.com • 2 min read

Google restructures finance team as a part of AI shift, CFO tells employees in memo

This is a great post from my Cofounder Alexander on why we at Gretel.ai are seeing such high velocity towards the adoption of synthetic data. The key is to enable organizations to tap into all their data, making it safe, high-quality, and available on demand. It's like a move from fossil fuels to renewable energy. This is how organizations can use their data as their moat, and ensure others don't leapfrog them by just applying newer technologies.

Alexander Watson on LinkedIn • 3 min read

Beyond Tech Giants: The Broader Potential of Synthetic Data in AI - A Response to the NYT

Gretel.ai Releases World’s Largest Open Source Text-to-SQL Dataset to Accelerate AI Model Training

https://lnkd.in/dsBbmS3a

#AIModel #GenAI #Gretel #HuggingFace #MachineLearning #syntheticdata

ciofirst.com • 3 min read

Gretel Releases World’s Largest Open Source Text-to-SQL Dataset to Accelerate AI Model Training

Fascinating study given that STEM has been so widely emphasized. Verbal ability is a better predictor of college enrollment. 

Stinks that the full article is paywalled....

journals.uchicago.edu • 1 min read

The Path to College Education: The Role of Math and Verbal Skills | Journal of Political Economy: Vol 129, No 10

nypost.com • 5 min read

Google fires 28 employees involved in sit-in protest over $1.2B Israel contract

Gretel has unlocked safe, real-time access to patient data for 27,000+ #healthcare practitioners and researchers using differentially private synthetic data. This approach allows researchers to learn insightful patterns from the data without exposing individual patient information.

Democratizing health data access accelerates critical research into early disease detection and helps hospitals proactively plan adequate staffing to handle high patient influx.

Learn more about Gretel's partnership with SA Health: 
https://lnkd.in/eNepSk2B #syntheticdata  #dataprivacy #Azure #EHR

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