sarah guo // conviction @saranormous Twitter profile

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sarah guo // conviction

2 years

Some personal news: We raised $100M for @w_conviction , an new early-stage venture capital firm purpose-built for Software 3.0

Launching With Conviction

sarahguo.com

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

2 years

When people build internet products without assuming there will be adversarial actors I just send them this photo

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

1 month

People are often taken aback how anti-communist I am ~This is what happened to my family

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

😓 the number of companies out there that won't pay $20K a year for off-the-shelf SaaS, but then spend unlimited engineering effort building internal tooling themselves and then complain they don't have enough engineering capacity

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

2 years

Finally, there is so much exciting work happening in the AI application layer. Who did I miss that's interesting?

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

1/ I was today years old when I was advised for the 2nd time in my career to “be less stylish” because l might “intimidate engineers” I am working with. 🤯

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

2 years

1/ After almost a decade of incubating and investing in startups at @GreylockVC , I have decided to start something new! 🌱

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

What a mistake it is to title-chase when choosing a startup 🤦🏻‍♀️. SVP at a company goes nowhere is SVP of nothing. Early teammate at a company that becomes a $10B+ platform biz, grows into a staff engineer, an SVP of product, an extraordinary leader. Choose company, not title.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

4 years

Cloud ops team at @zoom_us , the whole world economy is relying on you. 💕

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

2 years

SF right now (especially if you’re in AI) is electric. There’s more seriousness from higher quality builders than there has been in more than 5 years, the heat-seekers mostly left, ambitious technical people are moving here, and good ideas and idea collision are happening.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

1 year

secret to doing hard things: work with people who are fun when things are hard

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

Got myself pepper spray for walking around SF. Anti-Asian violence, the intensifying cesspool of crime & homelessness, and the experiences of being yelled at about the “Chinese flu” and followed by clearly mentally ill men puts me on edge. Rich city, broke government 😢

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 months

how can you work on anything except AI right now

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

Most startups have too many product managers, and too weak a culture of engineers and designers working with users.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

7 months

VC firms in California… “must report, for example, the race of the people they back, as well as their disability status and sexual orientation.” High on the list of things I do not want to *annually survey* founders I work with about: orientation. Still gay? Cool, cool. ಠ_ಠ

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

6 years

🔥 Fired up about working with and continuing to learn from my partners and the @GreylockVC family. My mission is to partner with extraordinary founders to build and scale category-defining technology companies from ground zero, improbable as the journey may seem. 📈

Greylock

@GreylockVC

6 years

We are thrilled to announce that @saranormous is Greylock's newest general partner. She is focused on helping entrepreneurs create and scale the next generation of important b2b companies. Join us in congratulating Sarah!

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

♥️ Everyone you have interacted with has been abnormally stressed for 15 months. Beyond feeling lonely and stir-crazy, they’ve likely got work issues, family issues, finance issues, mental health issues you don’t know about. Even the thriving, lucky ones. Please be kind.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

jeff bezos being in ship #1 is about as ballsy as it gets

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

4 years

1/ I’ll say it if no one else will. Women CEOs are held to a different standard.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

5 years

Brave thing I heard in a board meeting this week: “I don’t know if we have a good answer to that, yet.” Admitting you *don’t know* the answer is hugely productive. We’re trying to find, together, the important things we don’t know the answers to Striking how rarely it is said

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

6 months

If you are an AI founder who managed to stay on that grind and write useful code this weekend, I have a seed/Series A check for you

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

7 months

@nikitabier Nah, who cares if he’s hot? I want open source AI models and a cage match with Elon

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

1 month

@ebitdaddy90 what the hell is wrong with you

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

Couldn't help myself.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

Founder/CEO of an early stage company in the Greylock portfolio is about to have a baby. She was recently advised by random other people while speaking at a conference that her “timing” of company-founding isn’t great. Pro tip: don’t be these people ☠️

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

5 months

ok, @elonmusk wins. native content: full video of interview with @ilyasut on @nopriorspod (2 weeks ago)

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

2 months

whenever anyone says that technology's winners are known and permanent, I point them to this chart

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

7 months

AHHHH just let me buy Why are you like this enterprises I will literally write a crawler instead I will call you when I want help Give me self serve or give me death

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

7 years

This was a super impressive transformation to a subscription business model at Adobe.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

Shaming men for taking parental leave, reinforcing gender biases, and literally using the phrase “in the old days” 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩

Joe Lonsdale

@JTLonsdale

3 years

@danprimack Wow. Great for fathers to spend time w their kids and support moms, but any man in an important position who takes 6 months of leave for a newborn is a loser. In the old days men had babies and worked harder to provide for their future - that’s the correct masculine response.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

1/ I am wordless. They are murdering Asian women at work. #StopAsianHate

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

7 months

I am against murdering civilians with machine guns, grenades and rockets. I am against kidnapping children. This is terrorism. Hamas is a terrorist organization. Rejecting Hamas is not a political or religious question. It is a moral one: what crimes of hate will you accept?

sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

7 months

🇮🇱

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

If you’re an early stage VC basing your decisions on whether other early stage VCs like the company you’re looking at You’re in the wrong job

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

4 years

Tbh I felt I was managing it all ok before 2020 but now I’m a little overwhelmed by the whole working-mom, stay-at-home-mom, runs-a-preschool-mom, keeping-household-safe-during-end-times-mom combo

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

2 months

“How many GPUs did Jensen promise you?”

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

4 years

Californians should thank the CEOs and exec teams at companies that drove WFH early in the pandemic — Palantir, Stripe, Twitter, Square, Zoom on 3/2 and 3/3. It wasn’t easy or cheap to be first, and it made it possible for other leaders, corporate and government, to follow.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

4/ I don’t know who else needs to hear this, but just in case, this is infantile and unwelcome advice. Don’t come crying to me in your Patagonia vest when you and your monoculture bros you “can’t hire any women in EPD.”

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

11 months

1/ Incredibly easy to make something cool with LLMs, but hard to make something robust and consumable by end users.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

1 year

1st time founders focus on tech 2nd time founders focus on distribution

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

6 months

Poor taste, especially for someone who had no idea what’s happening, both in general and about this situation

Eliezer Yudkowsky ⏹️

@ESYudkowsky

6 months

Mira Murati reached out to me in 2022 for a one-hour zoom call. Sam Altman never essayed any such contact. Also, I don't think Murati has made any jokes about how funny it would be if the world ended. I'm tentatively 8.5% more cheerful about OpenAI going forward.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

Signs you’re an immigrant kid: My parents never once checked my homework growing up.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

6 months

All of a sudden, it’s open season in the AI landscape. Everyone is much less inspired by (and less intimidated by) an OpenAI without Sam and Greg, however many genius folks it has. Leaders matter.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

4 years

laptop feels very slow/underpowered now that I'm constantly running Chrome + Zoom + @SlackHQ + @Superhuman + @NotionHQ + @Outlook and driving an external display the new world of work requires a better machine, I think

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

7 months

the mob is going to come after me for this, but synthetic wombs would be the single most gender-equalizing advance

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

1 year

if you're a VC that has 𝐧𝐨 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 of investing in a startup, don't do "learning meetings." shame on you

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

1 month

. @gradypb at @sequoia AI summit: we are standing at the precipice of the greatest value creation opportunity mankind has ever known, and the landscape is wide open

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

2 months

actual information per minute of speech is a really great predictor of whether or not I want to work with a founder

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

2/ Five years ago I suppressed my feelings and nodded blankly when told this, but this time I just blew up. What the hell. Reinforcing Silicon Valley brotopia is not helpful.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

7 years

1/ Remember that when people speak up about harassment, they're risking a great deal.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

7 months

something is rotten in academia

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

4 years

Request for product from the @USPS . You already scan the mail - let me reject any mail pieces/senders via a website, save yourself the effort, and automatically recycle those mail pieces for me (for a fee?). Track aggregate rejection rates and fine senders over a certain rate.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 months

I think people are still sleeping on how much @MistralAI (and the first mixtral model) have changed the technology landscape. 50% of AI startups/scaleups I meet are building on it

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

2 years

I am getting many emails asking what kind of apps I think are interesting in AI. ten-minute brainstorm of free startup ideas — some aren't good businesses, some have been tried, but not nearly enough of these have been tried when capabilities are improving so rapidly. please add!

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

Scare a VC in a tweet. I’ll start: “The beta is full”

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

4 years

Seriously who is this thin skinned to care about this VC clapping crap

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

5 years

Morals of the @zoom_us entrepreneurial fable:

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

8 months

I want a product that will automatically organize my phone screenshots and make them clickable links (eg if of LinkedIn or GitHub profile, find and link) Does this exist or do I need to build it

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

4 years

1/2 Wrapping up breastfeeding for kiddo #2 🤱🏻 It is 3+ hours PER DAY of work = 20+ hours a week = 600+ hours over the past 7m (Ignoring the rest of keeping a baby alive and happy)

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

2 years

every startup should build a "bookshelf" of resources for new teammates curious to learn about their space. curating that requires hard won but easily shared knowledge, and it ups the context throughout the company

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

Taxes on unrealized gains (for any income level) are unenforceable, disincentivize startups, and will drive innovation out of America. Imagine a founder with no cash, and a growing company Its unrealized "value" increases The tax burden will force her to continually sell shares

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

1 year

1/ EOY prediction time! 2023 will be the year of racing to incorporate AI in products, but most companies' first instinct (shallow integration of generic models available through limitied APIs) is only table stakes. The race is now on to:

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

startups without existential urgency don't win

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

4 years

Here’s a strong case for not shotgun-marrying a board member with a 2-day process. Brutal, but 1/100th brutal as the founders and other board members enduring this guy for years

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

5 months

Not being afraid to look stupid Highly underrated quality

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

8 days

just to state the obvious: a “startup” inside a big company is not a thing. it’s a retention trap

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

bugs of being married to another venture capitalist - house has two copies of every tech, business book written - house is a massive graveyard of buggy gen 1 consumer hardware - that look of respect/judgement when someone you meet realizes you're so-and-so's other half 🙄

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

10 months

Let’s talk about runway 🧵 1/ “Runway” is really a cursed way to think about startups and the remnant disease of the 2017-2022 VC bubble If cash out the door is investment, it must have ROI, eventual translation into free cash flow (FCF) 💰 🌊 If cash out the door has no…

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@saranormous

2 months

Ideas we’re considering at

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

the line between failure and massive success in some of the most extraordinary startups is so faint it's not a line at all -- it's enough cash, a real problem, and sticking together long enough to figure it out

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

2 months

Companies that feel authentic rather than “corporate” are the product of obsessive founders who treat marketing tone and copy as part of the brand voice and product experience. They obsessively micromanage it — writing themselves or insisting everyone else align with their taste.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

5 months

1/ Congrats to the @HeyGen_Official team on their rocketship growth this year! We @w_conviction are SO excited to support (and fund) Joshua and Wayne in their mission to make AI the new camera. Try making your personal avatar today (here's mine!). More in @Forbes ( @kenrickcai )👇

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

2 years

the venture industry could use a little more curiosity, a little more punk, and a lot more diversity

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

gen z founders, when I ask you what you're looking for in a venture capital partner, I fully expect you to now respond, " #DiamondHands 💎"

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

4 years

Rapid onboarding of new talent is a competitive advantage for startups.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

4 years

Welcome, Noe Grady! And the swag wars begin. 🥊 CC: @gradypb

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

14 days

It is an incredibly safe assumption that models get much cheaper and smarter from here, yet very few founders are acting like it

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

8 months

As someone who wholeheartedly believes in the AI revolution — billions of dollars of venture capital funding are also going to vaporize in this early cycle

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

1 month

great people do not spend thinking about how to get promoted they put their energy into working with great people at great orgs, and being great at the work in healthy organizations, responsibility constantly flows to its best owners

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

Madam Vice President 😭

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

1 year

1/ founders are going $0-10M in ARR first 18 months of (efficient) selling, leveraging LLMs against “niche” use cases

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@saranormous

7 years

7/ Every woman I know in tech has "laughed off" an uncomfortable situation or practiced avoidance, rather than cause trouble. Including me.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

6 months

1/ those who thinks that chat-based interfaces/GPTs remove the need for software really don't understand business software at all software mirrors workflow in its infinite complexity if you're listening to the customer there is ever more workflow every feature begets subfeatures

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

5 months

if you don’t think multimodal AI is fundamental change in computing, you are not paying attention

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@saranormous

4 years

1/ If it’s not glaringly obvious your company has product-market fit yet, with customers pulling the product from you, it very likely doesn’t.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

Long day, quick 🧵 1/ We're doubling down on backing founders from Day One with $500M of seed capital @GreylockVC . The world is transitioning to a technology economy. We want to invest in the startups that power that transition, preferably early:

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

2 years

Web3 me ➡️ Web2 me Finally acquired my forever witch, thanks to ceaseless begging of @divfemininity and a shared secret incantation. Love to see more people in crypto with diverse tastes — and healthy, helpful communities building together like that of @crypto_coven 🖤

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@saranormous

3 years

3/ I have the privilege to work with a lot of truly great engineers in the past decade, both women and men — of whom are far more stylish and far less than me. Somehow, we seem to be able to talk software development and business.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

anyone who thinks SF is dead is being willfully blind to how important being an ecosystem "insider" still is sure if you were a Stripe eng leader, when you move to Miami you can recruit/raise $ but the magic of Silicon Valley is how quickly former outsiders can become relevant

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

Must clap 👏🏽 for @Alfred_Lin , because I’m not sure any other venture investor has had such an epic 2 days (after many years of work)

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@saranormous

2 months

if you are offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat, just get on ^immortal advice. hate to see great people get hung up on title and miss out on very very good opportunities

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

2 years

My VC superpower is being so tiny in a land of tall white men. Gives me a different perspective of the landscape. This market looks too small to you?? Maybe you should look more closely. Try stooping a little bit

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@saranormous

6 years

I don’t think it’s called “babysitting” if it’s his kid too. That’s probably just parenting

Punch Newspapers

@MobilePunch

6 years

Serena Williams’ multimillionaire husband babysits as wife returns to court

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@saranormous

2 years

1/ PSA 🚨 from your local cybersecurity and safety nerd! Have been experiencing a pretty sophisticated social engineering attempt recently. Thread on what to watch out for:

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@saranormous

6 months

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

8 months

"reducing team size has increased velocity"

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@saranormous

5 years

Two hugely undervalued attributes of startup execs - a problem-solving attitude and a lack of fear. 1/

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@saranormous

3 years

Grant me the wisdom to remember that the root of arrogance is insecurity 🙏

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@saranormous

1 year

a writing culture in a company is a clear-thinking culture

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

4 years

The greatest wealth creation engine the world has ever seen is startups in America, and the entrepreneurs are 55% foreign born. How did they get here? H1-Bs. We want these people. Refusing them does not drive employment of American citizens.

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sarah guo // conviction

@saranormous

3 years

we need more engineers

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