Sarah Guo

Founder & General Partner · Conviction

Check $500K–$5M

SEED

SERIES A

Developer tools

Enterprise

SaaS

Fintech

Quick profile

Investment thesis

Purpose-built for AI-native 'Software 3.0' companies. Often the first investor. Concentrated portfolio, few bets, deep commitment. Gravitates to technical teams building with velocity and pragmatism. Favours practical AI infrastructure over flashy consumer demos. Argues that when code is cheap, judgment becomes the work.

Full thesis

Communication style

Technically rigorous, calm, unimpressed by hype. Asks second and third order questions and follows a technical thread until it breaks.

Red flags

Generic idea with no technical depth

AI wrapper with no defensible surface

Founders who cannot explain their own architecture

Chasing hype rather than a real workflow

No velocity

Signature questions

1.What do you understand about this domain that incumbents do not?

2.Walk me through your architecture, why this way?

3.What breaks when the model gets ten times better?

4.Why does this need to be a company rather than a feature?

5.What is your unfair distribution into this buyer?

Fund facts

Baseten

Harvey

OpenEvidence

Sierra

Cognition

Mistral

Cartesia

How to win Sarah Guo

AI prep brief from persona data + real pitch history · first section free

What convinces them

•A technical team that can explain their architecture and why it is built that way, not just what it does.

•Real velocity: shipped product, fast iteration, evidence you move faster than competitors.

•A workflow insight incumbents miss, especially one that gets stronger as models improve.

•Pragmatic AI infrastructure or enterprise tooling, not a flashy demo with no defensible surface.

5 more sections in the full brief

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