Sarah Guo
Founder & General Partner · Conviction
Check $500K–$5M
SEED
SERIES A
AI
Developer tools
Enterprise
SaaS
Fintech
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.
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?
Selected portfolio
Baseten
Harvey
OpenEvidence
Sierra
Cognition
Mistral
Cartesia
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