Investing with Conviction | Sarah Guo, Founder of Conviction | Ep. 5

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

April 3, 2025

Duration

46m

Channel

Uncapped with Jack Altman

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

(If you enjoyed this, please like and subscribe!) I was pumped to chat this week with Sarah Guo. Sarah is a startup investor and the founder of Conviction, an investment firm purpose-built to serve intelligent software, or "Software 3.0" companies. Some of her investments include Harvey, Mistral AI, Sierra, Cognition, HeyGen, and Cartesia, among others. Prior to 2022, she spent nearly a decade incubating and investing as a General Partner at Greylock Partners. Sarah co-hosts a podcast with Elad Gil called No Priors where they discuss the AI revolution. We covered:

• Compounding qualities of enduring firms
• Brand building in the current market
• Taking risk by having an opinion
• Learnings from her time at Greylock
• AI discourse compared to previous cycles

Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (0:11) What a VC firm is at its core (2:27) Compounding qualities of enduring firms (6:44) Intentionality behind building Conviction’s brand (13:01) Correlation or causation between brands and returns (16:33) Shape of the current VC market (27:15) Learnings from experience at Greylock (32:06) Market vs founder driven (33:55) AI conversation shifting from inputs to outputs (36:28) More billion dollar companies than ever before (42:44) Agency being the last human resource (44:40) Important skills for kids to learn Linktree: https://linktr.ee/uncappedpod Twitter: https://x.com/jaltma Email: friends@uncappedpod.com

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Jack Altman

  host

• Sarah Guo

  guest

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Uncapped with Jack Altman, featuring Jack Altman and Sarah Guo, Investing with Conviction | Sarah Guo, Founder of Conviction | Ep. 5 explores sarah Guo on building venture firms, brand, and AI investing Guo frames a VC firm as a “bundle” of money (commodity), people/beliefs, and actual advantage—arguing the squishy parts (brand, individuals, ethos) are what can compound into durability over decades.

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