For Sarah Guo, startups weren’t just a career choice—they were the family business. Growing up in Los Angeles, she watched her parents build Casa, a cable and telecom infrastructure startup competing against giants like Cisco and Ericsson. After school, Guo would spend afternoons tagging along with engineers, learning to code while immersed in the controlled chaos of startup life.
“It was really formative to see how fun and stressful startups were,” Guo reflects. “The team wasn’t connected to Silicon Valley networks, but the product was the best in the market.”
That early exposure planted the seeds for what would become Conviction, Guo’s own venture firm focused on AI. Founded in 2022, Conviction has since backed some of the biggest names in the space, including legal AI platform Harvey ($3B valuation), open-source pioneer Mistral ($6B valuation), inference platform Baseten ($825M), and conversational AI startup Sierra ($4.5B).
As seen in Millionaire MNL, Guo’s journey is not just about capitalizing on AI’s rise—it’s about redefining how venture capital operates in a rapidly changing world.
Building a small firm with big impact
Unlike mega-funds chasing AUM milestones, Conviction remains intentionally small with just eight team members, including former Sequoia partner Mike Vernal.
“I don’t care about scale and power,” Guo says. “Founders choose early-stage partners based on trust and understanding, not the size of their backers’ balance sheet.”
Before Conviction, Guo made her mark as a general partner at Greylock while still in her twenties. Walking away from that prestigious role to start her own firm placed her at the heart of a larger VC trend: the rise of nimble challenger firms amid industry consolidation.
But Guo doesn’t see herself as a disruptor. “I’m actually pretty traditionalist,” she insists. “Venture is a service business. Judgment matters. Access alone isn’t enough.”
Betting on AI in a world where old assumptions fail
The launch of Conviction coincided with AI’s breakout moment. As ChatGPT captured public imagination, Guo was scouting office space and preparing her first investments.
While an early investor in Inflection AI, she was no stranger to the field. In 2016, she nearly co-founded an AI-driven language learning startup with AI luminary Andrew Ng. The timing wasn’t right then—but Guo now points to the explosion of platforms like Duolingo as evidence of how fast markets can shift.
“One of my big beliefs about venture in 2025 is that many of your priors are obsolete,” she says. “What you thought you knew about markets may no longer be true because the technology moves too fast.”
This philosophy drives Conviction’s thesis—and Guo practices what she preaches. Through her podcast No Priors, co-hosted with investor Elad Gil, she explores these shifting landscapes. She also publishes her LP letters publicly, “open-sourcing” her investment thinking to stay accountable and continuously learn.
Finding the real value in AI
Guo is well aware of the hype cycle around AI. When she launched Conviction, a friend gifted her a crystal hammer as a joke about overhyped AI solutions. But for Guo, the metaphor resonates differently.
“How good is the hammer?” she counters. “AI is a great hammer. The real question is: what are the interesting nails?”
As seen in Millionaire MNL, Guo’s approach is a masterclass in balancing conviction with curiosity. She’s not chasing trends blindly—she’s probing for where the technology truly creates value.
In an era where many investors view venture as a numbers game, Guo’s firm remains focused on judgment, depth, and founder alignment. Her bet on AI’s transformative potential is paying off—but the bigger challenge lies ahead: identifying which AI companies will deliver enduring impact.
Source: Fortune
