Sarah Smith

GP of Sarah Smith Fund, lecturer @Stanford Lean Launchpad, wife, mom. Formerly @BainCapVC @Quora @Facebook @GraphVentures @StanfordGSB @UWMadison, she/her/hers.

[Daniel Dhawan @daniel_dhawan]

Huge news: Rork raised $15M seed led by @leftlanecap with @peakxv, a16z @speedrun, @trueventures, @GoodwaterCap, @karman, @sasmith4, Mento & others

"Let's Rork & Roll" pitch from Oct '25

AI will not replace us. It will give our kids the power to make it in life.

[Rork @rork]

Big news: Rork raised a $15M seed round led by @leftlanecap with a16z @speedrun, @peakxvpartners, @trueventures, @GoodwaterCap, and others.

Our team has been building mobile apps for the App Store since we were kids. Now we're making it possible for everyone else to do the same.

And this is our story – in tribute to Howard Roark.

[Andrawes @andrawesbahou]

◉ We're live with 3 compute price tickers on 350,000 @Bloomberg terminals, and landed on the desk of every major CFO in the world.

On this note, it's time to bring @ComputeDesk out of stealth.

Compute is a financial asset class. We believe every company in the world will have an exposure to compute. So we are building capital markets infrastructure to price, hedge, finance, insure, arbitrage and market make compute.

In the last few months, we've built a mammoth compute price indexing engine, tracking bulk transacted compute prices, and the deepest compute price feeds in the market.

The tickers are the tip of the iceberg. Our market intelligence terminals are where GPU infrastructure operators and lenders go to price compute, expand margin and get ahead of their competitors. The biggest compute buyers use them to source capacity, and negotiate exclusive compute rates.

I would like to tell you our story and show you what else we've built. Something fun is coming.

[Sarah Smith @sasmith4]

Can't wait to create my @pika_labs AI Self! Check it out 👇🏾

[Pika @pika_labs]

Introducing Pika AI Selves: AI you birth, raise, and set loose to be a living extension of you. They’re rich, multi-faceted beings with persistent memory, and maybe even a peanut allergy. It’s up to you!

Have them send pictures to your group chat. Make a video game about your fish. Call your mom while you do anything but call your mom. The possibilities are as myriad as the stars ✨

Get on the list to give birth to yours at pika dot me

[Neo @neo]

Today we unveiled Neo Residency, a new program for startups and high-agency student teams. 🎉

We’re replacing our best-known program, Neo Accelerator, with something even better and more selective. 🧵

[Sarah Smith @sasmith4]

@dmitrshvets @trymirai @uncorkcap @dps @FrancoisChauba1 @marcinzukowski @matiii @gokulr @scooterbraun @krishnanvijay @benparr @MattPRD @adityajami Huge congrats! Let's go!

[Sarah Smith @sasmith4]

@adityaag @gokulr @southpkcommons Legend! Great episode😀

[Sarah Smith @sasmith4]

@awwstn Was also going to say Goonies. Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

[austin petersmith @awwstn]

Introducing Howie Blue

Your secretary just got an iPhone Air.

We're rolling this out to a very small number of Pro customers next week, and to everyone soon after. After 2 days I’m already obsessed.

(if you have Android it will still work just with green bubbles)

[James da Costa @jamdac]

🚨How does an AI-native startup unseat an incumbent?🚨
👇Enter the Greenfield Strategy: AI-native startup bingo.

The battle between every startup and incumbent comes down to whether the startup gets distribution before the incumbent gets innovation. One of the most powerful, and underrated, ways for startups to win distribution is to serve companies at their formation: greenfield companies.

@stripe @deel @mercury @cartainc @brexHQ @tryramp have all done this at scale.

Why does this work?

Simply put, acquiring customers de novo is easier than getting customers to switch:
- Many of the large software incumbents have hostages, not customers. Their customers would love to switch, but ripping and replacing existing software is risky and expensive. New companies don’t face those switching costs; they simply look for the best solution and evaluate based on merit.
- New companies don’t need as many features to have a complete solution.
- New companies have fewer stakeholders. You only have to convince the founders.

Grow with your customers:

If you attract all of the new companies at formation and grow with them, you will become a big company as your customers become big companies. Consider @stripe: many of Stripe’s customers did not yet exist when Stripe was founded. Some of those early customers later became large businesses in their own right. So when enterprises outside of Silicon Valley also needed to prepare themselves for a shift to ecommerce models, Stripe was an obvious choice, with plenty of relevant reference customers already in place.

Incumbents, on the other hand, would much rather sell to existing businesses vs. companies that don’t exist now but might exist in huge numbers in a few years. They are bound by the rules of P&L (Profit & Loss) – and there’s no “P” for greenfield companies that don’t exist yet, just “L” (in sales, marketing, and product development costs). The startup, however, isn’t bound to a financial model – the startup doesn’t need one; it's still figuring stuff out! That leaves ample room for the startup to define the category.

Graduation moments:

In a similar way, software “graduation moments” (the moments when a startup begins to develop enterprise needs) also create opportunities to execute this greenfield strategy. QuickBooks may be great for single-product, single-entity companies, but once businesses add multiple subsidiaries, currencies, or more complex reporting needs, they outgrow it and require the controls, integrations, and scalability of an ERP like NetSuite. And you can now build a far better ERP with AI - just look at @RilletHQ.

AI-native startup Bingo:

There are many different categories of enterprise software. Enough to fill a 5x5 Bingo board and more!

In each category of the Bingo board, there sits an incumbent that could be dethroned by an AI-native alternative.

So, how does a new company win the game of Bingo?
- Pick a square
- Make a narrow wedge much better
- Find a constant source of new customers
- Rapidly iterate and add features to grow with your customers
- Don’t be constrained by the division of existing categories

If you’re building a category-defining company on the Bingo board - come and talk to us.

cc: @arampell @astrange @a16z

[Sarah Smith @sasmith4]

@tnachen Congratulations @tnachen ! I still remember you starting Fund 1. :) It's wonderful to see solo GPs like you in the industry winning. So well deserved and your LPs are all very lucky to work with you. Congrats!!!

[Sarah Smith @sasmith4]

@awwstn This is the best! Focus and commitment to accuracy is why https://t.co/qaubpPdUTx will win. Congrats @awwstn on a big day, the result of a ton of work and dedication to a stellar AI product. So grateful to be on board! 🙏

[Sarah Smith @sasmith4]

An EA powered by AI is life changing. Cofounder @awwstn saw the need to deliver accuracy when you are dealing with people's time. AI + humans = the people's secretary.

Meet https://t.co/mlLXfziO09 - now available to all!

So thankful the team allowed us to invest early. 🙏

[austin petersmith @awwstn]

Meet Howie, the people's secretary. Out now.

(see thread for signup link + fundraise announcement)

[Sarah Smith @sasmith4]

@davefontenot This was so good! Congrats @davefontenot and your founders. HF0 is extremely special.

[Sarah Smith @sasmith4]

@Samirkaji I totally agree. This will become a much bigger part of the seed GP mindshare. We all talk about "see, pick, win, value-add" and "sell" is going to be the fifth must-have pillar. @Rick_Zullo has been rightly preaching this for awhile.

[Sarah Smith @sasmith4]

@adityaag Totally agree. I call it the “irrationally intense” founder. We’ve both seen them and it’s by far the most important factor in my decision to invest.

[Sarah Smith @sasmith4]

Remember pics of scooters in ponds? @wayneting has led a business where many very smart people thought the unit economics were impossible. Loved hearing him discuss Lime and his own personal journey with the best interviewer out there @HarryStebbings. Check it out 👇

[Harry Stebbings @HarryStebbings]

Lime is one insane turnaround story.

They went from losing $3 for every $1 spent.

Last year they did $600M in bookings & $90M in EBITDA.

They are the #1 leader in micro-mobility & saved from the brink of death by Uber.

My 7 key takeaways with @wayneting 👇

[Sarah Smith @sasmith4]

Ready for a new amazing role in 2025? Pika is hiring:
Founding Designer
Head of Engineering
iOS Lead
Full-Stack / Backend Engineer
Research Scientist / Research Engineer

[Pika @pika_labs]

Getting really real with you…

Pika 2.1 is HERE—crystal-clear 1080p resolution, razor-sharp details, seamless motion, lifelike human characters, and more. If you see it, you’ll believe it.

Try it out now at pika dot art.

[Sarah Smith @sasmith4]

@henrythe9ths AI Guide please

[Sarah Smith @sasmith4]

@HarryStebbings @m2jr Such a great episode as always! I particularly appreciated your points on how to approach liquidity in the later years for seed funds. I lost two term sheets at BCV and one was to @m2jr. Just an incredible investor and mentor to the industry.