Noor: Super excited to have Sarah Guo, the founder of Conviction, a AI focused venture capital firm here to chat with us today. Awesome to have you here. How's it going? Good. Good to see you. No, so I feel like with AI it moves insanely fast. Six months could probably feel like a decade. So over the last six months, kind of what have you feel like has really shifted in AI in terms of like spaces that didn't have any, any action and now are oversaturated versus kind of what you think is sort of unsaturated, maybe some new greenfield opportunities that have opened up.

Sarah: Yeah. Uh, I think it's a very fair observation that like the landscape changes a, um, faster than normal in this space. If I think about the, the changes that have happened, um, that are most important, I think the, the thing that was predictable but has happened is model progress, right? So we get more capability all the time, which means like applications that felt a little sci-fi or a little more out of reach are more and more in reach.

And I, I think the. Capabilities around like function, calling around, you know, more compute at inference time and more reasoning that is like very simply accessible from the model are like two things that I'm excited about. And then like domain wise, I actually think that one thing that is not at all technical is just the number of, actually, I guess it is technical and it is the, the number of interesting engineers from all different domains that are like trying things now has dramatically increased.

Right, because a year and a half ago, I think it was still a relatively small part of the ecosystem that was paying attention. And like the more people you have trying, I, I think the more success you'll see along with the, you know, curve of increasing capability. And so I, I think that's one of the reasons you get just more application companies that are interesting.

Noor: Okay. And what do you think is unsaturated and like, sort of new opportunities?

Sarah: My framework for this is like, is. It's pretty simple. Um, I think the, the spaces that like we get excited about, like they have to be both valuable and then either hard, um, or really deep. And these things are different, right?

And so hard. For example, like we're investors in a company called Hagen. They do video generation. Video generation is like not at all solved, right? Mm-hmm. Um, I think there's lots of experimentation for, can I like. Animate a photo of nor so it looks like you're like bopping around for a minute. I sure can now, but like that's not what people want, right?

Yeah. They want to be able to have like perfect and efficient control of gestures and voice and interactions and products and backgrounds with like total scene complexity. And we are really, really far away from that with like a lot of research and people are like hyper

Noor: aware of. Facial expressions and like mm-hmm.

Ticks specifically. So I feel like the bar is just Inc. Yeah. Incredibly high for what the content people want the most, which is like faces and people talking and Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah, totally. Like, and, and I think one of the things that people discover is, and this is true for voice or um, human expression, like you're really sensitive to human stuff, right?

And so if it's like, oh, that's not like the exact right accent for. This dialect in this location, or, um, excuse me, my lips don't do that. Right. I, I, I think like people really care and so there's huge expressivity and quality that still needs to be done. And so I think overall there's a ton of advancement, but just means we're gonna be able to do more video.

So that's an example of hard, right? Um, a hard might also be like. Types of reasoning that are hard. And so code is like a very classic example. I'll take one that is, I'll describe like what I think of as deep. Um, I was just talking to a really smart investor at a private equity firm today that, uh, invest in all of these very operationally intensive businesses.

So think, um, industrials are manufacturing. And, uh, they were like really, really clear about where the value was for them and, and like where they could picture the value from ai. And one of the areas was negotiation. Right. That's really interesting. That's a non-intuitive, no, not at all. Right. Um, it's not negotiation for like, making investments because the, the view of that was like.

In many parts of private equity, it is, it's more of an auction process, right? Yeah. There's not a lot of proprietary flow at a certain scale, but it was more negotiation within the portfolio companies with their vendors, right? If you have a supply chain that actually needs to be operationally managed and is really expensive, the likelihood that you have a procurement team that is like going after each and every contract and.

You know, pegging to commodities prices in real time is zero, right? There's just like, you know, you buy too many things in order to make a car or whatever it is, um, or a part for a car. And it's really interesting to think about what things are interaction based, where you can have a reliably better outcome with m, with LLMs, because they were basically like, oh, well we can take the context.

We can take the history and create a coaching plan for, nor the procurement representative, and we're saving like tens of millions of dollars doing this. I was like, oh, like that seems like an amazing use case. I don't know, um, like if I think that is a product, but what, it's just an example to me of like what is deep from a, like, understand what actually drives value for a business.

And like figure out if you can use models as a capability to drive like full end-to-end value because like that type of problem, as you said is like unintuitive. And then it's so far away from I'm doing generalist research and I think when if, if people can figure out like where the pockets are, where they understand those problems and do 'em repeatedly, you know, $10 million at a time is a lot of money to save.

Noor: Yeah. Are there any demos that you've seen recently that just like made your eyes water or just felt magical to you?

Sarah: After 12 years of being really negative on, I. Robotics as a like overall sector of investment. I used to describe it as like a really easy way to lose money fast. Um, yeah, we made a robotics investment recently, and I am positive on this in ways that I have never been in terms of the generalizability of the ability for robots to do a task.

In many environments and have transfer learning on tasks and like, that's just really exciting. I, I don't, I don't know if we jump all the way to humanoids, like very quickly, but I think the idea that we are going to have more robots, more cheaply, uh, deployed in robust ways where they're doing things for us as consumers in like some visible timeframe is like finally possible.

Um, so That's cool.

Noor: Yeah. That's really exciting because I think it's also just gonna make. Everything's so much cheaper, I hope, because obviously humans are expensive to do a lot of these tasks. That's super exciting. Is there anything that's like really gotten embedded into your workflow in terms of just like making you way more productive that you kind of maybe were annoyed at at first, but now they've like sort of like polished the experience and you're sort of like, oh, nice.

Like I can't imagine, you know, not having X as in as part of my day

Sarah: from an AI tooling perspective.

Noor: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah, I don't, I like, I'm trying to think about the, the obvious one from a research perspective is being able to use a tool to interpret something, right? Mm-hmm. And so, like for my job, I'm gonna read legal agreements, I'm gonna read scientific papers.

Uh, I think one of the really interesting things about I. AI is like, it is very multi-domain, right? For example, the science that orchid does is well beyond my understanding at a deep level. But the, I, I think this is like a very common pattern. Now if I'm trying to understand a, like something in a scientific field, I don't where I, like, I might know the CS part, but I have no idea on the biology, the translational medicine, the chemistry, whatever.

It's, um, like we're, we're looking at a bunch of material science companies now. Mm-hmm. Uh, I, I think a, a very common pattern for me would be like, explain this topic to me like I'm five. Tell me who the best experts in the world are in this area. Explain it to me like I have, like a college level understanding of this domain.

And then like, you know, what are the most important concepts that feed into it? Right? If you're like thinking about grounding your understanding and what whatever basis is behind it. And, um, I think the ability to come up to speed in a way that feels robust is like a, a big deal for me as an investor because I'm looking at more.

Areas outside of my expertise than I ever have.

Noor: Are there any like workflows or playbooks that you used to do or used to have team members on do for you that, you know, used to take a week that now are taking like an hour or a day that are like, just like feel almost boring now, but you know, maybe six months ago you would've been shocked that it got done that fast?

Sarah: I think the, the, the basic workflows of investing are learning, meeting people. Interviewing, uh, interviewing, recruiting, right? Maybe doing sales with customers. Making decisions and that requires like writing memos, right? And so like a lot of them are research workflows. And so I, I'd say, I think you have like productivity improvements on the research side.

I am so OCD about writing and so I haven't yet, I. Figured out, like, oh, we, we have to do, uh, I dunno if it's gonna be worth to it to do like fine tuning on my own voice. I will try. There's, by the way, there's no, there's no premise that like my writing is great, but at least like it sounds like it's yours.

Yeah. Okay. And so like, actually we should try that. Um, I think the biggest. Like I, the biggest advancement has certainly been on the like research and understanding front as well as the, I think the collaboration front as well of where people are comfortable. If you can do recorded meetings and then auto automated summaries, I.

Right. Like you spend a lot of, um, time note taking and then communicating understanding to other people. And so that is useful in a partnership. The thing I want is figuring out how to take like more of the upfront interpersonal communication and evaluation out, but that feels unfortunately like too much of a power move today.

Right. But I, I, I think that we're like, you know, where there is real asymmetry of like time and demand. The, the Overton window on this stuff is gonna shift. Maybe 10 years ago, five years ago, even like sending somebody a Calendly was considered obnoxious by mm-hmm. Some standards, like, I'm not offended by Calendly now.

I'm like, cool. I'm glad that happened. I think meeting, recording and having people, having avatars go to meetings for you, I think it will happen. I just think it will take a while. The biggest productivity thing for us has actually, I dunno if it's productivity or just made something possible, is we run a, like a, a grant program.

It's it's dollars in compute and partnerships and whatever for equity, and it's like 10, 12 companies at a time. We're on our third cohort now, but we get thousands of applications. We are a very small team and so we did all of the applications manually the first time and it, it is. Really, really, really painful to, as a very, very small team, go through thousands of applications.

Yeah, we still review all of the applications, but now we have like indicator functions on signals from a machine learning perspective of like more and less promising, you know, businesses, teams, et cetera. Um, and so that's, that's helped

Noor: a lot. What is your take on like the existential angst that people have of like most recent models are like, you know, better than human experts at X or Y or Z.

Have you been thinking about that a lot? Or is it just still a like, philosophical question for you?

Sarah: When I started the fund, I mean, I was, I, I had like a period of realization where I was like, oh, I stuff feels like it's gonna get a lot better, right? Yeah. Like I'm gonna make a really big bet on it. But I had a different type of angst, which is more.

Like I care more about like what takeoff means than a GI. Right? Because to me, a GI is like, I don't know how to define it, but if it is reasoning, like I'm gonna try anyway. Like if it was the touring test, look, we got that guys. Yeah. If it is reasoning capability in some domains and environments that is very similar to a median human being, I'm like, I'm.

We're pretty close. Yeah. And I believe it is going to happen, right? Yeah. Whether or not you believe in infinite scaling laws. So like the real thing that causes me anxiety is like takeoff. Like, what does that mean if we just get accelerating learning rate from, um, models

Noor: with generic stuff play, they're already smarter than the average person.

Right. On like almost any dimension. Right. Though the question is like, what is the future of the average, you know, worker, I would, I would

Sarah: argue that they're, there're certainly better at human than humans on many things, but it is, yeah. It's not robust and it's not every dimension and like the dimensions where models fail really matter today.

But I believe we're gonna get there. And I generally don't have much anxiety about that because I think, I think human capabilities can change. I think basically the capabilities of models in humans will be disjoint for a while, right? Like we'll remain good at certain things that models are less good at, and models be much better.

As computers and, uh, than we are at many things as well, and that people who know how to leverage these models and use these models as tools will, like, I think that type of human productivity is going to be relevant for a while. Maybe that's a, uh, I, I think that is a. Perhaps controversial opinion amongst like a very small number of people who work in AI in San Francisco.

And a not at all controversial opinion in general, but I, I think like human productivity will matter for a while.

Noor: A while. Meaning like a decade or like five decades or, yeah. What do you, yeah. What, what do you, what's the timescale? I refuse to think beyond the current decade. Okay. But basically you think, you think for a decade, like humans times, whatever, like AI tools are gonna, are gonna make better contributions than like AI agents themselves.

I do. Yeah. Okay. And then, yeah, I totally, that is very controversial in sf I would say.

Sarah: Yes. Well, especially amongst people who like, at least believe in AI somewhat, right? Yeah. And, and, but the way I look at this is very, it's, it's not with like full confidence, right? Like if I, my probability distribution, that is most of it.

Right. And some part of me is like, well, it is certainly possible that we are all irrelevant from a capability perspective. Yeah. Um, and then you have to decide what, you know, how you feel about that and what to bet on. So going back to your original question, like I had serious angst about like, I.

Relevance to society, what my kids should do, like post takeoff world, are we all just gonna be like, is it gonna be like an earth wide, like European club party? Because we have so much abundance and I'm like, I don't, I don't actually wanna be at a European club forever. You know? Kind of like that. It's now, yeah, I am.

You know, that's not my, that's not my general mo. One of the reasons being, I think like models after the next two generations, it's very unclear to me. That it is easy to scale, right? You run into physical data center scale issues. You run into the depth of the capital markets, right? Like when you begin to think about where you're gonna get a hundred billion dollars, there are not that many pockets and you run in data issues.

And so I think it's possible. I'm excited to see what it means to like try to solve any one of these blockers, but it is not like a simple straight line from here. Then the question is like, okay, well if you need algorithmic advances, you need improvements on a bunch of different hard dimensions versus like just pour more available money into doing the same thing.

Essentially, it becomes much less clear. It happens like in the next couple years, and so I'm gonna be less anxious about it.

Noor: Cool. Well, yeah, I actually wanted to switch gears a little bit to talk about motherhood because um, I feel like you're, that's a different gear. Okay. Very, very different gear because, um, I mean, you're a, you know, total badass, you're like the, you know, youngest general partner ever at Greylock, you know, have this amazing, you know, fund and everything.

I think a lot of ambitious women are like looking at like all their career goals that they have and looking at motherhood are, are just kind of like, oh crap, how do I do both? And yeah. I'm just curious, like when you were thinking about kids, was it like. Very planned out. Was it very thought through? Was there like specific things that you wanted to have sorted before becoming a mom?

Or like how, how did you think about this huge new, you know, role in your life?

Sarah: Well, ignorance is bliss, so I think I didn't think about that hard, I suppose. No, I was, um, I was anxious. I was existentially anxious about it. Uh, so let's say before, what do you mean by that? Oh, I, I think a. A lot of beloved people to me were like, you can't do it all.

Sarah. Like you just like should be prepared to make some compromises. And I'm like, I'm not a particularly compromising success. Hate

Noor: hearing that. I literally hate hearing that too. Yeah. So I'm surprised that didn't make you feel like, oh, I wanna delay it then if people kept telling you that or you took that as a challenge.

Sarah: I didn't take it as a personal challenge. I was just like, why are you like so negative? You know? Yeah. Um, well, I mean, I, I think I of course, like feel some unfairness about it. Yeah. Because I'm like, well, would you say that if I were a guy? Right. Yeah, exactly. They wouldn't, no one

Noor: would say that if you're a guy.

So that's, yeah. It, it does feel, yeah. And

Sarah: it does feel unfair, but I think the, the other thing was just a, a, a general stubbornness of like. I'm not gonna change my behavior because like, you think I can't do this. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. My, my overall like plan was, well, there are things I'm super passionate and interested in from a work perspective.

Yeah. And then I've always wanted to have kids and my husband, pat has always wanted to have kids. Yeah. And I think the, the specific action we took when we got married was I was like, okay, I'm freezing my eggs. Like I don't wanna deal with. Like the general panic of planning from a timeline perspective. I got pregnant before I became a GP at Greylock.

I was like, still like thinking about career anxiety and all of that. And uh, I was like, well, I just don't, I don't wanna be up against like some ticking time bomb of being forced to have children at an inconvenient time because they're all inconvenient and so at least we'll freeze. And then, you know, like.

I pulled the goal and had kids anyway. Right. So, um, yeah, I, I think the decision making there was actually, it's never going to feel convenient. Yeah. And I, I think from a personality perspective, I am not the type of person that hesitates for a very long time at the edge, right? Yeah. Like if you are, for example, like you're thinking about going down like a slope on a mountain, on skis where you're like not super prepared, like you can, I.

Sit there and like get really nervous and think about the risk where you can just go and like my, that, that's not like life advice for anybody. That's more of an orientation thing where I'm like, oh, like this is gonna be really hard and neither of our families are here and whatever else. Like, we don't have the infrastructure.

We're both working. But a big determining factor for me was actually the fact that my parents both worked when I was growing up. Um, you know, they were. Professionals and then entrepreneurs. And they were in a very, really different place from a resource perspective than me and my husband. Yeah. Uh, were, yeah, like they were immigrants.

My dad came here with like 50 bucks. They were both grad school students, like mm-hmm. You know, working extra jobs and they seemed fine, right? Yeah. Like they, they never expressed, I mean, I'm sure many things were hard, but they never expressed that much existential dread about it. They were like, oh, we just.

You know, dealt with it. And so I think the fact that they had that attitude about it, and I was like, well, I'm better prepared and no less capable, so.

Noor: Might as well go for

Sarah: it.

Noor: Yeah. My parents were, you know, in the same situation. They came here with like no money and they like still figured it out. But also I feel like they were like, our first house cost like a hundred thousand dollars or something comical like that.

So yeah, it, it is interesting. It both are true, right? It's sort of like, uh, as a society we got wealthier, a lot of things that were expensive before it got cheaper, but also it feels like, yeah, like childcare is like crazy expensive. And like people's career goals now are like, you know, 10 x what people.

You know, sort of expected in terms of like what they wanna do by, um, oh yeah. In their work lives.

Sarah: Yes. I, well, I, I do think like maybe you have the freedom and luxury of a different level of ambition because you, you know, had a different starting position. So how do you resolve like, it's like really, really hard and like.

We're gonna do it anyway. Uh, so one of our four family values that we teach our kids is, you can do hard things. We can do hard things. Right? Yeah. And so I think that's the, that's the basic resolution. Um, I, I think parenting is insanely hard. I think it is, um, most days harder than anything I do at work.

Wow. And maybe, maybe that's like. I think it's because I'm like, uh, like I'm gonna get pitch forked for this. Or like, I don't know, like, you know, YouTube commented for this, but I think that the work stuff comes more naturally to me in terms of interaction, whereas like parenting requires, like I've developed, I'm trying to develop new muscles around like patience.

And empathy for like irrational creatures that I, I love dearly, but you know, some people are gonna be better at that than others. And Yeah. I don't deal with, I mean, yeah, I definitely deal with irrationality, but they're like natural, irrational creatures. Right. Versus, you know, like I don't deal with anybody on a daily basis that's just like, I'm gonna scream for an hour and a half at the top of my lungs.

It's a new experience. I think there's like visceral. Fear of like doing things completely wrong or your child dying or whatever it is that, uh, just, um, is really hard. And so I, I definitely, I think it is really hard. I think the thing, the, the thing that's been hardest for me from a, maybe this is like stubbornness of personality or just like what I, my own expectations, but you know, along with being.

Uncompromising. Like if you hold yourself to really high standards in two areas, like, and those two areas take a lot of time, you did not discover any more time in a day when you became a parent. Yeah. Yeah. And so figuring out how to say like, I'm just, I'm not gonna be able to put infinite time toward both things.

Yeah. And there will be some compromises is like a growth vector for me.

Noor: So does that just mean you sort of sleep less or do you feel like you're just like more uncompromising? Yeah, basic. Basically both than like the work and in the parenting time of like, okay, I wanna do the high value parenting things.

I wanna do the high value work things. Um, because yeah, I think basically as women, like, you know, I. Yeah, I mean, I'm not a parent yet, but like, it just seems like kids tend to love their mom more, so they, they want them more than they want their dad. There's like more things, I mean, I don't know, is that not a universal truth?

I just feel like that's the thing. It's like mom is number one and then like dad is always number two.

Sarah: Is that not true? I think like what is absolutely true is, you know, there is a, like from a biological perspective, there's a period of time where like the. Impact to the dad could be. And like we, so I carried two kids and then we did surrogacy, right?

Mm-hmm. So I'm like, I had the dad experience and like, that is so different. But the, the, the, the, the thing is you, you have a choice of a time impact of zero

Noor: Yeah.

Sarah: As a dad. And then you have no version of that as a woman because if you are carrying breastfeeding, et cetera, and I, I think the, the handling of it is not graceful and imperfect, but.

It is 100% like what is highest impact. How much time like you, you have a series of decisions, right? Like you're trying to figure out what is high impact. Then you're trying to figure out how much time do I devote toward each of these things and there's like a continual trade off. And then also one thing for me that I absolutely have to set is I'm just, I'm going to spend less time with my kids.

And I would, if I was like a stay-at-home mom or if I just did a less demanding job. And I think the challenge is I can picture. An alternate universe of Sarah where I'm like, I run the homeschool and like I teach and I do insane shit for my kids 90 hours a week. And it's like I could be obsessed about that in a different way.

And so if you can picture it and then you're choosing to not do many pieces of it, I think that's, that's the compromise for me. And like, it's a whole, it's a whole range. It doesn't just have to be schooling. Right. But it could be activities, values, opportunities, social life with other parents. Right? Like, you know, the list is infinite.

Yeah.

Noor: See, yeah. No, I think that's, that's totally what I hear for, um, yeah, like really ambitious women in their jobs too, is like, they're just like, sometimes they feel like, okay, they're, they're. They just feel squeezed on both ends. And then Yes, the, the third option is like, yeah, they, they also see a window into, um, you know, people who are spending a hundred percent of their time, you know, devoted to Yeah.

To their kids, whether that's schooling or other things. So, I dunno, is it just sort of like a checking in with yourself of like, oh, like what actually feels good now? Because I think the other thing that people feel like before they have kids is like, oh, there's like this chasm that I'm gonna cross, and then suddenly all my priorities are gonna shift.

Or like who I am as a person is gonna shift or that they've seen that happen to others. And it can be positive or negative, right? Some people like become way more like patient and mature and uh, yeah, I dunno. Other people, um, you know, maybe had had kids too soon and they feel that angst of like, oh my gosh, I really didn't get to like, do this marathon or whatever.

Like something that, you know, got interrupted because of, um, you know, the timing wise when they choose, chose to have kids.

Sarah: Yeah. I think the, um, I, I've had friends accuse me of being like, far too real about parenting and I'm like. I'm, I'm a happy warrior. I'm like really happy to have kids. I'm super grateful to be doing what I'm doing, but I am under no illusions that like 50 years from now, like if, if you're living your life by some regret minimization framework, like I'm gonna regret something.

Right. Uh, like, because it is possible to put a hundred hours a week into each of these things. Yeah. And I think you just live with it. One of the things that gives me the most comfort is my parents both worked and it's like, never have I ever felt like they weren't there for me. And they really worked like they, you know, built a public company together.

Um, so like, and you know, some of it was like I got to be a little part of it, like I've slept at that office and worked at the company. But I think another, and maybe a part of it is like personality. Like some kids are more independent than others, but it helped me at least to like, think from. That framework of like, I did things as a child because my parents were busy.

That, you know, like in a. Really intensive Bay area parenting culture would be like, not very acceptable and is not what we do with our kids. But, you know, at a young age, I had keys to my house and I left myself into the house and I got a snack, and then I did my math homework in front of the, an maniacs and it was fine.

Yeah,

Noor: right. Yeah. Like there's, there's always like these, these memes of like, oh, this is what it means to be a, a, a good parent, or this is what it means to be like, you know, a good mother, or this is what it means to be like a good kid or whatever. Um, so yeah, it's kind of. Hard to decide which ones you subscribe to, which ones you don't like.

Are there any that you kind of can think of that are popular right now that you're like, oh yeah, I definitely like, don't subscribe to that one. Or like, you know, that one's like BS or something.

Sarah: I dunno if there's a specific meme, but there's a chart that you know, we can find and show that my husband sends to me every once in a while.

That I think is great. And it just shows the number of hours your average parents like spends with their children in America over the last couple decades. And it is a monotonic increase, right? Yeah. People spend like. You know, uh, many more hours a week, both men and women with their children. And so I think, like this is one of the things that helps me where I'm like, uh, you know, the only issue, not the only issue, but one of the more fundamental issues are what your own expectations are of yourself.

I. Yeah. And like, so to your, to your point about like what is good or what is normal? Like, am I comparing to the 1960s? Am I comparing to my parents or am I comparing to 2024 in like Woodside? Because these are, these are very different. And so I, I like, I feel much better when I think about like one positive experience my parents, and I'm like, well, I can do that.

Right? Yeah.

Noor: That's awesome. Yeah, I think having a historical perspective is really useful because it's like, yeah, we're obviously spending way more time than you know, a hundred years ago because just the nature of how much time is available today. Yeah. You mentioned a little bit about, you know, surrogacy versus, you know, carrying a pregnancy.

Kind of, what were those like two different, what were those two experiences like, and was there anything that, you know, for other people who are thinking through that decision, you think would be useful to know now that you know, you've been through it to the other side?

Sarah: Yeah. Surga is weird, man. Yeah. Um, so I would say I am like a, I'm a huge supporter of surrogacy, but having done both experiences, I like it just, it was different, like good and yeah.

Good and bad. Yeah. Um, and so the good was like, I had complications in my pregnancies and like, I'm five feet tall, like 90 some pounds. Right. I was a beach ball. I gained 40 pounds on a 90 pound frame for my first child. Wow. And like, you know, maybe that's my fault where I was like, cookies. But it also like, just like, you know, you don't have to, um, go through this physically traumatic experience for your body, which is.

Different. You also like don't breastfeed and you don't like go through like physical, like I went through surgery twice. Right. And you, you miss pieces of it. So there's, there's good and bad. It was really interesting to just be like, oh, well, you know, I'm working a hundred percent, or like working and parenting my existing children at a hundred percent capacity until like kid shows up.

Whereas as being pregnant, like be it physical or be it mental space, because you're just like, I have a human being inside me. I'm gonna think about that some part of the time. Even like working furiously, it definitely felt very different. Did you, did it give you more perspective of like the, like dad experience or was it just like a total thing?

I was like, I told my husband, pat, I was like, this is so different because the, the benefit of surrogacy was like, well, lots of kid, lots of people can't have. Children without this, or it makes it possible at a time where like, I, I don't know if I'm gonna get pitch for for this too, but like, it's just very inconvenient or it's a risk you don't wanna take, right?

Yeah. And like the guy experience all the time. But, um, I asked Pat, I was like, this is so different for me because baby arrives and I'm like, I do not feel gigantic spike of hormones that mean like. Everything, like 98% of my processing capacity for some period of time after baby one and baby two is, is the baby alive?

Right? Like, what am I doing wrong?

Noor: And I mean, I, I Oh, I see. So basically you felt like a huge emotional shift in terms of your attention was like from whatever, wherever it usually was to like laser focused on baby for the number of days or months?

Sarah: Um, yes. I mean, I. I also felt the draw of work relatively quickly, but like, yes.

At least for me, my experience was like very, very like mentally focused on keeping the baby alive and panic about that experience. Yeah. Maybe it's third child. Certainly some of it was surrogacy where you just don't, like, you don't have that at all, right? You're like, oh, I could. Parent the baby, or I could not parent the baby.

Yeah. And this is a conscious choice that has like No, no emotional valence. It has no chemical driver. Yeah. And also if you have a lot of infrastructure, it's like I. One rationalist view would be, um, and I'm not saying this is like a complete view, but it'd be the baby does not remember this period of time.

Yeah. The baby is receiving wonderful professional care and I can choose how much time to actually spend on the phase of the baby's life that they will never remember, right? Mm-hmm. And like that number, you know, might not be the a hundred percent it was that I, you know, would've had I've been pregnant myself.

So anyway, going back to, I asked Pat, my husband, I was like, is this any different for you? And he is like. No, this is great. You're just less mad.

Noor: I'm so,

Sarah: so,

Noor: um, and so the, the fact, so if you, like, if you had reversed the order, do you think it would've been really different? Like basically surrogate for the first baby or the second, you know what I mean?

And then, you know, you, you carried for the third. Do you think it would've been like, it would've been like, whoa, this is like way more intense. And versus the opposite, it sounded like, you know, it was almost like you were expecting like more of your attention to be, um, yeah, basically chemically mediated that, which, you know, wasn't there.

Sarah: Yeah, it's a hard thought experiment because also like we, you know, our, our third kid arrived when, you know, my fund baby was like six months old or something. Right. And so like, ugh. Yeah. Real busy time. But

Noor: yeah, I

Sarah: think I just, I felt very informed going into surrogacy after two natural births and I for.

I would just say like for anybody, maybe for anybody considering it or for me, like I, I'm very secure in that decision. I might have been more anxious if I just gone directly into Serge of, what am I missing? 'cause I'm like, well, I know what I'm missing. And I think it's a trade trade's pretty good in many ways.

And like baby is super healthy in the end, which is the thing that matters.

Noor: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Is there anything about the matching process that you thought was like bizarre in terms of like, I don't know, just like disqualifying criteria that you didn't know about? Or just like interview process or just like the actual process of finding someone to, to do this very precious, hold very precious cargo.

Sarah: Yeah. I think that there are, I wouldn't say I'm like a super laissez-faire person in like most of my life. And here is an area where I probably have a lot of opinions where I'm like, okay, well, even from some basics of like, okay, try to try to be really healthy and not drink and not drink coffee and work out and like stay away from gross chemicals when I was pregnant and I have a point of view on how I'd want the environment for baby to be in.

And yet, like you can't possibly have control. Yeah. 'cause you're not living with this person and like you're asking for a gift. And so I think people have different philosophies on this. This might be the, like, if you think about this as like, I. An employment or a contract or an ask. This may be like the single time we've been most laissez-faire or hands off in our lives 'cause the like it, which is super crazy to say, right?

Yeah. Because like very high stakes and you're like on relatively low information, right? Yeah. I think like, you know, we interviewed our surrogate, they were screened, like they had psych screening, they had medical screening. Um, we had dinner with them, but like. It's not a lot. Right. I spend like more time talking to the like potential CMO of one of my companies.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and the rationale here was really. Well, we can't control every factor. Right? And so we want is like trust. Mm-hmm. Um, I think that is the best we can do and we can make it really easy for this person who's giving us this gift to like do the things we're asking. Mm-hmm. But like, mostly we just have to rely on the proxy of like her own children and what she did and like the sense of like, why, you know, somebody's motivation to do this.

And you know, they. Good character and orientation. And so, um, we were really, we were really hands off, you know, really grateful. Love this person who's been lovely, shipped us milk, like still in contact, but, um, not, I, I think it's our, our sort of conclusion was that we can choose a person we trust and we can't do much else.

Noor: Yeah, that makes sense. When you're thinking about education for kiddos today, right? It's like so different in terms of like they're coming into like a Yeah. GPT native, like so many screens. Like what are, like, how do you think about. About that.

Sarah: Yeah. You have like a very digital environment. You have AI where it's like not clear what skills are gonna matter as much and certainly like what knowledge.

And then you have like personal philosophy. So maybe I'll, I'll try to hit all of those really quickly. Um, we're a really low screen time family at, you know, my. Our kids are like less than one, four and a half, six and a half. And so still early. But we see like family movies as a treat and they don't do screens otherwise, like on planes.

Planes are free pass. Everybody gets to do whatever they want 'cause we're trapped altogether. But otherwise, I know what. Staring at, you know, algorithmic feeds does to my attention span as an adult with all the discipline that I've learned over time. And I don't think that's particularly good for you while you're building neural pathways and, and to the degree that you know, at their school.

I get annoyed about how much like iPad usage there is. We focus on. Like values, confidence, and, you know, values mean different things to different people, but like, you know, I described one of them as like, we can do hard things,

Noor: right? Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Um, but like, it could be very simply summarized as like, work hard, be kind.

Mm-hmm. Um, think for yourself and family first, right? Mm-hmm. Like as a sort of, you know, the overall quo family values. So I, great values by the way. I like them a lot. I mean, I think they're, they're like. Mostly pretty simple and maybe not that controversial, but if you think about all the behaviors that come out of them, I care much more about that now than like how quickly there are benefits to like reading and math early.

But I'm, I'm not so concerned about this.

Noor: Think shape someone's character. Like I think that's, I don't know, something I'm very curious about. Like, do you think like the character or like personality of your kids came out like fully formed or do you feel like, you know what I mean, these family values, you can see like the 6-year-old has like more of them than like, you know, your 3-year-old or obviously your 1-year-old.

If you ask me for

Sarah: percentage distribution, I don't know. Yeah. Um, but I definitely think that you can imprint, right? Yeah. Our norms make us, our environments make us, I think I, I'm like a full send like growth mentality person where I think even like, think about how hard people work at, you know, a startup that's really working.

If you take a normal human being, social pressure is such a powerful force. Yeah. Even if you take somebody who's writing. 10 lines of code a week at Google and you dump them into like there's 10 people, they're all here until two in the morning. They think what they're doing is super interesting. We're gonna launch the rocket.

We all own a piece of it. Like are they really gonna be the one person who's like check out at four? Right. Like committed something last week. Maybe Sally can do it. I bet. Nor no. Right? Like I think, or I think, and so like that sort of informs my view from the parenting perspective of, yeah, well I can make the norm.

Something that is like very strong. Mm-hmm. And like, you know, there's gonna be some kid personality that is absolutely nature, but the social pressure matters, right? Mm-hmm. And so that's kind of, and, and then, you know, their peers will matter a lot too, perhaps more than parents, which is scary. But I think that's the reason to invest in it.

And yeah, so I, I definitely think you can shape, um, character to some degree.

Noor: Mm-hmm. Okay. Cool. No screens really strong values around basically working hard, being kind. Um, education. What, what do you think is important to learn?

Sarah: Yeah. Uh, I. I think it is very hard to work on AI and believe that like you need to memorize a lot of information.

Right? Yeah. Or like very hard to just hold a supercomputer in your hand and be like, do your rote memorization for anything. But I think that there are certain reasoning paths that are really important to somebody's overall, like thinking capability that you could invest in. Mm-hmm. And, uh, I'm gonna be real biased here, but I think like.

Math and the hard scientists sciences are, um, useful in that way. And then it's pretty clear that the investment in this early, like there are the, like, just like learning a language becomes much harder when you're older. Learning to do the type of thinking like I. Math when you're older is much harder, right?

And so it's, it's less that I like want them to specifically be able to do math or like understand physics equations in the specific and more. I think the quality of your reasoning capability will matter for a long time, and it's my best guess for what will still matter by the time they're, you know, 20.

Because if you ask me to like, like study a domain, I'm like, well, these are the things I think are interesting. These are areas that feel more unsolved. I'm unwilling to make a 14 year prediction that like, you child should do it. And so I, I, I, you know, I, from an education perspective, I do think like core reasoning skills and then just like interests, right?

Because it allows them to, I think motivation toward learning to do something or contribute something or understand it is, is much more important than anything else.

Noor: Like around the core reasoning skills? Like do you think if you, like, you know, a kid knows multiple languages, they're gonna basically think in different ways that, you know, weren't, wouldn't be possible if they only knew English or they only knew Spanish, they only knew, you know, Chinese or something.

Or do you think language is like, eh, you know, there'll be so many translators. That's not a, that's not an important one.

Sarah: I don't know. Uh, I feel very strongly about the math and science piece. Like, yeah, I. Speak Chinese. Mm-hmm. My kids speak different languages, but it is, um, it's more from a, like I want you to, like, even if you could speak through a device until then, I want you to be, to communicate with your family and there's like a richness of the culture I'd like you to have appreciation for.

I'd absolutely say there are things you'll better understand if you speak the language natively. Um, and it's like that will make it easier for you to connect with people that come from that culture.

Noor: Yeah. What about sports, do you think that like. That's gonna be more prized as like a human skill. It's like, oh, we go on, see humans compete at soccer, humans compete at gymnastics, or, um, I don't know.

Do you think that's like playing on teams? I don't know. How, how important is that to you? Like from like a parenting perspective of like, all right, I want my kids to like be on track, to be like Olympic skiers or something like that. Or, you know, maybe something much more casual like, you know, I, I prefer that they, you know, play a team sport versus, you know, chess or something like that.

Sarah: My kid is, our oldest kid is better at chess than she is at Team sports right now. No, uh, I, I mean, I think like that wasn't a judgment either way, by the way. I was just curious what you think. Oh, no, no, no, no. Um, yeah, one could argue AI will change this. Yeah. But historically, to date the power of humans has been in like collaboration in societies amongst other things.

Yeah. Right. And so most great software projects, most great hardware projects, many new discoveries are driven by teams. And so I think the ability to operate with. Other people and make them productive is really important. And I think team sports are, uh, again, like, you know, social pressure and the environment matters, right?

I think kids are more likely to like develop resilience if forced to by their peers as well, right? And like be committed to winning if forced to by their peer force is the wrong word, but encouraged to by the peer environment. And so I certainly believe in that, but I, I'm probably, I don't know, my, my.

Family and friends might accuse me of like listening to our kids a little bit too much, where I want them to be self-directed, right? Because I think the ability to do things you are interested in. As long as you're persisting in them is more important than like, what I think is super interesting, like just because, yeah, basically being age

Noor: agentic and like having the desire to actually follow through on your own plans is like, yeah, I think it's like a really hard thing to parent, but when I meet people like that, it's like so energizing to be like, oh yeah, they're just gonna like go do their thing.

They're not like. You know, validation, seeking object. So,

Sarah: exactly. And I'm just like, I can't, I can't, you know, if I, I'm fine. Maybe you can be Andre Agassi and your dad can force you to play tennis and you like sort of love hate it forever and that's amazing. But I think, again, I'm just projecting, but I'm such a self-directed person.

Not that like any of my first five interests were the thing I ended up doing, but. I look at that and I look at our oldest daughter Kinsley, and I'm like, that girl thinks she knows what she finds interesting. And if left her home devices, she can go work on that for hours on end. But if I'm trying to push her to do something that she does not find interesting, like we are gonna be battering ram forever.

Right. And so, you know, like if she, if it's gonna be sea creatures and chess instead of soccer or whatever else, I like. So be it. But then it's like, well you better be really invested in sea creatures and chest kinsley. Right.

Noor: That's awesome. Is there a really fond memory that you have from childhood that you wanna recreate for your kids?

Or is it like you want them to have like a totally new or different experience that than the stuff that you enjoyed or liked? I

Sarah: don't have that much to compare to in terms of like what I think to be. Normal, but my parents were really fun. Mm-hmm. I, I know that's like a, that sounds like a very shallow thing to say, but I think they, they approached, maybe it's like the immigrant mentality, right?

But they approached like everything they were doing, you know, they're really young. So be it, go to grad school, go to a startup, start a company together, get to go to Japan. They were not. Super concerned. Like, I mean, I'm Asian, so like I had to get good grades, but like beyond that, like I work really hard, but I didn't grow up in a particularly like rules-based, disciplined household.

And an example would be my dad would be like, I'm going on a business trip to Japan. Do you wanna come? And so he'd be like, just tell school you're six. Skip a week, it'll be fine. Bring your homework. Right? And like. I don't know. I mean, if anybody from the Woodside public school system is listening, I'm not gonna do that.

But like, she's just sick. But, um, yeah. But like, I will forever treasure, like my dad is just like going off to business meetings and I'm gonna get to like, have sushi and walk around Japan. Yeah. And like that is the coolest experience as a kid. Yeah. To just like be part of somebody's life. And if starting a company, and I, I, I think it's maybe a trope now to say like, don't treat people, don't treat your kids as children.

Um, but I think it is really. Um, you know, let them actually like be in your lives. But like, if you have curious little people, I, I would like to try to treat them to like, as, as capable as they are and like, you know, just show them the real world and show them what I'm excited about because I really loved that with my parents.

Noor: Yeah. That's awesome. Well, you're such a badass. Thank you so much for, um, like just a really refreshing perspective on AI and work and family. I feel like it's really rare to find someone who's like just excelling and, you know, running so fast in so many different domains at the same time. So awesome to get to chat with you and talk to you soon.

Thanks so much.

Sarah: Yeah, that's very kind. Thanks for having me. And just to be clear, like when you have these podcasts where people are like, this is not financial advice, this is not parenting advice, we have no idea.

Bye.