Sarah Guo - Funding the Frontier - [Invest Like the Best, EP.489]

is the founder of Conviction. We cover what she's learned from studying the 250 most important AI builders, why compute independence matters in a world of fragile supply chains, and how she raised a fund by promising to "execute like hell" instead of selling a polished story. This episode is brought to you by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Ramp. Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠'s mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ramp.com/invest⁠ to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. Vanta.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Vanta is trusted by thousands of businesses, Vanta continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Visit vanta.com/invest . Rogo. Rogo is an AI-powered platform that automates accounts payable workflows, enabling finance teams to process invoices faster and with greater accuracy. Learn more at Rogo.ai/invest . WorkOS. ⁠WorkOS⁠ is a developer platform that enables SaaS companies to quickly add enterprise features to their applications. Visit WorkOS.com⁠ to transform your application into an enterprise-ready solution in minutes, not months. Ridgeline. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ridgeline⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgelineapps.com . Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best (00:02:16) Investing Without a Backtest (00:03:31) The AI Wager (00:06:16) Building the Best Investment Firm (00:08:37) Finding Non-Obvious AI Opportunities (00:11:00) The Frontier AI Talent Race (00:13:50) Compute as the Constraint (00:19:10) The Future of Robotics (00:22:15) Making Investment Decisions (00:26:13) How Sarah Spends Her Time (00:28:15) Raising a Venture Fund (00:30:49) Lessons From Her Parents (00:34:38) The Case for Open Source AI (00:39:01) Abundant Intelligence Isn't Inevitable (00:40:55) Compute Independence (00:43:14) Debates Inside Conviction (00:45:27) AI's Opportunity in Biology (00:48:58) Why Conviction (00:50:31) Finding Truth and Taking Risk (00:54:16) What Changes in the Next Year (00:56:46) The Kindest Thing 09.01.2026 Hosted by Patrick O'Shaughnessy

So, where to begin what will hopefully be a really fun conversation? I guess because you and I are interested in so many of the same things, I'm curious what's on your mind today. I think we're both feeling a little frenzied and it's been going for a while and it feels like if anything, it might get more frenzied and more chaotic, both for what you do, but also the world around what you do. So just in this moment, what does it feel like? What's on your mind?

An obvious thing for anyone thinking about how to navigate this period as an investor is just, how does it unfurl and how's it different from the past? What do I do if I can't backtest? I was talking to an investor friend last night, and the analogy he gave me was, I keep saying I wanna press the brakes as hard as I can, but I'm not doing it — I'm going 90 miles an hour. And I do think the question is, do you miss the opportunity on one side, or do you make the mistake of every boom-bust cycle in technology history? Especially if you combine that with what does it mean when you're also four years into building a firm, for the durability of the firm and the careers of the people, I think is a complex question.