Sarah Guo

Who they are

Sarah Guo is Founder and Managing Partner at Conviction — left Greylock in 2022 to start the firm herself and co-hosts No Priors, an AI podcast with Elad Gil.

Person

Sarah Guo founded Conviction in October 2022 — her own AI-focused early-stage VC firm — after eight years at Greylock, where she rose to one of its youngest General Partners. Before Greylock she did banking and growth investing, with Goldman Sachs in her background; she also spent time at Casa Systems earlier in her career. She studied at The Wharton School and the Lauder Institute, the latter known for its international focus — she's fluent in Chinese. The through-line is a consistent early bet on infrastructure shifts: she was backing AI companies at Greylock when most funds were cautious, then founded Conviction when GPT-3 was new and the category was still forming. She co-hosts two podcasts: No Priors (at no-priors.com, with Elad Gil), interviewing AI engineers, researchers, and founders, and Mouthwash with Erik Torenberg on market trends and startup dynamics. She writes at sarahguo.com on AI, venture capital, and software design, and speaks widely — TEDAI San Francisco, RSAC, SoftBank's Sōzō AI event, and a February 2026 interview with The Economist. Possibly — her JavaScript coding interest hints she engages with product and technical depth beyond the typical investor surface.

Network

Sarah's most visible collaborator is Elad Gil, her No Priors co-host — a prolific angel and founder in his own right. She's interviewed Satya Nadella on ambition and AI startups, signaling access at the highest level of the industry. Her portfolio connections include board seats at Distributed Spectrum, Latent, and Onyx Security, and early investments in Baseten, Sierra, Nova Intelligence, and Collate (which raised $95M).

Elad Gil· Co-host, No Priors podcast; investor and entrepreneur
Satya Nadella· CEO, Microsoft — interviewed on No Priors
Erik Torenberg· Co-host, Mouthwash podcast; investor

How they likely show up

Founded Conviction herself in 2022 rather than joining an existing firm → high agency, prefers building to inheriting.
Active across two podcasts (No Priors, Mouthwash) plus a blog at sarahguo.com → very comfortable being publicly visible and generating a point of view at scale.
Wharton + Lauder Institute background → likely brings both quantitative rigor and an international, cross-cultural lens to deals.
Fluent in Chinese and has a JavaScript coding side interest → engages with technical depth and global context, not just financial abstractions.
Early backer of infrastructure plays — Baseten, Sierra, Nova Intelligence — before they were widely recognized → pattern-recognition investor who moves on conviction ahead of consensus.
Interviewed Satya Nadella and spoke at SoftBank's 100+ founder event → operates comfortably at the CEO/institutional level, not just the startup trenches.

Conversation tips

→ Reference a specific No Priors episode or a post from sarahguo.com — she'll know immediately whether you've actually listened or just name-dropped the podcast.
→ Ask about a portfolio company by name (Baseten, Sierra, Collate) rather than about 'AI investing' generically — she responds to specifics, not categories.
→ The Economist interview (February 2026) is a good recent anchor — it signals how she's framing the current AI moment publicly and gives you a shared reference point.
→ Don't pitch her on anything that requires her to explain why AI matters — she's three years into a fund built on that thesis; start from there.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on the Collate raise — she was an early investor and the company just raised $95M, which is a live signal about where she's placing bets on AI data infrastructure right now.
Lead with the No Priors interview with Satya Nadella — she hosted the Microsoft CEO to discuss ambition, trust, and AI startups, and it's a recent high-visibility moment worth acknowledging specifically.
Reference her February 2026 Economist podcast interview on AI investing — it's the most recent public articulation of her thesis and shows you've followed her thinking beyond LinkedIn.

Discovery questions

You backed Baseten early and Sierra early — what's the pattern you're looking for at the infrastructure layer that most investors are still missing?
No Priors covers everything from mechanistic interpretability to AI governance — how does that range of topics shape what you actually write a check for?
You founded Conviction when GPT-3 was new and most funds were still watching. Now that AI is consensus, how has your sourcing edge changed?

Avoid

Don't ask broad scene-setting questions like 'what's your view on AI' — she has a fully public, detailed thesis across a blog, two podcasts, and conference talks, and arriving without having engaged with it signals you haven't done the work.

Make it yours