Sequoia Partner & CPO Jess Lee: What Great Founders Do Early and How AI Will Change Consumer Apps

As a founder, you're almost starting a

cult. Getting all these people to follow

you on this journey that really doesn't

make any rational sense. Like you're

joining for the dream, the story, you

like the person, you like the idea, you

want to be part of something special.

And so being able to tell a good story

and be compelling like really changes

your, you know, ability to to run a

company.

The Library of Alexandria was an attempt

to capture all human knowledge. Fire and

war destroyed it. Today, we try again.

Welcome to the Library of Minds, where

you'll learn the frameworks and mental

models of the world's greatest thinkers.

And when our conversation ends, yours

begins.

Each guest has created a digital mind on

Deli that you can talk to anytime,

anywhere.

I'm Darla Levardian. Let's dive in.

Super excited to have Jess here, uh,

early product manager at Google and then

joined Polyvore as the first PM and then

actually became CEO, sold the company to

Yahoo and now she's a partner at Sequoia

and investor in Deli and a friend. Um,

it's been really awesome working with

her. So, thanks for coming, Jess.

Thanks Ben.

>> So, I wanted to start uh in your early

life. I'm curious if there are any

experiences or or things you consumed or

learned that maybe inform some of the

things that you believe today

>> about frameworks.

>> Yeah. Like books, things you consume, TV

shows. I know you're very much into

comics anime.

>> You know, I think one of the things that

most shaped how I think about the world,

interestingly, was this book called A

Corduroy Bear. Have you read that book?

It's like a kids book. Um, and in that

book, the toys kind of like wake up and

this the story is told from the

perspective of the toys. And I was like

some little kid when I read this and I

just remember thinking my toys might

have feelings.

And I think that book taught me about

empathy. And then um and just like

thinking about things from other

people's perspectives. And then my dad

um he he worked for Lee Kashing. is like

a very famous Hong Kong sort of tycoon.

I didn't know he worked from at the

time, but he would come home at dinner

and then constantly at the dinner table

tell me these stories about work and

they would always be about people. And

he kind of taught me that, you know, all

problems are people problems, all

solutions are people problems. He gave

me the book like Dale Carnegiey's How to

Win Friends and Influence People, but I

never read it till much later. I think I

was eight. And he's just like, you need

to understand people. you need to think

about what motivates people, how to

assemble teams. Like no great things can

be done without teams as people. And so

just over time I think the lens the

primary lens and framework I use to view

the world and figure out teams to invest

any part of any job I've ever had has

been through the lens people. Um and

then most recently,

um one of our partners at Sequoia, Sean

Magcguire, he shared this framework that

he had that I thought was sort of

perfectly summarized so many of the

things that I've learned about people

over the over the years. And it's this

framework of EQ and IQ, which everyone

knows emotional intelligence and

intellectual

intelligence. Then he added PQ,

political quotient, and um uh JQ,

judgment quotient. So if EQ is how good

you are with people one-on-one, then PQ

is good, how good you are with sort of

politics and the systems of people that

govern things. You can be really good

one-on-one and really bad at sort of

figure out how to work a system of

people like in an org or getting

promoted, all that stuff. Then there's

IQ. You could be super super technically

smart but have bad judgment about like

business. Like you could be the smartest

engineer and then join a series of very

bad companies that you know don't amount

to anything. And so he just laid out

those extra dimensions for me and I just

use that now all the time. I think I

think he actually invented that that

frame. I've never heard it from anyone

else but it's like so apt.

>> Do you think it's worthy to try to be

good at all of those or you should try

to surround yourself with people who

compliment you? I'm a big believer,

Nick, nobody's good at everything and so

you just really need to figure out what

you're really good at. Um, and then you

assemble teams that complement you and

you know I look for very spiky people

that complement each other essentially.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> Um, so you started as a PM at Google and

every company is known for excellence in

one area or another. So as you were at

Google, as it was scaling pretty

rapidly, what were those excellent

things about Google's culture that are

still with you today?

>> Yeah. Uh I think being at Google in the

era that I was there, this was 2004,

um before the IPO, I got really lucky to

join and then join the Google Maps team,

which was an acquired startup inside of

Google. I think what I learned were two

things. One was engineering excellence

and what great looks like. these were,

you know, at the time Google was

recruiting the very best CS grads, the

smartest engineers and just knowing what

quality looks like.

>> That was a big part and the system

design was exceptional. And so anyway,

that's one thing I think Google really

spiked on. They needed that because

that, you know, not not a lot of people

know this, but the early days like

Google's wiring of the data centers and

the little Lego, you know, bricks that

they built to to do all the computation

plus search uh was what drove them

initially. So they were just really good

at engineering. Uh the other thing that

was really special about the company was

ambition

[Music]

>> both to the good and the bad but there

was always this sense of let's figure

out how to make products that impact

millions of people around the world and

global ambition and it was just very

like

I remember when I joined maps we were

buying data from all the data providers

like these people who drive cars in the

world to collect street information to

get the most updated street everyone

just all providers just rely rely all

mapping companies relied on buying this

data. And then at Google, there was a

project where they're like, "Hey, what

if we made our own cars with special

cameras that could capture all the

photography around the entire world and

that just seemed insane, but that was

the level ambition, you know, let's go

all the way. Let's do the most audacious

thing." And so, I think that was those

are two defining things about early

Google that I remember and keep with me.

Is there anything you think they did

wrong in retrospect?

>> Yeah, actually ambition is a

double-edged sword.

>> And I think this is true of anything.

Like your greatest strength is also your

greatest weakness. Uh and so the

ambition I watched projects sometimes go

off the rails. There was this one

project where

uh it was meant to be a classified

competitor, like a competitor to

Craigslist, and it got brought into

review with Larry and Sergey. And Larry

said, "Well, isn't this just structured

search?" Like a a classified has a price

and a you know, value and, you know,

just a bunch of structured fields. Why

don't we just make structured search and

we can put DNA into it and recipes and

classifides? And I remember thinking,

who wakes up and says, I want structured

search today? Like nobody. And so it was

just weird to see that project kind of

evolve into this thing that nobody

wanted, frankly, because the level

ambition was that classified, so it's

too small of a market. Yeah.

>> And I think this is why Google has not

traditionally been great at vertical

search. It's like each of one of those

like shopping. How come Google never

completely nailed shopping? It's

actually because it was like almost

that's that's too small for us which is

which is a weird thing. Yeah.

>> And maybe another piece of that that

Google was not great at was talking to

customers at the early stages because

you could have caught that very quickly

if you just talk to a bunch of customers

up front and say do you have this

problem of no structured search? People

would say no I I don't care about that

at all. I don't even know what you mean.

Right? But what we would always do is we

did a lot of user research at the end of

projects. So we would build this

complicated product almost to full you

know production scale and then we would

put it in the usability lab and we'd

have users come in and we say please

complete this task and they click on it

and they try to complete the task but

that's like much too late to be doing

customer research. So I think we didn't

have a culture of customer discovery

upfront and I think that's really really

important and startups in particular be

talking to customers all the time

constantly.

>> Totally. And I think that leads to a

question that I had near the end that

I'll ask now. Uh you know Google was

maybe a visionary company in a way

>> and so sometimes you may talk to

customers and they may say they don't

want something when maybe the thing

you're building is more of like a

horizontal enablement layer like I don't

want to post pictures online but then I

had Instagram.

>> So how do you think about the balance

between talking to customers and just

saying we're going to define the vision

for them?

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think Delphi is such

a good example of this because you know

no one is out there saying yet man I

really need an AI close.

>> Some people are surprised.

>> Yeah. No, no, there's a very specific

subset of users where oh I really wish I

could scale my time.

>> So I think you really have to be careful

to understand user problems not

user reaction to the specific thing you

are pitching them.

>> Um and then you just have to have a lot

of faith right. I think you in

particular have this I always say this

about Dar who lives like five years in

the future and the rest of us are are

catching up and so you know the idea for

a digital mind or that we're all going

to be using deli in the future like this

seems so normal to you and even things

like how the demo works like you know

when you talk to deli and it replies

back in the voice of the person is not

even novel to you anymore because you're

so used to it but to everyone who

experienced is deli for the first time,

they say, "Oh my god, that's

incredible." And that's the moment I've

noticed that people really light up and

they say, "Oh, I get it. I want this or

I want to use this. I want to talk to my

heroes." And so, yeah, I just think you

have to be very very you have to talk to

us about their problems.

You have to have your own conviction and

then you can get them to complete tasks

like the usability research. But you

really it has to be about the problem,

not about your product and their

feedback on your product in those early

days. Yeah, totally.

>> Uh, so let's talk about Polyvore. You

joined as a product manager and then all

of a sudden you were CEO.

>> Yeah.

>> How did that happen and and why you over

others?

>> Well, I actually started as a user of

Polyore. I was um

just obsessed with the product and I

wrote in to complain about it. Uh

but my complaints were neatly organized

like a PM with you know problems and

some of them had suggested solutions and

then that got me an email back from uh

the CEO who I didn't know. I just cold

emailed him. He said hey these are great

why don't you just come work here and

fix all the stuff yourself and so I

joined as an early PM. And being an

early PM at any small startup is it's a

little bit of everything. You know

you're not really a classic PM. you just

fill in gaps across the entire team,

whatever needs to be done, however you

compare with the CEO or the product

visionary. Uh, and so I just did that

and it just so happened that our CEO at

the time had like was really good at

actually really good at product and

building and prototyping and there was a

lot of other stuff that needed to get

done. And so I just kept volunteering to

do those things. everything from, you

know, find the next office, uh, figure

out the business model, talk to

advertisers and figure out, can we sell

them anything? And so I just kind of

became not really a PM, but just sort of

this generalist fill in the gap kind of

person. And that also included hiring a

lot of the people. So, especially

outside of engineering

for a lot of roles that none of us on

the founding team had ever hired before,

marketing, sales, I just became by

default the person interviewing for

those roles and then by default the

person who those people reported to. And

so after a while, we had all of

engineering reporting to uh Pasha, our

CEO, and then pretty much everyone else

reporting to me. My title was officially

VP of product, but

I ended up Yeah. just running a lot of

different things purely by volunteering.

So I think the answer to your overall

question is just volunteerism. Um and

then the role of the CEO changes over

time. Right? In the beginning it's all

about product product market fit. Then

it becomes the product is not just

the bits and the bites of the product.

It's actually the product is the

company. It's the org chart. It's the

people. It's how you run things. It's

process internally. And so that just was

more I was just doing more of that than

him. But at some point he sat me down.

He said, "Hey,

why don't you be CEO?" And so I was

like, "Are you sure?" And we just kind

of made the switch. And I was very

nervous about it. But when we announced

it, the team, I think a lot of teams

like, "Cool, makes sense. Let's just

keep going." And I was like, "Oh, well,

maybe just kind of naturally evolve that

way." Anyway, um, and then along the way

also that the other co-founders came to

me and they said that they wanted me to

be an official co-founder and they

actually gifted me some of their their

shares. um just really special.

>> Did it take time for you to overcome

that nervousness and imposter syndrome?

Like there's no preba for being CEO.

>> Yeah, I know.

>> How do you know what to do? Yeah.

>> Or is it just you embrace the chaos?

That's just the way it is.

>> I don't know if I ever embraced the

chaos, but I just sort of accepted it.

>> Uh I think in reflection, I had a lot of

imposttor syndrome because I did not I

could not pattern match against any

other CEO that I had met.

that felt like me. And so I was trying

to take bits and pieces of different

people's leadership styles, like try

them on for myself. A lot of that didn't

feel that good or was not very

authentic.

Uh and so I just didn't have a lot of

role models to that I felt like I could

learn from or copy from.

And then eventually I met this amazing

woman um Cheryl Del Rimple. She was at

that time she'd been CFO of ADM Mob. She

later after Polyware she became CFO of

um Conflant. She's very successful. And

when she walked into our office,

I just remember thinking, "Wow, this is

a breath of fresh air. She's just 100%

herself." She was very funny. She made

self-deprecating jokes. She had this

crew of people who would follow her from

company to company. And that was like a

little bit of a glimpse of what I

wanted. I was like, "Okay, you can just

be yourself.

not pretend you know everything you're

doing, be really confident your thing,

but not have to. I don't know, I just I

just really related to her. And so, we

didn't even need a CFO at that time, but

I just remember thinking like, I just

want you around. And so, I tried really

hard to recruit her and she's like, I

don't want to be the CFO of your small

shitty company. So, I was like, what

about consulting? And so, I got her to

join as a consultant for a few months.

And then wooed like crazy. Like I mean

I've done crazy things to try to get

candidates, but for her she went on a

vacation to Hawaii. She didn't tell me

where she was staying, but I stalked her

to figure out where and I sent a huge

bouquet of flowers and a handwritten

note like begging her to please join

full-time. And it worked. And so I got

to learn from from her. And so I learned

so much of how to manage people, run

teams, like think about financials, like

all the stuff I didn't know from her.

And then actually from another guy as

well who later became our CLO. But um

yeah, I think I just had a really good

leadership team um

>> and good mentors.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Good mentors that I found

along the way. Yeah. But anyway, there's

many pastor Nirvana as a leader and

that's maybe the biggest lesson is

there's lots of different styles.

>> Yeah. What's uh what's the most painful

mistake you made as CEO and how did you

overcome it?

>> Yeah, it's ironic that today is the date

of Figma's IPO and as you know Sequo is

an early investor. I were very very

happy for them. Um I think you said you

bought 11 shares today that have tripled

in three

>> $33 just

>> um my biggest mistake was picking the

wrong market and business model and the

reason I mentioned Figma is because

early Polyore the actual product was

kind of like what Figma is today. It was

an endless canvas in the browser where

you can drag and drop and design things

and people were using it for art. you

know, they were making designs and then

some people were using it for fashion to

make outfits and mood boards and some

people were using it for home decor. And

I remember we had a very early

conversation with the four founders and

like which path should we go down?

Should we go down the design path or

should we go down the fashion and home

decor path because that would be maybe

easier to monetize because there's

revenue. You can buy things on the web.

SAS didn't exist yet. So, you know, we

were like, well, who's going to buy this

weird design thing? and you know is the

web even powerful enough for you know

that kind of tool and I just remember I

was like I think you should maybe do

design but I wasn't like a I don't think

I was officially even a co-founder yet

so we made the decision to go down the

path of fashion and shopping and then we

became a social commerce platform but at

our heart we always had people using us

because they love to create and design

and I kind of wish we had leaned into

that um so I don't I don't think I had

enough faith in the business model

potential of the design path

And so two big lessons learned, mistakes

made,

pick the right market

and business model really matters. Um,

different businesses have different kind

of like laws of physics. When you are a

recurring revenue business like Sigma,

you start every day with some revenue.

You have a year to lose it or maybe a

month and the cash flow is just better

versus social commerce what we were. We

start at zero every single day. You

start at zero sales. You pray to God

those customers come back. But hey, most

people only shop three times, four

times. How many how many shirts? You're

not going to buy a shirt every day, but

you're going to use Figma every day,

right? Or every every every workday. And

so it's just it's just inferior business

model. And I just never factored that

in. And so that's something I definitely

think about now as a as an investor.

>> Enjoying the conversation. Got a

question? You can ask Jess's digital

mind. just check the link in the

comments or description. Okay. And in

terms of how that affects the

decision-making, the reason you guys

chose social current commerce because it

felt like a better business model at the

time.

>> I mean SAS wasn't a thing yet. This was

>> 200 probably eight or nine when we had

this conversation.

>> So there's a good lesson there in you

know there's an unknown opportunity and

you can optimize for revenue or you can

optimize what you're passionate about or

where the bigger opportunity is. I wish

I'd optimized for what I was truly

passionate about

>> and just

>> Yeah. been willing to take the leap of

faith on business model.

>> Yeah. And be okay with if it's not

immediate revenue there.

>> Yeah. Um

what was the hardest cultural challenge

that you had as CEO? You know, we've

talked about product talking about team

and org structure.

>> Yeah.

Again, going back to greatest strength

is greatest weakness. I'm very

empathetic. I see the good in people and

like what their spikes and strengths

are. Um

I think I did not hold the bar high

enough on performance and did not fire

fast enough because I kept wanting to

believe like oh just a little bit more

time you're going to great like I see

what the potential and at the end of the

day you you were like it's it's about

the outcomes for the company. And every

time you don't make that tough decision,

all the other great people are like,

"What are you doing? You're slowing us

down." And that that hurts the overall

composition of your your team and your

and your progress. And so I think I was

not

um I think I needed to hold a higher

performance which is related to the

other thing that is a strength and

weakness. I am super fine with

ambiguity. I love creative ambiguous

like unknown like I'm very comfortable

in that space

and I hate process which is kind of

correlated to that and I did not

institute much process in the team I

didn't want to have you know review

processes I didn't want to have a lot of

measurement uh and some of that actually

ended up hurting because I couldn't then

hold the team accountable if I said no

this is the target this is what we're

shooting for if you have a number you

know matters. You can actually

performance manage better. But

everything was just ambu ambiguous. And

so people couldn't even tell if they

were delivering on the things that I

wanted them to deliver on. So the

combination of those two things was very

bad for a period until I figured out how

to fix them.

>> Cool.

>> Uh I read that Polyvore had a very

committed and loyal user base. They were

very passionate about the product.

>> What do you think that was a result of,

you know, hightouch customer support,

your shipping speed, you know, new

features,

>> less features that were very delightful?

like how did you kind of build that

sense of community?

>> Yeah. Yeah. We just had a culture of

talking to the customers all the time

and I think that began with me because I

was a user. I was part of the community.

I just talked to our users in the

product in the DMs all the time. I was

constantly playing with the product,

interacting and making friends on the

platform. And so I knew that that was

important. So we kind of instituted that

into the culture. Um we would regularly

have meetups with our customers and we

would you know they lived all over the

country but every once in a while we

would hold a a meet up at the office and

invite people from you know top users to

just come and hang out. I forced

engineers to come to those and present

like everyone had to come hang out. We

treated them like royalty you know we

would take sometimes you know when we

got tickets to fashion week we would

give them to our customers to go and

attend. Uh we would throw and we're like

a very hightouch customer service. You

said that that that's something we did.

We would um when you went when you came

to one of our meetups, our community

manager would have gone through all your

Polyvore sets and creations and found

the one product that you was probably

quite expensive, you couldn't afford,

but used all the time and would buy you

that item. And if you'd open your gift

bag, it would have all the, you know,

swag, all that standard, and it would

have that one item that you'd been sort

of playing with in your Polyore sets

all, you know, for a long time. And just

the the joy, the like I remember people

were crying at our meetups out of

happiness. Just like those little

touches like people remember that.

People remember, you know, there's that

Maya Angelou quote. Um people don't

remember what you said. They remember

how you made them feel and it was really

important to us that our community felt

really special and important and loved

by us. And um we also wanted the product

to have that feeling as well. also try

to bake it into the product and the

little details and design touches

>> and in those details obviously it takes

time to really care about the details in

product but also velocity is really

important in product. So how did your

org think about velocity and delight?

Were there different teams for that?

Were there different phases?

>> Yeah. Yeah. I I think products go

through phases where in the early days

and maybe this this is probably true

here. They're like not sure if this is

something that customers want yet.

you're like not entirely sure. And so at

that point, you shouldn't build for

scale as if it's going to work forever

and that this is a perfect idea. And so

velocity is really important. I mean,

velocity is important period, but you

can lower I think a lot of times the

finesse quality bar when you're still

validating if anybody wants this thing

at all. And so we did that. Um, but when

we were sure like customers would

constantly request certain features like

I need this new feature in the editor,

we knew that there was going to be

demand for that. So that better work

perfectly out of the box the first time.

And so I think we just cut different

features and and products that we

shipped into those buckets and then had

slightly different bars. Although one

trick we did have was um for a feature

we knew everyone wanted. Sometimes we

would ship it

slightly broken and then have the fix

ready to go.

So as soon as they complain we would fix

it. And sometimes we would also catch

things that we hadn't thought of that

we've fixed. And so the community felt,

oh my god, when I talked to this

company,

>> interesting

>> things happen. People reply, but it

wasn't just like the thing we held back.

But oftentimes we would discover like

little and just, you know, I went

through every single comment on our blog

and I wouldn't read it. We would tally

them up and say, "All right, what

percent of people liked it, didn't like

it?" Like we were really, really

customer obsessed. And I think that was

just a culture that we set. Yeah. And so

even when we screwed up, people were

much more forgiving because they

remember they heard about the time that

the meetup happened or they they had

seen me like I think one time someone

really mean about us on um somewhere

from common on the internet and our

community came out in droves and they

replied in the comments and like

personally defended you, you know,

because they kind of knew me from the

site, you know.

>> Yeah. I heard your customers love you.

Yeah.

>> You come around.

>> Yeah. Uh so let's talk about you at

Sequoia. Um you've obviously worked with

a lot of founders. You run ARC. Uh I'm

curious what are traits not just in

founders but in teams of early startups

that you've seen be indicative of

long-term success.

>> The number one is velocity.

>> Yeah.

>> Velocity.

>> Yeah. So, another um wonderful co-orker,

Mike Vernal, um he's now at Conviction

Partner, but he was at um Sequoia. Uh

and then before that, he he was a a

Facebook uh product VP. He likes to

describe startups as like a turn-based

game. You know, you play cards um and

you turn over a card. And it's very hard

to be more right about the next card or

get, you know, figure out like make

every decision correctly. Well, you can

certainly make decisions faster and flip

more cards and just getting more turns

and more at backs, you just find the

answer. You get to the right place

faster. And so that's the one thing you

control is you control velocity and how

fast you ship. Like that is really

really important to finding product

market fit. Um, so that's like probably

the number one thing

and that's something I think this team

is is very good at and you in

particular. I think one time we had like

a one-on-one and I was like maybe you

should get a PM and like 15 minutes

later you sent me like a PM job

description like after the oneonone I

think you just make decisions think

quite quickly and then move on things

and so you know you don't gain that much

from waiting around because you're

you're not

>> the best way to get data is just

>> jumping in.

>> Yeah. Yeah. And moving from operator to

investor, are there any things about

your worldview that have changed

significantly since joining Sequoia that

maybe like before you thought something

and it's actually not the case at all?

>> Yeah. Yeah.

Um, you know, I used to have this maybe

more romantic notion that startups are

just excellent teams and excellent

products and then I added excellent

business to that and that I just you

have to be brutal about and it's exactly

what I described before like some

business models are just better than

other ones and at the end of the day a

business a company is also like an

engine for producing cash at the end of

you have to be a self-sustaining cash

machine and there are a ton of metrics

that drive that equation and sometimes

let's say you're a beauty business or a

commerce business a GMV business like

you just have worse repeat rates um less

recurring revenue and then because of

that the dollar revenue that you

produced is not created equal to the

dollar revenue produced by another

company why SAS has like a 7 to 10x

multiple versus commerce companies have

like a 3 to 5x multiple it's just how

the business works and that is something

that I've had to recogn with I think I

have invested in companies where the

business model was like just inferior

and that just hurt us the entire time.

No matter how good the founder was, no

matter how great the product was, it's

just very very hard. And so now I try to

factor that into my to my calculus. But

that's like a you know a big lesson

learned.

>> Totally. Um

>> maybe the other thing which is maybe not

contrarian is the importance of

storytelling.

>> Sure.

>> Yeah. That's another trait I look for.

Um,

as a founder, you're almost starting

a cult. Almost has to be like a cult

leader. Like you're getting all these

people to follow you on this journey

that really doesn't make any irrational

sense. Like you could go get a job at

Google and make like, I don't know, 40K.

Why would you go to a startup and make a

lot less? You're joining for the dream,

the story. You like the person, you like

the idea, you want to be part of

something special. And so the ability to

tell that story in a compelling way is

so important. And you're not just doing

it to people at your team, you're doing

it to your customers, you know,

investors. And so being able to tell a

good story and be compelling like really

changes your, you know, ability to to

run a company. And so that's I think

something I knew was important, but

became more important later. It has to

be substance and story, but the story

really mattered.

>> Yeah, I've realized that as well. Do you

have any really hot takes or

controversial opinions that might be

against the VC tech Twitter norms?

Um,

I love consumer.

I love this company because I think it's

one of the has high potential to be a

massively adopted consumer company that

today feels a little bit unusual or

niche. Some the best the best consumer

companies often start out that way.

Remember

Snap was this like obscure like what

your pictures disappear? That makes no

sense. Or Airbnb like I don't want to

stay on someone's couch. like that's

insane. And then they became massive

companies, right? And so I think this

this has that flavor. Um

but in consumer, well, consumer has

fallen out of favor over the last, I

don't know, 10 years. Uh not a lot of

great new consumer companies have been

created, but I think we're in this like

really fertile period. And there's two

types of consumer, right? There's

consumer utilitarian, you know, think

about Door Dash or Google Search. It's

very utilitarian. And there's consumer

entertainment, there's media, there's

gaming, there's like social platforms.

That is what I am drawn to. That is what

I, you know, yeah, I will spend a lot of

my career building. And I think within

that, media is having a moment. At this

point, all VCs say media companies are

not tech companies. Like media is dead.

Like that's a terrible business model.

When I go on Tik Tok, what I see is I

see a lot of what today is termed AI

slop, right? It's like bad, you know,

fanfic AI generated videos, but it is

getting better and better and better.

Um, I saw this one that was Harry Potter

crossed over with the hangover. And so,

you know, Draco and Harry Potter like,

we can't find Ron. He's gone. Why is

there a tiger in our bathroom? It was

just like literally the plot of the

hangover were Harry Potter characters

and it's actually pretty wellm made. I

mean characteristic is not good. the

faces change slightly from, you know,

part for parts of the story, but it was

really entertaining and there's it would

be very hard to make that any other way

except with AI. And so I think we're

going to see this with like what looks

like weird niche fanfiction and then

it's just going to start to become AI

short form stories, AO AI micro dramas,

just full-on content. And I think

there's a possibility of someone

creating sort of the next YouTube uh or

the next Netflix, but it's a lot a new

creator class, right? Because you could

argue that YouTube will be that, but the

people on YouTube

>> are f like they have a creator,

different skill set. They're famous

because they're good at filming, because

they're hot, because they're funny. this

is a different group of people who are

not showing theirelves on camera or just

have good ideas and know how to use the

tools like that I don't think will

necessarily work right away on all the

other platforms I think there's an

opportunity there I think a lot of

people ride that off in the same way

that they've written off the micro drama

category I don't know if you know this

but there's like a two billion dollar

micro drama category that's you know

>> what Quibby tried to be kind of

>> yes what Quibby tried to be instead they

should have focused on romance novel or

or romance events or like short form

cheap uh you know I think it's sold like

by a lot of USC kids uh who are in film

school and and that has blown up and now

in China that market is bigger than the

Chinese film industry so it's clear

there's demand there so I think though

that the combination of these two trends

is really really interesting but a lot

of VCs and people are going to write it

off because it's media is a bad business

>> so you've alluded to um spikes multiple

times and you mentioned like Daras was

for example like velocity. And recently,

I've been thinking about this as well.

Uh cuz one of the people on your guys'

data science team reached out to me was

like talked about like they wanted me to

talk about people I know, but all I

could say about them was what their

superpower was.

>> Yeah.

>> And I found it to be a challenging

exercise to do cuz I was like saying

they're hardworking or relentless. Is

that even a good superpower?

>> Yeah. So something that you're thinking

about as you're looking at foundaries is

like what makes a good durable

superpower for them

>> because I think that could also be

something that we use when we're

interviewing people.

>> Yeah.

>> How would I evaluate a superpower that

actually is valuable as far as something

that's kind of out there and present in

the market.

>> Yeah. I think what's really important in

hiring is a sense of fit and you know

there's also there's always that's

obviously culture fit but like role fit,

right? Because different spikes are

useful to different types of jobs,

right? And so you really need to

understand what's like the most

important thing to get right on this

team with this one for this job, right?

Which may be different than a different

kind of job. And so I think you just

have to identify the fit. And then the

other thing you think about is the team

composition. So, especially in the early

days of Polyore when like nobody knew

who the hell we were and we couldn't

hire like the very very best like 10x

and all dimens all dimensions. It was

very hard to recruit create talent. So,

I would often just find someone who's

really spiky in one dimension but

potentially like a little bit deficient

or weird in another dimension that you

would normally want for that role. But

then I would just pair them with someone

who was really good at that one thing

and then the team was able to produce

the right output. very specific example.

Um, you think about product managers.

Product managers are supposed to be

organized and pro project managed. But

if you're working on creative delightful

product, sometimes you need to be really

creative and out of the box and

sometimes creativity and organization do

not exist in the same person that well.

Uh, and so what that is certainly I

think I that's true of me as well as a

PM. And so I found this guy who was

extremely creative and very bright and

very high standards, hopelessly

disorganized. And usually a PM who

cannot organize stuff is like dead in

the water. But instead, we hired him and

paired him with a designer who was

really, really, really organized and

just project managed the project, right?

And it's just a simple example and put

together a a pod of engineer, designer,

and PM where you just need all the bases

covered, but they don't have to be

traditionally good at the thing that

they are supposed to be good at, right?

And so that's like maybe a very small

example. Yeah.

>> You went into an industry without really

having like a investment background.

Also I think you were the first female

partners at Sequoa.

>> Like how did you navigate that?

>> Yeah.

>> And and and learned about the industry

and

>> yeah

I had not done a single angel investment

before joining Sequoia. They made me a

scout for like a hot second at Sequoia

and I didn't make any investments. So

that what she said is true. I did not

have sort of the the the background of

having hicked companies. Um but was

interesting about Sequoia and I think

part of what differentiates the firm is

the ethos was like no no your job is not

like a capital allocator who manage the

portfolio. You're not a financeier. Your

job is to be the conigliary to founders

to be the long-term company building

partner to like really get to know the

team and the people and like help

especially in the crucible moments which

is what we call the like those

inflection points where you have to

navigate two big decisions and that just

really appealed to me because I remember

that was like as a founder. I don't

think I necessarily had that person and

so I just kind of wanted to be that

person. Um

that said, I still very much identify as

someone who likes to build things and

there are many pastor Nirvani including

at Sequoia. So within my role there, I'm

I'm I'm

our chief product officer, which is like

a weird title that I don't think I've

seen at another VC firm, but what that

means is I help run our product and

engineering team. And our job is to like

make the firm technology accelerated, AI

first, help us pick, you know, great

investments. Like we just did a hunting

party this morning that I helped run

where we're like, "All right, we're

going to scour our database and hunt for

interesting robotics companies for one

of the growth stage partners and we use

a lot of technology to do those things."

And so I do I spent a lot of time on

that because I still actually just like

building things and that's useful to

Sequoia, but then I also help run um

Sequoa's ARC program uh which which is

our our seed and preede stage uh

program. And so Sequoia I think gets the

the best out of me, but it's also what I

love to do. I just feel very lucky that

I get to do that.

>> All right, thank you so much, Jess. It's

been great.

>> Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed

today's episode and want personalized

advice from Jess, head to the link in

the comments or description to ask her

digital mind on deli.