Sarah Smith

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

Today we unveiled Neo Residency, a new program for startups and high-agency student teams. 🎉 We’re replacing our best-known program, Neo Accelerator, with something even better and more selective. 🧵

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

Today, @trymirai is announcing a $10M seed round led by @uncorkcap , with participation from an incredible group of angels including @dps, @FrancoisChauba1, @marcinzukowski, @matiii , @gokulr, @scooterbraun @krishnanvijay , @benparr, @MattPRD, @adityajami and others. This funding accelerates our mission to make on-device AI inference accessible to every developer, turning what requires specialized systems teams today into something that integrates in a few lines of code. Every modern phone and laptop has AI silicon, but most developers can't access it. @trymirai removes that barrier. With this round, we're focusing on working with model makers to bring their models on-device across text, voice, and vision. As cloud inference costs become unsustainable for real-time workloads, on-device execution offers better economics, eliminating per-inference costs while improving latency. Models running on-device are becoming a new capability layer where developers can build system-level experiences independently. Inference becomes the programmable layer. We're building the infrastructure layer that enables that future. There's so much more to build, and we're just getting started. Excited to have Uncork Capital and this incredible group of investors and angels joining us on the journey. More on it at our blog: trymirai.com/blog/mirai-rai…

@adityaag @gokulr @southpkcommons Legend! Great episode😀

.@gokulr has helped shape some of the most iconic companies of our time: Alphabet, Block, Coinbase, DoorDash, Meta, Pinterest, and The Trade Desk. What is the common thread between them? Tackling real problems. Full @southpkcommons Minus One episode out now.

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

so fun when the kids are finally willing to watch real movies. we’ve been working our way through classics (parent trap, mighty ducks trilogy, rookie of the year, cool runnings). what should we add to the list

Introducing Howie Blue Your secretary just got an iPhone Air. We're rolling this out to a very small number of Pro customers next week, and to everyone soon after. After 2 days I’m already obsessed. (if you have Android it will still work just with green bubbles)

🚨How does an AI-native startup unseat an incumbent?🚨 👇Enter the Greenfield Strategy: AI-native startup bingo. The battle between every startup and incumbent comes down to whether the startup gets distribution before the incumbent gets innovation. One of the most powerful, and underrated, ways for startups to win distribution is to serve companies at their formation: greenfield companies. @stripe @deel @mercury @cartainc @brexHQ @tryramp have all done this at scale. Why does this work? Simply put, acquiring customers de novo is easier than getting customers to switch: - Many of the large software incumbents have hostages, not customers. Their customers would love to switch, but ripping and replacing existing software is risky and expensive. New companies don’t face those switching costs; they simply look for the best solution and evaluate based on merit. - New companies don’t need as many features to have a complete solution. - New companies have fewer stakeholders. You only have to convince the founders. Grow with your customers: If you attract all of the new companies at formation and grow with them, you will become a big company as your customers become big companies. Consider @stripe: many of Stripe’s customers did not yet exist when Stripe was founded. Some of those early customers later became large businesses in their own right. So when enterprises outside of Silicon Valley also needed to prepare themselves for a shift to ecommerce models, Stripe was an obvious choice, with plenty of relevant reference customers already in place. Incumbents, on the other hand, would much rather sell to existing businesses vs. companies that don’t exist now but might exist in huge numbers in a few years. They are bound by the rules of P&L (Profit & Loss) – and there’s no “P” for greenfield companies that don’t exist yet, just “L” (in sales, marketing, and product development costs). The startup, however, isn’t bound to a financial model – the startup doesn’t need one; it's still figuring stuff out! That leaves ample room for the startup to define the category. Graduation moments: In a similar way, software “graduation moments” (the moments when a startup begins to develop enterprise needs) also create opportunities to execute this greenfield strategy. QuickBooks may be great for single-product, single-entity companies, but once businesses add multiple subsidiaries, currencies, or more complex reporting needs, they outgrow it and require the controls, integrations, and scalability of an ERP like NetSuite. And you can now build a far better ERP with AI - just look at @RilletHQ. AI-native startup Bingo: There are many different categories of enterprise software. Enough to fill a 5x5 Bingo board and more! In each category of the Bingo board, there sits an incumbent that could be dethroned by an AI-native alternative. So, how does a new company win the game of Bingo? - Pick a square - Make a narrow wedge much better - Find a constant source of new customers - Rapidly iterate and add features to grow with your customers - Don’t be constrained by the division of existing categories If you’re building a category-defining company on the Bingo board - come and talk to us. cc: @arampell @astrange @a16z

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

Really excited to launch our fund 4! techcrunch.com/2025/09/23/tim…

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

Howie (howie.com) lives in email and manages your calendar with the finesse of a world-class EA and the precision of a bleeding-edge Al. He currently schedules 5,000 meetings per week for more than 1,000 paying customers. Today we're announcing 3 things: 1. General availability 2. We've raised a $6M seed 3. We launched a dope new website: howie.com Over 80% of our backers were Howie customers BEFORE they invested: This round is packed with the best founders, posters, broadcasters, engineers, angels, and funds: @sophiaamoruso @gaby_goldberg @AravSrinivas @jordihays @Jason @trueventures @anothercohen @TurnerNovak @pitdesi @davj @rahulvohra @merci @matthhayes @JoshuaSteinman @GabeOtte @aaronwhite @liveink @LDEakman @julianweisser @ryanbed @DevonThome @rsg @ColinGardiner @rogerdickey @pjcventure @resoluteVC @RooCapital @sasmith4 @Nick_Davidov @liveink @cicibellis @natedapore + more Lots of customer testimonials on howie.com. Here's one of my favorites, from Al pioneer @olivercameron: See FAQs in the next post, or peep our new site: howie.com

Meet Howie, the people's secretary. Out now. (see thread for signup link + fundraise announcement)

An EA powered by AI is life changing. Cofounder @awwstn saw the need to deliver accuracy when you are dealing with people's time. AI + humans = the people's secretary. Meet howie.com - now available to all! So thankful the team allowed us to invest early. 🙏

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

OpenAI just released AGI (all ghibli images) Today we launch W25. Our most powerful batch yet. They broke the benchmarks for acceleration so much that 0-$3M will never hit the same…and if you want to know why we’re building a ring of servers around the sun, watch carefully.

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

In 3-5 years, seed funds will generate the majority of liquidity through downstream sponsors or other GP led secondaries. The IPO bar is too high, and not interesting for most companies when private markets are so large. The 10 year model doesn't work and is far too antiquated - Needs a stronger structured liquidity market.

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

6/ I’ve also realized ambitious people are often not happier day-to-day. They live at the edge of their capabilities, frequently anxious that they’re falling short. The intensity of their goals means they’re regularly confronting frustration, uncertainty, and dissatisfaction.

1/ I’m coming to understand it’s not actually possible to significantly inflect someone’s baseline ambition. You can sharpen it, bring it into focus, and harness it—but fundamentally changing how ambitious someone naturally is hard. My job is to recognize the hidden ambition

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

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

@henrythe9ths AI Guide please

There's a shocking fact about AI that nobody tells you: You can catch up to the public AI research frontier in just 2 weeks. Yes, really. I've built a $150M annual revenue startup over the last 8 years and If I were to start a company today, I’d drop everything and go all-in on AI. But like many busy software builders, I felt lost—overwhelmed by the noisy, crowded and fast-moving modern AI landscape. And I wasn’t alone. So I spent my entire holiday diving deep into AI research—reading 30+ papers, watching hours of lectures, analyzing trends, and catching up to the research frontier. ✨ Here’s what I learned: - You don’t need months (or years) to catch up. - You don’t need a PhD or decades of ML experience. - You need fewer than 20 papers and 2 weeks to understand the major breakthroughs shaping AI today. It's because the technology is extremely nascent and most techniques that came before are no longer relevant: - ChatGPT is barely 2 years old and Transformers are only 7 years old. - Most game-changing discoveries happened within the last 4 years, driven by a few breakthrough ideas, scaling laws, and efficient matrix multiplication. The biggest secret? Many groundbreaking AI papers with thousands of citations are surprisingly simple and applied, like adding "let's think step by step" to the prompt, or simply asking the LLM over and over again to improve its answer (Self-Refine). I realized there are tons of founders and builders in the same boat—wanting to dive deeper into AI but unsure where to start. I've created an essential AI Guide that helped me catch up, in just 2 weeks, to the frontier of public AI research to figure out where the next opportunities and gaps were: - Curated list of only the most important papers - Simple explanations of key concepts - Clear pathway to understanding the frontier of modern AI It’s perfect for: - Founders expanding into AI - Builders wanting to innovate at the frontier of AI - Investors looking to separate the signal from the noise 👇 Want the full guide? - Like and Share this post - Comment "AI Guide" - I'll send you the complete guide (ps, I’m also teaming up with @VishalVasishth, co-founder of @obviousvc with @ev (focused on large-scale societal impact companies like Twitter, Medium, Beyond Meat), to host a small meetup to discuss what's working and needs to be solved in the AI stack in SF. Message me if you're interested)

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

I remember sitting at The Battery 8 years ago in San Francisco. I was meeting @m2jr for the first time & honestly, I just wanted him to give me a job. Sadly, he never gave me a job, but I gained a dear friend. He is one of the best seed investors of a generation. My 8 key takeaways on how to 10x a seed fund in 2025 👇

Today we launched our Pika 2.0 model. Superior text alignment. Stunning visuals. And ✨Scene Ingredients✨that allow you to upload images of yourself, people, places, and things—giving you more control and consistency than ever before. It’s almost like twelve days worth of gifts in one 💅 Available now at Pika.art

Animation coming to life!

@CindyBiSV @jorge_sfo Congratulations Cindy! So happy for you!!! You worked so hard to get her here and she’s so lucky to have you! ❤️