Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram and former CPO at Anthropic and now co-lead of Labs, was the perfect person to kick off our 21st Annual Summit. - We dove into Labs and how they operate at Anthropic, building for what the models will be in 6 months. - He discussed trust & security and how CXOs of today's largest enterprises should take the recent comments to slow down. - A topic I keep coming back to: more is not better anymore; it's just a prompt away. Mike shared how Labs handles that pull internally and lessons from Instagram virality. - Two companies can have the exact same frontier models and get wildly different results. Mike dove into how the gap isn't the model; it's how fast your team learns to use it. Watch the whole interview: youtu.be/ZkDRXs_LvWw?si=lyEw…

SIERRA Ventures' 21st Annual CXO Summit: one question kept coming up: What do you do when models improve faster than your organization can absorb them? "You can't hold your product shapes too strongly. You have to hold them lightly because they may just go away over time." - @mikeyk Speakers Included: @mikeyk (@AnthropicAI ) @jpatel41 (@Cisco ) @pwendell (@databricks ) @istoica05 (@databricks ) @andrewdfeldman (@cerebras ) @dylan522p (@SemiAnalysis_ ) @pathak2206 (@SkildAI) @sk7037 (@OpenAI) @robdthomas (@IBM) sierraventures.com/content/2…

SIERRA's Pre-Seed VC Summit gathered 100+ GPs and LPs. @shomikghosh21 kicked off the session with a fireside chat with @semil on early-stage investing, who had some of the spiciest takes of the day. 1/ “I can buy 10% of like a lot of companies that are turds.” Ownership isn’t the strategy. Selection is. Many emerging managers get pushed into debates about ownership, reserves, and concentration before answering the harder question: Are you getting into the right companies?

AI pilots are over. Enterprise leaders are focused on production, real workflows, and measurable impact. Execution is now the only thing that matters. youtu.be/mHFZK2byRw8?si=jtzv…

Hiring Your First Head of Marketing can be impactful. Impactful can be good - drive pipe, define your messaging, & retention. Impactful can be bad - waste your team's time, money, and energy chasing the wrong things with the wrong budget. 1/4 sierraventures.com/ascend/hi…

Thank you to all the GPs who attended our 2nd Annual Emerging VC Summit. It was a fantastic few days of networking with GPs from across the country. From LP fundraising sessions and roundtables to wine tasting and golf, great end to the week.