Leigh Marie Braswell, Kleiner Perkins, ex-Founders Fund and ex-Scale AI
Growth and Grit
We had another great dinner at SV Icons and hosted amazing Leigh Marie Braswell from Kleiner Perkins. She shared her insights of working for Scale AI, Founders Fund and now Kleiner Perkins, and Chyngyz Dzhumanazarov and I are highlighting some of them below:
1. Having a growth mindset is critical - being excited to learn, adapt quickly, and constantly improve. Great founders tend to thrive on responding to challenges and hypotheticals.
2. Focus and ruthlessness helps startups break through in competitive markets. Scale AI succeeded by initially narrowing in on a focused data labeling solution vs. a broad API.
3. Customer obsession is important - actively soliciting feedback, quickly addressing pain points, and building strong relationships.
4. Pivoting business models or focusing on new market opportunities pre-revenue based on customer and competitor feedback are signs of agility and play an important role in startups’ success.
5. Early-stage startups can gain traction by partnering with smaller companies facing acute problems, rather than large enterprises, which impose more requirements and have lower risk tolerance. Data from pilots can then be used to pursue bigger customers.
6. To avoid bad VCs, thorough reference checks and research are crucial.
7. Incumbent technology companies pursuing many generative AI initiatives simultaneously through acquisitions and internal projects may discourage some startups through perceived vaporware, though clear opportunities still exist for those addressing unmet customer needs.
8. Amid AI hype, delivering measurable value and ROI will determine which startups thrive long-term. Generative AI is expanding applications but implementation remains challenging.
9. In a market where everyone is betting on AI, having a contrarian view or proprietary knowledge can be advantageous.
10. Synthetic data generation shows promise but also limitations for certain applications like computer vision or self driving cars that require vast real-world datasets to account for edge cases; more research is still needed.
11. Investing time in people and relationships pays off. This was key to developing Leigh Marie’s angel investing network and sourcing great deals.
One of the joys of the conversation that cannot be shared through a LinkedIn post was Leigh Marie’s open and engaging nature, punctuated by genuine moments of laughter. Thank you Leigh Marie Braswell Marie for spending time with us!
Organizers: Chyngyz Dzhumanazarov and Aizada Marat