Grace Gong

Have you wondered how Perplexity competes with some of the other popular AI tools that people use?

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of attending Zetta Venture Partners's AI Native Summit where Apoorva Pandhi (Managing Director at Zetta & our past Venture with Grace podcast guest) had a fireside chat with Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity's founder/CEO.

As a founder & angel investor, here are the takeaways that blew my mind 🧵

1/ Product-Market Fit Insight: Aravind's "lazy prompter" philosophy is genius product thinking. Users don't want to craft perfect prompts—they want answers. Perplexity's UX does the heavy lifting to understand intent. Classic example of removing friction to find PMF.

2/ Differentiation Strategy: "Every sentence has a source" isn't just a feature—it's their entire moat. While other AI chats treat hallucination as "entertaining," Aravind made it a bug from day one. His academic background shaped this, but the business insight is pure gold for trust-dependent verticals.

3/ Performance Psychology: Streaming answers word-by-word isn't just technical—it's behavioral design. Users PERCEIVE speed even during complex queries. For founders: sometimes the feeling of progress matters more than actual speed.

4/ Hypergrowth Metrics That Matter:
Day 1: 3,000 queries
Today: 300M+ queries/week
Only independent company in top 3 US productivity apps
For VCs: This is what category creation looks like. They're not just growing—they're defining a new search paradigm.

5/ The Real Moat (Critical for Founders): Don't build what model labs might enter. Perplexity focuses on the "harder problem"—search infrastructure, indexing, crawling, real-time knowledge. This requires specialized expertise that's genuinely difficult to replicate. Choose problems that scale with difficulty, not just capital.

Key Takeaway: Perplexity shows how to compete with incumbents—find where their business model constrains their product, build infrastructure that's genuinely hard to replicate, and design for the next paradigm (voice/conversational), not the current one.

Sometimes the best moats aren't technical—they're philosophical commitments (accuracy > engagement) that shape everything else.

Shout out to Apoorva and the Zetta team for an incredible event.

What's your take on Perplexity's approach to building in this space?


#AI

#Search

#Startups

#VentureCapital

#ProductStrategy

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1 day ago | [YT] | 3

Grace Gong

Moderated a reverse pitch yesterday where VCs had to pitch to entrepreneurs. Right before a robot fight.

2000+ people showed up.

Watching VCs scramble to impress founders was incredible. Total role reversal.

"We add value, we help you hire, we move fast, we—"
"NEXT."

VCs stumbling through 90-second pitches like their lives depended on it. The energy was wild.

It was basically VC Fight Club before the actual robot fighting started.

Everyone started sweating through their Patagonia vests.

Then everyone went nuts watching robots destroy each other with hammers and spinning blades. JK, not sure if this happened because there were too many people in front of the stage - even the TV screen was buried by people.

Made more real connections in one night than months of coffee chats.

Only in SF do you get VCs pitching hard AND robot battles in the same night.

Big thanks to the talented Mariane for the wild invite and shoutout to David and Kristopher for hosting as well - got to see some friends pitch and met a ton of new people.

What's the wildest networking event you've been to?


#startups

#sf

#vc

#robotfight

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

2 days ago | [YT] | 2

Grace Gong

Moderated a reverse pitch yesterday where VCs had to pitch to entrepreneurs. Right before a robot fight.

2000+ people showed up.

Watching VCs scramble to impress founders was incredible. Total role reversal.

"We add value, we help you hire, we move fast, we—"
"NEXT."

VCs stumbling through 90-second pitches like their lives depended on it. The energy was wild.

It was basically VC Fight Club before the actual robot fighting started.

Everyone started sweating through their Patagonia vests.

Then everyone went nuts watching robots destroy each other with hammers and spinning blades. JK, not sure if this happened because there were too many people in front of the stage - even the TV screen was buried by people.

Made more real connections in one night than months of coffee chats.

Only in SF do you get VCs pitching hard AND robot battles in the same night.

Big thanks to the talented Mariane for the wild invite and shoutout to David and Kristopher for hosting as well - got to see some friends pitch and met a ton of new people.

What's the wildest networking event you've been to?


#startups

#sf

#vc

#robotfight

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2 days ago | [YT] | 1

Grace Gong

🤖⚔️ TONIGHT: I'M MODERATING VC PITCHES BEFORE ROBOT KOMBAT ⚔️🤖

The most Silicon Valley event that ever Silicon Valley'd is happening RIGHT NOW

Picture this: I'm moderating venture capitalists nervously pitching their funds... knowing that LITERAL ROBOTS are about to battle to the death in the same venue 💀

THE LINEUP: 🎯 ME moderating the VC pitch segment

💰 10 VCs ready to spill their investment secrets before watching robots fight:

Peter Olcott (First Spark Ventures)
Mohak Saxena (Race Capital)
Tiq Chapa (L'ATTITUDE VENTURES)
C.C. Gong (Menlo Ventures)
Paul Jun (Depth Ventures)
Karen Sheffield, MBA (Pachamama Ventures)
Suman Talukdar (AiSprouts VC)
Gabriel Jarrosson (Lobster Capital) 🦞
William Genesen (Audacious Ventures)
Raoul Felix Maier (Eudemian Ventures)

THE VIBE: Professional pitches followed by robot battles - only in Silicon Valley!

Thanks to my amazing friend Mariane Bekker for creating the most unhinged networking event in tech history 🔥

Who else is ready for the most epic crossover event of 2025?

#VCPitches #RobotKombat #OnlyInSilicon Valley #GIGAPARTY

3 days ago | [YT] | 2

Grace Gong

🚀 I was fortunate to attend Silicon Valley AI Hub's exclusive grand opening at Snowflake!

This invite-only event brought together only the best founders and enterprise executives in AI - Andrew Ng, OpenAI, Anthropic, Glean, Windsurf among other amazing tech company execs, top Snowflake leadership, and some speakers and guests happen to be amazing former Venture with Grace guests.

What I learned will change how you think about AI.

Especially inspired by Andrew Ng's insights, here are my key takeaways:

🎯 The New Reality:
- Coding is getting easier and becoming a necessary skill
- Using all the coding and no-code tools - equip yourself with coding skills
- Solution? Turn EVERYONE in your company into builders
- Custom software development is no longer just for engineers
- The winners will democratize creation across their entire workforce

🧠 What the smartest people in the room are prioritizing:
- Sandbox environments for rapid AI experimentation
- Evals and agentic systems (mentioned in EVERY single conversation)
- Change management strategies for the "builder revolution"
- Making valuable projects with AI

🏗️ The Great Divide We're splitting into two camps: those who build with AI and those who get left behind.

The companies that make their ENTIRE workforce more productive through AI will dominate the next decade.

The message from the smartest people in AI was crystal clear:

"Get everyone coding. Make everyone a builder. The window is closing."
What hit me most? The sheer SPEED. This isn't a 5-year transformation - it's happening in months, not years.

The future belongs to companies that can turn every employee into an AI-powered builder.

Are you ready?

Many thanks to the amazing Snowflake team for putting together this amazing gathering and inviting me to your amazing event!


#AI #SiliconValley #AIHub #Snowflake #BuilderEconomy #TechLeadership #ArtificialIntelligence #Innovation #FutureOfWork

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3 days ago | [YT] | 4

Grace Gong

Week 83 of Venture with Grace — Recap (earlier this month)
We had an incredible lineup of voices across venture, AI, and product:

 Lars Leckie (Aspenwood Ventures) — what defines great early-stage enterprise software founders.
 Umesh Sachdev (CEO, Uniphore) — lessons from scaling enterprise AI into a $2.5B company.
 Lauri J. Moore (Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners) — where AI, data, and dev tools are headed next.
 Jiaona Zhang (JZ) Zhang (CPO, Laurel ) — building products customers can trust in the AI era.
 Dan O'Connell (CEO, Front) — why AI-powered customer operations are a growth engine.

Reflection: The throughline was clear — AI isn’t just a feature, it’s becoming 
infrastructure for workflows where trust and ROI decide the winners.

Replays are on YouTube, Spotify, and iTunes — just search 
Venture with Grace

#VentureWithGrace #AI #VentureCapital #EnterpriseSoftware #Product

1 week ago | [YT] | 1

Grace Gong

I analyzed hundreds of AI startups for my Smart AI 100 list by Smart Venture Media. The spending patterns I discovered will shock you.

While researching and prepping for my fireside chat with the wonderful Anish Srivastava from Swisscom Ventures, I uncovered something wild:

CIOs spent significantly more on AI than originally planned in 2024, with budgets growing well ahead of initial expectations. Worldwide AI spending is on track to hit $337 billion in 2025.

Here's who's actually leading adoption:
- IT & Telecom (38%)
- Retail & Consumer (31%)
- Finance (24%)
- Healthcare (22%)

Two types of AI companies are winning:
COPILOTS → enhance your workflow
ASSISTANTS → replace your tasks

The insight that changes everything:
Vertical AI is outpacing horizontal AI.

Generic "AI for everyone" tools? Becoming commodities overnight.

The winners? Companies building for ONE industry with deep expertise and unique data.

Think legal AI that knows contract law inside out vs generic writing AI.

One exception: Genspark on our list breaks this rule completely.

For investors: Competition is intense, but winners will embed so deeply into workflows that customers can't switch.

The companies proving ROI in months (not years) will dominate.

Major thanks George, Theresa, Chris, and Jacquelynne for organizing this amazing event.

What AI trends are you seeing in your industry?

#AI #VentureCapital #Startups

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1 week ago | [YT] | 2

Grace Gong

It was such a privilege to attend the Giants game last weekend with the HubSpot for Startup team at the Tony Bennett Suite at Oracle Park!

Super thankful for my friend Mahir for inviting me and some of our Smart AI 100 conference besties. Amazing hanging out with founders and investors at the game. Thank you Melissa for making it so enjoyable!

I rarely go to baseball games, but it got me thinking about startups:

* You miss 100% of the swings you don't take
* Even the best hitters fail 7 out of 10 times
* Consistent small wins beat waiting for the perfect big moment

Sometimes the best insights come from stepping away from the screen and just watching people give their all.

#ai #giants #sf #startups

1 week ago (edited) | [YT] | 2

Grace Gong

🚀 Just wrapped an incredible panel at Frontier Tech Forum!

Sharing the stage with:
- Former Meta VP Vatsal Mehta
- Ai fund managersJeni C.
- Leading AI community builders Mariane Bekker Ash Kumra
- Moderated by Prof. PK Prasanna Kumar

The insights on AI strategy and community engagement were next-level.

But the real highlight?

Watching the legendary Tim Draper and my good friend Hermine Wong deliver a masterclass on the future of crypto and AI. The entire room was captivated.

Plus, nothing beats running into old friends and making new connections with brilliant minds from across the industry.

Massive gratitude to Dr. Pavel Vinitsky, PhD for the invite and orchestrating such an incredible lineup of minds.

These are the conversations that shape our industry's future.

What a day! 🔥

#FrontierTechForum #AIcommunity #TimDraper #TechLeaders #Innovation #VentureCapital #Crypto #Networking #TechPanel #FutureTech

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1 week ago | [YT] | 2

Grace Gong

🚀 In an hour I will be speaking at the Frontier Tech Forum with legends like Tim Draper, Fiona Ma and my wonderful friends like Bill Sun, Hermine Wong, Ray Wu, Keshia Theobald-van Gent, and Mariane Bekker. ✨



The future of tech is being shaped by conversations like these 💡



Thank you for inviting me Pavel Vinitsky, PhD ! Excited to speak soon! 🙏



When visionaries gather, innovation happens 🔥



#AI #FrontierTech #DraperUniversity #Innovation #TechLeaders #VentureCapital

1 week ago | [YT] | 2