Viviana Faga is general partner at Felicis, a venture firm that invests in seed to Series B startups in several sectors. Since its founding in 2006, the company has backed breakout companies like Adyen, Canva, Shopify and Runway.
Because she’s a former operator with experience in positioning, branding and go-to-market strategy, I asked her to come on Fund/Build/Scale to talk about how she evaluates seed-stage AI investments and share some of the tactics she’s using to help founders “really focus on this idea of a defensible brand.”
Because we are still very much in an AI hype cycle, I asked her how much stock she places in the TAM slide of the pitch decks she receives.
“I place no weight on it,” she said.
“And that's because when we looked historically at the companies that we passed on because we said the TAM was too small, nine times out of 10, we were wrong… I want to know that you're thinking about it, I want to see how you're thinking about it. But it's definitely not going to influence my decision.”
She also shared advice for AI founders seeking to develop distinctive messaging and positioning, starting with the fundamentals:
“Be brief, be bold, be gone. Be as succinct as possible. Get your point across and then move on.”
Episode breakdown:
A look at Felicis’ strategy of investing across different sectors and stages
Viviana outlines areas of interest within AI and clarifies typical investment size
“If you're a traditional SaaS company, I think it's going to be very hard.”
How AI startups differ from traditional SaaS in terms of growth/funding opportunities
“I think TAM is just a false predictor in either direction.”
“It's hard to start an AI company if you have not been in research or in academia,”
“Every time there's a hot AI company, there's 15 new YC companies going after that problem 3-6 months later.”
“Marketing is formulaic, it really shouldn’t scare anyone.”
Questions AI founders should ask investors to ensure alignment and set expectations
Viviana shares her resources for keeping up with the latest developments in AI
“I always ask teams, ‘what's going to happen in five years that will determine your success, and walk me through it.’”
Links
Viviana Faga, general partner, Felicis
NeurIPS 2024 Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems
Thanks for listening,
– Walter.
