"In the Series A, the Sequoia rejection included a line about how inspiring it was that I had two little kids at home while I was pitching them."
-- @Get_Writer CEO May Habib (@may_habib) with some real talk on being a working mom in Silicon Valley 👀
"Everybody wants to hear you say that there is nothing more important to you than being a billionaire," she says. "And the reality is, my kids are more important than that."
Now, when investors ask Habib about her family, her instinct is to stress that her in-laws take care of the kids, while she works 90 hours a week.
"It's sad that's the instinct. At the same time, I know that if I weren't working that hard, if our whole team weren't working that hard, it would have been much harder to get to where we are today."
Catch the full interview on The Upstarts Podcast, presented by @Rippling 👇
"Survive. Don't sell. Don't quit."
@Get_Writer CEO May Habib (@may_habib) has lived this mantra through a pivot, casual VC bias, and living in the shadow of the buzzier, brasher AI labs.
"Anthropic and OpenAI salespeople walk in like heroes, get a contract, and leave to literally never be seen again,” she says.
She's built Writer into a $1.9B valued business with customers like Accenture, Cigna and Vanguard anyway, by focusing on old-fashioned ROI, and AI tools built for "normal" people: non-coders who she argues are otherwise in danger of getting left behind.
On this can't-miss episode of The Upstarts Podcast, Habib isn't pulling any punches 🥊
We talk tokenomics "insanity," and why she believes more accountability is needed In AI spending: "People should be getting f***ing fired."
We also cover her pivot from Qordoba to Writer, and why Writer trains its own models, but doesn't want to be a lab.
And she calls out as venture capital's ongoing gender bias -- including one famous firm that wrote that her mom status was "inspiring" while they passed 👀
This season is presented by @Rippling 🫡
TIME STAMPS: 00:00 Introduction 1:55 How Writer helps ‘normal’ people 9:31 The temperature in the C-suite around AI 16:56 The killer use case for Writer’s tools 21:16 Pivoting from Qordoba to Writer 22:31 Vinod Khosla, Sequoia, and bias in VC 27:43 ‘Survive, don’t sell, don’t quit’ 30:33 Why Writer trains models, but isn’t a lab 33:38 Anthropic, OpenAI and how Writer can compete 40:52 Why people should be fired for buying AI badly
Enjoy!
