The Library of Minds Sequoia's CPO & Partner Jess Lee on How AI Will Change Consumer Apps
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Oct 23, 2025 Jess Lee, a Sequoia Capital partner and former CEO of Polyvore, dives into her dynamic career from Google to venture capital. She highlights the importance of empathy in leadership while revealing the pitfalls of delays in firing. Jess discusses the '4Q framework' for evaluating founders and emphasizes velocity as the key to achieving product-market fit. She also champions storytelling as a crucial tool for founders and predicts AI's transformative impact on consumer media, arguing for a new wave in storytelling.
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Storytelling Is A Founder Superpower
- Founders must craft a compelling story to recruit people who join for the dream rather than rational reasons.
- Storytelling materially increases a founder's ability to rally team, customers, and investors.
Evaluate People On Four Dimensions
- Evaluate people across EQ, IQ, PQ (political quotient), and JQ (judgment) for a fuller picture of talent fit.
- Use spiky team composition to combine complementary strengths rather than hiring generic generalists.
Talk To Customers Before You Build
- Talk to customers early and often to validate problems before building large, complex products.
- Avoid doing customer research only at the end of a long build; do discovery up front.
