Sophia Luo

Play To Win

I grew up in the Bay Area, and being ambitious and competitive is part of my DNA. I started playing in chess tournaments in elementary school, and was ranked nationally as a top 100 chess player at 8 years old. I love to play Bullet chess games, which is the most primal version of chess. Each player only has one minute to complete all their moves, so the whole game is usually over in two minutes.

For college, I ended up at MIT where I graduated with three degrees in four years: my Bachelors in Computer Science and Mathematical Economics and my Masters of Engineering. While at MIT, I interned at quantitative finance firms. I quickly realized that going into tech would be more intellectually stimulating and also allow me to have more impact in the world.

My first startup job was at Scale AI, where I started as an engineer, and then worked as a product manager. While there, I sprinted to help launch multiple new products, like the Generative AI Data Engine. After nearly four years working in enterprise, I wanted to try my hand at consumer, and joined Character AI as a product engineer.

Over the last several years, community building has been my side hustle. From organizing meetups for new grads, to connecting founders with engineering talent, I love meeting people and learning about new ideas. That’s a big reason I got into angel investing earlier this year, and was fortunate to write early checks into companies like Cognition.

LFG

The culture at Scale AI was one where there was no limit to how fast you could progress. Much of the early leadership were ambitious people who would run through walls to get things done. Despite being a new grad when I started at Scale, I built the university recruiting program from the ground up. I was able to have a massive impact on growing the engineering and product teams and cementing the culture – in addition to my day job building product lines for Scale.

This determination and grit has stayed with me. Today, I look for founders who believe they can accomplish the impossible, and have an “LFG” attitude.

The Next Wave

Something I learned from Alexandr Wang, CEO and founder of Scale, is the importance of seeing technology trends and being willing to pivot the business to capitalize on those trends. During my time at Scale, engineers were often moved across the organization depending on priorities. The company was always thinking about the next revenue stream, and how they could ride the latest wave of technology like autonomous vehicles and generative AI. Founders who will have the most success are those that can pick up on a trend and sprint towards orienting their business and product around what customers want and need.