Shernaz Daver is small in stature however huge in affect. Over three a long time in Silicon Valley, she’s mastered the artwork of getting anybody on the telephone with a easy textual content: “Are you able to name me?” or “Let’s speak tomorrow.” They usually do.

Now, as she prepares to go away Khosla Ventures (KV) after practically 5 years because the agency’s first-ever CMO, Daver may very well be an indicator of the place the tech world is headed. Her profession has been a remarkably correct barometer of the trade’s subsequent huge factor to this point. She was at Inktomi throughout the search wars of the late ’90s (the dot.com highflier hit a $37 billion valuation earlier than spiraling again to earth). She joined Netflix when individuals laughed on the concept of ordering DVDs on-line. She helped Walmart compete with Amazon on expertise. She labored with Guardant Well being to clarify liquid biopsies earlier than Theranos made blood testing notorious. She was even dressed down as soon as by Steve Jobs over the advertising and marketing of a Motorola microprocessor (which may very well be its personal brief story).

KV’s founder Vinod Khosla portrays his work with Daver thus: “Shernaz had a powerful affect at KV as she helped me construct our KV model and was a priceless accomplice to our founders. I’m grateful for her time right here and know we’ll keep shut.”

Requested about why she is leaving the agency, Daver was usually matter-of-fact. “I got here to do a job, and the job was to construct out the KV model and to construct out Vinod’s model, and to assist arrange a advertising and marketing group such that our corporations and portfolios have someone to go to. And I’ve carried out all of that.”

It’s definitely true that when founders consider prime AI traders, two to a few enterprise corporations spring to thoughts, and certainly one of them is KV. It’s fairly a turnaround for a agency that, for a interval, was higher identified for Khosla’s authorized battle over seaside entry than for his investments.

The Daver impact

Daver says her success at KV got here all the way down to discovering the agency’s essence and hammering it relentlessly. “On the finish of the day, a VC agency doesn’t have a product,” she explains. “Not like any firm — decide one, Stripe, Rippling, OpenAI — you’ve a product. VCs don’t have a product. So on the finish of the day, a VC agency is definitely the individuals. They’re the product itself.”

KV had already recognized itself as “daring, early, and impactful” earlier than she arrived. However she says she took these three phrases and “plastered them in every single place.” Then she discovered the businesses to substantiate every declare.

The breakthrough got here with that center phrase: early. “What’s the definition of early?” she asks. “Both you create a class, otherwise you’re the primary check-in.” When OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, Daver requested Sam Altman if it was okay to speak about KV being the primary VC investor. He mentioned sure.

“In case you can personal that first investor narrative, it helps rather a lot,” she says, “as a result of generally what occurs in VC is it takes 12 years or 15 years for any sort of liquidity occasion, after which individuals neglect. In case you can say it proper from the beginning,” individuals bear in mind.

She repeated the formulation, repeatedly. KV was the primary investor in Sq.. It was the primary investor in DoorDash. Behind the scenes, it took two and a half years of persistent effort for that message to stay, she says. “To me, that’s quick, simply because the trade is shifting actually quick.” Now when Khosla seems onstage or elsewhere, he’s nearly uniformly described as the primary investor in OpenAI.

Which brings us to maybe Daver’s most necessary lesson for the individuals she works with: To get your level throughout, it’s important to repeat your self excess of feels snug.

“You’re on mile 23, the remainder of the world is on mile 5,” she tells founders who complain they’re bored with telling the identical story. “You must repeat your self on a regular basis, and it’s important to say the identical factor.”

It’s tougher than it sounds, particularly when coping with individuals mired in day-to-day operations that invariably really feel extra crucial. “Founders are typically so pushed and have a tendency to maneuver so quick [that] of their head, they’re already [on to the next thing]. However the remainder of the world is [back] right here,” she explains.

Daver additionally makes each firm she works with do what she calls “the equals train.” She attracts an equal signal, then assessments their readability of function. “If I say ‘search,’ you say ‘Google.’ If I say ‘purchasing,’ you say ‘Amazon.’ If I say ‘toothpaste,’ you in all probability say ‘Crest’ or ‘Colgate.’” She tells her shoppers: “What’s the factor that after I say it, you mechanically consider your organization’s title?”

She has seemingly succeeded with sure KV portfolio corporations, like Commonwealth Fusion Programs (nuclear fusion) and Replit (vibe coding). “It’s simply, regardless of the phrase is that someone says, you mechanically consider them,” she explains. “Take streaming — the primary factor you consider is Netflix, proper? Not Disney or Hulu.”

Why ‘going direct’ doesn’t work

Some startup advisers, no less than on social media, have lately advocated for startups to bypass conventional media and “go direct” to prospects. Daver thinks that’s backwards, particularly for early-stage corporations.

“You may have a seed funding, no one’s heard of you, and then you definitely say, ‘go direct.’ Effectively, who’s going to even hear you? As a result of they don’t even know you exist.” She likens it to shifting into a brand new neighborhood. “You’re not invited to the neighborhood barbecue as a result of no one is aware of you.” The best way to exist, she argues, is to have someone speak about you.

Daver doesn’t suppose the media goes wherever, in any case — and he or she wouldn’t need it to. Her method contains conventional media layered with video, podcasts, social media, and occasions. “I have a look at every of those ways as infantry, as cavalry, and should you can handle to do all of [these things] in a great way, you possibly can handle to turn out to be the gorilla,” she says.

Daver additionally has some sturdy concepts concerning the more and more polarized and performative nature of social media, and the way a lot founders and VCs ought to share publicly.

She sees X as “a automobile that makes individuals be extra loud and extra controversial than they is perhaps in individual.” It’s like a bumper sticker, she says: a sizzling take you possibly can slot in a small area.

She thinks inflammatory posting is pushed principally by the necessity to keep related. “In case you don’t have one thing to promote and it’s simply you, it’s important to be related.”

At KV, she controls the agency’s account, however has no management over what Khosla posts on his private account. “There must be some half that’s freedom of speech,” says Daver. “And on the finish of the day, it’s his title on the door.”

Nonetheless, her coverage is easy: “You wish to share about your children’ soccer recreation? PTA? Go forward and do it. In case you share something that hurts the corporate or hurts the prospects for us getting companions, that’s not okay. So long as it’s not hate speech,you need to do what you need.”

The trail to Khosla

Daver’s profession has been a masterclass in being on the proper place simply earlier than it turns into the plain place to be. Born at Stanford (her father was a PhD pupil there), she grew up in India and got here again to Stanford on a Pell Grant. She went to Harvard to review interactive applied sciences, hoping to work for Sesame Road, bringing training to the plenty.

That didn’t work out: She despatched out 100 résumés and bought 100 rejections. She bought closest to a job at Digital Arts (EA) underneath founding CEO Journey Hawkins, however “on the final minute, Hawkins nixed the rec.”

A lady there urged Daver strive PR as an alternative. That led to advertising and marketing semiconductors, together with that memorable assembly with Jobs, who was then operating his pc firm NeXT. Daver was the lowest-ranking individual in a gathering about Motorola’s 68040 chip. Jobs confirmed up 45 minutes late and mentioned: “You probably did a horrible job of selling the 68040.”

She defended her staff (“However we did all of this nice stuff,” Daver remembers saying), “and he simply went, ‘No, you don’t have any concept what you probably did.’ And no one defended me.” (She says she would have carried out something to work with Jobs, regardless of his popularity as a taskmaster.)

From there, she headed to Solar Microsystems in Paris, the place she labored with Scott McNealy and Eric Schmidt on the working system Solaris and the programming language Java. Afterward, she rejoined Journey Hawkins at his second online game firm, 3DO; then it was on to Inktomi, the place she was the primary and solely CMO. “We had been additional forward than Google” in search, she says. Quickly after, the web bubble burst and inside a couple of years, Inktomi was offered off in elements.

Consulting and full-time roles would observe, together with at Netflix throughout the DVD-by-mail period; Walmart, Khan Academy, Guardant Well being, Udacity, 10x Genomics, GV, and Kitty Hawk.

Then got here the telephone name from Khosla. She didn’t acknowledge the quantity and took per week to hearken to the voicemail. “I referred to as him, and that began this means of him convincing me to return and work with him, and my telling him all the explanations it might be actually, actually unhealthy for us to work collectively.”

After 9 months, “opposite to most individuals telling me to not do it” (Khosla is called demanding), “similar to the remainder of my life, I took it.”

The true deal

She hasn’t regarded again. Quite the opposite, Daver describes one problem she has to cope with throughout Silicon Valley (however not with Khosla): Everybody sounds the identical. “All people is so scripted,” she says of company communications and CEOs. “All of them sound the identical. That’s why, for lots of people, Sam [Altman] could be very refreshing.”

She tells a narrative concerning the day final month that Khosla appeared at TechCrunch Disrupt, then went to a different occasion. “The organizer mentioned one thing like, ‘Oh my gosh, I heard what Vinod mentioned onstage. You have to have been shrinking.’ And I’m going, ‘No, that was nice, what he mentioned.’”

So the place will Daver land subsequent? She’s not saying, describing her future solely as “totally different alternatives.” However given her monitor file — at all times arriving simply earlier than the wave crests — it’s price watching. She was early to look, early to streaming, early to genomics, early to AI. She has a knack for seeing the longer term simply earlier than most others.

And he or she is aware of the right way to inform that story till the remainder of us catch up.