How Lucy Guo conquered tech and became Miami’s number one party girl

Lucy Guo is neighbors with David Beckham, however don’t ask her what he appears to be like like.

“Each white man appears to be like the identical to me, so I’ve been within the elevator with David Beckham just a few instances and I didn’t realize it was him,” the tech developer, designer and investor informed The Publish. “The one motive I discovered after was as a result of my associates had been within the elevator with me saying, ‘Oh my God, that was David Beckham.’”

However the soccer legend, who co-owns the MLS workforce Inter Miami CF, almost certainly is aware of who Guo is.

The 27-year-old has not endeared herself to her neighbors within the One Thousand Museum tower, the place condos go for $6 million to $33 million. (Guo reportedly paid $6.7 million for hers.) In February, she threw a small banquet that become a raucous soiree with greater than 100 hackers — invited final minute through Twitter, naturally.

“Individuals have totally different definitions of a celebration, however to me, it was quite a lot of engineers standing round speaking about their tasks, the way forward for net 3 and crypto,” she stated.

However then there have been the social gathering’s different friends: a lemur and snake, which had been rented from the Zoological Wildlife Basis. (The infant tiger she wished was not accessible.)

“The lemur was very well behaved,” Guo added. “It was very pleasant and didn’t get freaked out by the noise and folks. Actually, it was just about hugging and licking everybody.”

Evidently, she obtained a letter from the constructing’s Owners’ Affiliation detailing her violations — together with life-safety points, overcrowding, smoking and “interfering with different residents’ peaceable use and pleasure of their properties.”

“I did get scolded by the HOA,” she stated. “And, in all equity, I in all probability deserved it.”

Including salt to the wound, Guo shared the letter on her Instagram tales, with the caption, “My HOA hates me,” and it went viral. It could possibly be seen as whining, or maybe bragging concerning the state of affairs. However Guo tends to carry nothing again on social media. 

And that’s precisely what’s made her a hit.

Guo is a part of a brand new era of highly effective programmers, who mix their tech savvy with unfiltered observations plastered throughout social media. Amongst her friends, she’s distinguished herself as some of the outrageous — and profitable — gamers in Silicon Valley. Actually, on the age of 23, Guo was anointed as one of many “30 Below 30 In Enterprise Tech” by Forbes in 2017.

She discovered how you can code when she was in second grade in her native San Francisco. Guo’s dad and mom, who immigrated from China, had been each electrical engineers, however they dissuaded her from the career — together with her mom saying it was too laborious for ladies to achieve success within the subject.

In center faculty, Guo created one of many first Twitter bots, which allowed customers to auto-follow primarily based on particular hashtags. She began competing in hackathons — interactive occasions that deliver laptop programmers collectively to enhance upon or construct new software program — in highschool, and was accepted to Carnegie Mellon for faculty. 

After two years, she utilized to and was awarded the $100,000 Thiel Fellowship, created by entrepreneur and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel to incentivize college students 22 and youthful to drop out of faculty and create a startup or pursue scientific analysis. 

“In tech, it was nearly a cool factor to drop out as a result of all these individuals beginning massive firms had been dropouts,” Guo stated. “So, once I had the chance too, I used to be like, ‘Why not? What’s my worst-case situation?’ I had already been supplied jobs so I knew I might land someplace, plus save two years of tuition.”

Guo labored on the crowd-sourced Q&A web site Quora for just a few months earlier than being employed by Snap, the place she was the corporate’s first feminine designer and on the workforce designing localized tales for founder Evan Spiegel’s ardour venture, Snap Maps.

However Guo shortly felt the need to innovate for herself. Inspiration struck in an Uber when she struck up a dialog together with her driver, who advisable she meet Paige Craig, the angel investor who coined the time period “Silicon Seashore.”

“I seemed up Paige on Twitter and he was already following me,” she recalled. “So I simply DMed him and was like, ‘Hey, I’m fascinated by leaving Snap, form of need to do a startup. Are you able to give me recommendation, suggestions, no matter?’ We met up and afterwards he supplied me 1,000,000 {dollars} in funding.

“I had simply gotten into Y Combinator on the similar time, so I stated, ‘Hey, I don’t need to take 1,000,000 {dollars}, however I actually such as you and I’d love you on the cap desk [as a company shareholder with equity], so I’ll simply take 100K.’ He’s very comfortable about his 100K funding.”

At Y Combinator, a 12-week accelerator program that has incubated main tech firms like Dropbox and Twitch, Guo and her companion, Alexandr Wang, developed a number of concepts for a startup.

Finally they hit on the thought to merge machine studying with individuals, or “API for people,” which grew to become the corporate Scale AI. It really works with firms that want to research hundreds of thousands of information factors, reminiscent of for a self-driving automobile.

Scale AI blew up and is now valued at $7.3 billion {dollars}. It really works with firms that want to research hundreds of thousands of information factors, reminiscent of for a self-driving automobile.

“We used a workforce of people to label the information and, concurrently, we had been capable of prepare machine studying fashions,” Guo stated. “Machine studying makes the perfect guess, and the people go in and proper the machine studying’s mistake. It’s cheaper for the corporate and so they nonetheless get essentially the most correct information.”

Purchasers have included Uber, GM Cruise, Alphabet and Liberty Mutual.

At this time, Guo, who’s single, is not with Scale AI, though she retains her fairness. Now, because the founding father of Backend Capital, which invests in startups, Guo can dwell wherever and has hung out rotating between Los Angeles, New York and Singapore, the place she spent the primary three months of the pandemic.

“I had been homeless for 2 years,” she says earlier than shortly correcting herself: “I used to be a nomad with out an deal with.”

In December 2020, she was lured to Miami through Tweets from associates like Delian Asparouhov, a principal at Founders Fund and co-founder and President of Varda House Industries; Keith Rabois, co-founder of Opendoor and basic companion at Founders Fund; and Jack Abraham, founding father of funding fund Atomic, who had been main the cost for Miami turning into the following Silicon Valley.

A yr later, she purchased the 4,727-square-foot luxurious pad on the Zaha Hadid-designed One Thousand Museum. Now, her assortment of Pokemon slippers, stuffies and paintings resides there, together with a Swarovski-crystal Pokemon necklace by streetwear artist and jewellery designer Dan Life. Guo additionally has a Mutant Ape NFT and a multimedia piece by artist ThankYouX, who pairs bodily canvases with NFTs. 

An enormous Twitter consumer, Guo is a fan of potential new proprietor Elon Musk. “If I had been as wealthy as Elon Musk, I’d be doing the stuff he does,” she stated. “He’s humorous for positive and I like how outspoken he’s. Individuals suppose he’s somewhat loopy on Twitter — even I feel he’s somewhat loopy on Twitter — however I recognize it as a result of I do know I’m somewhat loopy on social media.

“Lots of people don’t like me as a result of, truthfully, I seem to be an a–gap on-line. I might not like me on the web,” she added. “However I’ve made quite a lot of associates as a result of I feel individuals recognize my savage character.”

Guo can also be fearless in her spare time. She has a skydiving license, diving certification and motorbike license and hopes to get her paragliding license, too. And regardless of breaking her jaw on an electrical skateboard, she nonetheless rides. Her twice-daily sweat periods at Barry’s Bootcamp are legendary amongst her 73,000 Twitter and Instagram followers, making her one thing of a strolling billboard for the model.

“I don’t care about trying cute at Barry’s,” she stated. “I simply need to do my two exercises and really feel useless after. I’ve a lot power to burn.”

Images: Sonya Revell; Hair/Make-up: Bea Diaz