Demi Guo: CEO & Co-founder of Pika

I researched gen z entrepreneurs and I found several, but when I started reading about Demi Guo, it caught my interest.

She graduated from Harvard with a bachelor’s in mathematics and computer science. She later went on to start a PhD at Stanford.

She took a large leap, and quite a risk when she left Stanford in order to fix a problem that she had discovered when she was involved with an AI movie festival. It definitely caught my attention in how she took a leap to do something that she found she was passionate about and practically abandoned her academics to do something she cared about with the skills she had.

It was innovative that she thought to make better technology to use to produce films, something that may not necessarily be something that many people would think of. But it was nevertheless something that people would use and want, and it showed promise that encouraged investors to invest in the company.

I found it also inspiring that she had enough confidence to try something, and ended up succeeding. Confidence can go a long way in terms of making a leap to fulfill and idea that isn’t guaranteed to succeed, continuing to work hard to advance the idea, starting the business, and continuing at it when it gets hard.

I think I can apply the confidence that Demi showed in her venture. With my current business (Country Road Flowers), I think I sometimes doubt how large I could truly make the business and I can lack confidence in what I could do, and sometimes get overwhelmed by all that needs done. But really there is a market that I could use and expand in if I only have the confidence to go all in and not hold back because of what I think my limitations may be.