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Clay Bavor

18 statements across 1 episodes · 8 bullish · 1 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Jul 4, 2026 by Clay Bavor · said 4 times in 2 episodes since 2024 · across every show →

On the record as a speaker too: Clay Bavor's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.

Mentions by year

brought up most by Reggie Marable (3), Bret Taylor (1)

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2025 3 mentions in 1 episode
2024 1 mention in 1 episode

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Everything said about Clay Bavor, oldest first

Jul 4, 2026
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sierra uses six-to-ten-page written memos instead of decks for board meetings
“As for running the board meetings themselves, we don't have board decks, we have board memos. So Brett and I write a usually six to 10 page memo.”
Clay Bavor Jul 4, 2026 ▶ 39:52 Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? | The $100K Token Budget Every Engineer Will Need · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 4, 2026
Disclosure
Bavor built an internal AI strategy partner trained on Sierra board letters
“Sierra brain is it starts with a 20 or 30 page document that grounds any agent in what we are as a company. What we do, how we're organized, our team structure, the competitive landscape, our strengths and weaknesses, all of these things. And then on top of th…”
Clay Bavor Jul 4, 2026 ▶ 21:12 Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? | The $100K Token Budget Every Engineer Will Need · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 4, 2026 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bavor: Top engineers spend over $100K annually on AI tokens
“I have heard and I have observed that top engineers who are really leaning in to cloud code codex and so on are spending more than a 100,000 dollars on a run rate basis on tokens per year.”
Clay Bavor Jul 4, 2026 ▶ 22:52 Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? | The $100K Token Budget Every Engineer Will Need · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 4, 2026 positive
Opinion
Bavor calls Richard Hamming's 'You and Your Research' essential reading for graduates
“There's a talk that I love by the renowned computer scientist, Richard Hamming, you and your research. And it's for any new graduate, probably the single best thing on a per word basis, I think you can read.”
Clay Bavor Jul 4, 2026 ▶ 54:27 Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? | The $100K Token Budget Every Engineer Will Need · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 4, 2026 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Bavor: Enterprises will mix open-weights and frontier models based on tasks
“And I think you'll end up with companies using both mixing and matching them depending on the task at hand.”
Clay Bavor Jul 4, 2026 ▶ 9:06 Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? | The $100K Token Budget Every Engineer Will Need · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 4, 2026 positive
Assertion Supported
Sierra gives engineering candidates $150 in tokens for AI-native interviews
“We completely changed our engineering interview process. So it now looks much more like, here's a very here's a kind of prompt think through an application you would like to build. Cool. Okay. Here's a 150 dollars to spend on choose your coding agent. You can …”
Clay Bavor Jul 4, 2026 ▶ 57:58 Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? | The $100K Token Budget Every Engineer Will Need · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 4, 2026
Disclosure
Sierra deliberately took lower valuations than offered in every funding round
“Every one of our rounds, we actually guided to and took a lower price than we could have.”
Clay Bavor Jul 4, 2026 ▶ 0:36 Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? | The $100K Token Budget Every Engineer Will Need · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 4, 2026
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bavor: Sierra holds board meetings on a six-week cadence
“You mentioned the six week cadence. We have kind of a tick tock, a three hour meeting and a one and a half hour meeting. We've done this since the beginning of the company”
Clay Bavor Jul 4, 2026 ▶ 39:08 Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? | The $100K Token Budget Every Engineer Will Need · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 4, 2026 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sierra founders personally monitored every AI customer conversation during Black Friday
“When we, in our first Black Friday, Cyber Monday with a set of retailers, one of one of our lead engineers, our head of operations, me or Brett, was in real time personally reading every single conversation that our agents were having, because we wanted to mak…”
Clay Bavor Jul 4, 2026 ▶ 45:04 Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? | The $100K Token Budget Every Engineer Will Need · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 4, 2026 positive
Disclosure
Sierra builds proprietary fine-tuned models on top of open weights
“So today we have a set of our own proprietary fine tune models. But these are fine tunes on top of open weights models.”
Clay Bavor Jul 4, 2026 ▶ 6:50 Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? | The $100K Token Budget Every Engineer Will Need · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 4, 2026 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bavor uses dual cellular and Starlink Mini for uninterrupted commute connectivity
“I now have a very complex networking setup that combines two cellular networks and a Starlink mini so that I have uninterrupted beautiful connectivity to and from the city every day.”
Clay Bavor Jul 4, 2026 ▶ 53:04 Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? | The $100K Token Budget Every Engineer Will Need · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 4, 2026
Insight
Bavor: Co-founders should use a 'majors and minors' responsibility framework
“We think about rather than dividing up the company, we think about Majors and minors for every part of the company.”
Clay Bavor Jul 4, 2026 ▶ 1:01:09 Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? | The $100K Token Budget Every Engineer Will Need · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 4, 2026 positive
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Bavor: Every Sierra job interview will be AI-native within two months
“I will be disappointed if in the next no more than two months, not every one of our interviews has some strong AI native component to it.”
Clay Bavor Jul 4, 2026 ▶ 58:46 Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? | The $100K Token Budget Every Engineer Will Need · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 4, 2026 bullish
Prediction Open · timeframe Jul 2031
Bavor: AI token spend will reach 20% of software developer salaries
“I would not bet on 3.8%. I would bet on much closer to 20%. In software engineering, the gains, to me, seem unequivocally there.”
Clay Bavor Jul 4, 2026 ▶ 25:31 Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? | The $100K Token Budget Every Engineer Will Need · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 4, 2026
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bavor personally reviews and approves every single hire at Sierra
“So I, to date review and approve every single hire we make, and I get some help from pine cone and I've basically taught it.”
Clay Bavor Jul 4, 2026 ▶ 20:35 Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? | The $100K Token Budget Every Engineer Will Need · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 4, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Clay Bavor details recent operational debate with Sierra co-founder Bret Taylor
“I was on one side. It was like, I think we need better kind of process and structure around this thing. Brett was on the side of people and maybe we need different leaders or a different leader in this space. The answer is with most things like turned out to b…”
Clay Bavor Jul 4, 2026 ▶ 1:00:21 Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? | The $100K Token Budget Every Engineer Will Need · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 4, 2026 negative
Insight
Bavor: Pre-training foundation models is economically unviable for most startups
“The capital expense the ongoing capital expense to create what is effectively a highly perishable bag of floating point numbers just doesn't work. Just doesn't work for any, but a small number of companies.”
Clay Bavor Jul 4, 2026 ▶ 6:13 Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? | The $100K Token Budget Every Engineer Will Need · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 4, 2026 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bavor: Percentage of fully automated enterprise tasks is currently a rounding error
“Well, I think if you look at what percent of enterprise tasks are completely automated today, it's a rounding error, right? It's very low.”
Clay Bavor Jul 4, 2026 ▶ 9:38 Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Actually Wins? | The $100K Token Budget Every Engineer Will Need · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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