Formulary
Published
On November 4, the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES) and the South Asian Business Students Association (SABSA) hosted a fireside chat at Stanford between Samir Kaul, Founding Partner at Khosla Ventures, and Formulary CEO Alfia Ilicheva.
Khosla Ventures is Formulary’s lead investor. Samir has had a distinguished career in venture capital, with early investments in industry-defining companies such as OpenAI, Instacart, Ramp and Impossible Foods.
The conversation covered how to build resilient businesses in the AI era, the difficult choices leaders are making about AI in their organizations, and what those decisions mean for the future of financial services.
On fund administration, Alfia outlined the principles that guide how Formulary uses AI across the business. AI is one of many tools Formulary uses to deliver white-glove service, and domain experts take full ownership of every outcome. AI does much of the work, but it never makes the judgment calls, decisions or final recommendations to clients. In practice, Formulary’s accountants stand behind every number investors receive and work with each client directly as a strategic partner.
Samir shared practical lessons from his long and successful career investing in AI-first companies.
1. Find customers you can grow with
Customer fit is critical, and trust is one of a company’s most valuable assets. Before a young company takes on full responsibility for delivering a product or service, Samir says it should ask three questions. Can a small contract grow into a large one? Will the customer be patient with the mistakes a young company is bound to make? Does this customer look like the ones who will come next? A customer that is wrong for a company at one stage can be exactly right at the next, once the team and product are ready to deliver.
2. Let revenue follow the product
Whether a growing company books $2 million or $8 million in a year matters far less than whether it can keep growing for a long time with healthy margins. That depends on having the right customers, product and team. A product sold half-finished tends to stay that way, because the team spends its limited time servicing the customers who bought it.
3. Know whose advice to take
Founders hear from everyone. Samir said one of the most important lessons an entrepreneur needs to learn is how to separate signal from noise. An investor thinks about a company a few hours a month. The founder thinks about it nearly every waking hour. Knowing which advice will move the needle matters.
4. Hard days count for more than credentials
Asked what he looks for in a founder, Samir said the first thing is someone he wants to work with, because there will be Saturday morning calls and bad weeks. After that, he looks at how a person has handled adversity in the past. A polished résumé interests him less than someone who found a big problem in a previous job and committed to solving it. Founders who have never had a bad day tend to run when the first one comes, and there will be many.
5. Look outside your own department
One student asked how someone studying computer science could start a company in a field like energy without a background in it. Samir’s advice was to use the whole university: take the classes, join the clubs and find partners in other departments. No one builds a startup alone. A computer science major interested in energy should team up with someone studying physics or chemical engineering. The same goes for health or any field where the hard problems are outside software.
After the discussion, Formulary hosted a dinner for students from across Stanford’s schools, from undergraduates to master’s and PhD candidates.
Formulary is hiring summer interns for 2027. Anyone who wants to build at the intersection of AI and financial services can reach out to talent@formulary.co.
