I know I almost never post on here, so I figured I should probably introduce myself properly. I’m Benazir. I’m originally from Kazakhstan, lived in China for a while, and I’ve been in San Francisco for the past two years. My path into tech was a little unusual. I got a scholarship to Beijing Institute of Technology at 15, graduated in Computer Science at 19 with a 4.0, and somehow ended up working in the industry way earlier than I expected. Before coming to SF, I worked at Momenta on autonomous driving, at Taobao on recommendation and visual search, and at Tencent on large-scale AI systems. A lot of users, a lot of data, and very little room for things to break. Fun fact: I also became the first woman from Kazakhstan to earn Apple’s certification as a programming instructor. Now I’m the Co-founder/CTO at @siriusai (back by @speedrun) We’re building AI for customer retention and customer experience, so I spend most of my time thinking about why people leave, what makes them stay, and how software can make better decisions around both. Outside of that, I’m still exploring San Francisco, finding good food, and meeting a lot of very interesting people along the way. Figured this was a good time to finally say hi :)

Pretty cool way to start the day. @a16z featured @siriusai in their latest roundup of breakout startups hiring, with @benaziration and me on the cover. We’ve grown a lot over the past year, and we’re continuing to build out the team in San Francisco. Right now, we’re hiring a Founding Events & Partnerships Lead to help us with the next stage of Sirius. A lot more to come. Thanks to the @a16z team for the feature, and if you’re interested in joining us, reach out!

so excited to be presenting @siriusai with @ChiefSnack at a16z @speedrun's invite-only AI Faire during SF Tech Week!! Azamat and I will be presenting and our @siriusai team will be there with us too october 9 in SF. can’t wait to meet everyone :) DM me if you want an invite!

i was 16 in this photo. at the time, i was the youngest software engineer at Momenta and the youngest speaker on this panel. i remember looking around at people i had genuinely looked up to for years and realizing i wasn’t just in the room with them anymore. i was on stage speaking alongside them.that moment changed the way i thought about being “ready.” you rarely feel ready before the biggest opportunities in your life. sometimes you have to step into the room before you feel qualified, learn faster than everyone expects, and trust that you have something worth contributing. i still carry that mindset with me today building @siriusai. being young, early, or inexperienced doesn’t mean you have to wait. sometimes it just means you have more room to grow.

so excited to finally share that i’m joining @siriusai as a Growth Engineer. @siriusai is building AI-powered retention infrastructure for subscription businesses, helping companies understand why customers leave and take smarter action to keep them. we’re backed by a16z @speedrun and working with some of the fastest-growing companies in tech, so there’s a lot happening very quickly. i’m really excited for this next chapter, to learn a ton, work with an amazing team, and help grow what we’re building. you’re definitely going to be seeing a lot more from me.

one successful deploy can fix my entire mood

users are undefeated at finding edge cases you did not think were possible

before the team, the customers, the launches, all of it @siriusai was basically just an idea and a lot of belief that we could make it work took the risk anyway probably one of the best decisions I’ve made

AI is making it dramatically easier to build software it is not making it easier to know what should be built

most AI startups do not have a model problem they have a product problem

the difference between a demo and a product is everything that happens after the demo works once

the scariest sentence in software is “it was working yesterday”

I was 16 in this photo. Back then, I had no idea where life would take me, but I already knew I loved learning, building things, and taking on challenges that felt a little bigger than me. Since then, life has taken me across countries, cities, and a lot of very different problems to solve. Still one of my favorite old photos. Funny how much can change, and how much stays the same.

This is gonna be such a fun one, can’t wait to see everyone there!

there’s something very satisfying about finding the one assumption that breaks the whole model

I love engineers who can explain something complicated in 2 sentences if it takes 40 slides, I’m already suspicious

12 months ago, @siriusai was just @benaziration and me building out of a small apartment today we’re a 10+ person team, working out of our office in San Francisco, serving some incredible customers, and growing faster than we ever have it’s honestly crazy how much can change in a year the team is bigger, the product is stronger, the customers are bigger, and the problems we’re solving matter more than ever @siriusai turned 1 today if retention is something your company is thinking about, we’d love to show you what we’ve built

hot take: a lot of “AI strategy” is just people avoiding the hard part, which is deciding what actually matters

first ever Sirius hoodies just dropped @lulusirius40

I don’t trust people who say “AI will solve it” without being able to explain what the actual decision problem is