Benchmark’s Eric Vishria on Going Zero to $100M ARR in 12 Months, Archetypes of Top AI Founders, Why Storytelling is a Superpower, How Benchmark Makes New Investments
Show notes
Eric Vishria is a General Partner at Benchmark Capital. Our conversation goes inside the new class of startups going zero to $100 million ARR in 12 months, the ways AI is changing company building, and how Eric and Benchmark make new investments. We get into the risk rewards of Series As today, how Benchmark competes to work with founders, and and why the best storytellers win. We also talk about parallels between the 90’s, 2000’s, and today, and how the archetype of successful founders has changed in the age of AI. Thanks to Spenser Skates, Sajith Wickramasekara, Bobby DeSimone, and Semil Shah for help brainstorming topics for Eric! Special thanks to this episode’s sponsors: Bolt: Help them break a world record for the largest hackathon - up to $1m in prizes. Sign-up here. Numeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance. Try it here. Timestamps: (5:17) What gets Eric excited about a new investment (7:48) Backing learning machines (12:34) Backing Cerebras at inception (16:20) Why the best storytellers win (21:17) How Eric works with founders (26:38) Companies going zero to $100m in 12 months (31:09) Revenue quality of AI products (32:41) Moats and business models in AI (38:41) AI margins and runway (41:14) Parallels between winners of the 90’s and today (44:54) Archetypes of the best AI founders (50:43) SaaS companies successfully pivoting to AI (53:43) LLMs are most comparable to transistors in the 1950s (56:19) Ways Eric uses AI personally (58:05) How VC has changed over the past decade (1:01:40) VC is a hustler’s business (1:03:20) Backing extraordinary companies is all that matters (1:09:36) What makes Benchmark unique (1:17:03) How Benchmark makes investment decisions (1:18:38) Skipping senior year of high school (1:20:21) Working with Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen ‘00-’08 (1:24:42) Starting RockMelt, selling to Yahoo (1:26:28) Joining Benchmark in 2014 (1:28:08) Investing in Confluent one month later (1:28:50) Lessons from Spenser at Amplitude (1:29:36) Fireworks AI’s hyper growth (1:30:49) Pricing in AI changing from tokens to outcomes (1:32:23) Ways Eric’s perception of VCs changed after becoming one (1:34:07) How to build a management team (1:38:21 )The best CEOs make new mistakes (1:39:50) Why there should be more public companies (1:44:03) “Even great companies can be overvalued” Referenced Benchmark Cerebras Benchling Ben Thompson + Mark Zuckerberg Interview Confluent Amplitude Fireworks AI Andy Price at Artisinal Talent Follow Eric X / Twitter LinkedIn Follow Turner X/ Twitter LinkedIn Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week
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