Eric Vishria

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

Eric Vishria

General Partner

BenchmarkBenchmark Capital

Eric Vishria is a General Partner @ Benchmark Capital, one of the world's leading venture firms. At Benchmark, Eric has served on over 10 boards including Confluent (CFLT), Amplitude (AMPL), Benchling, Contentful, Cerebras and several other private companies. Prior to joining Benchmark, Eric was the Co‐Founder and CEO of RockMelt, acquired by Yahoo in 2013. In Today's Episode with Eric Vishria We Discuss: 1. How to Make Money Investing in AI Today: How does Eric think through where value will accrue in the stack between chips, models and applications? Why does Eric believe foundation models are the fastest commoditising asset in history? Why does Eric believe that Nvidia will not be the only game in town in the next 3-5 years? 2. How to Invest in AI Application Layer Successfully: How does Eric analyse between a standalone and deep product vs a product that foundation model will commodities and incorporate into their feature set? How does Eric differentiate between the 10 different players all going after customer service, or sales tools or data analyst products etc? How does Eric analyse the quality of revenue of these AI application layer companies? What does he mean when he describes their revenue as "sugar high"? 3. How the Best VC Firm Makes Decisions: What is the decision-making process for all new deals in Benchmark? As specifically as possible, how does the voting process inside Benchmark work? What deal was the most contentious deal that went through? What did the partnership learn? How has the Benchmark decision-making process changed over 10 years? 4. Does AI Break Venture Capital Models: Does the price of AI deals and size of their rounds break the Benchmark model? Will foundation model companies all be acquired by the larger cloud providers? Unless multiples reflate in the public markets, does venture as an asset class have hope? Why does AI make paying ludicrously high prices potentially rational?

Eric Vishria

General Partner

BenchmarkBenchmark Capital

Dive into the world of AI investments with Eric Vishria of Benchmark and Sergiy Nesterenko of Quilter. Explore the future of AI in hardware design, the strategies for venture capital investment in the AI era, and the impact on society. Discover why Benchmark has yet to invest in foundation model companies and the significance of solving enduring problems in this dynamic field. Join us for an eye-opening discussion on the intersection of AI technology and business innovation. 🔥 Apply to join over 400 founders and Execs in the Turpentine Network: https://hmplogxqz0y.typeform.com/to/JCkphVqj SPONSORS: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds; offers one consistent price, and nobody does data better than Oracle. If you want to do more and spend less, take a free test drive of OCI at https://oracle.com/cognitive The Brave search API can be used to assemble a data set to train your AI models and help with retrieval augmentation at the time of inference. All while remaining affordable with developer first pricing, integrating the Brave search API into your workflow translates to more ethical data sourcing and more human representative data sets. Try the Brave search API for free for up to 2000 queries per month at https://bit.ly/BraveTCR Head to Squad to access global engineering without the headache and at a fraction of the cost: head to https://choosesquad.com/ and mention “Turpentine” to skip the waitlist. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off https://www.omneky.com/ Recommended Podcast - The Riff with Byrne Hobart Byrne Hobart, the writer of The Diff, is revered in Silicon Valley. You can get an hour with him each week. See for yourself how his thinking can upgrade yours. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6rANlV54GCARLgMOtpkzKt Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-riff-with-byrne-hobart-and-erik-torenberg/id1716646486 CHAPTERS: (00:00:00) Introduction (00:10:12) The Idea Maze (00:12:28) Disruptive Approach (00:15:47) Sparse reward problem (00:18:26) Sponsors: Oracle | Brave (00:20:34) Reliability of the reward signal (00:28:12) Model size and compute (00:30:14) Simulation methods (00:35:48) Superhuman circuit board design (00:38:53) Sponsors: Squad | Omneky (00:40:38) What does the future of circuit board design look like? (00:43:11) How do I make money in AI? (00:46:18) What is cutting edge? (00:48:34) Researchers vs. engineers (00:50:51) Call for startups

Eric Vishria

General Partner

BenchmarkBenchmark Capital

Sergiy Nesterenko

Founder

Quilter

Eric Vishria and I both got into venture in 2014 and both focus on enterprise software. In episode 90, we discuss Eric’s unique approach to investments and what he looks for in founders and companies. We go back and forth on his model versus mine, as well as Eric's background, having grown up in Memphis and graduating from Stanford at 19 years old before joining LoudCloud, which became Opsware with Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen. (0:00) Intro (1:20) The role of venture capitalists (5:52) Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs (12:00) commonalities in investments that you haven't done (14:05) The best CEOs (17:40) The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Business (21:16) The role of market trends in investment decisions (27:46) Reflecting on investment successes (39:41) Benefits as an investor vs board member (42:17) From Memphis to Stanford (44:29) The early days at LoudCloud (46:49) The Aspiration to be a Great CEO (49:33) The Journey to Joining Benchmark (53:20) Bringing new people to Benchmark (1:01:26) The Evolution of Early Stage Investing (1:14:07) What career advice would you give? (1:19:56) The value of Benchmark’s Dinners   Produced: Rashad Assir & Leah Clapper Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky Executive Producer: Josh Machiz   🎙 Listen to the show Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-logan-bartlett-show/id1606770839 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5WqBqDb4br3LlyVrdqOYYb?si=3076e6c1b5c94d63&nd=1 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9zb0hJZkhWbg   🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1   Follow on Socials 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow 🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow 🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow   About the Show Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes. Executive Producer: Rashad Assir Producer: Leah Clapper Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA 🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1 Follow on Socials 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow 📱 X - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow 🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow About the Show Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member. Tap follow and enable notifications to stay ahead of the game.

Eric Vishria

General Partner

BenchmarkBenchmark Capital

My guest this week is Eric Vishria, a general partner at Benchmark Capital. Eric joined Benchmark after spending the first part of his career as an operator and CEO. The topic of our conversation is the past, present, and future of software businesses. We begin by explaining why public software companies trade at such incredibly high multiples today. We then explore the several different generations of these businesses and why the future remains so bright for companies building software as their primary product. I’d go one step further and suggest that the information in this episode is even more valuable for non-software businesses and investors, because its crucial to understand the impact that these products will have on the overall business landscape. COVID has accelerated the long-running transition to digital across the corporate world, and Eric serves as the perfect guide. Let’s dive in.    This week’s episode is sponsored by Bottomless. Bottomless is a smart coffee subscription which automatically re-orders coffee for you based on your consumption habits.  Bottomless is offering one month and your second bag of coffee for free at bottomless.com/patrick.   For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes (2:29) – (First question) – His take on public markets, and specifically as it relates to SaaS businesses (4:04) – Why these companies trade so high             (7:53) – Peter Zeihan Podcast Episode (11:19) – The competitive frontier in the digital markets (14:02) – The API competitive frontier             (14:22) – Chetan Puttagunta Podcast Episode             (18:36) – Every Company is Becoming a Software Company             (20:10) – John Collison Podcast Episode (22:54) – Charging in an API business model (24:09) – Describing the different generations of SaaS, starting with Gen 1 (28:15) – Gen 2 SaaS businesses (31:52) – Being an investor in SaaS (36:55) – Gen 3 and importance of traditional SaaS companies to get into API (38:06) – Other problems software can solve (44:19) – Why more money isn’t going into SaaS (46:48) – Lessons from the investment universe and how it could apply to SaaS             (47:26) – The Hierarchy of Marketplaces — Introduction and Level 1 - Sarah Taval (51:49) – Lessons about scaling (57:51) – Cross customer strategy             (1:00:01) – Energy and Civilization: A History (1:01:28) – Qualities of an interesting investor (1:03:52) – Kindest thing anyone has done for him   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag

Eric Vishria

General Partner

BenchmarkBenchmark Capital

On this episode I'm visiting Benchmark Capital, one of the world's most renowned venture capital firms, at their offices in the heart of the Tenderloin in San Francisco to chat with two of its general partners, Sarah Tavel and Eric Vishria. Sarah Tavel has a unique background as an investor, then operator, and back to investor. In the mid-2000s she joined Silicon Valley-based Bessemer where she led an investment in Pinterest and others. She went on to join Pinterest back when they were only a few dozen people before returning to venture three and a half years later. She's now a GP at Benchmark and on the board of Hipcamp and Chainalysis. Eric Vishria started his career as an operator, working at Opsware and HP before founding Rockmelt, a social take on the web browser, back in 2008. Later the company was acquired by Yahoo where Eric joined as a VP before making a leap into venture at Benchmark. Over the past four-plus years he's lead investments in Confluent, Contentful, Amplitude, and others. In this episode we talk about: What it's like to go from operating to investing and the different skillsets involved in those jobs, and why Benchmark has bucked the trend of venture firms expanding both in headcount and fund size. What Sarah and Eric are looking for in an investment, which spaces they're most excited about (hint: they say that contrary to reports of its death, consumer is very much alive), and why each partner at the firm only does on average one or two investments in a year. The importance of starting a company in Silicon Valley (or not) and why we're seeing more startups build outside the Valley. We also discuss some of her favorite products, including a couple apps that are enabling new forms of communication on mobile, an “Airbnb for campsites,” and why Sarah has been playing Fortnite for “research purposes.” We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to AngelList and FreshBooks for their support. 😸 Quotes From This Episode “When I meet with a company that's outside the Valley, I would get on a soapbox and talk about how they have to be here if they want to scale and I always kind of thought that from zero to a couple hundred million market cap, you can build that anywhere, but to be that multibillion-dollar company, you have to be here. I still believe that but not as a strongly as I used to and it's because you do see so many examples of companies that are getting started and are getting to some scale outside of the Valley.” — Sarah “As soon as you think it’s over, it’ll probably come from an unexpected place. It won’t be a direct competitor to Facebook, it won’t be Facebook reborn. That isn’t the way it’s going to happen, it will be something unexpected, orthogonal, that comes out of nowhere but that meets this need for people to connect. I think that it’ll happen — I don’t know where, I don’t know how.” — Eric “It's incredible to see how big many of the other venture firms are getting, and not just from a fund perspective, but from a people perspective. It's almost like they're vertically integrating. They've got seed investing, early stage investing, growth investing, some even have you know, public equity investing, debt, you know, as part of their platform. They've got talent teams and marketing teams and customer development teams and we've just decided to stay very very focused on what we do, which is being a close partner.” — Sarah “It's really about looking at a lot of stuff, falling in love with an opportunity and an entrepreneur and deeply engaging, whereas operating is mostly figuring out how to get stuff done and very little of figuring out what to do, in a lot of ways venture is like 90% or 95% figuring out what to do and like 5% getting it done.” — Eric Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode AutoSleep — Automatically track your sleep from your Apple Watch. Bitmoji — Turns your avatar into stickers and emoji. Breaker — The social podcast app. Chainalysis — Building trust in blockchains. Discord — Find people who share your interests. Hipcamp — Airbnb for campsites. Marco Polo — Keep in touch on the go. Nextdoor — Connect to your neighbors.

Sarah Tavel

General Partner

BenchmarkGreylock PartnersBenchmark Capital

Eric Vishria

General Partner

BenchmarkBenchmark Capital

Eric Vishria is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the world's leading VC funds with a portfolio including the likes of Twitter, Uber, Snapchat, eBay, WeWork, Yelp and many more revolutionary companies of the last decade. At Benchmark, Eric has led deals and sits on the board of the likes of Confluent, Amplitude, and Bugsnag. Prior to being in VC, Eric was the Founder & CEO @ Rockmelt, the startup that sought to re-imagine the browser for the way people use the web today, the company was ultimately acquired by Yahoo in 2013. Prior to Rockmelt Eric held numerous different roles including VP of Products @ HP and VP of Marketing @ Opsware. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Eric came to be one of the 5 GP's at Benchmark following operational success with Rockmelt, HP and Opsware? 2.) Why does Eric believe the pendulum has swung too far to the operational route into VC? What are the under-appreciated benefits of career VCs and the perspective they bring? How does Eric expect the pendulum to swing in the coming years? 3.) What makes the best-performing venture partnerships? How does Benchmark think about partner composition and career pre-VC? How does Benchmark structure investment decision-making? Why do they favor advocacy over unanimity? 4.) What does Eric mean when he says we are at the beginning of an infrastructure renaissance? What opportunities does this create in the venture landscape? How does this lead Eric to consider the current state of the consumer landscape? 5.) How does Eric view multi-stage investing? Why does Eric and Benchmark favour stage specifity when it comes to investing? What are the dangers of larger stage funds investing in earlier rounds for optionality? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Eric's Fave Book: Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage To The Antarctic Eric's Most Recent Investment: Confluent As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Eric on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. If you are an early stage startup, the right infrastructure and support systems are critical, that is where First Republic is so good. First Republic's resources network and expertise allow entrepreneurs to customise a solid foundation for their business. Why First Republic, well you get to leverage their incredible network of VC firms to prepare you for future fundraising events, you get to count on a single point of contact that will be there for you and your employees, you get access to exclusive events and networking opportunities. Their clients include the likes of Instacart, eShares and Wish just to name a few. Check it out by heading over to innovation.firstrepublic.com Segment allows you to collect data from every platform (mobile, web, server, cloud apps) and load it into Segment. Segment then sends the customer data to your tools and destinations where it can be used most effectively, destinations include email, analytics, warehouses, helpdesks and more. With over 200 sources and destinations on the Segment platform that can empower your team, Segment really is the last integration you will ever do and that is why the world's best companies use segment to drive growth and revenue including Atlassian, New Relic and Crate & Barrel. Simply head over to segment.com to find out more.

Eric Vishria

General Partner

BenchmarkBenchmark Capital