YouSaid · the spoken record

Eric Vishria

lines on the record: 67
first: 2024-09-25
most recent: 2024-09-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I think you have to say, and this goes back to the insight thing, if this thing, whatever the product is, accomplished what it was supposed to and what the entrepreneur said it could do, would there be market creation there, right? And so like, and you mentioned Uber, like Uber is a good example of this. And this goes back to the whole that professor, the taxicab analysis that was done in the early days of Uber where it was like, oh, the entire market's this big. And it's like, well. If you can imagine everybody has a smartphone in their pocket. And if you could actually request a ride instantly and pay for it easily with not with shorter wait time and much more accuracy and much less cumbersome communication, could a market be created? Yeah. And I think that was a huge part of Gurley and the rest of the benchmark teams at that time predates me. It was a huge.”
2024-09-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Eric Vishria on Where is the Value in AI: Chips, Models or Apps | Why Nvidia Will Not Be The Only Game in Town | The Commoditisation of Foundation Models | Which AI Apps Have Sustaining Value vs Hype and Short Term Revenue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think you could say that, you know, that's a good case of violent execution by a determined team. And so I think there are insights there, as you said. There's like little execution detail insights in your point. And so it's not like it doesn't have to be some pie in the sky insight. Like that's like, oh my God, you know, like AGI is coming in Q3 of 2025. Like, that's not the kind of insight that we're talking about. We're talking about actual things that are nuances that help build a company. And so, yeah, they think they come at different levels. I would also say, you know, this is a difference, and I've been fortunate to work with Pat on a board and work with the larger Sequoia team on a number of companies. And there is a difference also in stage, right? They're growth investors like least patent histine are growth investors. And we're early stage. And so there's also a stage difference in terms of how we evaluate things.”
2024-09-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Eric Vishria on Where is the Value in AI: Chips, Models or Apps | Why Nvidia Will Not Be The Only Game in Town | The Commoditisation of Foundation Models | Which AI Apps Have Sustaining Value vs Hype and Short Term Revenue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, there are levels to it, like, yeah, you can say, hey, we're going to cloud and we're doing this. But normally there's an insight. I would say like if you look at most of the successful companies, there's an insight. Like there can be an insight underneath that, right? Which is like, yeah, it's going to cloud and this is the right way to attack it. Or it's going to cloud and the like core differentiation is going to be like here, not here. Normally there's an insight there. I think there's a couple cases where you really have to think about it. There's a couple cases where just like violent execution by a determined team in a hyper-competitive market where like nobody has an insight has worked.”
2024-09-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Eric Vishria on Where is the Value in AI: Chips, Models or Apps | Why Nvidia Will Not Be The Only Game in Town | The Commoditisation of Foundation Models | Which AI Apps Have Sustaining Value vs Hype and Short Term Revenue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Could be that's possible, but I would tell you this. We were talking about a company yesterday, and it has every possibility that you just said the entrepreneur in that case is one of the challenges with these platform shifts is some form, it's some variant of the innovator's dilemma. It's not quite the innovator's dilemma. As Christensen articulated it, but it's some form of the innovator's dilemma, which is like you have to make the platform shift. And in order to make the platform shift for a company like what you're articulating, you have to kind of be willing to burn down the existing business, at least in short order. There's a whole bunch of entrepreneurs who don't do that. And so this is what I just go back to. If you have a learning entrepreneur who is constantly rethinking how they're navigating the ship, then that makes a really, really big difference in the probability of outcome as you're working through a platform shift.”
2024-09-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Eric Vishria on Where is the Value in AI: Chips, Models or Apps | Why Nvidia Will Not Be The Only Game in Town | The Commoditisation of Foundation Models | Which AI Apps Have Sustaining Value vs Hype and Short Term Revenue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For an announcement. And I think one of the maybe contrarian things around that is I think that a lot of venture capital in the SaaS era and certainly a lot of growth venture capital got to be like a very spreadsheety investor bankery type of approach, which is like it's kind of the models figured out. We plugged these things in and we kind of know and we figured it out that way. And I think that doesn't work. Like I think there was a period of time where it might have worked for a bit. But I think it largely doesn't work. I think the AI stuff is going to wipe out that breed of venture capitalists. It's going to be really challenging because you really have to make these other kind of fundamental assessments.”
2024-09-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Eric Vishria on Where is the Value in AI: Chips, Models or Apps | Why Nvidia Will Not Be The Only Game in Town | The Commoditisation of Foundation Models | Which AI Apps Have Sustaining Value vs Hype and Short Term Revenue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can apply, but like, but it's not a specialty model. And I think about this a lot, and we should talk about it in the context of AI. So then the question is, well, what can you evaluate on? And I think this is it for me, which is you can say, hey, this is an extraordinary entrepreneur. That's an evaluation that you can try to make. There's a second thing, which is this entrepreneur has a very interesting and unique insight. Like that's a really important thing for me. And then you can say this market can sustain a big company. Like those are three things which I think even coming without sector specialists, without being a sector specialist, you can try to come to a belief or a probability distribution for each of those things. And I think if you have those things and then you add on top of all of it, I have chemistry or want to work with this company or want to work on submission or whatever, then I think you have the base.”
2024-09-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Eric Vishria on Where is the Value in AI: Chips, Models or Apps | Why Nvidia Will Not Be The Only Game in Town | The Commoditisation of Foundation Models | Which AI Apps Have Sustaining Value vs Hype and Short Term Revenue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am not a sector specialist, and nobody at benchmark is. And I think the fundamental idea with benchmark is there's a small group of people, a small group of partners who are all equal. And right now it's five of us, but sometimes it's four, sometimes it's six, but it's basically four to six who cover technology. And the challenge with that, if you kind of think about it, is we can't be sector specialists. The sectors that have the most disruption and things are changing the fastest are changing. That part's constantly changing. So you have to be as a group of investors, you have to be moving. You have to be looking at new stuff because that's where the disruption is happening. And so then the question is, I can't be a sector specialist. I can't be a semiconductor specialist or I can't be an open source specialist. Of course, we each have preferences and things that we like and don't and lessons that we.”
2024-09-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Eric Vishria on Where is the Value in AI: Chips, Models or Apps | Why Nvidia Will Not Be The Only Game in Town | The Commoditisation of Foundation Models | Which AI Apps Have Sustaining Value vs Hype and Short Term Revenue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“External reasons for it. And like the whole job that we have is to try to figure out root cause on those things and help them figure out root cause on them and then like fix it. You're not helping your three-year-old fall or not fall or teach him a lesson. That isn't the job. It's quite a different actual mental model in terms of what the engagement with entrepreneur is.”
2024-09-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Eric Vishria on Where is the Value in AI: Chips, Models or Apps | Why Nvidia Will Not Be The Only Game in Town | The Commoditisation of Foundation Models | Which AI Apps Have Sustaining Value vs Hype and Short Term Revenue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They haven't actually done these things at depth. They haven't done themselves. They often lack empathy and understanding. I think they often think that things are more deterministic than I think they actually are. Like all of those things, I think actually really can get in the way. And I was talking to my partner yesterday about we were talking about a board member who's at a different firm who is on a couple boards with us. And it's like the challenge with that career investor is they think like if a company has a plan and they miss the plan, that's because the company messed up. And if the company had a plan and they exceeded the plan, it's because the company did great. And like, you know, or executed or management did great or management messed up. And it's just like, there's about 47 other ways that could go wrong. Like the plan could just be gobbled from the beginning. It could be totally wrong and messed up. There could be.”
2024-09-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Eric Vishria on Where is the Value in AI: Chips, Models or Apps | Why Nvidia Will Not Be The Only Game in Town | The Commoditisation of Foundation Models | Which AI Apps Have Sustaining Value vs Hype and Short Term Revenue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Practice and reps matter. And so if you're kind of, if you take somebody who's 15 years into their career as an example and they're an operator at that time, they may have seen three to five companies that they worked on and know them really deeply and know the ins and outs of them. If you're a career investor over 15 years, you will have seen 30 or 35 companies and hundreds and hundreds, thousands of pitches. And then of those pitches, you'll be thinking about, well, like I saw this one and this is what it looked like then and 15 years from now, like or 10 years later or five years later, like you've run this like very long term longitudinal experiment and you have data and mental models around that. And so I think that that's really helpful. It can actually hold people back too, but I think that's really helpful for investors. And so that's why I think that career investors tend to be.”
2024-09-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Eric Vishria on Where is the Value in AI: Chips, Models or Apps | Why Nvidia Will Not Be The Only Game in Town | The Commoditisation of Foundation Models | Which AI Apps Have Sustaining Value vs Hype and Short Term Revenue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also, not necessarily better board members, not necessarily better advisors, not necessarily a better bunch of things, but definitely better investors.”
2024-09-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Eric Vishria on Where is the Value in AI: Chips, Models or Apps | Why Nvidia Will Not Be The Only Game in Town | The Commoditisation of Foundation Models | Which AI Apps Have Sustaining Value vs Hype and Short Term Revenue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not looking for an answer or a right answer. What I'm really looking for and trying to figure out is has the person thought about it deeply and is constantly learning or constantly applying and adding new mental models to their framework to figure out what the right path is and they're navigating it. It isn't like, hey, I'm a boat captain and I'm looking and like this is where we're going to go. You start going and then conditions change and you get more information and you have to kind of constantly change. And so what you're actually trying to evaluate isn't they're not going to have all the answers and that's okay. You can have theories and hypotheses and then evaluate and change as time goes on and you get more information. And I think that's really”
2024-09-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Eric Vishria on Where is the Value in AI: Chips, Models or Apps | Why Nvidia Will Not Be The Only Game in Town | The Commoditisation of Foundation Models | Which AI Apps Have Sustaining Value vs Hype and Short Term Revenue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do a million things differently. And I say this to the CEOs I work with now. Some of the big mistakes that I made were definitely not thinking about distribution enough. That's always a big thing. Two, you really, there were a couple times or two people specifically that I think about where what they wanted in Comp and what I was like willing to give were separate. Like they were just off and they were so far out of market in terms of what their ask was at least for one of them. I would have just broken all the rules and thrown it out and hired them. Those are two examples. But I think those things, you know, you can get into real trouble if you kind of keep doing something like that. It's always a balance.”
2024-09-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Eric Vishria on Where is the Value in AI: Chips, Models or Apps | Why Nvidia Will Not Be The Only Game in Town | The Commoditisation of Foundation Models | Which AI Apps Have Sustaining Value vs Hype and Short Term Revenue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think the question is whether it's deterministic or not. Like it's just like, is all of that knowable? Like we're all taking calculated, whether you're an entrepreneur, you're an investor, you're taking a calculated risk, right, of certain probabilities. And so I just don't think it's deterministic if you kind of perfectly evaluate the team, the timing, the product, and everything at the beginning, you can actually determine with certainty whether it's going to work or not. And that's just like that's part of it because there's too many things that change along the way. As those things change, the probability of potential outcomes changes a lot. And so I think that's the part of it that that's why I startups are hard and fun.”
2024-09-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Eric Vishria on Where is the Value in AI: Chips, Models or Apps | Why Nvidia Will Not Be The Only Game in Town | The Commoditisation of Foundation Models | Which AI Apps Have Sustaining Value vs Hype and Short Term Revenue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Startups are really hard, and I think it makes you really empathetic. It makes me really empathetic as a venture capitalist now. When I meet entrepreneurs and you kind of understand like, well, you know what? This stuff is really hard and there's a whole bunch of stuff you can do and there's a whole bunch of stuff you can't.”
2024-09-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Eric Vishria on Where is the Value in AI: Chips, Models or Apps | Why Nvidia Will Not Be The Only Game in Town | The Commoditisation of Foundation Models | Which AI Apps Have Sustaining Value vs Hype and Short Term Revenue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I reflect on rock melt, which is a startup I founded and was CEO of, my reflection is that we fell short, like far short of my hopes and dreams for the company. Like my expectation for the company and my hopes and what I thought we could accomplish, we fell really, really far short of it. You know, and I think there's a few ways to think about it. One of the reflections and has been really useful now as a venture capitalist is good teams with an interesting idea. It's not necessarily enough. The real lesson from it for me is like, hey, you can put it together, a great team. And I think we did. You can have an interesting or provocative idea. We were rethinking the browser, and this is circa 2010. So I think we had some of the right ideas. We had some of the right execution even and a great team, but distribution for a browser brutal. But the big takeaway, the big lesson from that actually, I think, is just that.”
2024-09-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Eric Vishria on Where is the Value in AI: Chips, Models or Apps | Why Nvidia Will Not Be The Only Game in Town | The Commoditisation of Foundation Models | Which AI Apps Have Sustaining Value vs Hype and Short Term Revenue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Foundational models are the fastest depreciating asset in human history. I don't believe NVIDIA is going to be the only game in town on infrastructure. We have a major, major shift in AI, which could be bigger than any of these other shifts, maybe combined. It's simultaneously the most exciting and most disorienting time in my 25 years in technology. There's a lot of uncertainty, but we've been more active than we've been since 2010 and 2011.”
2024-09-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Eric Vishria on Where is the Value in AI: Chips, Models or Apps | Why Nvidia Will Not Be The Only Game in Town | The Commoditisation of Foundation Models | Which AI Apps Have Sustaining Value vs Hype and Short Term Revenue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source