YouSaid · the spoken record

Victor Lazarte

lines on the record: 63
first: 2025-04-14
most recent: 2025-04-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I want to be an important part to the most important companies creating, and that can be an early board member and that can be a co-founder. But I want to look back and say, hey, AI is going to solve so many of humanity's biggest problems, you know, like from education to security. These companies are being created now to companionship. And I want to be an important part of their story.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“AI is going to change people's lives in really important ways. One really important thing is the way we're going to learn is going to be through AI teachers and dual lingo, I think it's very sneaky in a good way. Like they're starting with like this language app, but they're making like they're making your AI friend that teaches languages and then they're going to teach more stuff. And Louise, the founder, like is a total genius. So I think he's going to make a free AI tutor for everyone that's going to be incredibly important to humanity and it's going to be a very valuable company”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Times people say yes. People say yes, they have a fantastic experience, and then they'll tell more people. I would love it.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the thing that Peter does better than anyone I've met is he can understand people and like he can get people to open up. So lots of times before we decide to work with a founder, like Peter takes people to dinner and a lot of times I would introduce people to Peter and like I take Peter to dinner with someone. So for example, I took the Braxia world to have dinner with Peter. And it's someone that I've known for many, many years. At the end of like that two and a half hour dinner I felt like I knew the person a lot better than I did before. Peter does this thing where he's able to make people open up in a way and the effect that it has is like people leave the dinner and said wow like I just had a really special dinner right so I think it's a superpower and I think it's kind of known that this thing happened so a lot of times if you want to spend time with someone and like it's kind of hard a lot of times I invite hey like you're gonna go have dinner with Peter and I and”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I believe that pretty soon we're gonna have an app and language is gonna wake up and do whatever the app tells us to do. In a way, we're gonna be obedient to machines and we're gonna.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it's a smart choice, and I think the best people, what they're going to maximize for is like, hey, how do I get my conditions, my initial conditions right? How do I get like the smartest people around the table? Because in the end, the initial conditions, like they affect so much what you can actually do.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On Brad's case, I think I had dinner with the partners. It was more like a conversation than a pitch. I think Brad Taylor's case, you know, I think it's a good example. It was like, hey, the guy's so accomplished, like he could praise from anyone, could do whatever he wanted. But I think he valued, like, he valued the relationship with Peter and said, hey, like, I think it's going to be valuable to have you along this way, right? And because it's an equal partnership, it's like, hey, these people, they're going to be my partners in this company. So it's a get to know you much more than it's like, hey, I'm pitching you, right?”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think a lot of funds, like they think about portfolio construction and this and that. But the reality is RLPs, like they're the same LPs in all funds. So if you want to do like one like $3 billion funds or if you want to do like five like 600 million dollar funds, like for RLPs is actually the same. And so I think the fund size has never been a constraint. I think the constraint is where we can make a difference is like in the beginning. So it's like early and we work best with founders that want to have a relationship. Some founders are like, hey, I do think it's bad but you have a sounding partner that is going to have a lot of context on the business. And if you believe in that, then it's like, yeah, benchmark is a good fit. And most early rounds are less than 15 million. But you know, we've done things that are later, like we've done larger checks and like sometimes if we're going to do a lot larger check like we do in SPV, but the check size, it's not.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It needs to be clear to everyone's like, hey, what's a benchmark round? And a benchmark round is when there's a founder that is very capable going after a very big market. As long as you have that, like that's a benchmark founder, it doesn't matter if you're raising like 5 million or if you're raising like 200 million.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if it prevents the extension as the function we're trying to maximize. I think the function we're trying to maximize is like there's going to be $10 trillion companies created in the next decade. How do we make it so that we're in a large number of them and we have a deep relationship with those founders? I think that's a maximizing function. And to me, it's just like it works backwards from how are you like obviously the right choice for the founders that have a ton of choices. And right now, benchmark, when we want to do something, we typically do it. We have the chance to partner with the companies that we want to partner. But the problem is because we're a small firm that gets a lot of stuff that we don't even see. And then sometimes people are raising around that doesn't look like a benchmark around. And I think that is the thing that is most important for us to change. It's like a lot of times people think, oh, this is a benchmark round. Like this is not a benchmark round. What it means like.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the voters should disambiguate what people actually think you got a clear signal because you're going to bring a company in. It doesn't matter what the company is, there's always like a ton of reasons to do it and a ton of reasons not to do it. And then people were like, they'll argue both sides. So you force them to like put a number to it. That number carries a lot of information. So like we vote from one to ten and you can't vote five.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's all optional. It's like all optional. The one thing that is not optional is like you have to present the idea to the other partners. And everything else is optional, but the way it typically works is like you meet a founder, do a second meeting where you bring another partner in so you guys can have a discussion. But then if you know you want to do it and you like it, typically you bring the company in, everyone talks to the company, and then people vote, but it doesn't matter what the vote is. If you really want to do it, you can do it.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a very lightweight process, which is very good. So, the way we work is, you know, you find a company, if you like it, you need to get your partner's opinion, but you don't need to get your partner's approval.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the reality is I haven't done a ton of investments, right? But I've done a couple, like I've done a couple of angel investments where it didn't go well. One of the things that I learned after joining Benchmark and I work a lot with Peter and Peter sits on two of my boards and I sit on two of his boards. And, you know, you see these companies go through these ups and downs. Like the thing that I learned is like, we don't give up. It's like, hey, as long as the founder wants to do it and it's completely uneconomical, completely uneconomical. So I was talking with Peter and there was a company that wasn't doing well. It's like, I know what we have to do. A lot of venture capitalists would say, hey, like just cut it loose. You know, like forget about this thing. We should double the frequency of the board meetings. I said, okay. And it's because we're here for as long as the founder wants to try it. So it's like you made the commitment to the founder and from that point on, you try to be true to this like.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think if you're taking a lot of decisions in isolation, like, oh, If we do this, it's going to be better for the shareholders. But if you look at it in aggregate, that your policy is, I'm going to choose the best founders. And I'm going to trust them. And my fiduciary duty comes in at the moment where I write the check. It's like I'm underwriting that person's like, hey, do I think this guy will be a good CEO? And once you're there, I'm just, I'm here to enable this guy. And even when I disagree with him, I'm just going to help him do what he wants to do.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maximize what the founder wants to do. So it goes from oversight to like catalyzing, like to amplifying the founder's ambition.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think a big difference is when you think about it a couple decades ago, like the role of a board member was the governance. It's like capital was so scarce. There's like, hey, once you put capital into a company, a lot of your jobs just like managing the downsides. Like, hey, make sure that this guy is not going to lose all your money. And that's understandable because there had been like less big outcomes in tech. So people that invested are kind of afraid. You know, like Fast Fortune today, like everyone knows investing in technology, it's a great thing. People should do that. And it turns out that it's more important to maximize the upside than it is to manage your losses, right? And the way this changes the role of a board member is you're not that concerned with like, oh, some of your investments are going to lose money. And your role is not governance. Like your role is not there to say, hey, like founder, like you can do this or you can like.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“into yeah you know the thing that i love about benchmark is so i came in and the partner said hey you're coming here to co-found the forum like there's a lot of tradition but a venture firm that is like sticking to its tradition is soon going to be very relevant so so we we believe a lot in like creative destruction and like you feel like oh okay you almost feel like really and then i met i met with a with the with the founding partners at benchmark and there's like hey yeah like the only way like the only way we continue to be a great forum is like if we have no attachment to just how the way things were done right and i actually think that this is a big advantage for benchmark is because we have very like because we don't have any process and we have a small team it's it's easier for us to like change things right so and i think ventures changing i think venture is changing a lot”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When we're participating, like, we don't have that ability. And that's why we don't do it. So normally, and the reason we do it sometimes, like, hey, maybe this is a way to start building a relationship with the founder. And over time, we'll grow our position and we'll build a relationship. But the reality is if you write a small check and you're one of many, then you don't make any difference. It doesn't matter how smart you are.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Context than he does, then other people do. So I think how do you add value? Like, what's the way to add value? It's like, hey, you have a lot of context. But the thing is, it's just very costly to have context. And that's why the reason we do very few deals is because getting context on the companies takes a bunch of time.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, one thing that made me very happy is a few months back, like Peter came to me and said, Hey, man, I'm so grateful that you've been a partner on this and you're the closest thing that I have to a co-founder outside of the company, right? And can you make a difference? I think it's actually very hard to make a significant difference from the outside. But the way you do it is founders need a thought partner and founders need a way to like access all the knowledge in the ecosystem and you can catalyze that. But I think like the good founders, like they have access to a bunch of people, the good founders, they don't work on isolation. They have access to a bunch of people. But the difference, like the thing that you can do as a board member that is very hard for other people to do is, you know, like I've been at the Brex board for, I don't know, like seven years. And for every important hire that he did, I discussed that with him. And I've done so many close calls with candidates that once he has a problem, like he calls me just because I have way more.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All else being equal, I think everyone wants to be the closest partner. But I think the part that changes the all else being equal, right? I think it's like, hey, we're willing to take a lot of trade-offs in order to be a very close partner, right? So why does benchmark make very few investments? It's because we spend more time with our companies. And, you know, you're saying like all investors want to be their first call. I don't think it's true because the reality is if you're a financial investor, you don't want to be the call. Okay, you made your investments. You want to find the next company. And like there's a lot of investors that are really smart investors that say, hey, you know what? Like I hate the board work. You know, I want to write the check. And there's some investors that, hey, that's not a product that I have. I put my check in and that's it.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think rigidity is nonsense. Frankly, what defines benchmark, we want to be a partner to the most important companies being created, which is similar to most venture firms out there. And I think the difference is we want to be the first call. Like we want to be the first call to every entrepreneur that we work with. And in order to do that, the easiest way to do that.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Transformation is an AI transformation. So go study computer science because, like, even if you're not going to be a developer and you're probably not going to be a developer, but just having the basis to understand how that's done, it's going to be extremely helpful. And then the transfer learning of like, hey, just being very logical and be able to take a big task and break down into smaller tasks and be very rigorous. I think that will continue to be very valuable.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Piece of advice, yeah. They're saying, hey, go on computer science. Like, to me, it's very, I feel very strongly about that. Before I had calculators, machines, like we had human calculators, like if you saw the like Apollo movie and like, they're typically women and they're like they're calculating this like tables right there are people that are just like doing doing math and then calculators were invented and then like when calculators were invented It's not like oh people shouldn't study math. No, people should study math. And if you study math, the reality is like you're studying math in high school and like you're studying math in college like the first few years of college you're doing stuff that computers can do, but it doesn't matter because like first like you're understanding the technology and two like there's so much transfer learning. When we train models to code they get better at a lot of other stuff why i advise people like hey go on computer sciences the transformation right now it's technology”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They know what your long term goals is. And so you wake up and say, hey, go spend an hour reading this book. And I just do it. Now meet with that person and just do it.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We see glimpses of this, right? So, you know, there's this companion apps, like there's a, I don't know if it's like seen Finch or like this self-care pets, you know, it's like, oh, I'm gonna be your accountability buddy. I'm gonna help you like exercise every day and like I'm gonna help you like make sure you're drinking water and like taking your meds So I think it starts with like this simple things and you know like you open up your app So for example I try to work out every morning for like 20 minutes but a lot of times like you know like I wake up and I just don't have the energy but imagine like you wake up and say hey it's your 20 minutes like remember because like if you do that for like X days you're gonna be better and then like you're just just get into those routines like it's gonna like this apps they're helping you like form routines So that's like I think that's the beginning like these apps that are helping you form routines They're telling you what to do and it'll get to a point where like AIs are gonna be smarter than us like AI is going to be smarter than us on most things and they're just gonna learn how to trust their judgment They have context on you”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This thing that will happen quite soon is like we're gonna have an app and like we're gonna wake up and you're gonna look at your app and you're gonna read what it says and you're just gonna do it the app will tell is like go do this you're not gonna understand but you're just gonna do it and you're gonna do it and turns out that you're gonna be happier after you do this thing and over time like you just learn to trust the app. It's gonna be a complete reversal like you're not going to apps to make it easier to do the things you want to do For example, like oh, I go on Instacart to like get my groceries like you know what you want to do you go there and it just makes it easier for that to happen it's like you go to the app for the app to tell you what to do and you just blindly trust and does whatever the app says”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's a lot of wisdom in saying, hey, we overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do with 10, right? I think there's a lot of truth to that. I still think in AI, you look at three years ago, like we didn't have ChatGPT and now there's like close to a billion people that use it every month. And they have like a meaningful different experience, right? So in the next, not in the next year, but in the next five years, like lives would be meaningfully changed. So I think AI is going to happen way faster than people believe.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I agree, it's a very serious competitor. I 100% agree with you. I think we're still in the lead. But we cannot afford to waste time on anything else. We cannot afford to waste time into internal disagreements and stuff like that”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think China has better work ethic and have more people. So they have more people working harder. But I'm still so bullish that the US because there's just so much knowledge here. Like I think our advantage is it's like the true network effect is a city, right? So like we have Silicon Valley and you say, hey, I think China's winning. I think by all measures, like the US is winning. If you look at all the AI products, like ChatGPT is the most used AI assistant in the world and sure, you can talk about like, oh, how about deep sea and this and that? But the AI is like ChatGPT still is the best product out there.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hey, the population wanted to get more. I think China is actually a very stabilizing force because I think the US right now has this external threat. And the US cannot spend a lot of time with internal conflict. We're at a very important moment in time where someone will get you to a powerful AI very soon and it needs to be the US because like we want to live in a world where like where like powerful AI is controlled by the US. And if we spend too much time like an internal conflict, China will do it, right? So I think China is actually a very stabilizing force for the US.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is that good for the general population or not? And then someone will come in and we'll have an agenda that is like, hey, big redistribution of wealth. It's like a very populous, like a very populist agenda. And then I think people, if people very selfishly ask their AIs, like, hey, is this politician better for me or not? Like, is this politician going to get me more material wealth or not? I think people that want to redistribute a lot, like they'll get fulch, right? So I think that's very destabilizing for democracy. And then a lot of people that are in control, they will say, hey, like right now have people that are in control. Like are they going to just cede control? Are they going to be less powerful? Are they really going to like let go of all the influence that they have? But I think there's like one. So I think AI is a destabilizing force because it makes the entire population way more informed and knowing what's best for them. And at the same time, it concentrates wealth, which makes the scenario more propensity.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to get way more extreme, and the other thing is it's going to be much harder for politicians to not do what's best for the entire population because the entire population will have a very powerful AI system on their pockets. So they will know. They'll just ask their systems like, hey, this politician, this stuff.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Imagine this society where there's a lot of abundance, a lot of wealth, but the majority of the people are not accessing that wealth. That wealth is very concentrated, but it's a democracy. And turns out that”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you're like Yeah, you know, net net, I think this would be tremendous for society because companies are humanity's best invention. And if we need less people to create companies, we're going to have more companies, right? So I grew up in Brazil and Brazil is not a great place to grow up in. And then I moved to the US and like the Bay Area turns out it's a fantastic place to live. And the principal difference between Brazil and the Bay Area is the quality of the companies. So overall, it's going to be fantastic for society. But then there's a huge problem of, okay, how do you distribute that wealth?”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“100%, what percentage of knowledge work as we know today will exist in 10 years? Like if you define knowledge work as work you do behind a computer, I think it's probably like 1%. And, you know, the thing that I worry most about is if you're college, if you're someone coming out of college, what are the things that you can do? Like if you're coming out of law school, like what are things that you can do that a model won't be able to do like in three years, there's not going to be that many things. And at the same time, like companies will be more valuable because they're going to reduce costs so much. So people that own companies, people that own shares will get richer, founders will get way richer. You're going to have this $300 companies being done by very small teams. So that's a very destabilizing force. And that's something that is something to worry about. And I think all these things are controversial. So you see this big leaders talking, like the big company CEO talking about, oh no, AI is not replacing people. AI is actually...”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think smart investors are saying, hey, if software spend in the US is like a trillion dollars, but labor spend is like 10 trillion, and now like the AI companies are going after the labor spends. And so the outcomes are going to be insanely larger than they were before. So, okay, there's going to be huge winners. So we got to make sure that we're there. Like we're going to make sure that we're in these companies. So I think on average, buying the winners today will work out. Are there some winners that are overpriced? In retrospect, the answer will be yes.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Talking about the round that I did Yeah. And then, but then, like, just a framework to talk about the rounds in general, right? I think as an asset class, like, is there a bubble? Are people getting paid for the risk they are taking, right? So you think about like, I don't know, like entropic at 60 or you think about perplexity at 15, right? I think the reality is AI is a big shift. I think AI is much bigger than mobile. Maybe like all the other magnitude of the internet. And then if you take a basket of the winners, it's going to work out. What I'm telling you is in the next three years, I'm sure someone will start a company that is going to be worth a trillion dollars. How do you make sure you are in this company? It's like, okay, where's the best place to find these companies? It's like, what are the interesting spaces that have great teams and it's working? So, okay, there's this trillion dollar companies out there and the space, like, okay, the early winners, like they're not that many.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's very much on a case by case, like Hajen and Mercor. I think there were like very cheap rounds. And, you know, I feel so lucky that I was able to like.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have like an annual contract that people are signing this annual contract, it's a run rate. So some people criticize and the criticism that I hear is you have this recruiter and you're building this platform. And a lot of the growth is coming from labs and like the labs, they need before there were like three stages of language models, right? Like I think the first stage of language models is you just”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But then there's a few things that make it super interesting, which is interviewing someone is a very hard problem. You talk to the best founders in the world, like Elon Musk, like Bezos. They all spend a ton of time interviewing because figuring out who's the right person, you continue to have gains to quality. So it's okay, this is a problem where we already have value now, but continues like as you get better, it continues to be valuable. And so investing a lot of money is solving that specific problem is valuable. And then if you get specific data, it's like you hire people, you see how they perform, you adjust your model, like having that model is just incredibly valuable. And the other thing is you have this network effect with like, okay, there's a platform. Everyone is coming into the platform. So you have this marketplace of people. So to me, it's like, okay, at the time, they didn't have a lot of revenue. Like they had a million dollars. But it's like, oh, this is a place where AI is going to do a much better job than humans. And you have like a lot of defensibility.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The first question that we ask is if models get a lot better, is their company worse or is your company better? And if your company is worse, there's going to be very hard to touch it. But if your company is like, hey, as the models get better, my company gets better. Then it's like, oh, that's a great place to be in. So for example, on Mercore, what got me excited is, so first one thing that I think is super exciting right now is like just replacing people. It sounds really bad when you say it this way, but it's the most exciting opportunity inventor right now and it's actually going to be fantastic for humanity. So it's like, okay, figure out like what's a profile of person that does knowledge work that you can replace with a model. And Mercor was like replacing a human, like replacing a recruiter. I was like, oh, like that's pretty cool. I think models are going to be better at interviewing than people. And the recruiting process now is just so inefficient that if you have a model interviewing, like that's going to make it a lot better.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think Sass was a moment in time where if Rube's investing works really well, it gets you $10 million in revenue, like you're a category winner. I think this is no longer true. I think it's because the nature of the revenue, I think a lot of the AI revenue is experimental. And the reality is it's now incredibly easy to take ChatGPT and say, okay, what are companies using ChatGPT for? Let's say their lawyers are using ChatGPT to write demand letters. So, okay, I'm going to make this very thin workflow around ChatGPT and then I'm going to go after like every law firm that writes demand letters and say, hey, like buy my tool. And you are going to get revenue. Like you're going to get you're going to get millions of dollars. But if that's all you're doing, there's just no enterprise value. The reality is like as the models get better, like the workflow you're building becomes less valuable. So one test that we always do is when a company comes in and pitches, first you have revenue growth, like it's still worth something. It's not worth what it was worth before. But it's like, hey, you have revenue growth. Okay, we should pay attention.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we're still in stealth, so we're not talking too much about it, but maybe a year from now, come back and tell you all about it”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there's a lot of things that come to you, but the question is are the deals that you want to do, are they coming to you or not? And I think as you build your network and like I'm up from Silicon Valley and frankly, like I've been a founder for 13 years and I've been an investor for like a year and a half. So a lot of people don't think me as an investor. So very little of what I want to do just comes inbound and sounds like, hey, go meet this company. Most of the time you're talking to really high quality people and you ask them like, hey, what has impressed you mostly or you get super interested in a sector and then they say, okay, like what are all the go to someone and say, hey, what are all the companies in the sector? And you do a little bit of homework. And then it's like, oh, okay, this is an interesting company. I think I've done four companies since I started a benchmark. Three have been this way. And then the fourth one, the fourth one I actually, I'm a co-founder. So I started the company with someone that I knew for a long time.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Facebook, like he hired a bunch of people from Google and had board members that had been at other places. A lot of the role of a board member is like, how do you catalyze that? How do you help a founder access all the knowledge of what has worked before? I think the way a board member adds value is like it's a function of two things. One is like how exposed have you been to hyper growth in the past? And then how much time do you put in to actually understand the context of that company that you're able to draw from the right lessons?”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, like I think 100%. And you know, I think a lot about what's the, what's the role of a board member? I think it's related to like, what's special about Silicon Valley? And, you know, I was trying to come up with a number, but if you start a company in the west coast of the United States, like you are a thousand times more likely to build a tech giant in the west coast of the United States than you are anywhere else in the world, right? The raw math is 70% of like all companies in the world were starting the west coast of the United States, Bay Air, Seattle, and I think 0.1% of people live there. It's like you do the math. It's like roughly like a thousand times more likely, right? So why is that? Because people are just as smart in Silicon Valley that they are in Europe or like in Brazil. But the big difference here is there's so much knowledge about how companies are built. And when someone starts a company, like is able to access all that knowledge, right? So when Zuck did a”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An intrinsic passion for them. Like, this thing compounds really well over time, right? So to me, it's like, hey, we're smart kid and a very promising space, but it's a kid that is not just smart, like very, very special because of this almost obsessiveness of like understanding businesses, right? And then little did I know that Mercor and Brendan would have something else in common, which is Brex went from like zero to $100 million in revenue like in 18 months after launch and Mercourt went from like a million dollars in revenue when I invested to like over 100 million like in 11 months.”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the day, he was the first person to find one of the jailbreaks for the iPhone, right? But he did that for no reason. He didn't make money out of it. It's just like, okay, I like going very deep on this technical thing. And then with Brandon, you know, like our first conversation, like the guys, okay, the guy's 21 years old, but you're talking with him about business. And it feels like you're talking to your peer about business. He was telling me, you know, like, what is it like to work with Bill Gurley? Like I've read all the blog posts, man, like, why would you read all of Bill Gurle, like Bill Gur's blog posts from years and years and years ago? And again, I heard all the podcasts and like there wasn't a specific reason for the person to do that, but it's like, hey, I just love like studying businesses and how this business works. When you have very young people that they spend a ton of time on something that are just”
2025-04-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark's Victor Lazarte on Why Portfolio Construction is BS| Why SaaS Spreadsheet Investing is Dead | Why China is a Stabilising Force for the US | Three Traits All the Best Founders Have & The Lie All Big Tech Companies Have Been Telling · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source