Eric Vishria - A Decade of Lessons Investing in Software & Hardware - [Invest Like the Best, EP.486]

My guest today is Eric Vishria, a General Partner at Benchmark. 

Eric has spent his career in software and cloud, and few people know the history of these markets as well as he does. What makes him special is his ability to use that history to make sense of today. 

We discuss what the rise of AWS teaches us about AI, what he has learned from investing in Fireworks, Sierra, and Cerebras, and how the criteria for winning have changed for founders and investors. 

Please enjoy my conversation with Eric Vishria.

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. 

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant.

Timestamps:

(00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best

(00:02:20) Learning the World Through Fireworks

(00:05:42) AWS Was Going to Eat Everything

(00:07:40) The Zero-Sum Thinking Trap

(00:09:01) Comparing Cloud and AI Adoption

(00:11:03) Becoming Enterprise's AI Sherpa

(00:13:05) Building Sandcastles

(00:14:55) The Return to Being Technical

(00:17:13) The Shifting Competitive Frontier

(00:22:10) Why the Old Playbook Fails

(00:27:53) Energy as the Binding Constraint

(00:29:38) The Cerebras Story

(00:37:57) The Virtue of Productive Naivete

(00:39:19) What Robotics Still Needs

(00:45:58) What Makes a Great Board Partner

(00:51:13) Raising A Growth Fund

(00:55:39) What the Big Winners Taught Him

(00:57:37) Hard Work Versus the Hole-in-One

(00:58:38) The Best Reasons to Go Public

(01:01:09) Debates Inside Benchmark

(01:02:16) What If It All Works

(01:03:35) What Geoff Hinton Got Wrong