Growth vs Sustainability in AI Startups

Ev Randle is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the best funds in venture capital. In their latest fund, they have Mercor ($10BN valuation), Sierra ($10BN valuation), Firework ($4BN valuation), Legora ($2Bn valuation) and Langchain ($1.4Bn valuation). To put this in multiples on invested capital, that is a 60x, two 30x and two 20x. Before Benchmark, Ev was a Partner @ Kleiner Perkins and before Kleiner, Ev was an investor at Founders Fund and Bond.

AGENDA:

05:25 Biggest Investing Lessons from Peter Thiel, Mary Meeker and Mamoon Hamid

14:36 OpenAI Will Be a $TRN Company & OpenAI or Anthropic: Who Wins Coding?

22:27 Why We Should Not Focus on Margin But Gross Dollar Per Customer

30:25 Why AI Labs are the Biggest Threat to AI App Companies

44:26 Do Benchmark Fire Founders? If so… Truly the Best Partner?

54:38 People, Product, Market: Rank 1-3 and Why?

57:36 Why the Mega Funds Have Just Replaced Tiger

01:04:08 GC, Lightspeed and a16z Cannot Do 5x on Their Funds…

01:14:09 Single Biggest Threat to Benchmark