Eric Vishria
speaker
163 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Sep 2024
last heard Sep 2024
Eric Vishria’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Just to put it in perspective, like $100 billion, even for the oil state companies of technology, doing $100 billion acquisition is unprecedented.
Yes. I mean, I think, well, I think there's two things, which is like if $30 billion acquisitions are not unprecedented, and maybe you could say like in this world, you know, therefore 100 also is not like that big of a stretch. Like that isn't that huge a multiple, but it does feel like a big number to me.
Well, I think the antitrust thing is a big question.
I don't think so. And I don't think so for two reasons. One is through 30 years of performance, I think we have unprecedented flexibility in what we do. And so if we want to write a $50 million check, we can write a $50 million check and we have. And if we want to write $150 million check, we can write $150 million. check. If we deploy a fund in 18 months or a year, it's fine.
We can do whatever we want. The fund thing is almost like irrelevant artifact of history and accounting. And so I don't worry about it there. So that's one part of it. The second part of it is... Does it not just impact your decision-making?
You know, I think one of the things that we maybe think about almost not at all is we almost never think about like fun cycle or fun timing or anything else. And we almost never think about or talk about portfolio construction or anything else like we it does not come up.
It's really interesting because when I talk to other venture capitalists, they're like, well, how do you think about the portfolio construction? And how do you think about check diversity and company? And just like never, ever talk about it. And so it isn't a thing. Genuinely isn't a thing. That's a bunch of inherited goodness and flexibility. I think there's this amazing Munger quote.
And he said, you know what? Finding good investment ideas is hard enough. Finding great companies is hard enough. Let's not over constrain it, basically. Let's not over-constraint it. Let's not add a bunch of things to it.
So what I say back is like in the benchmark view and approach, what we're looking for is these exceptional opportunities led by these exceptional people that can turn into something extraordinary if things work. Like that combination is hard enough.
We very, very openly and regularly talk about things that are just, hey, that's way off. That's a $50 million check for 10% ownership. That's not the core model, obviously. But the flip side is I look at, you mentioned 11X. That's an amazing company we're super lucky to be part of. I think about Brett Taylor, Sierra. I think about Lens, Fireworks.
I go through and I look at these companies and I'm like, I like that AI portfolio. It's a bunch of infrastructure software companies. It's a semiconductor company in Cerberus. It's a few application companies as well. And like the foundational model rounds and some of those things have gotten like really, really large.
But you kind of look at some of the things that are happening on the ground in the early stage in AI and it's like, yeah, it's totally doable, totally manageable.
I mean, to some extent, you always have to play the game on the field, or you always have to, maybe a different way to say this, you always have to be aware and cognizant of the game on the field. So the game is the game. You can always choose to play more or less. You can choose to play more or less. So I'll give you a really concrete example.
2021 was like SaaS craziness, everything craziness, right? Like everything was running and everything else. In 2021, we made like three new investments as a firm. Three. That was the game on the field and just saying, that's okay. I'm okay not playing that game. And that's great. And I have no regrets on that at all. I think that is fabulous.
This year, 2024, the game on the field is we have a major, major shift in AI, which could be bigger than any of these other shifts, maybe combined. It's really big. There's a lot of interesting work happening. There's a lot of uncertainty, without a doubt. But we've been more active than we've been since 2010 and 2011. What was happening in 2010 and 2011? Mobile shift.
One of the beauties of this in our model, like I think about if I go back to 2010 and 2011 for a second, in that timeline, that's when Snapchat, Uber, Twitter, Instagram, that's when we did the series A's. And Instagram, Snapchat, Uber, whatever, a weird round in Twitter. The round that Peter led in Twitter at that time was like technically a series C or series D.
at like 200 pre because the company had its history right with odio and everything else and so it was it was a rule breaking around it's a good example of exactly what we were talking about earlier yeah you kind of have your like norms and then every once in a while you just have to be like throw it all out and just do it and that was a good example but you think about that like that body of work which is which was obviously tremendous towards the returns which
And like, fast forward to today, you're looking at the game on the field here. You know, we have to kind of ask ourselves, like, hey, are there extraordinary opportunities and extraordinary companies getting built here? And if so, like, you just got to do it.
Yeah, he did. He did.
Well, I think both are true. My partners have kept me out of countless companies. It's amazing. You asked this sector question earlier. We were talking about it. I spend a lot of time trying to understand chemistry, my chemistry with an entrepreneur and try to figure out, am I going to love working with this person? Do I believe this person is a learning machine or not?
Showing 81–100 of 163 · page 5 of 9
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