My conversation with Eric Vishria of Benchmark. Eric has spent a decade investing across software and hardware, backing companies like Fireworks, Sierra, Sunday Robotics, and Cerebras. This one is about what history teaches us about the current moment, and a dispatch from inside the AI buildout through his companies.... We discuss: - What AWS tells us about how big AI can get - How the goalposts have moved for every software company - Lessons from a decade with Cerebras - China and the energy bottleneck - Benchmark's return to growth investing - Robotics Enjoy! TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 3:36 What Cloud Teaches Us About AI 12:52 Sierra, Sandcastles, and AI Products 17:35 The New SaaS Competitive Frontier 28:28 AI Demand and the Energy Bottleneck 31:28 The Cerebras Story and AI Chips 45:10 The Future of Robotics 52:53 Eric’s Venture Investing Philosophy 1:07:30 Going Public, AI Value, and Jobsshow more

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@ericvishria Best Series A board member of this generation

@ericvishria Eric has invested in 18 companies over 12 years. Incredible.

@ericvishria love this 🍓

@ericvishria Great pod ser, pulled the tldr & transcript

@ericvishria 🐐

@ericvishria Patrick with the heat 🔥

@ericvishria Brilliant episode - learnt a tonne

@ericvishria 👑

@ericvishria Key insights:

@ericvishria You don’t post these anywhere else? YouTube? X sucks for watching long form videos.

@ericvishria What is the difference between Fireworks AI offerings and Rackspace public cloud offerings as long-term business models? Haven't we played this out before? Isn't it a TERRIBLE business?

@ericvishria

@ericvishria @ericvishria for the cloud analogy that you used about the market, are there any books or longform content to read about that? Or any resource really, about that history

@ericvishria Hey @ericvishria, what do you think can be done to each of 5x, 10x, 50x, and 100x the annual amount of energy that the US builds out? And @shaunmmaguire, what do you think can do that, with and presumably in addition to Valar Energy? Cc @chamath @friedberg @altcap

@ericvishria The dot com bubble saw immense capital flow into software. Yet, the subsequent winners like Amazon, Netflix, and Google demonstrated value creation, not just speculation. The enduring question is whether current AI investments are building similar foundational businesses.

@ericvishria history rhymes until it doesn't, and that's always the expensive lesson

@ericvishria "Say 'Jagged Edge' again. Say 'Jagged Edge' again, I dare you, I double dare you motherfucker, say Jagged Edge one more goddamn time!"

@ericvishria the cloud angle really flips the scale of AI possibilities, makes the goalposts feel wild

@ericvishria Energy demand for AI is going to be a bottleneck soon. We have moved from cloud to cloud-and-on-premise, with SLMs that utilize less energy and give an answer back.

@ericvishria Another incredible episode 🔥