EP 90: Eric Vishria (General Partner, Benchmark Capital) Behind The Scenes of Benchmark’s Boldest Bets

**Logan Bartlett** (0:05)
Welcome to The Logan Bartlett Show. On this episode, what you're going to hear is a conversation I have with Eric Vishria. Eric is a general partner at Benchmark, where we've been fortunate enough to share two investments together over the years. Eric and I both got into venture in 2014, and both focus on enterprise software. And so, we have a discussion about how he views investments, and what he looks for in founders as well as companies, which is vastly different than the way I think about the world. And so, a fun conversation kind of going back and forth on his model versus mine, as well as Eric's background having grown up in Memphis and graduating Stanford at 19 years old, before joining LoudCloud, which became Opsware with Ben Horowitz and Mark Antresen. Really fun conversation with one of the more thoughtful investors in venture capital that I've really enjoyed getting to know over the last couple of years. You'll hear that conversation with Eric here now.
All right, Eric, thanks for doing this.
Right above your office. We've never recorded here in our Woodside office.

**Eric Vishria** (1:01)
Oh, well, I appreciate you coming down to do that.

**Logan Bartlett** (1:03)
Yeah. So you and I are both venture capitalists. I think we got into the industry around the same time. When did you start at Benchmark?

**Eric Vishria** (1:10)
2014

**Logan Bartlett** (1:10)
2014 That was 2014 as well.
We invest broadly in similar stuff. We had two shared investments, Amplitude and Acuity. I think they would be remiss if we didn't shout it out. But I think how we think about things is vastly different, and I've enjoyed picking your brain. Part of that's probably a function of stage, your earlier, definitely a little later. But I always enjoy asking how you think about things.
And so, one of the, I guess just to start with, what are you looking for when you're taking meetings with entrepreneurs, or meeting with businesses?

**Eric Vishria** (1:42)
That's the right question. I don't know if I have the right answer.

**Logan Bartlett** (1:46)
You told me a couple months ago that within the first five minutes, you met a CEO and you were like, we're going to make this investment.

**Eric Vishria** (1:52)
That happens to me a lot.

**Logan Bartlett** (1:54)
I don't really know what that feels like.

**Eric Vishria** (1:56)
That happens to me a lot.
I would say that if I look at the investments that I've made over the course of my time at Benchmark, over the last nine years or nine and a half years, I think all of them actually have that element where it was like, you had this feeling very, very quickly that this is the kind of person you want to work with, that it's an idea that is really special and it could be something big. I think those are characteristics of the three things that I would say. I think part of what manifests for me is when the entrepreneur makes you see the world differently. They say something typically very early on that you haven't heard before, you haven't read about before, no one else has articulated. It's just a unique view of the market. You're like, huh, that's plausible. And then they go on to explain the intricacies of it. And you're like, wait a minute, maybe there's something there.
And then the question becomes like, well, okay, let's say everything they said was true.
Like if it worked, could it be a big valuable business? That's like a very, very important question. And then like, do they have an angle of attack on the market? Not just the insight, but also an angle that is defensible, not replicable, and blah, blah, blah. And so I think those are kind of the things that they put out there, which is like, it is unique. It relates to this whole, do venture capitalists have a thesis or not, actually is a very interesting question.

**Logan Bartlett** (3:43)
You're preempting some of my questions. So you are a non thesis guy.

**Eric Vishria** (3:47)
But I think part of it, what I realized on it and maybe a better articulation of saying, whether it's thesis or non thesis, I mean, it's categories, it's like, who comes up with the thesis?
And I think it's my view that entrepreneurs have the thesis. It's our job to assess whether we believe the thesis or not.
Right? And so they have the thesis. And if we have the thesis, then a lot of people have it. If an investor has it, then a lot of people have it.
And if a lot of people have it, that probably is not going to be that big an outcome. That's the thing. Now, I think, to be fair, one of the things that's weird about our business, venture capital, is there's a lot of models of success. There's not one model. There's not one path. There's many paths. And there are probably venture capitalists out there who are smart enough to have a thesis and be futurists and see the world and see where it's going and everything else. I'm not one of those people. And so I love it when I'm sitting in a meeting and someone's like, wait a minute, this is how this is going to go. And everybody thinks this, but it's really going to be this way. And you're like, huh. And it makes you think. And then you're like, well, one, I've never heard that before.