Mitch Lasky

General Partner, Benchmark · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

investorexecutivefounderhost@mitchlasky ↗mitchlasky.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Mitch Lasky is a veteran technology investor best known for leading Benchmark's early-stage investments in Snapchat, Riot Games, and Discord. Prior to venture capital, he served as CEO of JAMDAT Mobile through its IPO and acquisition by Electronic Arts, and held executive roles at Activision.

12statements → 4claims → 2claims resolved → 3.83/5average certainty → 2.67/5average debate potential → 4.4/5argument clarity · the sources → 19said about them ↓

0 supported 2 partly supported 0 contradicted 2 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 2 assertions · 3 opinions · 4 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, and 2 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Mitch argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1

none yet certainty 2

50% certainty 3

none yet certainty 4

50% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.4 / 5 directness 4.7 · coherence 4.9 · precision 4.2 · compression 3.8

answered every one of 14 assessed questions directly

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

234 words/min while actually speaking · 10.9 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,291 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 3/10

pushed back at the host 4/10

setup questions received 75%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 5:04“Have you seen your investment decision-making change since, since you joined, but in 2007, I think it was. Have you seen that change from kind of the, the mass excitement to a much…” ▶ 13:59“Do you think esports will ever be as big as traditional sports?” ▶ 18:41“How, how does one continue to self-motivate and strive for that three AM term sheet when you've achieved so much as a team?”

What they said12 What others said19 Episodes1

Everything Mitch Lasky said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion

Lasky is short Magic Leap, favoring cell phones for AR

“I would say I'm quite short the approach of the magic leaps of the world that sort of require a visor and maybe for an industrial application, but are you really going to walk around the city looking like you're doing Star Trek cosplay, you know, just so that …”

Mitch Lasky Jul 10, 2017 ▶ 11:23 20VC: Benchmark's Mitch Lasky on The Snapchat Journey From Series A to IPO, Why Small Is Beautiful In Venture Partnerships & Why Venture Is Very Much Like Hollywood

Opinion

Lasky: Venture Capital Has Become an Over-Hyped PR Machine Like Hollywood

“Even the pre-internet bubble days. VCs were kind of shadow warriors. They were in the background. They were enablers. They were not really the center of attention. And I think increasingly, firms have brought a kind of Hollywood-like public relations and hype …”

Mitch Lasky Jul 10, 2017 ▶ 7:48 20VC: Benchmark's Mitch Lasky on The Snapchat Journey From Series A to IPO, Why Small Is Beautiful In Venture Partnerships & Why Venture Is Very Much Like Hollywood

Disclosure

Lasky avoids VR application startups due to long market trough

“So I've stayed away from investing in, in the application space, primarily because the development teams are really expensive and you'd have to kind of keep them funded through what could be a fairly long trough, maybe three, you know, three to five years.”

Mitch Lasky Jul 10, 2017 ▶ 9:42 20VC: Benchmark's Mitch Lasky on The Snapchat Journey From Series A to IPO, Why Small Is Beautiful In Venture Partnerships & Why Venture Is Very Much Like Hollywood

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Lasky: Esports will remain a niche until television narrative problems are solved

“I don't just for a lot of reasons, I mean, I think until they solve the television problem, it's going to be very, very difficult. You know, so much of our experience of, I don't want to call them real sports, but of traditional sports is, is mediated by 2030,…”

Mitch Lasky Jul 10, 2017 ▶ 14:04 20VC: Benchmark's Mitch Lasky on The Snapchat Journey From Series A to IPO, Why Small Is Beautiful In Venture Partnerships & Why Venture Is Very Much Like Hollywood

Insight

Lasky: Operator background and hubris are classic failure vectors in VC

“I think all of those are sort of classic failure vectors for coming to the venture business. I think, you know, all the people with that background a lot of times come in with a lot of hubris.”

Mitch Lasky Jul 10, 2017 ▶ 2:58 20VC: Benchmark's Mitch Lasky on The Snapchat Journey From Series A to IPO, Why Small Is Beautiful In Venture Partnerships & Why Venture Is Very Much Like Hollywood

Insight

Lasky: Small partnership model is essential for effective VC decision-making

“I think there's a sort of small is beautiful approach that really works. You know, we can have one conversation. There's an enormous amount of mutual respect and admiration, and so, you know, it allows, I think, for good decision-making. There's a lot of trust…”

Mitch Lasky Jul 10, 2017 ▶ 3:45 20VC: Benchmark's Mitch Lasky on The Snapchat Journey From Series A to IPO, Why Small Is Beautiful In Venture Partnerships & Why Venture Is Very Much Like Hollywood

Insight

Lasky: VC Mega-Hits Generate Orders of Magnitude More Value Than Good Outcomes

“The value of hits like Facebook and Google in the venture business or the Star Wars movies or the Marvel franchise in the, in Hollywood create sort of orders of magnitude more gravity in our business than even good or very good results with other companies.”

Mitch Lasky Jul 10, 2017 ▶ 6:52 20VC: Benchmark's Mitch Lasky on The Snapchat Journey From Series A to IPO, Why Small Is Beautiful In Venture Partnerships & Why Venture Is Very Much Like Hollywood

Insight

Lasky: VCs Overvalue Historical Pattern Matching Over Non-Continuous Innovation

“Both share a tendency to overvalue Professional experience and sort of historical pattern matching potentially over taking chances on really non-continuous innovation.”

Mitch Lasky Jul 10, 2017 ▶ 7:17 20VC: Benchmark's Mitch Lasky on The Snapchat Journey From Series A to IPO, Why Small Is Beautiful In Venture Partnerships & Why Venture Is Very Much Like Hollywood

Opinion

Lasky: Professional esports teams are raising capital at astonishing valuations

“I'm less interested in sort of the professional team approach, the cloud nines, the mortals, who are raising money at the moment at astonishing valuations.”

Mitch Lasky Jul 10, 2017 ▶ 13:22 20VC: Benchmark's Mitch Lasky on The Snapchat Journey From Series A to IPO, Why Small Is Beautiful In Venture Partnerships & Why Venture Is Very Much Like Hollywood

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Lasky: Benchmark held no champagne celebration following Snapchat's IPO

“I came back from New York after the Snapchat IPO. I was in New York for the pricing and to see the stock open on, on the New York stock exchange floor. And I flew back from, it was on a Thursday on, came back on, on Monday to the partners meeting. And our cele…”

Mitch Lasky Jul 10, 2017 ▶ 19:26 20VC: Benchmark's Mitch Lasky on The Snapchat Journey From Series A to IPO, Why Small Is Beautiful In Venture Partnerships & Why Venture Is Very Much Like Hollywood

Prediction Partly held up

Lasky: Benchmark partners will retire within the next decade

“Well, I think we have an opportunity as the current group of partners comes to the, in the next decade or so, comes to the end of their careers to really reinvigorate the firm with youth, and I think an increasing awareness of diversity.”

Mitch Lasky Jul 10, 2017 ▶ 20:33 20VC: Benchmark's Mitch Lasky on The Snapchat Journey From Series A to IPO, Why Small Is Beautiful In Venture Partnerships & Why Venture Is Very Much Like Hollywood

Assertion Partly supported

Benchmark: Snapchat was 12 people in a dining room at Series A

“When we invested in the Series A, the company was essentially a dozen people camping out in the dining room of Evan's dad's house in Los Angeles.”

Mitch Lasky Jul 10, 2017 ▶ 15:45 20VC: Benchmark's Mitch Lasky on The Snapchat Journey From Series A to IPO, Why Small Is Beautiful In Venture Partnerships & Why Venture Is Very Much Like Hollywood

The other half of the tape: Mitch Lasky's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 16 times in 9 episodes on 20VC. 3 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Jason Citron 4 Harry Stebbings 4 Torsten Reil 2 Sarah Tavel 1 Jeff Fagnan 1 Everett Randle 1 Clinton Foy 1 Anjney Midha 1

Statements about Mitch Lasky, by other people (3)

Opinion

Stebbings: VR is an isolating experience that detracts from social togetherness

“I joined Mitch Lasky at Benchmarks of the World in being very anti-VR. It's some of the very best innovations of the last decade have been those that fundamentally bring people together. And VR for me is an isolated experience that detracts from a feeling of s…”

Harry Stebbings May 1, 2017 ▶ 24:23 20VC: Explosion of First Time Funds, Only 1 Mega Fund Raised: What The Heck Happened in Q1 Venture Markets with Beezer Clarkson, Managing Director @ Sapphire Ventures

Disclosure

Discord rejected a higher Series A valuation to partner with Benchmark's Mitch Lasky

“In fact, I got an offer I think our series A, I had one other offer for a little bit of a better valuation, but I really wanted to work with Mitch. So I chose to work with him.”

Jason Citron Nov 25, 2024 ▶ 42:19 Jason Citron, Co-Founder/CEO @Discord: The Untold Story Behind Scaling to 200M Users | E1230 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Reaching profitability requires daily discipline and tight prioritization of key tasks

“And getting to profitability takes an incredible amount of discipline. My partner, Mitch Lasky, he describes it as his daily act of will, where, you know, every day it's making the decision to do three things instead of the 10, and that is a muscle that you ha…”

Sarah Tavel Sep 24, 2018 ▶ 17:06 20VC: Benchmark's Sarah Tavel on Why Investing Success Lies In Small Markets Adjacent To Very Large Ones, Why You Have To Be Judicious On When To Pay Up vs Be More Price Sensitive & Why Crypto Investing Is Like The Early Days of AdTech Investing