The Ledger
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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 …”
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 …”
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.”
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,…”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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.”