The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 41 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 4 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Lazarte: Only 1% of computer knowledge work will exist in 10 years
“What percentage of knowledge work as we know today will exist in 10 years? Like if you define work, knowledge work as work you do behind a computer, I think it's probably like one percent.”
Lazarte: AI replacing human workers is venture capital's top opportunity
“One thing that I think is super exciting right now is, like, just replacing people. It sounds really bad when you say it this way, but I actually think it's the most exciting opportunity and venture right now, and it's actually gonna be fantastic for humanity.”
Lazarte: Claims that AI only augments workers are "bullshit"
“Big companies still talking about like, oh no, AI, AI is not replacing people. AI is actually augmenting people's abilities. Like this is bullshit. You know, like it's fully replacing people.”
Lazarte: A Trillion-Dollar Company Will Be Founded Within Three Years
“What I'm telling you is in the next three years, I'm sure someone will start a company that's going to be worth a trillion dollars.”
Lazarte: AI will understand most people better than anyone within 5 years
“I have this very strong belief that five years from now, for the majority of people, the person that will understand you the most is going to be an AI.”
Lazarte: Consumers will soon blindly follow instructions given by AI apps
“I think this thing that will happen quite soon is, like, we're gonna have an app, and like, you're gonna wake up, and you're gonna look at your app, and you're gonna read what it says, and you're just gonna do it. Like, the app will tell us, like, go do this. …”
Lazarte: Writing small checks as one of many investors makes zero difference
“But the reality is, like, if you write a small check, and, like, you're one of many, then, like, you don't make any difference. It doesn't matter how smart you are.”
Lazarte: VC fiduciary duty ends at check writing to fully support founders
“And my fiduciary duty comes in at the moment where I write the check. It's like, I'm underwriting that person. It's like, hey, do I think this guy will be a good CEO? And once you're there, it's like, I'm just, I'm here to enable this guy. And like, even when …”
Lazarte: Now is the best time in over a decade to start a startup
“It's quite clear. It's the best time in over a decade to start a company. Because we have this insane phenomenon of adoption, like adoption of LLM inference.”
Lazarte: Character AI is merely the Friendster of AI companions
“In a few years, we're going to look back, and we're going to say that Character AI was Friendster. And what I mean by that is there's going to be a company that is going to be very important, and we'll look back and we'll say Character AI was the precursor of …”
Lazarte: Mercor grew from $1M to $100M revenue in 11 months
“Brex went from like zero to a hundred million dollars in revenue in like in 18 months after launch, and Mercor went from like a million dollars in revenue when I invested to like over a hundred million, like in 11 months.”
Lazarte: Reaching $10M revenue no longer guarantees category victory
“SaaS was a moment in time where, like, rule-based investing worked really well. You know, like, you get to ten million dollars in revenue, like, you're a category winner. I think this is no longer true.”
Lazarte: AI models will surpass humans at job interviewing
“I think models are gonna be better at interviewing than people. And like the recruiting process now is just so inefficient that if you have like a model interviewing, like that's going to make it a lot better.”
Lazarte: U.S. is winning the AI race against China by all measures
“I think by all, like, I think by all measures, like the U.S. Is winning. If you look at, like, all the AI products, like, ChatCPT is the most used, ah, AI assistant in the world, and sure, you can talk about, like, oh, how about DeepSeq and this and that, but …”
Lazarte: Board members should amplify founder ambition, not focus on governance
“It turns out that it's more important to, like, maximize the upside than it is to manage your losses, right? So, and the way this changes the role of a board member is, you're not that concerned, it's like, oh, like, some of your investments, like, are gonna l…”
Lazarte: Benchmark doubles board meetings for struggling startups instead of walking away
“A lot of venture capitalists would say, hey, like, just cut it loose, you know, like, forget about this thing. It's like, we should double the frequency of the board meetings. It's like, oh, okay. And it's because we're here for as long as the founder wants to…”
Lazarte: Benchmark partners can do deals regardless of partnership vote outcome
“Typically, like, you bring the company in, everyone talks to the company, and then people vote, but it doesn't matter what the vote is, if you really want to do it, you can do it.”
Lazarte: Ten trillion-dollar companies will be created in the next decade
“There's going to be 10 trillion dollar companies created in the next decade.”
Lazarte: LLM usage measured in FLOPS grew 100x over two years
“LLM usage has grown a hundred x in the last two years. So if you measure like in the number of flops, it went from like one extra flop to a hundred extra flops now. And like, of course, this data is not very precise, but it's directionally correct.”
Lazarte: Mercor founder Brandon is generating $100M ARR at age 21
“And then in, in the Brandon case, it's like, okay, he's a 21 year old, running a company, doing a hundred million dollars a year. Like, there's very few people that have been in that place, but turns out that Pedro has been in that place, you know, like, early…”
Lazarte: I have done four Benchmark deals, co-founding one of them
“Yeah, so I've done, so I mean, I've done four companies since I started at Benchmark. Three have been this way. And then the fourth one, I actually, I'm a co-founder. So I started the company with someone that, that I knew for a long time.”
Lazarte: US labor market spend is $10T versus $1T software market
“If software spending in the US is like a trillion dollars, but labor spend is like 10 trillion, and now, like, the AI companies are going after the labor spend, and so the outcomes are going to be, like, insanely larger than they were before.”
Lazarte: Benchmark participated in a funding round for Cursor
“So we made, like we participated in one round of cursor.”
Lazarte: Benchmark bans partners from voting 5 on investment opportunities
“So like, we vote from one to 10, and like, you can't vote five.”
Lazarte: Benchmark rounds are defined by founder quality, not check size
“And a benchmark round is when there's a founder that is very capable going after a very big market, and as long as you have that, like, that's a benchmark founder, it doesn't matter if you're raising, like, five million or if you're raising, like, two hundred …”
Lazarte: My first check at Benchmark was $55M into HeyGen
“My first check at benchmark was a fifty-five million dollar check into HeyGen.”
Lazarte: Best early Wildlife Studios term sheet offered $50k for 50%
“The idea was, like, I loved mobile games, and I thought it was going to be a good business, but there wasn't, like, a very strong, well-thought-out thesis, and I guess that's why, like, the best term sheet that we got is someone offered us, like, 50,000 dollar…”
Lazarte: Early Brazilian VC deals included predatory 20x liquidation preferences
“So I had friends that they raised money in Brazil and they agreed to like a 20 times liquidation preference, which seems like oh, yeah, there's this clause in the contract, but I don't really know what it is. And yeah, like, people do that, and they end up los…”
Lazarte: AI agent UI shifts allow startups to rebuild incumbent businesses
“Whenever you have a shift, like, a UI shift of this magnitude, a lot of the businesses, like, they don't adapt, and so I think there's an opportunity to recreate a lot of the successful business of today in an agent format.”
Lazarte: Board value depends on past hypergrowth exposure and context depth
“I think the way a board member adds, adds value is like, it's a function of two things. One is like, how exposed have you been to hypergrowth in the past? And then How much time do you put in to actually understand the context of the company so that they, that…”
Lazarte: Most of my Benchmark deals are sourced via active outbound
“No, so the majority, like the majority of what I do is like outbound. Like the majority of what I do is outbound.”
Lazarte: AI market shift is much bigger than mobile
“I think the reality is, AI is a big shift. I think AI is much bigger than mobile. Maybe, like, all the other magnitude of the internet.”
Lazarte: ChatGPT reached nearly one billion monthly users in three years
“Three years ago, like, we didn't have ChatGPT, and now there's, like, close to a billion people that, that use it every month”
Lazarte: Benchmark's lack of process and small team are key advantages
“And I actually think that this is a big advantage for benchmarks, like, because we don't have any process, and we have a small team, it's easier for us to, like, change things, right?”
Lazarte: Sierra's Bret Taylor met Benchmark over dinner rather than pitching
“So I think on Brad's case is like, I think he had dinner with the partners. It was more like a conversation than a pitch.”
Lazarte: Wildlife Studios bootstrapped out of necessity, not choice
“So, so yeah, I bootstrapped a mobile gaming business, and it makes for a good story, but the reality is we tried really hard to raise money. Like, we didn't bootstrap by choice.”
Lazarte: Mobile app downloads grew 42x between 2008 and 2009
“And we saw that app downloads, like, this was in the market, and app downloads had grown 42 times. From 29, from 2008 to 2009, happy downloads, mobile app downloads had grown, like, 42 times.”
Lazarte: I would not have invested in Mercor without Brex
“Frankly, I don't think I would have invested in Mercor if I hadn't invested in Brex.”
Lazarte: Brex co-founder Pedro Franceschi discovered early iPhone jailbreak
“That, like, back in the day, he was the first person to find one of the jail breaks for the iPhone, right?”