Garrett Lord
Co-founder & CEO, Handshake. On 2 shows, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutive@garrettlord ↗LinkedIn ↗joinhandshake.com ↗
Garrett Lord is the co-founder and CEO of Handshake, which he launched in 2014 out of Michigan Technological University. He expanded the platform from a college recruiting network into an AI data provider for frontier AI labs.
2shows
1appearances
18statements
5resolved
3supported
0contradicted
60%fully supported
22said about them ↓ Everything Garrett Lord said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Lord: AI models no longer need generalist annotators, only domain experts
“But really what's happened is the models have gotten so good that the generalists are no longer needed. Like what they really need is experts, experts across every area that the models are focused on.”
Lord: Humans will be needed to train AI for the next decade
“And I think for as long as models are improving, humans will be needed in this process. And when you talk to the lead scientists and researchers at these labs, it's like the data types will evolve and what they're trying to capture and collect, but you know, t…”
Lord: The only moat in human AI data is audience access
“We like to say like the only moat in human data is access to an audience.”
A leading AI data competitor spends tens of millions monthly on ads
“One of the leading players has like, they have like 200 recruiters. It's like unsustainable. There are like 200 people on LinkedIn sending individual messages to acquire these people because there's no brand, there's no trust. They spend, you know, they're spe…”
Frontier AI labs have practically unlimited demand for high-quality data
“In this market, there's essentially like unlimited demand. Like if you can produce high quality volumes of data you most likely will be able to sell whatever you produce.”
Lord: Synthetic data will not dominate frontier AI training
“Synthetic data has a role to play and like in verifiable domains, but like what we consistently hear from companies is like, you know, their synthetic data is not going to dominate.”
Lord: AI pre-training gains asymptoted 18 to 24 months ago
“And about 18 months ago, 24 months ago, we started to really see, like, an asymptoting of gains coming from, because they had essentially, like, sucked up all of the knowledge on the internet. And so labs really shifted towards most of the gains now coming fro…”
Lord: Handshake has 500,000 PhDs and 3M master's students
“We have, you know, more PhDs. 500,000 of them use Handshake than any other platform. We have three million master's students who are, you know, in-school or alumni.”
Lord: Handshake AI will exceed $100M revenue in year one
“I think we'll blow through that number, but yeah.”
Handshake pre-builds AI training data and licenses it to multiple labs
“There's certain swim lanes where we're actually pre-building data and selling that data to all the labs. So we can do this thing where You know, we produce one unit of data ourselves. We pay for it, almost like a movie production. We pay for a unit of data. An…”
Handshake powers 92% of top 500 US schools with zero CAC
“We have no customer acquisition cost, because we partner with 1600 universities, power 92% of the top 500 schools in the country. We power almost every institution and community college in the country. We have no customer acquisition cost to acquire the people…”
Lord: Handshake AI works with seven frontier AI labs
“Fast forward to today, we're working with Seven of the frontier labs, basically every lab that's doing work and building the best large language models.”
Lord: Handshake's core business has reached $200M ARR
“Our core business is a two hundred million dollars error.”
Lord: Hiring managers will not manually review resumes in five years
“The hiring manager process of like reviewing 200 resumes. Are you kidding me? I'm going to sit there and review 200 resumes. Like not a chance five years from now, right? Like students manually making cover, like not a chance, right?”
Frontier AI builders demand real-world tool-use and trajectory data
“Evolving the use cases to also follow what the model builders want, which is they want more. They want more real-world tool use and trajectory-based data as well.”
Lord: Handshake engages hundreds of elite music students for AI multimodal data
“And we're engaging like thousands or not thousands, like probably hundreds of top music students at, you know, the weed music schools in the country who are improving models, understanding of music.”
Lord: 100% of the Fortune 500 uses Handshake
“There's like a million companies that use Handshake. Like we have 101 hundred percent of the Fortune 500 uses Handshake.”
The other half of the tape: Garrett Lord's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 22 times in 3 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 18
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20VC 22
2025 22 mentions in 3 episodes 7 per episode
- Chime IPO: Are IPOs Hotter Than Ever? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Surge CEO & Co-Founder, Edwin Chen: Scaling to $1BN+ in Revenue with NO Funding · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Figma’s IPO: The Full Breakdown & Why Melio’s $2.5BN Acquisition is “Discouraging” · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Garrett's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 LENNY'S PODCASTLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Handshake | 1 | 18 | 60% 3/5 | full record on Lenny's Podcast → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Handshake | 0 | 0 | — | full record on 20VC → |