Sarah Tavel: Will Foundation Models Be Commoditised? | E1149

Right now, it feels like if you need a model that's on the frontier, you're gonna be closed source. I focus on the application layer because I do think that's where a tremendous amount of value ends up being captured and created. You just see the tremendous amount of investment that has to happen right now in order to progress these models. At this point, it's kind of compute constrained. Each successive model is going to be more and more expensive. That suggests a world where you're gonna have an oligopoly.

Ready to go? Sarah, I am so excited for this. I always love our chats. So first-

I love it.

... thank you so much for joining me today.

No, thanks for having me as always, Harry.

Now, well, I want to start, for those that do not know, how did you come to be at Benchmark? I- I love a good story, Sarah. So like, did they call you up and they're like, "Hey, join Benchmark?" Is it over dinner? Like talk to me, what was that courting process?

It's, um, you know, for... It's a very serious decision for us when we bring on a new partner because it's, you know, it's a s- very small group. Right now we're five general partners. And so it is a bit of a, uh, uh, it's a very deep getting-to-know-you process. Wh- how it started initially was actually, um, Peter Fenton reached out to me (laughs) and we grabbed a, a coffee at Sightglass. I was at Greylock at the time, and he, he just mentioned that for whatever reason, uh, they, they, uh, wanted to, to get to know me and, and, and, and kind of talk about what it would be like to partner together. Uh, and I, I said no (laughs) . Um, I, uh, I just didn't, you know, I was ha- like Greylock was just, it's a great group of people that been nothing but great to me. And I'd been there for, you know, a year and a half or so, and it just didn't feel right, uh, to me at the time. And so we kind of parted ways, and then they smartly had, uh, Rich Barton call me. I had met Rich at a prior event. And Rich, you know, had been a, a... Rich is the CEO of Zillow, um, amongst other things. And he called me up and we talked about it a little bit 'cause he knew the, the Benchmark crew very well, and he basically told me, he's like, "Look, what do you have to lose by spending time with the team, right?" Like, "If you wanna be great in this business, see how some of the greats practice the business of venture capital." And when he said that way, I just felt like, you know, he was right, that what did I have to lose by getting to know the team? And then as I did then start to get to know the team and see what felt so different to me about the way Benchmark practiced partnering with founders in this like very small, equal, uh, very committed way of doing things, it was just one of those things that once you saw it, you couldn't unsee it, you know? And that's, and, and so ultimately, thankfully, stars aligned and, uh, they felt the same way. And so it's been, it's been, uh, almost seven years now.