Ev Randle, General Partner at Benchmark, joins Sourcery to break down how AI has rewritten the rules of venture and growth investing. Ev explains why the old inverse relationship between scale and risk has collapsed, why the golden rules of SaaS now run in reverse, and how he underwrites AI companies when the spreadsheet no longer does the work. We cover the new AI taxonomy through a P x Q x M lens, the economics of inference and agents, Claude Code at $36,000 per developer, the AI mom test for frontier versus open source demand, and the trillion-dollar question of whether frontier labs hold pricing power. Ev also walks through the coming liquidity shock from the $380B Anthropic round, why late-stage can now beat a Series C, and how venture firms became alternative asset managers. Benchmark's AI portfolio spans Mercor, HeyGen, Decart, Manus, Gumloop, Exa, StarCloud, Reducto, Eigen, Cerebras, 11x, Sierra, Fireworks AI, Legora, and LangChain. Everett Randle: https://x.com/EverettRandle [https://x.com/EverettRandle]  Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea [https://x.com/MollySOShea]  Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy [https://x.com/sourceryy]  𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒 • Brex [https://brex.com/sourcery]—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery [https://brex.com/sourcery]  • Turing [https://turing.com/sourcery]—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery [https://turing.com/sourcery]  • VCX [https://fundrise.com/vcx]—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com [http://getvcx.com]   • Deel [https://www.deel.com/sourcery]—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery • Public [http://public.com/sourcery]–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets [https://public.com/generated-asset], which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery [https://public.com/sourcery]  • Merge [https://merge.dev]—The leading provider of customer-facing integrations and agentic tools for frontier LLMs, Fortune 500 organizations, and B2B SaaS companies. Visit https://merge.dev [https://merge.dev]   Follow Sourcery for the latest updates! https://www.sourcery.vc [https://www.sourcery.vc/] Disclosure Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time.    𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Everett Randle, General Partner at Benchmark (00:58) Coming off Benchmark's AGM (04:05) The Golden rules of Investing are all gone (08:58) Who actually has a handle on AI Economics? (12:57) Why Benchmark bets on Founders, not Categories (15:31) Brad Gerstner's "Age of Inference" Thesis (19:07) The most important shift since the Cloud (23:55) Inside Gumloop's AI automation canvas (26:40) The Token Maxing problem nobody's solving (27:25) Ev's "Mom Test" for frontier AI (31:33) What happens when frontier models get too cheap (34:44) Inside the new funding playbook (40:31) Venture Capital became a product, not a firm  (42:35) The Biggest IPO wave Wall Street's ever seen (49:08) The secret behind Benchmark's wildly diverse bets (52:54) The mentors who shaped him