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Victor Lazarte
Cofounder and CEO at Wildlife Studios
Victor Lazarte is the co-founder and former CEO of Wildlife Studios, a leading mobile gaming company.12 He founded the company with his brother Arthur in 2010, growing it into a global powerhouse with over 3 billion downloads and offices in multiple countries.124
Lazarte has a diverse educational background, holding a Bachelor of Engineering from CentraleSupélec in France and a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from the University of São Paulo.1 He also completed the OPM program at Harvard Business School.2
Prior to founding Wildlife Studios, Lazarte worked as a Credit Trader at JPMorgan in London from 2009 to 2010.12 Under his leadership, Wildlife Studios achieved significant growth and established a strong market presence in the mobile gaming industry.1
In July 2023, Lazarte transitioned from his role as CEO to become the Chairman of the Board at Wildlife Studios.3 Concurrently, he joined Benchmark, a venture capital firm, as a General Partner.35
Throughout his career, Lazarte has also been involved in other ventures, including serving as a Board Member for Brex since 2018 and founding Escola Aberta in 2017.3
Highlights
After 2 great years at benchmark, I’ve made the difficult decision to leave the firm in order to pursue a new adventure.
Benchmark simply excels in the craft of early stage investing and forming deep partnerships with founders. I’ll always be grateful to have had the opportunity to partner with and learn from great investors at benchmark, both current and past. I especially want to thank Peter for his mentorship, first on my board and later as a colleague over the past 6 years. While I’m eager to start investing my personal capital, I’ll certainly miss the great colleagues here.
The best part of investing is to partner closely with generational founders and help them at the start of their journeys when faith and support matter the most.
During my two years at benchmark, I’ve had the privilege to join the boards for remarkable founders like @BrendanFoody at @mercor_ai , @DLeitersdorf at @DecartAI, @joshua_xu_ at @HeyGen_Official , @ypatil125 @lindensli and Rhythm at Applied compute , and other incredible companies that are still unannounced. I’ll also continue to serve on the board of Brex, one of my first seed investments, with appreciation for Pedro and Henrique who trusted me as one of their first board members.
These founders have pulled off feats that would have seemed impossible when they started. Mercor has grown run rate over 100X into 9 figures in 1 year, Decart has created realtime generative videos that feel like magic, HeyGen is helping businesses create 10M minutes of AI video every month, Applied Compute is bringing frontier RL to any enterprise, and Brex has now provided credit cards to over 30K businesses.
It’s an honor to continue to support their growth.
Before benchmark, I was a founder for 12 years, so I know how much that word means. Nothing has brought me more joy over the past 2 years than to have some of you describe me as a co-founder to your business.
As for what’s next, I’ll continue leading rounds personally (including one where I am partnering again with my benchmark colleagues!) and plan to build a new investment practice. I look forward to sharing more soon. Thank you again to Benchmark for the wonderful experience.
I am excited to lead Benchmark’s $55M investment in @HeyGen_Official, partnering with @joshua_xu_ and @wayne_liang_, building the AI video platform for businesses.
full story:
HeyGen’s beginning was as scrappy as it gets. Joshua and Wayne, were colleagues at Carnegie Mellon, where they discussed what new applications AI would unlock. After developing consumer products for a few years, in late 2020 they realized that similar to how the smartphone camera changed media, a new revolution was about to begin.
Video is the preferred way people consume information, but businesses have a hard time creating them. Joshua and Wayne believed that if they replaced the camera with AI, the barrier would be drastically lower and businesses would be able to tell their story through video, which is why they built HeyGen.
For their first use case, they noticed how slow and expensive it was to hire a spokesperson. To test their product they went on a freelance marketplace and started fulfilling spokespeople tasks. Creating videos for mere 5 dollars they were 10x cheaper and 100x faster then their human counterparts and customers couldn't get enough of it.
With the need for the product established they went on to create an AI video generation platform where businesses can create their own avatars in minutes, and use 100s of templates to create videos for marketing, learning and development, translation and more.
Businesses had so much success creating videos with HeyGen that in just over a year they went from 0 to over $35 million ARR. Over 40 thousand companies use the paid product and millions of people use some version of Heygen. From small to fortune 500 companies, customers use HeyGen videos to grow their business, and the company’s focus on trust and safety made it the partner of choice for companies like McDonald’s where HeyGen powered their “Sweet Connections” campaign allowing people to send videos to their families translated in their native language. At the same time new products like Streaming Avatar are transforming chatbot conversations into a video call and driving a new wave of growth.
I wasn't alone in noticing HeyGen. With a stellar team and a generative AI product that had exponential user adoption, the founders were overwhelmed with venture capitalists' advances and reluctant to take a meeting with a new one.
So much of Joshua's trajectory reminded me of my experience as the founder and CEO of Wildlife Studios, where I bootstrapped the business to hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue. On the journey of reaching over 1 billion unique users for our mobile games, video creation played a critical role. We had a team of 50 full time employees just creating marketing videos, so I could see first hand the difficulties as well as the business growth video creation generates. As we spent more time together, Joshua and I connected over the struggles of immigrant founders building a company to reach a large audience and now I am excited to share that Benchmark is investing 55 million dollars leading HeyGen’s series A, and I am joining the board.
There are strong tailwinds propelling HeyGen that are common to the most interesting AI companies. While the previous generation of software made workers more productive and charged per seat, in AI companies deliver the entire outcome previously produced by teams. HeyGen doesn't make spokespeople more productive, it allows businesses to create videos without a camera or a studio.
Since the invention of computers, we have had to adapt to their language, with AI computers are finally adapting to the user interface that is most natural to humans, like chatGPTs conversational interface, speech synthesis/recognition or HeyGen allowing business to communicate through video.
HeyGen benefits from a flywheel common in AI leaders. Early in the cycle HeyGen developed a superior technology, leading to a higher quality product: much more realistic avatars. That led to faster adoption, higher brand awareness and revenue, allowing higher investment in the technology and the ability to recruit the best talent, this in turn leads to a superior technology completing the flywheel.
It's exciting to see a new wave of AI entrepreneurs with design sensibility and commercial instincts building products customers love and delivering outcomes. If you are in the space reach out at [email protected]
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Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.