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 37 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 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
Fenton: Capital Oversupply Is Good for Innovation Because It Increases Entropy
“I personally think that oversupply of capital is historically a good thing for innovation insofar as it creates higher degrees of entropy.”
Fenton: Early-stage VC returns are never determined by entry valuations
“I've never seen ever seen a venture investment from the early stage standpoint become bad because of valuations in the flip side. I've never seen one become great because of valuations going in.”
Fenton: 2021 Venture Capital Is Overfunding Non-Existent Market Preconditions
“One of the bigger risks that's going on in 2021 is there's a lot of invested capital is going in to market preconditions that either don't exist or are still too early to support the economic development of the businesses.”
Fenton: Initial valuation does not matter if an early-stage startup succeeds
“If you zoom out, Harry, big picture, if the company works, if it really works, it doesn't matter.”
Fenton: Board Members Who Focus on Giving Answers Shouldn't Serve
“If you think your role is to provide the answers, then I think you probably shouldn't be in the boardroom.”
Fenton: Benchmark Won't Exist in 50 to 75 Years
“Benchmark won't be around in 50 to 75 years, nor will most of the companies we work with”
Fenton: Free and open consumer distribution channels evaporated by 2017
“One of the major oxygen supplies For consumers, especially, is free and open distribution, and I think we could say pretty emphatically that that has evaporated in the last five years”
Fenton: Ownership stake drives early-stage VC returns more than valuation
“The other variable on, you know, this topic specifically that you'll hear people focused on is ownership stake, and I think ultimately that is a bigger determinant of returns than anything related to the valuation going in, and I say it specifically for early …”
Fenton: The most successful startups launch in narrow or invisible markets
“In many ways, by definition, the startup companies that do the best invest and get going in very narrow, almost ill-defined, if not completely invisible markets”
Fenton: Great founders consistently choose reckless decisions over conservative ones
“The best founders make me feel like Number one, I can never control them, and I never want to control them. Number two, that given an opportunity to do the insane, reckless, non-conservative versus the rational, logical, they'll prefer the insane and the reckl…”
Fenton: Corporate Boards Create a Superstructure of Mistrust for Founders
“And a board represents a governance structure. And so there are many people who, like myself, are highly anti-authoritarian. If we see authority, we immediately don't trust it. And so that's one of the challenges, that you create a structure that has the super…”
Fenton: Early Venture Converts Latent Demand Into Kinetic Product Traction
“I think so much of the art of early stage venture is to ask the question of, can you unlock consumption? Can you tap into a latent potential energy of demand that can be made kinetic through a product experience that's radically easier to engage with and more …”
Fenton: Hyper-curiosity and hyper-competitiveness are deficient traits for operating CEOs
“I think those are positive ways of pressing what are arguably are two very deficient traits for a operating CEO focus and, you know, collegiality can be very defining as a great CEO set of character traits.”
Fenton: Direct venture practice is superior to prior operating experience
“There's no substitute for being great in the venture business than practicing it, and if I viewed this as a 20 to 30 year career, the sooner I got started, the better”
Fenton: Zenly's low-battery location tech enables a new social layer
“In the case of Zenly, we had a point of view that, you know, we now have ubiquity of smartphones, and there's a set of enabling features inside of those phones that could really change how we interact with people in the world. And in the case of Zenly, it's th…”
Fenton: Early VCs should refrain from giving founders product strategy
“A bulk of what we try and do at the early or Stages of a company is to not give product strategy, because I think that's something that's really best done by the product authors, but to ensure that the questions are being asked”
Fenton: dotCloud was subscale and unviable due to Amazon competition
“When we were in the business model of dot cloud, that wasn't happening. We were subscale. Amazon was competitive in a way that I think it was clear to some of us that the business was no longer viable.”
Fenton: Docker achieved developer ubiquity within a year of pivoting
“We would have never imagined that in less than a year, you know, Docker would achieve ubiquity, and now it's a, you know, household name for developers”
Fenton: VCs can no longer buy 25% of high-momentum early-stage startups
“I think that the notion that you could buy 25% of a early stage company that has some demonstrable momentum is, is gone.”
Fenton: Board meetings using over 10 PowerPoint slides are tragic and criminal
“It's tragic that most of the board meetings that are practiced in the Silicon Valley involve over 10 PowerPoint slides. I think that's criminal.”
Fenton: Founder Workload Is Unaffected by Investor Base or Board Structure
“Once you start a business and you're working on it, you don't work more or less hard based on the investor base or the governance structure.”
Fenton: Top Talent Seeks Companies Creating Maximum Equity Value
“The best people are going to want to work for a company that's going to create the best equity value.”
Fenton: Over-Invest in Early Vulnerability Because Bad News Drives Learning
“So by over investing at the beginning in vulnerability, allowing for the bad news to carry just as much space for compassion, good feelings, bad feelings, all those things, because bad news typically is a catalyst to learning.”
Fenton: Startups require external tailwinds larger than themselves to scale
“The second major variable in investment was in any of these market segments, there needs to be an outside force, in my experience, something you don't create, you know, an energy source that's bigger than a startup.”
Fenton: Benchmark Invested $3.25M for 27% of New Relic's Series A
“We put 3.25 million in to buy 27% of the company with a 20% management pool. That's a series of investment. There was no seed. There was no precede.”
Fenton: The Immediate Human Response to Board Critique Is Defensiveness
“If you're threatened, and the emotions of fear take over, you're not going to hear the feedback. You may hear it an hour later, or a day later, a month later, but in the moment, the human response to critique is defense, and it takes a highly evolved founder t…”
Fenton: Most board directors fail at asking questions over giving answers
“And I think most directors failed this. I have failed at this multiple times, and I will continue to fail at it, because it's sometimes a lot easier just to give the answer.”
Fenton: Believing You Mastered VC Destroys Your Capacity to Perform
“The minute you think that you figured it out and that you've mastered it, you've shut down your capacity to do it effectively.”
Fenton: New Relic's Premortem Risk Was Targeting Low-Budget Developers
“The reasons it wouldn't work, tiny market of Mickey Mouse developers that would never have the money to support a viable economic model.”
Fenton: Snapchat has replaced the native camera for heavy users
“I think the camera is now, in many cases, for most, most people who are heavy users of Snapchat, like myself, the camera's been replaced by Snapchat, because it's plugged into a network.”
Fenton: Socratic questioning by board members is more effective than being didactic
“Onto a pretty steep learning curve, and I've ultimately concluded the Socratic method is far more effective than being didactic, so meaning Socratic of the form where you're inquisitive, asking questions, but really in your mind synthesizing, what are the two …”
Fenton: Startup CEOs should replace PowerPoint with prose pre-reads for board meetings
“So a huge part of what I've done is encourage all my CEOs to move to a pre-read that's written in prose format, not PowerPoint.”
Fenton: Airtable is a grand simplification of the database
“Airtable for me is a great example of a grand simplification of the database.”
Fenton: Benchmark backed New Relic when it was just founder Lou Cirne
“If you look at the Series A, there were four people. Now, of course, we committed to Lou, and it was just Lou.”
Fenton: Benchmark typically maintains board commitments for 12 years
“In the case of New Relic, I was on that board for 12 years. That's a pretty standard commitment for us.”
Fenton: CFO Mark Sackleben is the unsung hero of New Relic's success
“The unsung hero of New Relic's financial success is Mark Sackleb and the CFO. Lou brought in early, and Mark would write a crisp, succinct narrative with the team that laid out the core business metrics with the story behind them.”