Benchmark
also referred to as: benchmark capital
includes Benchmark Fund I
78 statements across 7 episodes · 34 bullish · 11 bearish · 10 people on the record · first statement Sep 28, 2022 by David Rosenthal · said 487 times in 28 episodes since 2021 · across every show →
Mentions by year, the whole family
brought up most by David Rosenthal (242), Ben Gilbert (189), Peter Fenton (25), Dara Khosrowshahi (7), Eric Vishria (6), Chetan Puttagunta (6), Mitch Lasky (3), Jason Calacanis (3)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 4 mentions in 4 episodes 1 per episode
- Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire · Acquired
- The Walt Disney Company: The most successful enterprise for monetizing human nostalgia (Audio) · Acquired
- Vanguard: The communist capitalist who saved investors a trillion dollars (Audio) · Acquired
- The NFL: How small-town teams became America's most valuable sports empire (Audio) · Acquired
- every mention in 2026, scene by scene →
2025 3 mentions in 1 episode
2024 7 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
2023 26 mentions in 6 episodes 4 per episode
- Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky and Blake Robbins on The Art of Business in Gaming · Acquired
- Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi · Acquired
- Holiday Special 2023 (Audio) · Acquired
- Visa (Audio) · Acquired
- Sessions: David Senra (Founders Podcast) · Acquired
- Nvidia Part III: The Dawn of the AI Era (2022-2023) (Audio) · Acquired
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 443 mentions in 11 episodes 40 per episode
- Benchmark Part I · Acquired
- Benchmark Part II: The Dinner · Acquired
- Holiday Special 2022 · Acquired
- ACQ Sessions: Jason Calacanis · Acquired
- Amazon.com · Acquired
- Altimeter (with Brad Gerstner) · Acquired
- Qualcomm · Acquired
- Stratechery (with Ben Thompson) · Acquired
- 3 more episodes that year, every mention in 2022 →
2021 4 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
Everything said about Benchmark, oldest first
Sep 28, 2022
Friendster CEO Tim Koogle blocked Benchmark from investing in Facebook's Series A
“Specifically what happened was Benchmark had invested in Friendster, and so was conflicted out. Now you could argue that was an unavoidable mistake, you know, but like, boy does that hurt. And supposedly, I think it was Bob Kegel who was on the board of Friend…”
Sep 28, 2022 neutral
Generating top returns and generational succession are VC's hardest feats
“The hardest thing to do in venture capital is create those massive outsized returns that only come from investing in one of the five or so truly important companies each decade. Then, once you've done that, the next hardest thing is to keep doing it with an en…”
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Sep 28, 2022 negative
Equal-partnership VC models trend toward mediocrity due to diluted individual responsibility
“For most groups of people, I think it actually trends towards mediocrity. And this was some of the criticism of LPs and some of the other GPs in the early days thinking they were crazy. They called it communist capital. This looks like communism, right? Like i…”
Sep 28, 2022 negative
Stanford's endowment blackballed Benchmark's Fund I over its 30% carry demand
“Literally almost all of these folks who are starting Benchmark, they get so angry that not only do they not invest in the fund, they start organizing against this young benchmark capital. They call up all of their peers, the other university endowments across …”
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Sep 28, 2022 bullish
Sep 28, 2022
Venture investors should aim to quickly become consensus and right
“You want that to be true when you make the investment, but you don't want to be very non-consensus for long. You want to quickly be consensus and right. You just don't want anybody to see it until you make that bet. But like, you don't want to make that bet an…”
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Benchmark structured $1.5 million in founder loans to win the eBay deal
“It was also reported by the Washington Post after the IPO of eBay that Benchmark had also structured Equity-backed loans to Pierre and Jeff in the amount of 750,000 dollars each as a way to, like, prevent them essentially, give them an incentive not to take th…”
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Benchmark refuses fund scaling, junior partners, platform teams, and CRM software
“Benchmark famously believes that venture capital doesn't scale. They have zigged when others have zagged. They have not grown their fun size. They haven't tried junior partners. They don't have a platform team. They are not multi-stage. And I've heard they don…”
Sep 28, 2022 neutral
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Founders need board members who possess psychological safety at their venture firm
“Really what you want is a board member who feels psychological safety in their partnership to do the things that they think are right without conflicting incentives. It is crazy how rare that is for someone to actually have that psychological safety.”
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Benchmark partners retire past their forties because 100% effort is strictly required
“And I also think that's why they have to retire once they sort of age too far out of their forties, because it is an implicit thing among the group of you gotta be bringing it all day, every day. And at some point, if you want to notch down to 90%, it's time f…”
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Sep 28, 2022 neutral
Equal VC partnerships fail unless every partner delivers equal value and output
“The only way this works is if everyone truly brings the same amount of value to the partnership. Because otherwise, over time, you will have a situation where even if you're equal economically, you become unequal in everybody realizing, hey, that person's not …”
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Sep 28, 2022 neutral
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Sep 28, 2022 bullish
Benchmark almost assuredly could have won a slot in Google's Series A
“But could they have beaten one of those two firms to get one of the two primary VC slots in Google? Almost assuredly. I mean, at this point, this was Bench where they had just done eBay. You know, they were at the height of their powers. They were the internet…”
Sep 28, 2022 neutral
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Small equal partnerships spend 90% of their time on investing
“You get to spend all your time on the field when you're a small equal partnership. Yes. You're not spending your time managing the firm, or worrying about managing the firm, or worrying about where your career is going, or worrying about this, that, or the oth…”
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Benchmark GPs receive equal carry and free ownership of the management company
“It both means that each of the partners in a given fund have equal carry, but also all of the current GPs own the management company without paying for it. The management company is always just given to whoever the equal current GPs are.”
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Sep 28, 2022 neutral
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Sep 28, 2022
Sep 28, 2022 bullish
Sep 28, 2022 neutral
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Sep 28, 2022 bullish
Sarah Tavel led Chainalysis's Series A round during a crypto winter
“The very first investment that she made after she moved over from Greylock and joined Benchmark was Chainalysis, which does not fit any of those categories and was a very, very non-consensus deal to do in the middle of ICO crypto winter in 2017, early 20 18. S…”
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Sep 28, 2022 neutral
Sep 28, 2022 neutral
Benchmark originally branded as a seed and startup firm, not Series A
“Which is really interesting because Benchmark mostly markets themselves at this point as a Series A firm. That is not how they marketed themselves then. They said, we do seed and startup investments. Seed being pre-business plan and startup being post-business…”
Sep 28, 2022 bullish
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Suing Travis Kalanick did not directly harm Benchmark's investment business
“I think pretty unambiguously at this point, both in my opinion and just looking at what's happened in the intervening, god, it's been five years since then, the answer to that, like, does this meaningfully negatively impact benchmark is no. Directly, no.”
Sep 28, 2022 neutral
Benchmark cannot test junior partners before granting equal GP economics
“You can't bring them in as a junior partner and see what happens and be like, oh, you know, you'll get a sliver of economics in this fund. We'll see if the partnership gels, you know, we'll see if you perform here, you know, and then no, you can't do that. You…”
Sep 28, 2022 neutral
Sep 28, 2022 neutral
Sep 28, 2022 neutral
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Benchmark hosts annual dinners with Jeff Bezos and founders they missed backing
“On Monday nights after the partner meeting, they do these dinners. They invite somebody, you know, Bezos comes every year. Like, this is crazy. Public company CEOs. Yeah. So Michael Lewis, you know, blah, blah, blah. You know, part of that I'm sure is just fun…”
Sep 28, 2022 positive
Benchmark founding partners stepped down in 2005 with zero tail economics
“David Byrne and Andy Ratcliffe, and they had brought on another GP during that period, Alex Balkansky, in the 2005, 2006 fund they raised then, they all step back and they don't take tail economics, meaning they're out of the management company, no longer form…”
Sep 28, 2022
Peter Fenton is Benchmark's only remaining active 'Fab Four' GP
“2018, they do fun nine. Matt and Mitch step back at that point. Bill sticks around for one more fun cycle. And then of course, you know, probably everybody knows at this point, certainly if you're still listening at this point, Bill has stepped back now at thi…”
Sep 28, 2022 bullish
Oct 4, 2022 bearish
Oct 17, 2022 negative
Grimshaw: Avoiding growth funds prevents pricing conflicts with founders
“Our job, we're really focused on how do we scale the company, those companies, right? And how, as part of that, having a relationship that doesn't get sort of adulted by this question of the us making another commitment decision. It's like we're in and we're n…”
Oct 17, 2022 neutral
Oct 17, 2022 bullish
Oct 17, 2022
Oct 17, 2022 negative
Fenton: Late-stage investing dilutes venture fund return multiples
“If we start, all we're doing, we're investing more money in late stages. We're lowering our returns. That's all we're doing because our commitment is fixed. It's not like we're going to be more committed. So we're, you could say we're getting more cash on cash…”
Oct 17, 2022 neutral
Oct 17, 2022 neutral
Oct 17, 2022 neutral
Oct 17, 2022 positive
Fenton: Benchmark committed to his last two deals in under a day
“And the last two or three investments I've made were an example of the following, which is that there's, there was an angel in the ecosystem who saw a deal going down and they said, you know, you probably should talk to benchmark. And when they did, we committ…”
Oct 17, 2022 neutral
Puttagunta: Benchmark lacks formal programs but lets partners hire principals and EIRs
“I would say that we don't have associates, but
One of us may hire an associate.
We don't have principals.
We have a principal.
We have EIRs.
We have venture partners.
It's just, you're trying to figure stuff out.”
Oct 17, 2022 neutral
Puttagunta: Entrepreneurs referred 100% of his Benchmark investments
“I was sharing this note internally, which was that I found that a hundred percent of the investments that I've made as a benchmark partner were all sent to us by an entrepreneur, and not necessarily an entrepreneur that we had backed.”
Oct 17, 2022 negative
Tavel: Benchmark bans memos because they function as pre-sell tools
“So you don't write a memo. And it's because the memo, you know, when you're, a memo really is a vehicle to, you know, obviously give background on a company, all the work you've done, but it is also a little bit a pre-sell before the company comes in to presen…”
Oct 17, 2022 positive
Oct 17, 2022 neutral
Oct 17, 2022 positive
Fenton: A VC's true customer is the founder's purpose, not the founder
“Our customer isn't, it's not the founder. We say it is, but it's really the purpose of the founder, and it turns out that purpose, if that's the customer, One of us may be deviating from that, and we can keep each other accountable, and that happens internally…”
Oct 17, 2022 negative
Fenton: Benchmark will not expand to eight partners or launch a growth fund
“Now that doesn't mean we're going to have eight partners
And a growth fund.
And then there's some hard lines where you just say, but this is, you know, getting closer to people who are embody our values, but at a different stage in their career, that's okay wi…”
Oct 17, 2022 positive
Oct 17, 2022 negative
Grimshaw: Being a founder's 'first call' is a low, reactive bar
“There's this trope in the industry, right, which is you want to be the founder's first call. And it's like, I've never really liked it insofar as it's like very reactionary for you. It's like, oh, they'll call me, I'll pick up the phone and respond. It's a low…”
Oct 17, 2022 negative
Oct 17, 2022 neutral
Fenton: Benchmark took equity in Tinder without investing cash
“There have been examples and we're, we don't, there's some awkwardness to talking about it publicly. One of the ones is probably a good example is Tinder. And, you know, Barry Diller said, what do you want? And it's like, well, we want equity in Tinder.”
Oct 17, 2022 neutral
Oct 17, 2022 neutral
Oct 17, 2022 negative
Fenton: Docker's valuation plummeted from $1.5B to zero, stranding Benchmark
“So last time I did an all hands meeting at Docker was three years ago, and there were 60 employees that, that we'd spun out of the prior company, and the valuation was zero. So we'd gone from over a 1,000,000,004, 1,000,005 to zero, and I was working with some…”
Oct 17, 2022 positive
Oct 17, 2022 neutral
Oct 17, 2022 neutral
Apr 26, 2023 negative
Lasky: Paid customer acquisition in gaming is a dangerous, addictive slippery slope
“I resist as long as possible going paid, although sometimes you're so profitable that you can with and not really mess your margins up too much, right? But I think once you start down the paid path for customer acquisition, it's kind of a slippery slope and it…”
Jun 13, 2023
Oct 28, 2024