Benchmark, every mention
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every year anyone David Rosenthal 242Ben Gilbert 189Peter Fenton 25Dara Khosrowshahi 7Eric Vishria 6Chetan Puttagunta 6Mitch Lasky 3Jason Calacanis 3Brad Gerstner 3Sarah Tavel 1
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Benchmark comes up
Benchmark Part II: The Dinner · Acquired
- ▶ 57:43 Ben Gilbert So this is a question or are we just selling for benchmarks?
- ▶ 59:36 Ben Gilbert And if I had to sort of summarize why benchmark works, it seems like every, all the trade-offs are actually just thought through very clearly and tried to align them all so they sort of like, um, uh, they play well, amplify each other…
- ▶ 1:02:05 David Rosenthal oh, I'm not gonna call, I've got these other firms calling me, that's great, I'm gonna go with, but like, am I gonna call Benchmark?
- ▶ 1:04:24 Peter Fenton 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.
- ▶ 1:06:41 Ben Gilbert We were just at their office in San Francisco, actually right before we went to Benchmark and, uh, met with Wasim and got to get a little tour of, uh, everything going on at Pilot HQ right now, and, uh, they're just executing really well.
- ▶ 1:09:09 Chetan Puttagunta Um, 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
- ▶ 1:15:15 Ben Gilbert As you're evaluating mutual fit on an investment between the entrepreneur and benchmark,
- ▶ 1:15:36 Ben Gilbert It seems to me benchmark has shifted to become much more analytical over time.
- ▶ 1:18:47 David Rosenthal 10 years ago, Benchmark was making commitments when there was
- ▶ 1:23:18 Peter Fenton So, um, I do remember one attempt at a portfolio review a while back, and it was like the apex of failure at benchmark, and, you know, I think I have one of those in my portfolio now.
- ▶ 1:26:01 Peter Fenton As an LPM benchmark, I don't like, you know, there's a limit to where you're gonna take this idea.
- ▶ 1:27:11 David Rosenthal Benchmark.
- ▶ 1:28:56 David Rosenthal Oh, the Benchmark website.
- ▶ 1:30:01 David Rosenthal but, but, but literally that seems to be the model of like serve on a board with a benchmark partner.
- ▶ 1:30:33 Eric Vishria Um, you know, I think the story with Peter is like, he was repeatedly showing up competing for investments that benchmark before he was here.
- ▶ 1:32:01 Peter Fenton Would be benchmark.
- ▶ 1:32:12 Peter Fenton I, I left Stanford Business School embarrassed that I went there maybe at some level, um, and I, and I dreamed about getting a job at Benchmark, and Bruce canceled his meeting with me, and then I waited, and then, you know, another time he…
- ▶ 1:33:06 Peter Fenton And, you know, I said, what does that say about benchmark?
- ▶ 1:34:57 Peter Fenton So to get close to benchmark, get close to extraordinary.
- ▶ 1:36:49 Eric Vishria It didn't, it didn't, it wasn't intentional, um, at least for the part, when I joined Benchmark in 2014, at the end of the Fab Four era, or at the whatever, um, as, as you called it, um, you know, the partnership, the four, were…
- ▶ 1:38:06 Eric Vishria And I think this is just a, a big element of benchmark overall, which is the entrepreneurs lead the way and the markets lead the way.
- ▶ 1:39:33 Peter Fenton The issue that you're seeing at Benchmark today is sort of a question of, like, where's the equity value been created?
- ▶ 1:40:36 Peter Fenton We got Kohler to join the firm at the, still the beginning quarter of the social and the social over.
- ▶ 1:43:33 Chetan Puttagunta How many success stories are there in Venture, and even through Benchmark's history, of that market was dead, that market is done.
- ▶ 1:50:53 Chetan Puttagunta And then they were like, oh, we're both at benchmark exploring ideas.
- ▶ 1:52:14 Ben Gilbert And on the other hand, it's kind of the point of Benchmark that, like, it actually is just about you as humans and not about this, like, institution and strategy.
- ▶ 1:55:06 Peter Fenton Like if benchmark's anything, it's that we're available, we're flat, there's no arrogance, and it's, uh, you guys got to the central core of that, and that comes now really from Bob's history, and you know, they say this about our…
- ▶ 1:55:46 Peter Fenton To fuck up the benchmark culture, and we haven't done it yet, but we're trying.
- ▶ 1:56:26 David Rosenthal Thank you to the Benchmark Partnership, too, for inviting us doing this.
- ▶ 1:56:35 David Rosenthal They were great.
- ▶ 1:58:28 Ben Gilbert With that, listeners, thank you, or thanks to the very good people at Benchmark, and, uh, we'll see you next time.
ACQ Sessions: Jason Calacanis · Acquired
- ▶ 1:55:43 David Rosenthal We just did Benchmark.
- ▶ 1:55:46 Ben Gilbert The Fab Four era of Benchmark.
- ▶ 1:55:47 David Rosenthal The Fab Four era of Benchmark was truly something special.
- ▶ 1:55:55 Jason Calacanis It's, it's going to be Sequoia, Kleiner, Benchmark,
- ▶ 1:58:06 David Rosenthal August Capital, Benchmark Capital, Shasta Capital, all in this same building, and I think there's some space for rent in there.
- ▶ 2:02:22 Jason Calacanis I think, I don't think it's going to
- ▶ 2:02:26 Jason Calacanis I think in the arc, it will not be comparable to benchmark at Sequoia.
- ▶ 2:02:45 David Rosenthal I mean, having just done this benchmark episode, like the benchmark fund seven, one of, if not the best institutional size fund of all time.
Benchmark Part I · Acquired
- ▶ 0:15 Ben Gilbert It's a very anti-benchmark approach we're taking to this episode.
- ▶ 1:29 Ben Gilbert Today, we are going to talk about a firm who built one of the top franchises in venture capital, Benchmark, that has incredibly managed to do both.
- ▶ 1:44 Ben Gilbert And this episode is about the empire they chose not to.
- ▶ 1:54 Ben Gilbert Benchmark famously believes that venture capital doesn't scale.
- ▶ 1:58 Ben Gilbert They have zigged when others have zagged.
- ▶ 2:01 Ben Gilbert They have not grown their fun size.
- ▶ 2:03 Ben Gilbert They haven't tried junior partners.
- ▶ 2:05 Ben Gilbert They don't have a platform team.
- ▶ 2:07 Ben Gilbert They are not multi-stage.
- ▶ 2:08 Ben Gilbert And I've heard they don't even have a CRM.
- ▶ 2:12 Ben Gilbert And yet, they are the big early backer of so many of the world's most important companies.
- ▶ 2:42 Ben Gilbert Bill Gurley is not a general partner in the Next Benchmark Fund, and the majority of the current partners joined in the last five years.
- ▶ 2:50 Ben Gilbert They clearly transitioned from the eBay generation to the Uber generation.
- ▶ 2:54 Ben Gilbert And the question is, can they do it again?
- ▶ 2:57 Ben Gilbert Will this third generation of benchmark continue to set the benchmark for all time greatest venture capital funds in history?
- ▶ 3:25 Ben Gilbert So for this episode, we talked to several current partners at the firm, several former partners, some of the original founders of the firm, portfolio CEOs, and even public company CEOs who used to be portfolio CEOs to get a whole bunch of…
- ▶ 8:01 David Rosenthal God, there's so much Silicon Valley history, and I feel like we covered Sequoia, we covered Andreessen, and there's this missing gap in between the two of them, and this is Benchmark.
- ▶ 8:17 David Rosenthal Okay, to understand Benchmark, we started in the 19 nineties in Silicon Valley, but I don't think you can actually start with Benchmark.
- ▶ 9:14 David Rosenthal You know, you think today of the top VCs, the top VC firms, you think Sequoia, you think Benchmark, you think Andreessen Founders Fund.
- ▶ 26:40 Ben Gilbert And we did unearth something that I've always been a little bit curious about because people always say benchmark is an equal partnership.
- ▶ 28:40 David Rosenthal So, Bob and Future Benchmark aren't the only ones that come out of this.
- ▶ 29:07 Ben Gilbert Before we actually get into the formation of Benchmark here, it is worth lingering on Dave and TVI and the Microsoft investment for one more moment.
- ▶ 29:15 Ben Gilbert When I was looking up what the terms of the deal were for the Microsoft investment, there's some interesting color shared by Dave about his style of investing, and you can see that the seeds of Benchmark really were present in TVI's…
- ▶ 30:08 Ben Gilbert That could have been a benchmark partners quote, but it was Dave Marquardt when he was at TVI.
- ▶ 34:11 David Rosenthal It reflects two things, certainly in Bob and, uh, and I think in all the early folks at Benchmark and Benchmark as a firm.
- ▶ 39:06 David Rosenthal You've got Bob, you've got Bruce, you've got Andy, you've got Kevin, the four well-known founders of Benchmark.
- ▶ 39:24 David Rosenthal And so they go out and they do actually recruit a fifth founding member, the fifth co-founder of Benchmark, a guy named Val Vaden.
- ▶ 40:19 David Rosenthal Of course, benchmark capital.
- ▶ 40:23 Ben Gilbert Yeah, they went all in on signaling something to the market.
- ▶ 40:27 Ben Gilbert And I think what you're about to get into is how they signal that in the form of the economics that they were asking for, but they certainly signaled it in the name.
- ▶ 42:14 David Rosenthal Benchmark comes out, the new Benchmark Capital swinging right out of the gate with 30% carry.
- ▶ 42:45 Ben Gilbert A good allegory is actually the thing that Andy Ratcliffe went on to do after Benchmark, which was found Wealthfront.
- ▶ 43:04 Ben Gilbert It's like kind of amazing that when he was going out to raise for Benchmark, he was saying,
- ▶ 43:37 David Rosenthal Makes a huge bet on this motley crew of benchmark capital founders in fund one.
- ▶ 43:45 Ben Gilbert And I think they've been in every single fund ever that Benchmark has raised and were in before any other institutions.
- ▶ 43:51 David Rosenthal And I think they are still one of the very largest Benchmark LPs to this day.
- ▶ 47:18 David Rosenthal Literally almost all of these folks who are starting Benchmark, they get so angry that not only do they not invest in the fund,
- ▶ 47:31 David Rosenthal They call up all of their peers, the other university endowments across the country.
- ▶ 47:47 David Rosenthal Literally Stanford black balls benchmark.
- ▶ 48:07 Ben Gilbert They end up being a large benchmark LP.
- ▶ 48:09 David Rosenthal And they do end up coming back to benchmark and the new team very happily for them, for Stanford, for my alma mater gets back into benchmark or gets into benchmark for the first time and atones
- ▶ 48:49 David Rosenthal Loves it as he's thinking about what's going on at TVI and what he wants his future fund and what benchmark would become to be totally aligns with Jim's principles in the book.
- ▶ 50:22 David Rosenthal Benchmark itself as a partnership, either.
- ▶ 51:02 David Rosenthal And like, would benchmark have beaten John Doerr to do Amazon?
- ▶ 51:20 David Rosenthal He wasn't Mike Moritz before he did Yahoo and Benchmark wasn't in the picture then.
- ▶ 51:33 David Rosenthal He was coming from the buyout industry, the proto software buyout industry, and Benchmark was all about doing formation stage investments in technology and internet companies.
- ▶ 51:56 Ben Gilbert Like I remember thinking like, wait, there was a fifth founder of benchmark.
- ▶ 53:56 David Rosenthal You were tweeting the last couple of weeks, like just screenshots from old benchmark websites.
- ▶ 54:05 Ben Gilbert In 1997, January 97, so there's the five general partners, and it says, complementing Benchmark's early stage focus, Val Evaden concentrates on technology special situations, and when you click on his bio, he's there, he's got a picture,…
- ▶ 55:01 David Rosenthal If you were handicapping the future, if Vegas were betting on the odds of the young benchmark capital heading into 1997, the line would be long on outsized success here.
- ▶ 55:31 David Rosenthal The Annis Mirabellis for benchmark.
- ▶ 55:54 David Rosenthal You know, I think we're going to talk about this more in a minute, but a key, key element to benchmark and to them getting it off the ground was both doing something different, but also having this swagger to them.
- ▶ 59:18 David Rosenthal And we spent a lot of time talking about that in part one of our Andreessen Horowitz episode involving none other than Benchmark Capital.
- ▶ 59:56 David Rosenthal So Benchmark comes out.
- ▶ 1:00:10 David Rosenthal Yes, and the Benchmark partners convince him to come out and try his hand being an actual VC and to join Benchmark, and I'm sure they're thinking, and this is what plays out, they need a shot in the arm here for this firm, and boy is Dave…
- ▶ 1:00:45 Ben Gilbert And for those who don't know, who have not heard of the book eBoys, it is the authorized history of Benchmark up until 2000,
- ▶ 1:01:30 David Rosenthal So David Byrne arrived at Benchmark with ambitions to contribute to the partnership fast in any way he could.
- ▶ 1:04:48 Ben Gilbert And it was so ambitious that even the benchmark partners, after they invested, kept trying to talk him into, could we just do food?
- ▶ 1:05:00 David Rosenthal And the benchmark partnership as a whole, but I think especially the, um, original four benchmark partners were the ones really pushing David to push Louie.
- ▶ 1:05:34 David Rosenthal Which Benchmark totally needed.
- ▶ 1:06:01 Ben Gilbert This is, A, a great risk-adjusted bet to make by benchmark, but B, not actually that big of a smoking crater relative to today.