Benchmark, every mention

Benchmark Part I · Acquired Sep 28, 2022 · 100 mentions

• ▶ 2:22:55 David Rosenthal He had just joined the firm and Google appears and some subset of the benchmark partnership, including Bill, heard about them, met with them, had an opportunity to pursue.
• ▶ 2:23:21 David Rosenthal The typical benchmark and bill hyper competitiveness drive to win that we all know they declined to pursue.
• ▶ 2:23:56 David Rosenthal I mean, at this point, this was Bench where they had just done eBay.
• ▶ 2:24:46 David Rosenthal Do the core benchmark Menlo Park partners do it?
• ▶ 2:25:05 David Rosenthal He met Skype, liked Skype, he's got this right up his alley, right up Benchmark's alley.
• ▶ 2:25:14 David Rosenthal Should Benchmark Menlo Park do it?
• ▶ 2:25:54 David Rosenthal You know, Excel ends up doing it, and Excel is a great firm, and Jim Breyer does it, you know, like, not to take anything away from them, but like, absolutely, Benchmark should have been and was in the conversation.
• ▶ 2:26:12 David Rosenthal Well, specifically what happened was Benchmark had invested in Friendster, and so was conflicted out.
• ▶ 2:26:49 David Rosenthal Tim blocked Benchmark from pursuing Facebook.
• ▶ 2:26:57 David Rosenthal And supposedly, you know, Mark Zuckerberg loved Bob, loved the Benchmark team.
• ▶ 2:27:33 Ben Gilbert So this sort of like, 2001 to 2010, actually not a great decade for Benchmark.
• ▶ 2:29:19 David Rosenthal About, uh, does Benchmark have the technical prowess to, you know, relate to the next generation of founders?
• ▶ 2:29:51 David Rosenthal So, you know, again, the benchmark rollercoaster continues.
• ▶ 2:30:49 David Rosenthal They're great firms now because Benchmark helped set them up.
• ▶ 2:31:31 David Rosenthal They've had ups and downs at Benchmark.
• ▶ 2:32:50 Ben Gilbert Well, and kind of like what you were mentioning in the 1996 recruitment where they went and got Dave Byrne, the spree of recruiting that they go on here to inject a little giddy up back into Benchmark, they go and get hitter after hitter…
• ▶ 2:33:33 David Rosenthal And he's asked about Bill and his time in this period of Benchmark.
• ▶ 2:33:36 David Rosenthal And he says, Bill, like me, isn't a founder of Benchmark.
• ▶ 2:33:40 David Rosenthal But in a sense, we have acted as though we were founders of Benchmark.
• ▶ 2:33:46 David Rosenthal And this is a re-founding of the firm with the blessing and direction of, not direction of what to do, but like the prescription from the original founding group to go forth and do your thing and figure out what's gonna work now.
• ▶ 2:34:35 David Rosenthal The existing group of GPs at Benchmark, and in particular Bill, they found that, you know, as they were going and meeting companies, everything that they would get interested in as they were going around the valley, they'd show up and…
• ▶ 2:36:16 David Rosenthal On the other hand, there's some questions about Benchmark right now.
• ▶ 2:36:48 David Rosenthal So those are the questions on the benchmark side.
• ▶ 2:37:14 David Rosenthal And he's walking away from that to join Benchmark.
• ▶ 2:37:21 David Rosenthal Do I really, really believe in this sort of refounding of Benchmark, this refocusing on this model?
• ▶ 2:37:56 David Rosenthal He brings Brett Taylor of Google Maps and then Facebook fame into Benchmark as an EIR.
• ▶ 2:39:34 David Rosenthal Why would they recruit him?
• ▶ 2:39:36 David Rosenthal So jam dad had gone public and then had gotten acquired by EA in short order during this period where benchmark didn't have a lot of wins.
• ▶ 2:39:54 David Rosenthal So Mitch had actually sort of pervade over one of the bright spots for Benchmark during that era.
• ▶ 2:41:09 David Rosenthal They recruit.
• ▶ 2:44:59 David Rosenthal They were making more riskier bets on both Mitch and Matt, both of which paid off hugely for the partnership.
• ▶ 2:45:17 David Rosenthal Even though Bill ended up doing the investment, but they worked as a partnership to source and we'll talk about it.
• ▶ 2:46:15 David Rosenthal I mean, they returned the fund on the investment, but, like, with the sale to Facebook.
• ▶ 2:46:20 Ben Gilbert Cuz it sold, like, 12 months after they did the Series A.
• ▶ 2:47:01 David Rosenthal You know, that took a long time, but they end up getting public on that.
• ▶ 2:47:06 Ben Gilbert New Relic, which was incubated in their office.
• ▶ 2:47:28 Ben Gilbert 20 11, and they raised five hundred and fifty million dollars for Benchmark Fund Seven.
• ▶ 2:50:38 Ben Gilbert Benchmark knows how and when to sell in addition to how to identify these phenomenal companies.
• ▶ 2:50:45 Ben Gilbert I think the benchmark philosophy is that they don't want to hamstring the next generation with any of their decisions.
• ▶ 2:50:50 Ben Gilbert All I have is these sort of like gut feelings from talking to people, but I think the way benchmark kind of works is when they hand it over to the next generation, first of all, they don't do it all at once.
• ▶ 2:52:30 Ben Gilbert Cause I think so far this has been the benchmark glory fest.
• ▶ 2:53:08 David Rosenthal And like this article comes out in Forbes called the benchmark way five partners.
• ▶ 2:54:13 Ben Gilbert In 2018, when that Wall Street Journal piece came out, their holding in Uber was worth eight billion dollars, so that alone would have sixteen-xed the fund.
• ▶ 2:54:22 David Rosenthal And I think at that moment, they sold some to SoftBank in a transaction at that point in time.
• ▶ 2:54:31 Ben Gilbert They've gotten liquid on a lot of things sort of like along the way.
• ▶ 2:54:36 Ben Gilbert You got February, 2018, Benchmark sold almost half of its stake in Snap and realized a billion dollars in gains somewhere.
• ▶ 2:54:45 Ben Gilbert I don't remember the timeframe exactly, but Benchmark sold nine hundred million dollars worth of Uber shares to SoftBank.
• ▶ 2:54:54 David Rosenthal And to rewind to Snap for a minute, Benchmark, I think, was instrumental in encouraging pushing Snap to go public as soon as they did.
• ▶ 2:55:22 David Rosenthal Like, they're very good at this.
• ▶ 2:55:25 Ben Gilbert Even this knowing when to sell thing, WeWork, they sold a lot of WeWork shares to SoftBank, and I think it's actually still part of some ongoing litigation.
• ▶ 2:55:36 Ben Gilbert But, as an aside actually on WeWork, I was watching a video with Peter Fenton, and he said, we were involved with WeWork.
• ▶ 2:56:31 Ben Gilbert Benchmark invests.
• ▶ 2:56:46 David Rosenthal There's some such great fun stories of that era that I think it's just fun to think back on like a happier time in Silicon Valley and show the sort of like swashbuckling insanity of Benchmark at the moment.
• ▶ 2:57:21 David Rosenthal The benchmark guys knew what was going on while Travis is inside at Sequoia, just up the street.
• ▶ 2:57:26 David Rosenthal They call the Uber away.
• ▶ 2:57:38 David Rosenthal Then after they do the deal, they send him a pair of Nikes as like a joke.
• ▶ 2:58:31 David Rosenthal But Jason asks Travis on this episode, why'd you go with benchmark?
• ▶ 2:58:37 David Rosenthal He's like, they're the best.
• ▶ 2:58:38 David Rosenthal I went with them because they're the best.
• ▶ 2:58:43 David Rosenthal I knew it was benchmark.
• ▶ 2:58:44 David Rosenthal They are the right partners.
• ▶ 2:58:46 David Rosenthal They are the best period.
• ▶ 2:59:03 Ben Gilbert Like they're this unbelievable partner and like, they actually can help you recruit executives.
• ▶ 2:59:08 Ben Gilbert And they're truly like, like three people told me they feel like a co-founder.
• ▶ 3:00:18 Ben Gilbert So there's a thing that we should definitely talk about on the benchmark episode, which is benchmark with their board seat on Uber ends up suing the founder along with a group of other people.
• ▶ 3:03:02 David Rosenthal You get to a certain point with Uber and, you know, a few years in, like, so we start out with Benchmark and Bill and Travis and the company are besties, you know, lock arms for life, right?
• ▶ 3:04:21 David Rosenthal Never by an order of magnitude had that happened, and all of a sudden the rules of the game have changed, and things are very different, and the amount of pressure on the company, on Benchmark, on the board, on the LPs of Benchmark.
• ▶ 3:04:41 David Rosenthal Say you're an LP in Benchmark.
• ▶ 3:06:47 Ben Gilbert Benchmark goes through with this.
• ▶ 3:08:32 Ben Gilbert You know, if you already have all these other things stacked against you, like Benchmark doesn't have a platform team and like,
• ▶ 3:08:51 David Rosenthal 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.
• ▶ 3:10:31 David Rosenthal So what's benchmark
• ▶ 3:11:26 Ben Gilbert Loud cloud and Opsware, and then ended up at benchmark and not Andreessen Horowitz.
• ▶ 3:11:38 Ben Gilbert But total class act like fits the benchmark, understated, classy, always go above and beyond be, you know, incredibly responsive, courteous.
• ▶ 3:12:30 David Rosenthal So now in 2017, really kind of in the midst of all the Uber stuff going down, Benchmark brings on another general partner.
• ▶ 3:12:40 David Rosenthal In some ways, actually, like, the very perfect Venn diagram hybrid spec, if there ever were a spec for a benchmark general partner.
• ▶ 3:12:51 David Rosenthal And in other ways, the most different general partner that they've ever had a benchmark.
• ▶ 3:13:06 Ben Gilbert At benchmark ever.
• ▶ 3:13:21 David Rosenthal Sarah, in so many ways, is like, literally, I think if you were to ask Dolly to paint a picture of a benchmark GP, it would come out looking exactly like Sarah because she started her career in venture as a junior analyst at Bessemer.
• ▶ 3:14:07 David Rosenthal Uh, so, I mean, literally, like, I can't imagine a more qualified partner to join Batchmark.
• ▶ 3:14:34 David Rosenthal Well, here's the other interesting thing about Sarah and why I think she's a great, you know, fit everything we've talked about at benchmark here.
• ▶ 3:14:43 David Rosenthal She fits that swim lane, but do you know what her first investment was at benchmark?
• ▶ 3:14:51 David Rosenthal 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…
• ▶ 3:15:12 David Rosenthal She did, I believe, the Series A and Benchmark, I believe, owns a meaningful part of that company, which is currently valued at 8.6 billion dollars.
• ▶ 3:15:28 David Rosenthal Which, but I think it's so funny, you know, it really, like, it really just fits the benchmark, she fits benchmark, and that investment of, like, hey, knowing a secret, right?
• ▶ 3:15:47 Ben Gilbert All of the benchmark partners, or at least some benchmark partners from every generation,
• ▶ 3:16:06 Ben Gilbert And I have heard another addendum to this from a benchmark partner that I thought was pretty interesting.
• ▶ 3:16:58 David Rosenthal So you got Eric joining 2014, you got Sarah joining 2017, and then the next year, 2018, you have surprise, surprise, another spec hire joins Benchmark as the next GP.
• ▶ 3:17:48 Ben Gilbert So Chatham, total spec hire for Benchmark.
• ▶ 3:18:34 Ben Gilbert Person to join as a general partner at Benchmark, which is Miles Grimshaw, which was last year, David?
• ▶ 3:18:54 David Rosenthal All these baby GPs into, uh, yeah, an incredible success there, but not part of Benchmark.
• ▶ 3:19:14 David Rosenthal Definitely before Benchmark and Eric.
• ▶ 3:19:17 Ben Gilbert Yeah, if you want to be a GP at Benchmark, just, uh, be on boards with them.
• ▶ 3:19:43 Ben Gilbert And that is the current Benchmark partnership.
• ▶ 3:25:06 Ben Gilbert Analysis of benchmark capital.
• ▶ 3:25:10 Ben Gilbert Is it benchmark capital or is it benchmark?
• ▶ 3:25:12 Ben Gilbert I know they used to say benchmark capital.
• ▶ 3:25:14 David Rosenthal Well, the entity itself is benchmark capital.
• ▶ 3:25:17 Ben Gilbert At least their goofy website.
• ▶ 3:25:24 David Rosenthal So, yeah, as Ben has been talking about in the episode through the Wayback Machine, they used to have a truly goofy website.