Benchmark, every mention
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Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Benchmark comes up
Benchmark Part I · Acquired
- ▶ 3:25:36 Ben Gilbert So many people know that Benchmark has a website that just says Benchmark.
- ▶ 3:25:44 David Rosenthal A link to their Twitter feed.
- ▶ 3:25:46 Ben Gilbert Which of course lists their announced portfolio companies in a Twitter list.
- ▶ 3:25:54 Ben Gilbert I assumed they just never updated their website because they thought,
- ▶ 3:26:04 Ben Gilbert They were actually the very first venture capital firm to have a website in the early nineties.
- ▶ 3:26:11 Ben Gilbert Yes, they were, they were very early to adopt it.
- ▶ 3:26:17 Ben Gilbert I mean, it is like hilariously goofy and, uh, you can find directions on how to drive to pitch them.
- ▶ 3:26:22 Ben Gilbert And they evolved it a few times.
- ▶ 3:26:25 Ben Gilbert And, uh, then Matt Kohler joins the firm and says, Hey, I think we really need to update our website.
- ▶ 3:26:56 Ben Gilbert Ultimately, one problem was it ended up putting Benchmark too far forward.
- ▶ 3:27:05 Ben Gilbert And, uh, that is antithetical to everything Benchmark stands for.
- ▶ 3:27:08 Ben Gilbert They want to be in the background.
- ▶ 3:27:09 Ben Gilbert They want it to be the entrepreneur show.
- ▶ 3:27:10 Ben Gilbert They want to be that sort of quiet confidant and partner.
- ▶ 3:27:13 Ben Gilbert And they think that the best founders will be attracted to the idea that they're not taking credit by featuring those companies on the website, which I think is sort of an interesting rationale for it.
- ▶ 3:27:24 Ben Gilbert I think what really happened, or at least what also happened, is Matt was showing it to the rest of the partnership in these early revisions and got a whole lot of feedback and a whole lot of opinions.
- ▶ 3:28:01 Ben Gilbert I'm not sure there's a more perfect and pure illustration of counter positioning than how benchmark started.
- ▶ 3:30:13 Ben Gilbert But I love this from Benchmark's 1997 website.
- ▶ 3:31:25 Ben Gilbert So it says, benchmark is structured to provide a high level of service with maximum investment flexibility.
- ▶ 3:32:26 Ben Gilbert Benchmark and all VCs are in the business of selling American green dollars.
- ▶ 3:32:31 Ben Gilbert And Benchmark's American green dollars
- ▶ 3:32:42 Ben Gilbert Lots of times, entrepreneurs take a deal where Benchmark is asking for more of their company, aka a lower valuation, in exchange for the same amount of dollars.
- ▶ 3:33:04 Ben Gilbert Is benchmarks money worth twice as much as a competing term sheet?
- ▶ 3:33:40 Ben Gilbert The thing that is not squishy at all is, it has to be close to a hundred percent of benchmark companies that raise a Series B.
- ▶ 3:33:50 Ben Gilbert And so you're completely de-risking your next round of capital by becoming a benchmark partner, and it costs benchmark nothing to have that asset, but they now have that asset because the only people that revere benchmark more than…
- ▶ 3:34:47 David Rosenthal And in aggregate, the response has trended towards responding to this, being that if you take money from Benchmark, you are almost guaranteed your next round in good terms.
- ▶ 3:35:00 Ben Gilbert Unfortunately, those people also could lead the round, so they signal, whereas Benchmark can't.
- ▶ 3:35:17 David Rosenthal And Benchmark has very explicitly not done that.
- ▶ 3:35:33 Ben Gilbert I think they embrace the sort of, like, opacity and, like, mystique of Benchmark.
- ▶ 3:36:25 David Rosenthal And benchmark isn't a position.
- ▶ 3:36:59 Ben Gilbert I do think for Benchmark, I suspect they've done some bridge rounds here and there, or their participation in a round signals something to the next round investor.
- ▶ 3:37:20 David Rosenthal I think this is the right point here to say too, obviously we know all of the current generation of benchmark partners, and we've had a bunch of them on the show in the past, and we know lots of folks in the ecosystem.
- ▶ 3:37:32 David Rosenthal You know, there's always kind of this question with any VC and with Benchmark, too, of like, oh, they say XYZ VC says they're dedicated to the craft
- ▶ 3:37:47 David Rosenthal We can genuinely say, like, that's not the case with Benchmark.
- ▶ 3:38:11 Ben Gilbert I also will say it is surprising to me whenever I meet with a benchmark partner, how much time they have for me.
- ▶ 3:38:41 Ben Gilbert This is the moment where we should see the benchmark model really work.
- ▶ 3:39:03 Ben Gilbert The first thing that I just want to say after doing the research is they are just not a thesis driven firm.
- ▶ 3:39:12 Ben Gilbert They've been so good historically, especially the fab four, maybe a little less today, but definitely the fab four of saying, oh, no, I don't have themes.
- ▶ 3:39:46 David Rosenthal I think part of the DNA of the culture of the firm is they're all learning machines.
- ▶ 3:39:51 David Rosenthal I think that is what they screen for, you know, and, uh, that takes, like, so many forms.
- ▶ 3:39:55 David Rosenthal But one obvious, you know, fun form that I can't believe we haven't talked about yet is they do these dinners.
- ▶ 3:40:01 David Rosenthal They started, um, during the Fab Four era.
- ▶ 3:40:05 David Rosenthal They have this custom-built
- ▶ 3:40:06 David Rosenthal Table in the office on Monday nights after the partner meeting, they do these dinners.
- ▶ 3:40:10 David Rosenthal They invite somebody, you know, Bezos comes every year.
- ▶ 3:40:17 David Rosenthal You know, part of that I'm sure is just fun, but one of the things they do in those dinners, and I'm sure one of the reasons they started them, they bring the CEOs of companies they missed in.
- ▶ 3:40:30 David Rosenthal When they miss, they want to know why, and then they want to adjust.
- ▶ 3:40:38 Ben Gilbert It's funny, my, uh, a playbook theme that I had was they are experimental, and I think it dovetails off of what you were just saying.
- ▶ 3:40:45 Ben Gilbert I came into the research thinking Benchmark has had one opinion about what venture capital should be and always did that, and that's just, like, not true.
- ▶ 3:40:54 Ben Gilbert All these dot-com partnerships, playing around with mezzanine investing, even recently trying growth investing, like in 20 11, at the beginning of the Fab Four era, they did a
- ▶ 3:41:13 David Rosenthal They made some noises in the most recent fund announcement about they might do some public company investing, you know.
- ▶ 3:41:18 Ben Gilbert They held OpenTable for a long time while it was still public, which I think this is something that puts a fine point on the analytical side of Benchmark, and particularly Bill Gurley's analytical side, which is
- ▶ 3:41:29 Ben Gilbert I also came in thinking they know when to sell.
- ▶ 3:41:32 Ben Gilbert They always sell going into the IPO, or they sell a lot because they know that they are private investors, and the goal is to get into the companies that are going to IPO for the most and then exit near IPO.
- ▶ 3:41:44 Ben Gilbert But actually, I think what they are is, in some ways, they're value investors.
- ▶ 3:41:47 Ben Gilbert They're good at understanding the intrinsic value of something, which I think is why we saw them dump WeWork, why they were holding OpenTable while still public,
- ▶ 3:42:05 Ben Gilbert So I think that illustrates for me, like, sure, there are lots of quote unquote rules for how benchmark works, but the main thing that they're good at is breaking them when it makes sense to break them.
- ▶ 3:42:19 David Rosenthal I mean, one I want to highlight quickly is, uh, it's just the all-stars team aspect of benchmark.
- ▶ 3:42:24 David Rosenthal Beat that horse plenty through this episode, but like, you know, if Sequoia is the Yankees, Benchmark is the all-star team, and those are two very different conceptions, I think we might have an opportunity to do some more Benchmark…
- ▶ 3:42:49 Ben Gilbert Because all of their biggest wins in the past have been consumer companies.
- ▶ 3:43:01 Ben Gilbert And, you know, we've talked about people thought they were idiots for investing in eBay, because big consumer investments seem really weird.
- ▶ 3:43:08 Ben Gilbert And as more and more prestige has accrued to the firm, will they try and keep that prestigious track record going?
- ▶ 3:43:15 Ben Gilbert Or will they do really weird consumer stuff?
- ▶ 3:43:17 Ben Gilbert You know, are they going to do more of these near risk free early stage enterprise investments?
- ▶ 3:43:22 Ben Gilbert And if you look at the partner team right now, they're set up really well to do that.
- ▶ 3:43:39 Ben Gilbert So I think their next
- ▶ 3:43:40 Ben Gilbert Partner will be really telling on this, and I think it'll be interesting to see, does Benchmark stay a great breakout consumer investing firm, or do they look a lot more like high-performing SaaS B to B enterprise investors?
- ▶ 3:44:44 Ben Gilbert I think, like, I'd like to pull a benchmark here and say grading made a lot of sense for us.
- ▶ 3:46:41 David Rosenthal This is kind of related to the benchmark, you know, dinner thing.
Amazon.com · Acquired
- ▶ 1:33:05 Ben Gilbert It's been many years, and so there's lots of names of key folks at Sequoia and at Benchmark and at Andreessen Horowitz that
- ▶ 2:11:37 David Rosenthal And of course, famously, Benchmark invests 6.7 million in eBay in the fall of 1997.
- ▶ 2:12:33 David Rosenthal Oh, there are legendary stories of administrative assistants at Benchmark retiring.
- ▶ 2:13:37 David Rosenthal eBay's still this little startup that had raised the Series A from Benchmark.
- ▶ 2:28:48 David Rosenthal Benchmark.
- ▶ 2:28:57 David Rosenthal In benchmark in the future, of course, the main backer of eBay.
Walmart · Acquired
- ▶ 1:33:14 Ben Gilbert It's very clear that what they did was, to quote Chathan at Benchmark, the sort of go slow to go fast.
American Dynamism (with Katherine Boyle) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:20:34 Ben Gilbert The back catalog is now completely open and free, so you can go listen to the old classics like VC Fundamentals or How to Invest in Consumer Businesses with Sarah Tavell from Benchmark.
Altimeter (with Brad Gerstner) · Acquired
- ▶ 37:41 David Rosenthal Wait, he came in in the A with Benchmark?
- ▶ 49:42 Brad Gerstner So remember just these venerable early stage firms, you know, Mike Spicer and, and Jim White and the team over at Sutter Hill and my friends at Benchmark and friends at Sequoia.
- ▶ 1:15:25 Brad Gerstner Because Chaitin at Benchmark, and Mike Spicer at Sutter Hill, or, you know, the folks at Sequoia, or the, or the folks at, they do an incredible job.
- ▶ 1:15:52 Brad Gerstner Same with Benchmark.
- ▶ 1:18:03 Ben Gilbert You're a reasonably concentrated portfolio, so it's, it's kind of like the benchmark mantra, but applied to later stage, and that discernment
- ▶ 1:33:20 David Rosenthal Well, and what's different now is you can go public early and you still have Altimeter or Benchmark or Sequoia or whoever has your shareholders.
Not Boring (with Packy McCormick) - Extended Cut · Acquired
- ▶ 2:55:26 David Rosenthal They had everybody in the value, except maybe benchmark after the loud cloud experience.
Complexity Investing & Semiconductors with NZS Capital (Extended Cut) · Acquired
- ▶ 59:54 David Rosenthal They just, uh, a little while ago now, but, uh, just as we are recording, this announced a eighty million dollar series C at a two billion dollar evaluation led by existing investors, altimeter capital and benchmark capital.
Michael Mauboussin Master Class — Moats, Skill, Luck, Decision Making and a Whole Lot More · Acquired
- ▶ 50:42 David Rosenthal They have raised, uh, fifty million dollars from top firms like Y Combinator, Benchmark, and Altimeter, and they are really just, like, killing it, I think is the correct term.
- ▶ 1:06:52 Michael Mauboussin And then you have to know to call Sequoia or benchmark or entries in Horowitz or wherever it is.
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