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
The NFL: How small-town teams became America's most valuable sports empire (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 3:41 Ben Gilbert The story is one of incredible cooperation, of belief in growing the pie over a century, and just like our benchmark episode, of communist capitalism at its finest.
Google Part III: The AI Company. Google is amazingly well-positioned... will they win in AI? (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 25:08 Ben Gilbert He and some, I think it was grad students, were in the process of starting a company, had term sheets from Benchmark and Sequoia.
- ▶ 2:52:17 Ben Gilbert As we talked about earlier, he does join Google through that crazy, please don't raise money from Benchmark and Sequoia and we'll just hire you instead.
- ▶ 4:05:24 Ben Gilbert Chaitan Putugunta, partner at Benchmark.
Meta (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 27:58 Ben Gilbert And Benchmark, right?
- ▶ 28:02 Ben Gilbert Which is what tied their hands and why they could not pursue an investment in Facebook.
- ▶ 28:19 Ben Gilbert They just, they had a competitive investment.
Holiday Special 2023 (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:39:01 Ben Gilbert Benchmark's very good at that.
Nvidia Part III: The Dawn of the AI Era (2022-2023) (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 0:04 Ben Gilbert I went for the first time, what, two weeks ago, when I was down for meeting at Benchmark, and the nostalgia in there was just unbelievable.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi · Acquired
- ▶ 1:12:02 Ben Gilbert Their Series A was the next year, famously led by Benchmark, where Bill Gurley joined the board at quite the step up in valuation, sixty million dollars, so all those early angels got a ten-x even before Benchmark came in, which was…
Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky and Blake Robbins on The Art of Business in Gaming · Acquired
- ▶ 2:05 Ben Gilbert Mitch, of course, was a partner at Benchmark in the Fab Five era that we chronicled on our Benchmark episode.
- ▶ 2:18 Ben Gilbert So we are joined by Mitch and Blake Robbins, Benchmark's current principal, who has also come up on previous episodes.
- ▶ 2:00:22 Ben Gilbert Yeah, we're at benchmark, and I can see like, 15 founders lying outside with decks.
- ▶ 2:14:23 Ben Gilbert We got a lot of feedback on the first benchmark episode that we talked about this cool shape and you couldn't actually see it, so made sure to get that.
Sessions: David Senra (Founders Podcast) · Acquired
- ▶ 2:46:09 Ben Gilbert Like if LVMH, Benchmark,
Holiday Special 2022 · Acquired
- ▶ 35:47 Ben Gilbert Benchmark.
- ▶ 38:12 Ben Gilbert And I think like the lean into the upsides thing for us is if you're doing a super high velocity show, benchmarks probably not going to feel like you're giving them a unique spotlight in a way to do something like that.
- ▶ 1:01:42 Ben Gilbert Like the two Benchmark episodes were both way higher than the 100,000 that we were at before Amazon.
- ▶ 1:23:26 Ben Gilbert Like, you know, what if we had Eric Vishria just like hanging out next to you on the couch, and we weren't talking about Benchmark, but Eric was just like chiming in on a lot of this stuff and sharing his ideas.
Stratechery (with Ben Thompson) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:55:15 Ben Gilbert But the other great acquired merch that dropped a couple of weeks ago is the benchmark tee that in the benchmark style, of course, says there's always room at the top.
Enron · Acquired
- ▶ 3:31:21 Ben Gilbert You can also get a there is always room at the top benchmark inspired shirt at acquired.fm slash store.
Benchmark Part II: The Dinner · Acquired
- ▶ 1:13 Ben Gilbert Last episode, we told the four-hour story of Benchmark, the legendary venture capital firm that stayed small while all their competitors ballooned in size.
- ▶ 1:23 Ben Gilbert At the end of the episode, we mentioned that their partner meeting had this dinner at the end of it, where the five equal partners of Benchmark sit down for an open-ended discussion, sometimes with a special guest.
- ▶ 1:36 Ben Gilbert Well, we were talking with the Benchmark partners about that last episode,
- ▶ 1:39 Ben Gilbert And they invited us to be their guest for one of these dinners, and for the first time ever, record it, even on video.
- ▶ 1:50 Ben Gilbert We got to ask them about a lot of the open questions we had about the future of balancing those out there consumer investments with their B to B portfolio, how they think about making sure that they see that next world-changing company,…
- ▶ 18:05 Ben Gilbert Hey, it's benchmark.
- ▶ 26:50 Ben Gilbert And for listeners who don't know, because I didn't know until Chathan just showed us, uh, the benchmark partners, none of you have offices.
- ▶ 42:37 Ben Gilbert Wasn't in response to benchmarks.
- ▶ 42:49 Ben Gilbert That was like a benchmark stayed so true to their thing.
- ▶ 57:03 Ben Gilbert They go out and they raise at market rates, but then there is a benchmark brand.
- ▶ 57:08 Ben Gilbert So like option C is take benchmarks money, and I think, and you guys probably are sure of this, your companies tend to go raise better series Bs at higher valuations with more certainty than your average series A funded startup.
- ▶ 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…
- ▶ 1:06:41 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.
- ▶ 1:15:15 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.
- ▶ 1:52:14 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.
- ▶ 1:58:28 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
- ▶ 1:55:46 Ben Gilbert The Fab Four era of Benchmark.
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…
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 42:45 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,
- ▶ 43:45 Ben Gilbert And I think they've been in every single fund ever that Benchmark has raised and were in before any other institutions.
- ▶ 48:07 Ben Gilbert They end up being a large benchmark LP.
- ▶ 51:56 Ben Gilbert Like I remember thinking like, wait, there was a fifth founder of benchmark.
- ▶ 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,…
- ▶ 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,
- ▶ 1:04:48 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?
- ▶ 1:06:01 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.
- ▶ 1:19:30 Ben Gilbert I think of the portion of the 6.7 million dollar Benchmark investment that went to the company's balance sheet, I don't think any of it ever left the balance sheet.
- ▶ 1:20:45 Ben Gilbert I have also heard from a podcast where another benchmark partner at the time said that three of the six was used as a secondary.
- ▶ 1:21:02 Ben Gilbert At least something, and there's enough sort of smoke here around the equity back loans that was reported not only by the Washington Post, but then was an SEC filings that in addition to the equity investment that Benchmark made, there was…
- ▶ 1:22:18 Ben Gilbert And it's like, the benchmark eBay deal, that may have been 50% of the round, or at least 25%.
- ▶ 1:24:35 Ben Gilbert And we do know for sure that they distributed four billion dollars.
- ▶ 1:24:57 Ben Gilbert So depending on when they got out of certain things, at the point that eboys was published, the mark on this fund was 92 X.
- ▶ 1:28:31 Ben Gilbert There's a sort of long-standing relationship between Jeff and Benchmark.
- ▶ 1:29:13 Ben Gilbert In less than two years, Benchmark's stake grew 100,000 percent.
- ▶ 1:29:22 Ben Gilbert And to put a finer point on that, they invested at a twenty million dollar pre-money valuation, and by the next spring, the company was worth twenty-one billion dollars.
- ▶ 1:33:18 Ben Gilbert However many years later this is, uh, 22 years later, right around the market cap where Benchmark got liquid.
- ▶ 1:50:23 Ben Gilbert Rich famously started Expedia by spinning that out of Microsoft and then started Zillow where Benchmark was an investor and Rich for a long time was a venture partner with
- ▶ 1:50:33 Ben Gilbert Benchmark.
- ▶ 1:50:56 Ben Gilbert But this cooperating your way to success is the benchmark secret sauce.
- ▶ 1:51:00 Ben Gilbert And because of that, and because the relationship with a benchmark board member who is almost like a co-founder and the entrepreneur is so tight and the communication is so frequent.
- ▶ 1:53:41 Ben Gilbert Okay, so now that we've laid this groundwork of how delicate it is, and how essential it is, and how at the core of benchmarks every fiber of their being it is, now let's talk about the first time that they recruited someone new into the…
- ▶ 1:59:53 Ben Gilbert Where you might expect us to go here is, but Benchmark didn't do any of that.
- ▶ 1:59:58 Ben Gilbert They stuck to their guns.
- ▶ 1:59:59 Ben Gilbert They knew what made them special, and they chose to ignore all the temptation.
- ▶ 2:00:09 Ben Gilbert They tried everything.
- ▶ 2:00:11 Ben Gilbert They threw the kitchen sink at corporate partnerships.
- ▶ 2:00:14 Ben Gilbert They expanded to multiple continents at the same time.
- ▶ 2:00:17 Ben Gilbert They were like, oh, bigger fund, let's raise a billion dollar fund.
- ▶ 2:00:21 Ben Gilbert And they tried it all.
- ▶ 2:02:40 Ben Gilbert And it's like, here's San Francisco, here's San Jose, here's Stanford, and here's benchmark.
- ▶ 2:07:39 Ben Gilbert He would always leave at the bottom, like, if you have feedback, email, I think it was, like, atc at benchmark.com.
- ▶ 2:10:39 Ben Gilbert Which is really interesting because Benchmark mostly markets themselves at this point as a Series A firm.
- ▶ 2:10:45 Ben Gilbert That is not how they marketed themselves then.
- ▶ 2:10:48 Ben Gilbert They said, we do seed and startup investments.
- ▶ 2:11:41 Ben Gilbert Right, because it was consumer so hits driven that Benchmark basically said, okay, we'll let you guys take that risk and we'll invest at the point of traction or the point of product market fit because these consumer products are such…
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