Bill Gurley, every mention
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every year anyone David Rosenthal 90Ben Gilbert 31Brian Koppelman 7David Senra 6Jason Calacanis 5Michael Mauboussin 4Brad Gerstner 4Peter Fenton 2Miles Grimshaw 2Sarah Tavel 1
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Bill Gurley comes up
Google Part III: The AI Company. Google is amazingly well-positioned... will they win in AI? (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 3:59:41 David Rosenthal He has the same accent as Bill Gurley.
- ▶ 3:59:46 David Rosenthal Like, if Bill Gurley, instead of being a VC, only wrote about sports and basically dedicated his whole life to understanding the mentality and psychology of athletes and coaches, it's so cool.
Google Part II: Alphabet (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 2:59:54 David Rosenthal So this was not widely publicized at the time, as you can imagine, but, uh, Bill Gurley wrote a blog post where he had heard from friends that Google was paying carriers and OEMs to use Android, even though Android was free, and he wrote…
Microsoft Volume II: The Complete History and Strategy of the Ballmer Years (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 4:00:39 David Rosenthal I think Bill Gurley had a blog post about Android back in the day about the less than free business model and why you can't compete with it.
Holiday Special 2023 (Audio) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:38:55 David Rosenthal Bill Gurley has for years said this.
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…
- ▶ 1:27:53 David Rosenthal It's the, do you want a business with- Bill Gurley wrote that blog post years ago about a rig too far.
Sessions: David Senra (Founders Podcast) · Acquired
- ▶ 12:32 David Senra Sam did this when he was younger, but this ties together where, um, Bill Gurley had a fantastic quote about this, a tweet about this when all that crypto was going crazy and like the run up and people are getting rich.
- ▶ 17:17 David Senra I wasn't expecting to quote Bill Gurley two times early so far, but, um, he, that's how you know this is going to be a good episode.
- ▶ 17:47 David Senra But what Bill says is like, you may, like, you don't have to be the smartest person, but you can collect more, the most information, and he's, and he holds you to a high standard in that talk.
- ▶ 17:55 David Senra Bill's like, listen,
- ▶ 23:20 David Senra Again, I just take advice when people are smarter than me.
- ▶ 23:22 David Senra Bill said, go collect everybody, everything you can.
- ▶ 1:18:13 David Rosenthal It's kind of like the Bill Gurley, you know, you have no excuse not to do that.
Qualcomm · Acquired
- ▶ 7:07 David Rosenthal That is written and said by none other than Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital for this almost unknown book.
- ▶ 46:13 David Rosenthal The business history of Qualcomm, just like Bill Gurley said on the blurb of this book,
Benchmark Part II: The Dinner · Acquired
- ▶ 7:04 Peter Fenton There was great optimism between Bill and me about, you know, injecting new practices, new habits, new ideas into the firm, and Bill had just read the Ben Franklin, uh, biography, and Ben had four dinners, if I recall, a week, but they…
- ▶ 8:04 Peter Fenton Bill had this habit, he'd always call me in the car after, like, what'd you think of the dinner?
- ▶ 15:40 Miles Grimshaw I also think that, like, the artifacts, like, they live in the memories and the lived stories of the partners, and so, like, you sort of, if there's a curiosity in that direction, call up Mac, call up each other, call up Mac, call up Bill,…
- ▶ 25:53 David Rosenthal Uh, we talked about, um, one of the things I remember, you know, from the research and hearing Eric, you and Bill both talk about is with Cerebris.
- ▶ 1:08:27 Sarah Tavel See something that I wrote, or, or Bill wrote, or whoever wrote, and then kind of come into the fold that way.
- ▶ 1:29:49 Miles Grimshaw You think Mitch was an exception, Bill, and Mitch had, you know,
- ▶ 1:37:09 Eric Vishria Like, Peter was working on Twitter at the time, obviously, Bill with Uber,
- ▶ 1:52:25 Chetan Puttagunta So I think, like, if you look at even when it was, um, Bill, Peter, Mitch, and Matt,
ACQ Sessions: Jason Calacanis · Acquired
- ▶ 18:07 Jason Calacanis But it was me, Bill Gurley.
- ▶ 27:52 Jason Calacanis So I'd be like, alright, I'll put Brad Kersner in, if you can't make it, I'll try to get Bill Gurley to show up, or whoever Draymond, to fill in for him, you know, and it was always like, I wonder if Freebird will show up, but he's…
- ▶ 1:06:46 Jason Calacanis It was, you know, me, Bill Gurley, Dave Goldberg, rest in peace.
- ▶ 1:50:00 Ben Gilbert Gurley.
- ▶ 1:50:01 Jason Calacanis John Doerr, here's Gurley, like, if we are making a Mount Rushmore.
- ▶ 1:55:45 David Rosenthal You gotta have, you gotta have Bill Gurley.
- ▶ 2:00:35 Jason Calacanis You know, because I think, like, you look at Gurley, like, he's part of that Patrick Ewing generation, right?
- ▶ 2:04:17 David Rosenthal Who inducts Bill?
Benchmark Part I · Acquired
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 56:55 David Rosenthal We're not yet talking about Bill Gurley, although that will be a story coming up very, very soon here.
- ▶ 2:05:41 David Rosenthal Bill Gurley, of course we're talking about.
- ▶ 2:05:44 Ben Gilbert He sees above the crowd.
- ▶ 2:05:46 David Rosenthal I can't imagine that anybody listening now, you know, what are we 2:03 hours into this podcast, uh, that's still listening does not already know a Bill Gurley, but you know, his history is basically perfect for this.
- ▶ 2:05:57 David Rosenthal He's also from Texas.
- ▶ 2:05:58 David Rosenthal He's from Houston.
- ▶ 2:05:59 David Rosenthal He's, you know, uh, his dad worked for NASA, I think,
- ▶ 2:06:04 David Rosenthal and then he goes to Florida.
- ▶ 2:06:05 David Rosenthal He plays basketball.
- ▶ 2:06:06 David Rosenthal He started his career as an engineer at Compaq, a John Doerr company, goes to Wall Street, starts writing above the crowd.
- ▶ 2:06:13 David Rosenthal There was, um, I think this was on, there's a great interview he did years ago with Kara Swisher.
- ▶ 2:06:17 David Rosenthal I think this was where he tells the story.
- ▶ 2:06:20 David Rosenthal When he started above the crowd, he went to a tech conference that Stuart Alsop was putting on.
- ▶ 2:06:50 David Rosenthal So Bill bought the PalmPilot and then just started spamming everybody with their fax numbers for
- ▶ 2:06:58 Ben Gilbert I do know Michael Movison shared this story with us that the way that Bill originally started above the crowd was there was someone else who sent out a fax that was like a weekly sort of like equities analyst, effectively like blog posts,…
- ▶ 2:07:15 Ben Gilbert And when that person retired, Bill started above the crowd to start sending the faxes at the same time and sort of fill the slot that this other person had.
- ▶ 2:07:25 David Rosenthal And then he added to the contact list from the Palm Pilot with fax numbers.
- ▶ 2:07:30 Ben Gilbert And did you know, David, he eventually also started writing for Fortune.
- ▶ 2:07:37 Ben Gilbert He had a regular column in Fortune.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 2:07:48 David Rosenthal He's a good growth hacker, Phil.
- ▶ 2:07:49 David Rosenthal He's underrated on that.
- ▶ 2:07:59 David Rosenthal So, you know, we told the story elsewhere, he bid on Wall Street, he then to work for Frank Quattrone in Silicon Valley, did the Amazon IPO with Frank.
- ▶ 2:08:07 David Rosenthal Frank promised to get him into venture.
- ▶ 2:08:08 David Rosenthal If he came out, he did.
- ▶ 2:08:10 David Rosenthal Bill joins Hummer Winblad, spends about 18 months there as a venture capitalist, but he's a well-known commodity.
- ▶ 2:08:22 David Rosenthal Bill's just great.
- ▶ 2:08:23 David Rosenthal There's, you know, what can we say about Bill that hasn't been said?
- ▶ 2:08:29 David Rosenthal Bill has a Calvinist work ethic.
- ▶ 2:08:35 David Rosenthal Having worked with him on some stuff.
- ▶ 2:08:42 Ben Gilbert Having someone like Bill Gurley on your board is really like bringing in a new co-founder.
- ▶ 2:08:46 Ben Gilbert He is always working on behalf of your company intellectually and executionally.
- ▶ 2:08:50 David Rosenthal That sounds like the Bill I know.
- ▶ 2:08:53 David Rosenthal So he's funny, you know, so all of this is chronicled in eBoys, the whole recruitment process, all the internal discussions about Bill.
- ▶ 2:09:07 David Rosenthal But what's interesting, you know, when I read it, there's this discussion about Bill that, like, just screamed off the page to me, where the existing partners are concerned about whether Bill's too intellectual.
- ▶ 2:09:21 Ben Gilbert And too analytical, like he'll overthink the decisions.
- ▶ 2:09:42 David Rosenthal And nobody personifies that more than Bill.
- ▶ 2:11:13 Ben Gilbert And in fact, there's a great girly quote where he says, backing a repeat entrepreneur in the enterprise sector is near risk free.
- ▶ 2:12:20 David Rosenthal So Bill joins from Hummer Winblad, and uh, do you know what Bill's first deal at Benchmark was?
- ▶ 2:13:03 David Rosenthal Bill also talks a lot about this on that Kara Swisher episode.
- ▶ 2:13:07 David Rosenthal So Bill joins and, um, we got to tell this too from e-boys.
- ▶ 2:13:12 David Rosenthal There's this really funny vignette that the partnership can't get comfortable with like the one thing they're having trouble with, with Bill is like, is he going to overthink things?
- ▶ 2:13:32 David Rosenthal Bill apparently greatly impresses Kevin by jumping over a cliff to go chase down either a deer or a boar that they're hunting and go like, you know.
- ▶ 2:13:59 David Rosenthal First, we got to talk about the imperial era, but first, let's flash forward a little bit, and I want to talk about Bill and his investing and how it ends up transforming the firm over time.
- ▶ 2:14:26 David Rosenthal In the earlier era than that, sort of the Grubhub, OpenTable era and all that, those were great wins, and Bill worked tirelessly, I think, to, you know, help make those companies successes.
- ▶ 2:14:41 Ben Gilbert Well, Benchmark did not have an eBay-sized win until Bill's big marketplace.
- ▶ 2:14:48 David Rosenthal But I think it's very retrospectively, and there's so much randomness tied into all this, but I do think that inside of the Series A style investing, I think Bill and Benchmark in the sort of next generation recognized that shift of, like,
- ▶ 2:15:30 Ben Gilbert And that's the thing that Bill really brought from being an analyst and from writing regularly and from like writing, you know, we've referenced by 10 times on this show, a rake too far, you know, Bill's posts where he sort of compares all…
- ▶ 2:16:20 David Rosenthal And to bring it back now to this moment in time when they're bringing Bill on and also facing all of these other
- ▶ 2:16:30 David Rosenthal It's interesting that that decision, the bringing bill on, the evolving the partnership, that was the right decision.
- ▶ 2:17:39 David Rosenthal So from when Bill joins and all these decisions are on the table in 99, 2000.
- ▶ 2:22:29 David Rosenthal The first, and this happens shortly after Bill joins, but as all of this, you know, architecture, all of this, uh, infrastructure is starting to get spun up, that's when Google shows up.
- ▶ 2:22:48 David Rosenthal Bill talks about it a lot.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 2:23:11 David Rosenthal And Bill always frames it as they failed to pursue Google.
- ▶ 2:23:21 David Rosenthal The typical benchmark and bill hyper competitiveness drive to win that we all know they declined to pursue.
- ▶ 2:25:03 David Rosenthal And Bill talks about this too.
- ▶ 2:25:13 David Rosenthal Should Bill do it?
- ▶ 2:32:28 David Rosenthal So at this point, heading into fund six, or in the mid-two thousands, the lineup is Bruce, Bob, Kevin, and Bill.
- ▶ 2:32:39 David Rosenthal And three of the original founders, plus Bill.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 2:34:35 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…
- ▶ 2:35:17 David Rosenthal But he fits the bill, you know, just like Bill, when Bill joined, he was early thirties, he had an established track record, he was young, he was hungry, he was up and coming, he was a baby GP in Excel,
- ▶ 2:36:10 David Rosenthal And again, it's, you know, on the one hand, it's an intelligence test, like it was an intelligence test for Bill to join.
- ▶ 2:36:41 Ben Gilbert Bill Gurley hasn't become Bill Gurley yet.
- ▶ 2:37:31 David Rosenthal Do I think Bill and I and other people we recruit can bet on the future here and it'll be worth me walking away from Facebook fund economics?
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