Bob Kagle, every mention
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Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Bob Kagle comes up
Benchmark Part II: The Dinner · Acquired
- ▶ 1:54:28 Peter Fenton Deep commitment to quality that Bob feels permeates to this day through everything we do.
- ▶ 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…
Benchmark Part I · Acquired
- ▶ 22:46 David Rosenthal And then there's another quote in the article from one Robert Cagle, partner at Technology Venture Investors, as we're talking about, and he says, today the power is much more distributed, says the young Robert Cagle.
- ▶ 23:14 Ben Gilbert You know, you can imagine Bob Cagle is sort of saying this a little wistfully.
- ▶ 23:25 David Rosenthal Well now, just who is this, uh, Bob Cagle character?
- ▶ 23:29 David Rosenthal Well, his story is actually pretty freaking unbelievable, and kind of explains why he might harbor some resentment for this privilege, that you might say, of the older generation.
- ▶ 23:39 David Rosenthal He grew up in Flint,
- ▶ 23:45 David Rosenthal His mother was a single mom.
- ▶ 23:46 David Rosenthal His whole family worked on the production lines for General Motors.
- ▶ 23:58 David Rosenthal So Bob was a great student in high school, but there was not a lot of opportunity there.
- ▶ 24:04 David Rosenthal In fact, the only opportunity he had
- ▶ 24:07 David Rosenthal To go to college, of which he was the first member of his family to go to college, was to go to an institution called General Motors University.
- ▶ 24:33 David Rosenthal So I believe he works in the company for a little while, and then he ends up getting a chance to go to the prestigious Stanford Business School.
- ▶ 24:42 David Rosenthal And while he's at GSB, he gets a chance to meet and intersect with someone a few years his senior, who had graduated a few years before,
- ▶ 25:00 David Rosenthal After GSP, Bob goes into consulting at Boston Consulting Group, and then Dave invites him to come back and join TVI.
- ▶ 25:08 David Rosenthal And he does really well there.
- ▶ 25:09 David Rosenthal He does Synopsys, the big EDA company, it's still around today, Avant, Viasoft, a bunch of other companies that do well, the firm makes good money on.
- ▶ 25:19 David Rosenthal And so after 10 years, he's kind of like,
- ▶ 25:30 David Rosenthal Speaking about Bob and their impression of him at the time, uh, he had an almost religious fervor that anything other than an equal partnership was just morally wrong for a venture capital firm.
- ▶ 25:41 David Rosenthal And I totally understand where he's coming from here.
- ▶ 25:44 Ben Gilbert I don't think Bob
- ▶ 26:10 David Rosenthal We didn't talk to Bob, but I don't think he foresaw just how powerful this was going to be.
- ▶ 26:16 David Rosenthal I think it was motivated first and foremost, especially given his background by like a sense of fairness and like morally, like what is the right thing to do and fair and proper rewards for proper work.
- ▶ 26:34 David Rosenthal He was like, Hey, related to the fairness, I'm doing the work.
- ▶ 27:18 David Rosenthal So here's Bob.
- ▶ 27:21 David Rosenthal And Bob in particular, you know, he's quoted in the New York Times talking about this.
- ▶ 27:25 David Rosenthal He feels more strongly than anybody about this idea of an equal partnership going forward.
- ▶ 28:40 David Rosenthal So, Bob and Future Benchmark aren't the only ones that come out of this.
- ▶ 30:19 David Rosenthal So back to Bob here, I think he really would have preferred to keep going at TVI and like convert it to an equal partnership.
- ▶ 30:26 David Rosenthal Like this is what he was agitating for.
- ▶ 30:32 David Rosenthal So he's gotta go figure out something else.
- ▶ 30:36 Ben Gilbert He believed this so deeply in his soul that it is worth not continuing at this firm, or perhaps even not continuing this firm period in order to realize this dream.
- ▶ 30:47 David Rosenthal So what does he do?
- ▶ 30:52 David Rosenthal He calls up his good buddy, Bruce Dunleavy.
- ▶ 30:56 David Rosenthal He trots up the stairwell, maybe takes the back stairs to go see his buddy, Bruce up at Merrill Pickard.
- ▶ 31:03 David Rosenthal Now Bruce had gone to GSB a few years after Bob.
- ▶ 31:07 David Rosenthal And when Bob was at BCG after GSB, Bruce had interned for him there.
- ▶ 31:15 David Rosenthal Background than Bob, shall we say.
- ▶ 32:06 David Rosenthal But remember, he's a few years younger than Bob.
- ▶ 32:09 David Rosenthal And so Bob
- ▶ 32:10 David Rosenthal Goes up to see him, and he's like, hey, TVI's breaking up.
- ▶ 32:35 David Rosenthal And Bruce is like, well, Bob, I'm honored, but I don't have the Microsoft money here.
- ▶ 32:41 David Rosenthal I'm a few years younger than you.
- ▶ 33:33 Ben Gilbert By the way, can we just recognize Bruce was Bob's intern, and think about the incredible vote of confidence and how counter to human nature it is for Bob to approach Bruce and say, would you like to be my equal partner?
- ▶ 34:01 Ben Gilbert And it really illustrates this obsessive sense of fairness that Bob had, that the very first person he asked used to be a subordinate of his, and he asked, will you be my equal?
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 34:30 David Rosenthal Bob's like, hey, you and me, let's together go take on this whole industry, just the two of us, which, you know, you kind of need both to go do something crazy.
- ▶ 34:46 David Rosenthal He's amenable to the idea of leaving and starting a new firm, but he's like, Bob,
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 40:01 David Rosenthal The drummer, the guitarist, the bassist, the lead singer, rhythm guitarist, Bob, Bruce, Andy, Kevin, and Val.
- ▶ 48:34 David Rosenthal So Bob, I think he probably would have had the religious fervor about the equal partnership anyway, but right around this time is when Jim Collins first big book built to last comes out.
- ▶ 48:48 David Rosenthal Bob reads it.
- ▶ 57:33 David Rosenthal So kind of like Bob, Dave also grew up pretty hard scrabble.
- ▶ 1:16:39 David Rosenthal Benchmark, though, is interested, and Bruce is interested, and he's like, you know, as you were saying, Ben, my partner Bob is actually really interested in consumer stuff and consumer marketing and consumer psychology.
- ▶ 1:16:54 David Rosenthal My partner, Bob, bring Bob in.
- ▶ 1:26:01 David Rosenthal And, uh, famously, I think Bob pushed for this.
- ▶ 1:41:11 David Rosenthal David Byrne made as much money on eBay as Bob Cagle made on eBay, as Bruce Dunleavy, as Kevin Harvey, as, you know, Andy Ratcliffe made on eBay.
- ▶ 2:26:23 David Rosenthal And supposedly, I think it was Bob Kegel who was on the board of Friendster, and at that point, there had been some CEO turnover at Friendster.
- ▶ 2:26:57 David Rosenthal And supposedly, you know, Mark Zuckerberg loved Bob, loved the Benchmark team.
- ▶ 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.
- ▶ 2:45:53 David Rosenthal I think Bruce and Bob are still active, at least in Fund Six, maybe a little bit into Fund Seven, but Fund Six is the transition, and Fund Six is, you know, great.
- ▶ 3:31:19 David Rosenthal And I think that's also very Bob Giggle.