The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 78 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 3 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Fenton: Late-stage investing dilutes venture fund return multiples
“If we start, all we're doing, we're investing more money in late stages. We're lowering our returns. That's all we're doing because our commitment is fixed. It's not like we're going to be more committed. So we're, you could say we're getting more cash on cash…”
Calacanis: Andreessen Horowitz's long-term returns won't match Benchmark or Sequoia
“I think in the arc, it will not be comparable to benchmark at Sequoia.”
Lasky: Paid customer acquisition in gaming is a dangerous, addictive slippery slope
“I resist as long as possible going paid, although sometimes you're so profitable that you can with and not really mess your margins up too much, right? But I think once you start down the paid path for customer acquisition, it's kind of a slippery slope and it…”
Grimshaw: Avoiding growth funds prevents pricing conflicts with founders
“Our job, we're really focused on how do we scale the company, those companies, right? And how, as part of that, having a relationship that doesn't get sort of adulted by this question of the us making another commitment decision. It's like we're in and we're n…”
Fenton: Benchmark GPs pay standard LP fees and carry on personal commitments
“As an LP. And that's, well, that's crazy. And this is-... But for this, for the super majority of my investment in benchmark, I'm paying limited partner rates and management fees.”
Vishria: Benchmark portfolio founders retain more equity through exit
“I believe that the founders own more of their companies at exit at S one time, whatever it is, in this case, for those reasons.”
Fenton: Benchmark probably won't be around in 30 years
“Benchmark probably isn't going to be around in 30 years.”
Tavel: Benchmark bans memos because they function as pre-sell tools
“So you don't write a memo. And it's because the memo, you know, when you're, a memo really is a vehicle to, you know, obviously give background on a company, all the work you've done, but it is also a little bit a pre-sell before the company comes in to presen…”
Fenton: A venture firm's quality is measured by how good its failures are
“One benchmark, no pun intended, I guess, one measure of quality for the firm will be how good our failures are. Webvan was a really good failure.”
Fenton: A VC's true customer is the founder's purpose, not the founder
“Our customer isn't, it's not the founder. We say it is, but it's really the purpose of the founder, and it turns out that purpose, if that's the customer, One of us may be deviating from that, and we can keep each other accountable, and that happens internally…”
Fenton: Benchmark will not expand to eight partners or launch a growth fund
“Now that doesn't mean we're going to have eight partners
And a growth fund.
And then there's some hard lines where you just say, but this is, you know, getting closer to people who are embody our values, but at a different stage in their career, that's okay wi…”
Fenton: Benchmark took equity in Tinder without investing cash
“There have been examples and we're, we don't, there's some awkwardness to talking about it publicly. One of the ones is probably a good example is Tinder. And, you know, Barry Diller said, what do you want? And it's like, well, we want equity in Tinder.”
Fenton: Docker's valuation plummeted from $1.5B to zero, stranding Benchmark
“So last time I did an all hands meeting at Docker was three years ago, and there were 60 employees that, that we'd spun out of the prior company, and the valuation was zero. So we'd gone from over a 1,000,000,004, 1,000,005 to zero, and I was working with some…”
Stanford's endowment blackballed Benchmark's Fund I over its 30% carry demand
“Literally almost all of these folks who are starting Benchmark, they get so angry that not only do they not invest in the fund, they start organizing against this young benchmark capital. They call up all of their peers, the other university endowments across …”
Venture investors should aim to quickly become consensus and right
“You want that to be true when you make the investment, but you don't want to be very non-consensus for long. You want to quickly be consensus and right. You just don't want anybody to see it until you make that bet. But like, you don't want to make that bet an…”
Benchmark structured $1.5 million in founder loans to win the eBay deal
“It was also reported by the Washington Post after the IPO of eBay that Benchmark had also structured Equity-backed loans to Pierre and Jeff in the amount of 750,000 dollars each as a way to, like, prevent them essentially, give them an incentive not to take th…”
Benchmark refuses fund scaling, junior partners, platform teams, and CRM software
“Benchmark famously believes that venture capital doesn't scale. They have zigged when others have zagged. They have not grown their fun size. They haven't tried junior partners. They don't have a platform team. They are not multi-stage. And I've heard they don…”
Benchmark almost assuredly could have won a slot in Google's Series A
“But could they have beaten one of those two firms to get one of the two primary VC slots in Google? Almost assuredly. I mean, at this point, this was Bench where they had just done eBay. You know, they were at the height of their powers. They were the internet…”
Suing Travis Kalanick did not directly harm Benchmark's investment business
“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. Directly, no.”
Khosrowshahi: Uber eliminated all dual-class super-voting shares for SoftBank deal
“We literally had to, like, get everyone to agree to blow up the high vote shares. I think it's actually the only time when tech, a tech company like, they blew up all of the high votes.”
Fenton: Benchmark's largest LP commits $25M to $30M per fund
“They're like, 25, thirty million. I could get it wrong. I'd probably piss one of them off if listen to this.”
Fenton: Benchmark committed to his last two deals in under a day
“And the last two or three investments I've made were an example of the following, which is that there's, there was an angel in the ecosystem who saw a deal going down and they said, you know, you probably should talk to benchmark. And when they did, we committ…”
Puttagunta: Entrepreneurs referred 100% of his Benchmark investments
“I was sharing this note internally, which was that I found that a hundred percent of the investments that I've made as a benchmark partner were all sent to us by an entrepreneur, and not necessarily an entrepreneur that we had backed.”
Fenton: Every partner who has left Benchmark fired themselves
“In the case of everyone who's left this firm, and I've never seen this in the history of investing, you study all these firms, every single partner fired themselves”
Grimshaw: Being a founder's 'first call' is a low, reactive bar
“There's this trope in the industry, right, which is you want to be the founder's first call. And it's like, I've never really liked it insofar as it's like very reactionary for you. It's like, oh, they'll call me, I'll pick up the phone and respond. It's a low…”
Puttagunta: Benchmark does not do outcome scenario analysis on investments
“There's no sort of, like, outcome scenario analysis here that says, like, here's the 10% upside, bull case, bear case. These are all things that, you know, those of us that came from other places had all done.”
Tavel: Retired partners are Benchmark's largest limited partners
“Some of our retired partners are our largest LP.”
Friendster CEO Tim Koogle blocked Benchmark from investing in Facebook's Series A
“Specifically what happened was Benchmark had invested in Friendster, and so was conflicted out. Now you could argue that was an unavoidable mistake, you know, but like, boy does that hurt. And supposedly, I think it was Bob Kegel who was on the board of Friend…”
Equal-partnership VC models trend toward mediocrity due to diluted individual responsibility
“For most groups of people, I think it actually trends towards mediocrity. And this was some of the criticism of LPs and some of the other GPs in the early days thinking they were crazy. They called it communist capital. This looks like communism, right? Like i…”
Nearly 100% of Benchmark portfolio companies successfully raise a Series B
“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.”
Peter Fenton walked away from Accel's Facebook fund carry to join Benchmark
“He had GP economics, even if they were baby GP economics, in the Facebook fund. And he's walking away from that to join Benchmark.”
Benchmark partners retire past their forties because 100% effort is strictly required
“And I also think that's why they have to retire once they sort of age too far out of their forties, because it is an implicit thing among the group of you gotta be bringing it all day, every day. And at some point, if you want to notch down to 90%, it's time f…”
The Uber crisis precipitated the end of Benchmark's 'Fab Four' GP era
“Indirectly, yeah, very little doubt in my mind that this precipitates the end of the Fab Four era.”
Benchmark launched its inaugural Fund I demanding a 30% premium carried interest
“Benchmark comes out, the new Benchmark Capital swinging right out of the gate with 30% carry. Premium carry.”
Benchmark GPs receive equal carry and free ownership of the management company
“It both means that each of the partners in a given fund have equal carry, but also all of the current GPs own the management company without paying for it. The management company is always just given to whoever the equal current GPs are.”
Benchmark founding partners stepped down in 2005 with zero tail economics
“David Byrne and Andy Ratcliffe, and they had brought on another GP during that period, Alex Balkansky, in the 2005, 2006 fund they raised then, they all step back and they don't take tail economics, meaning they're out of the management company, no longer form…”
Larry Page Pre-empted Benchmark and Sequoia to Acqui-hire Sebastian Thrun
“He and some, I think it was grad students, were in the process of starting a company, had term sheets from Benchmark and Sequoia.”
Benchmark Passed on Facebook Due to a Conflict With Friendster
“Which is what tied their hands and why they could not pursue an investment in Facebook.”
Fenton: Investors who lack time for the next meeting should stop practicing
“When I don't have enough time to take that next marginal meeting, I shouldn't be practicing.”
Fenton: Venture firms are ultimately just a collection of habits
“Firms are full of strategies that aren't coupled to reality. And if you look at a venture firm, eventually it's just a collection of habits.”
Puttagunta: Benchmark lacks formal programs but lets partners hire principals and EIRs
“I would say that we don't have associates, but
One of us may hire an associate.
We don't have principals.
We have a principal.
We have EIRs.
We have venture partners.
It's just, you're trying to figure stuff out.”
Fenton: He proposed cutting Benchmark's fund size in half
“I'm the person that the last discussion of, like, we were going to do it the same size fund. I'm like, why don't we cut it in half? And people thought, well, then people, others will say we're becoming irrelevant.”
Fenton: Rectangular tables embed power hierarchies; round tables atomize groups
“The problem with the table is that you either have a rectangular structure, which carries power structure embedded in it or you have a circular table which atomizes the group.”
Tavel: Benchmark GPs make only one or two startup commitments annually
“Each of us make one or two of these commitments a year.”
Generating top returns and generational succession are VC's hardest feats
“The hardest thing to do in venture capital is create those massive outsized returns that only come from investing in one of the five or so truly important companies each decade. Then, once you've done that, the next hardest thing is to keep doing it with an en…”
eBay was profitable and growing 10% monthly at its Series A round
“And an interesting thing to note is, at this point, eBay is growing 10% a month. So check, fast growth company. It's profitable. All these checks that are getting mailed in, like, it is generating cash and growing.”