Benchmark General Partner Sarah Tavel discusses the firm's distinctive organizational structure and refusal to scale fund size or hire support staff.
Insight
Tavel: Ex-operator VCs act as harmful crutches by micromanaging functional roles
“And this is sometimes the weaknesses that ex-operators have when they transition into investing is thinking, oh, I can do this and I'm going to dig in on, in the company and get, you know, help them with growth or help them with whatever it may be. And it ends…”
Insight
Tavel: Mediocre 'seven' employees kill companies by blocking top talent
“And the thesis was is that sevens kill companies. And what that means is that, you know, when someone is a four, you just know they're not doing the job, they're not up for it, and let's, let's take them out of the system. But the problem with the seven Is tha…”
Insight
Tavel: Board observers matter because decisions rarely come to formal votes
“That's so, so wrong, because things rarely come to a vote. It's always about what's that conversation around the table. And someone who has a seat at the table is participating in whatever strategic conversation you're having can really change the direction of…”
Insight
Tavel: DoorDash beat Postmates by targeting uncontested suburbs instead of cities
“You know, I would say Postmates could be executing a 10 X DoorDash's execution, but because DoorDash had a strategy that let them just be, you know, so much better than any substitute because it's a lot better to be Better. It's a lot easier to be better than …”
Insight
Tavel: Startup org chart changes indicate company growth, not dysfunction
“I think people sometimes see org changes As a bug, you know, as a oh, something must not be going right with my company, the company that I'm at, because we had to change the org chart, and now I'm reporting to someone else, or, you know, they had to change th…”
Insight
Tavel: Efficient startups should burn aggressively to pull away from competitors
“If you have a more efficient machine where you're able to, again, take that dollar and make, you know, five dollars, six dollars, whatever it may be out of it, if not more, then you should be burning as much money as you can do efficiently to keep getting furt…”