David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…Wait, Matt didn't have a background in venture. Do you know if he was a big angel investor? I don't think so. I believe he had always wanted to get into venture. Mitch didn't have a background in venture either. Both of them actually were. We talked about the Benchmark spec for hiring a GP. The best way to be reasonably confident in someone's ability to be a good venture capitalist is someone who's already been a good venture capitalist. They were making more riskier bets on both Mitch And Matt, both of which paid off hugely for the partnership. The other thing that Matt identified long before much of the rest of the investing world and world at large, was the dynamics behind Uber. Even though Bill ended up doing the investment, but they worked as a partnership to source and we'll talk about it. Matt had this saying back then that was partly formed by his experience with Uber I think, that, “The smartphone is going to become your remote control for the real world. ” That was an outlandish thing to say in 2010–2011, but my God, was he right. Yup. Okay, you have the slate now. You have the Fab Four. You have Bill Gurley, you have Peter Fenton, you have Mitch Lasky, and you have Matt Cohler. Of course, I think Bruce Dunlevie is still an active partner at this point, too.…

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