David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah, let's do that. I think, so far, this has been the Benchmark glory fest. I think the takeaway is overwhelmingly positive here, but let's continue to paint some of the trade-offs and some of their tougher moments. Two things just to put the cherry on top of the fund seven fab for glory fest. In March of 2015, which really was the apex, I think, of this era, ironically, after Eric joined, so there were five at this point, but Eric had just joined, Eric Vishria, who we'll talk about in a sec, but Forbes comes out with this article. Man, I remember this article. It will always be seared in my memory working in the industry. It was post-GSB back in Madrona at this point in time. This article comes out in Forbes called The Benchmark Way. "Five partners," because it was five at this point, Eric had joined, "who make other VC firms look outgunned and overstaffed." It was just this chronicling of the Fab Four era and all these companies we've talked about. Everything they touched turned to gold. We listed all those companies that all other firms would kill to have one or maybe if they were in their wildest dreams to have those portfolio companies in their funds. They had like 12. And they own like 20% of each of them. It's not like they're cutting little checks here and there. On average, each partner takes one board seat per year. When they take a board seat, they invest at the Series A, and they own 15 to 20-plus percent.…

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