Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…That's when things are going sideways for the company. It's also a conflict when things are going well. We talked to a founder about this where things are going well, and he had a great point. He was like, all of my other VCs have these growth funds and they do a lot of seed. Whenever I go to raise a new round, all the conflicts come out. It's like everybody's trying to ram money down the throat, outside investors, inside investors, blah, blah, blah. I think this is a legitimate point to make. They can help make the best round come together without the conflict of having to force more of their own money down the company's throat. Where this shows up for a founder is how nice is it to have your board member be someone that you're not pitching? Board meetings aren't pitches because they are not your next round of capital. That is the thing. With PSL Ventures, having a $100 million fund, the awesome thing for me is we're also not your next round of capital. We aren't going to lead your Series A, so you actually get to have a more real relationship. I do think for Benchmark, I suspect they've done some bridge rounds here and there, or their participation in a round signals something to the next round investor. It's not perfect. You do need to keep your lead investor excited about your company, but they definitely have a lot less of a conflict then. Yeah. It's a different motion than just about everybody else in the industry. I think this is the right point here to say too. Obviously, we know all of the current generations of Benchmark partners and we've had a bunch of them on the show in the past. We know lots of folks in the ecosystem. There's always this question with any VC and with Benchmark too of, XYZ VC says they're dedicated to the craft and they do all this, but how can we help? We've talked to enough people. We've lived. We can genuinely say that's not the case with Benchmark. They really do the grit. Everybody we talked to you grind. We've seen it. They actually do it.…

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