Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…We've told several of them on this podcast. Yeah, but this cooperating your way to success is the Benchmark's secret sauce. Because of that and because the relationship with a Benchmark board member who is almost like a co-founder, and the entrepreneur is so tight, and the communication is so frequent—we talked to founders who said, I'd speak to my board member every week and we talked to other people who said, we're texting or calling every single day—this is really a tight knit relationship in how they think about the board role. Rich's point was, this culture of cooperation and trust ends up being a model for entrepreneurs to bring into their company. It's amazing having that kind of example to follow. I don't think he meant that it was super direct or overt, but I think he meant that you naturally end up learning from that, following it, and implementing it in your company. Yes, this absolutely spills over into the portfolio company relationship, both between the lead, the board member within Benchmark. But even more so, and I think this is one of the things that makes Benchmark very different from other firms, the whole firm of Benchmark, the whole partnership, the firm is the partnership. There is no difference between the firm and the partnership, there's nothing else. That relationship with the entrepreneur in the portfolio company.…

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