Acquired / episode intelligence
Speakers in the public record
Claim mix
Evidence policy
Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.
Claim ledger
35 published records
01 / belief
“Let's do it. I would say that we don't have associates, but one of us may hire an associate.”
02 / belief
“I think one of the things that you all talked about on the episode was swimlanes and areas of focus.”
03 / belief
“Don't fuck it up, because I think there's a real risk. You could imagine a risk where you feel like you're born on third base or whatever the analogy you want to use is.”
04 / belief
“Opening yourself up to organically finding cool things is, I think, ultimately the goal.”
05 / belief
“The Bruce's counter argument, which I think is 100% right, isn't the worst economic arrangement, because the returns will be higher, so you'd be happy to pay the fees.”
06 / uncertainty
“I'm like, I don't know. Because then maybe we're in a meeting, we'll look at it, and it's not so good.”
07 / belief
“There is one big trade-off with our model, though, that I think about all the time just because I'm a paranoid person, which is at the end of the day, our job starts.”
08 / evaluation
“Eventually, we go away, so it all doesn't matter, but I think we pulled it off in the last fund or two.”
09 / belief
“I think that a lot of things will lead you the wrong way. The truth is, in this market, oftentimes you're making a commitment before there's enough enduring data to really know what it is.”
10 / belief
“I think the way in is something that's common. What we've heard from the people we've recruited—and maybe Eric is an example of this—is that they don't want to join a venture firm.”
11 / belief
“Having done analytical things, I would disagree with that completely. I would say that we're not particularly analytical.”
12 / belief
“More often than not, somebody that we haven't worked with or invested in, and I think you guys might have mentioned this in the podcast, that we've had dinners with people like Dylan Field.”
13 / belief
“Certainly, all of those opportunities to do that, I think Sarah says it nicely in part.”
14 / belief
“I think that's the biggest thing that we have to be protective of, and that is what we're protective of, and the relationship we all have and how we work together as a team, we preserve that more than anything else.”
15 / observation
“I went on a drone kick and definitely, Peter was like, stop it. The only way to kill the conversation about drones is if we brought in Dedrone.”
16 / belief
“I think that's the biggest thing, which is if you love working with founders, then you want to spend your time working with founders.”
17 / uncertainty
“I don't think she knew anything about crypto at the time, or maybe she knew a little bit, I don't know, but that wasn't part of it.”
18 / belief
“I think you both have investigated the venture industry so much that sort of like all the stories that are told at Benchmark are all about the group going and accomplishing something.”
19 / belief
“Sarah uses this phrase which is truth seeking, which I think is a really good one.”
20 / evaluation
“There may be ones. It is critical to then what happens on the Mondays and everything in between.”
21 / belief
“I believe that the founders own more of their companies at exit, at S-1 time, whatever it is, in this case, for those reasons and one other really important reason, which is a founder is going to raise a series B, series C, series D, or an IPO one time in their career, maybe two times in their career.”
22 / belief
“I would say the memo is a crutch often, because yes, it can force you into clarity of thought.”
23 / belief
“I would say when we went shorthand, it feels more like uncles and aunts than they do like parents or grandparents.”
24 / belief
“The multiplicative effect of those two plus the help, I think, should yield better outcomes.”
25 / belief
“I think part of the relationship that we then have with each other is the comfort of seeing something that can be contrarian or misunderstood from the outside.”
26 / recommendation
“You define the scoreboard as fund multiple, and it's not total cash return to LPs. I think that's a clarifying mindset about the way that you guys look at this.”
27 / recommendation
“As you're evaluating mutual fit on an investment between the entrepreneur and Benchmark, in eBoys, there's some famous line about venture capital is more a ball's business than a brain's business. Let's stop using that phrase immediately.”
28 / evaluation
“The role of a general partner in a venture capital firm, traditionally, is that you have a fiduciary responsibility to your LPs to maximize their returns, and you have a second fiduciary responsibility when you join the board of a company to the company. It's hairy enough trying to balance the trade off, because sometimes those things are at odds.”
29 / prediction
“This is one of the thesis of every successive generation of technology should be bigger outcomes, because you're addressing bigger markets.”
30 / prediction
“I don't think we ever talked about this on the show, but a very prominent firm, one of their mantra quotes is "Focus on your winners." I think that's what you're talking about here.”
31 / observation
“I think for a lot of, especially first time founders that are younger, that are at an earlier stage, they're probably like, oh, I'm not going to call.”
32 / preference
“Every time we start taking on more stuff, I'm like, oh, man, the golden goose is getting worse. I can feel the golden goose getting worse because we're doing other stuff.”
33 / evaluation
“I think in large part, it's a competitive response to you guys during the past fab four era.”
34 / evaluation
“I think one of the most persuasive things that we heard in our research for part one about maintaining the model is we definitely talked to entrepreneurs in the current Benchmark portfolio who believe that aggregate in the long run, they took less dilution by having Benchmark invest, and you guys not having your growth fund and having to put more money into them than they would have had you or whatever early stage firm they had taken money from, been wanting to put more money in in subsequent rounds.”
35 / commitment
“You'd have to talk to the entrepreneurs that I've invested in. But I suspect if you were to talk to them, the value that I can provide to them since I stopped being a professional venture capitalist as part of the firm, is exponentially higher than when I was within a firm because there's no conflict.”