Benchmark (venture capital firm)
Company type | Limited liability company |
---|---|
Industry | Venture capital |
Founded | 1995 |
Founder | Bob Kagle Bruce Dunlevie Andy Rachleff Kevin Harvey Val Vaden |
Headquarters | San Francisco, California, United States |
Key people | Matt Cohler, General Partner Peter Fenton, General Partner Bill Gurley, General Partner Mitch Lasky, General Partner Eric Vishria, General Partner Chetan Puttagunta, General Partner Sarah Tavel, General Partner |
Website | www |
Benchmark is a venture capital firm based in San Francisco that provides seed money to startups.
History
The firm's most successful investment was a 1997 investment of $6.7 million in eBay for 22.1% of the company.[1] In 2011, it invested $12 million for an 11% stake in Uber, worth $7 billion in 2019.[2]
The firm's most infamous investment was in WeWork, the troubled office rental social networking company. On April 1, 2012, Benchmark became WeWork's first major investor when it led WeWork’s $17 million Series-A seed funding.[3][4]
Companies funded by the firm include Dropbox,[5] Twitter, Uber,[6] Snapchat,[7] Instagram,[8] Discord,[9] Domo,[10] New Relic,[11] Nextdoor,[12] Stitch Fix,[13] WeWork,[14] Yelp,[15] Zendesk,[16] Zillow[17] and Zipcar.[18]
Partner structure
Benchmark is noted for creating the first equal ownership and compensation structure for its partners.[19] The "maverick" firm[20] differs from most VC firms, which are named for their founders and are structured hierarchically; Benchmark was described by Fortune as "a lean operation in which its six full-time partners share profits equally."[20] There is no differentiation between its "junior partners" and "senior partners," as each partner benefits equally from company profits. In addition, there is no CEO-like position held.[21]
Offices
The firm announced in May 2012 it would be expanding beyond its Menlo Park, California headquarters by opening a second headquarters with more than 10,000 square feet in San Francisco’s emerging tech corridor, the Mid-Market neighborhood.[22]
In popular culture
Benchmark Capital was featured in the Apple TV+ Original WeCrashed starring Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway. In the show, Anthony Edwards portrays Benchmark co-founder Bruce Dunlevie, who on April 1, 2012, became WeWork's first major investor when it led WeWork's $17 million Series-A seed funding.
Benchmark was also featured in the Showtime Original Super Pumped starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. In the series, Kyle Chandler plays Benchmark General Partner Bill Gurley, portraying his involvement in leading Ubers' $11 million round of fundraising in February of 2011.
Investments
Benchmark has invested in more than 250 startups since its inception in 1995, including:
- 1-800-Flowers
- Amplitude[23]
- AOL
- Art.com/Allposters.com
- Asana[24]
- Baixing
- CTERA Networks
- Cerebras Systems[25]
- Confluent[26]
- Cockroach Labs[27]
- CouchSurfing[28]
- Cyanogen[29]
- Digits[30]
- Discord[9]
- Duo[31]
- Domo[32]
- Docker[33]
- Dropbox
- EBags.com
- eBay
- Friendster
- HackerOne[34]
- Instagram[35]
- JAMDAT
- Juniper Networks
- Marin Software[36]
- Metacafe
- Minted
- Modern Treasury[37]
- MySQL
- New Relic[38]
- Nextdoor[39]
- OpenTable
- Optimizely[40]
- Palm, Inc.
- ResearchGate[41]
- Seeking Alpha
- ServiceSource
- Sketch[42]
- Snapchat[7] - In February 2013, Snapchat confirmed a $13.5 million Series A round of funding led by Benchmark Capital, which valued the company at between $60 million and $70 million.[43] Beyond the two founders, the two biggest shareholders for the planned early 2017 Snap IPO were Benchmark and Lightspeed Venture Partners, both prior Snap investors and venture-capital firms from Silicon Valley. They held a combined stake of about 20%.[44]
- Solv[45]
- Stitch Fix[46]
- Twitter[47]
- Tellme Networks
- Uber[48]
- Ubiquity6[49]
- Vessel[50]
- Yelp
- WeWork[51]
- Xapo,[52]
- Zillow
- Zipcar
- Zuora[53][54]
See also
References
- ^ "Loans to EBay Provide a Big Payoff for Venture-Capital Firm". The Washington Post. April 9, 1999.
- ^ Muoio, Danielle. "The early Uber investor suing Travis Kalanick turned its $12 million investment into $7 billion stake". Business Insider. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
- ^ Winkler, Rolfe (24 September 2019). "For WeWork Investor Benchmark, a Struggle to Balance Board Duties with Founder Support". Wall Street Journal.
- ^ "WeWork U-turn reignites SoftBank and Benchmark battle". Financial Times. 14 April 2020.
- ^ Konrad, Alex. "The Benchmark Way: Five Partners Who Make Other VC Firms Look Outgunned And Overstaffed". Forbes.
- ^ Helft, Miguel (6 June 2014). "These are the venture firms celebrating Uber's massive $18B valuation". Fortune.
- ^ a b Wortham, Jenna (8 February 2013). "A Growing App Lets You See It, Then You Don't". The New York Times.
- ^ Indvik, Lauren (2 February 2011). "Instagram Raises $7 Million, Hits 1.75M Members". Mashable.
- ^ a b Takahashi, "Fates Forever mobile game maker Hammer & Chisel raises funding from Benchmark and Tencent", Venture Beat, February 10, 2015.
- ^ Konrad, Alex. "Domo Reveals Its Business Software, Raises $200 Million At $2 Billion Valuation". Forbes.
- ^ Cromwell, Schuberth. "Big winners on New Relic, Hortonworks IPOs are mostly Benchmark, Peter Fenton". Silicon Valley Business Journal.
- ^ Chapman, Lizette (March 4, 2015). "Valued at $1.1 Billion, Nextdoor's Pivot Appears to Be Paying Off". The Wall Street Journal.
- ^ Gannes, Liz (9 June 2014). "Happy Stitch Fix Investors Pump Another Round Into Personal Shopping Startup". Re/code.
- ^ Alex, Konrad. "Inside The Phenomenal Rise Of WeWork". Forbes.
- ^ Empson, Rip. "Twitter, Yelp Board Member Peter Fenton On How Enterprise Is Learning From The Consumer Web". TechCrunch.
- ^ Connie, Loizos. "Benchmark's Newest Partner, Eric Vishria, On His First Year at the Powerhouse Firm". TechCrunch.
- ^ Jackson, Eric. "Interview With Bill Gurley: The Guy Who Backed OpenTable, Yelp, GrubHub, Twitter, Zillow And Uber". Forbes.
- ^ Chapman, Lizette (2 January 2013). "For Venture Firms, Zipcar Purchase a Profitable but Disappointing Exit". Wall Street Journal.
- ^ Stross, Randall (2009-12-29). eBoys: The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work. Ballantine Books (May 29, 2001). p. 89. ISBN 978-0-345-42889-9.
- ^ a b Hempel, Jessi (11 February 2013). "Bill Gurley: The sage of Silicon Valley". Fortune.
- ^ Konrad, Alex (March 25, 2015). "The Benchmark Way: Five Partners Who Make Other VC Firms Look Outgunned And Overstaffed". Forbes.
- ^ Levy, Ari (25 May 2012). "Benchmark Joins Twitter in San Francisco's Startup Zone". Bloomberg News.
- ^ "Amplitude raises another $30M for its product-focused analytics tools". TechCrunch. August 10, 2017.
- ^ "Peter Thiel-backed workplace app Asana files for direct listing on NYSE". Reuters. 24 August 2020.
- ^ "Company".
- ^ Lawler, Ryan (November 6, 2014). "Benchmark Backs Real-Time Data Processing Startup Confluent". TechCrunch.
- ^ Novet, Jordan (June 4, 2015). "Peter Fenton's latest investment is a database startup called Cockroach". VentureBeat.
- ^ "CouchSurfing Raises $7.6 Million in Series A From Benchmark Capital and Omidyar Network to Expand Services and Fuel Growth in Cultural Exchange Network" (Press release). PR Newswire. 25 August 2011.
- ^ Culter, Kim-Mai (September 18, 2013). "Cyanogen Mod Raises $7M To Find A Direct-To-Consumer Route For Android Firmware". TechCrunch.
- ^ Perez, Sarah (November 6, 2019). "Stealth fintech startup Digits raises $10.5 million Series A from Benchmark and others". TechCrunch.
- ^ Lawler, Ryan (22 September 2014). "Two-Factor Authentication Startup Duo Security Raises $12 Million From Benchmark". TechCrunch.
- ^ Lacy, Sarah (July 13, 2011). "Series A Whopper: Benchmark Invests $33M in New BI Company Domo". TechCrunch.
- ^ Alex, Williams (January 21, 2014). "Docker Raises $15M For Its Open-Source Platform That Helps Developers Build Apps In The Cloud". TechCrunch.
- ^ Gage, Deborah (28 May 2014). "HackerOne Emerges With $9 Million to Root Out Software Bugs". The Wall Street Journal.
- ^ Gannes, Liz. "Instagram Raises $7M Led by Benchmark". All Things Digital.
- ^ "Benchmark leads series B for marin software". The New York Times. April 7, 2008.
- ^ Roof, Katie (19 December 2019). "Venture Firm Benchmark Invests in Payments Startup as Sector Heats Up". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 21 June 2020.
- ^ Rao, Leena (November 16, 2011). "Cloud App Management Platform New Relic Raises $15M From DAG, Benchmark". TechCrunch.
- ^ Isaac, Mike (July 24, 2012). "Nextdoor Raises $18.6M From Benchmark, Greylock in First Major Funding Round".
- ^ Ha, Andrew (10 April 2013). "Website Testing Service Optimizely Raises $28M Round Led By Benchmark, Plans Global Expansion". TechCrunch. TechCrunch. Retrieved 3 June 2021.
- ^ "ResearchGate brings in strong funding round for 'scientific Facebook'". The Guardian. September 8, 2010.
- ^ Loizos, Connie (13 March 2019). "Sketch, maker of popular design tools, just landed $20 million in Series A funding from Benchmark in its first outside round". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 14 March 2019. Retrieved 15 March 2019.
- ^ Primack, Dan (June 26, 2013). "Snapchat's liquidity trap – The Term Sheet: Fortune's deals blogTerm Sheet". Fortune.
- ^ Winkler, Rolfe (February 3, 2017). "Snap IPO Will Mint Fortunes for Founders, Two Big Investors". The Wall Street Journal.
- ^ "This Startup Wants to Be the OpenTable for Urgent Care". Fortune. April 19, 2017.
- ^ Kucera, Danielle (October 17, 2013). "Stitch Fix Nabs $12 Million From Benchmark to Customize Commerce".
- ^ Chapman, Lizette (October 4, 2013). "Twitter Investor Benchmark Capital Gets Smaller Taste In Potbelly IPO". The Wall Street Journal.
- ^ Arrington, Michael (February 14, 2011). "Huge Vote Of Confidence: Uber Raises $11 Million From Benchmark Capital". TechCrunch.
- ^ "AR startup Ubiquity6 lands $27M Series B to build a more user-friendly augmented reality". TechCrunch.
- ^ Kafka, Peter (24 June 2014). "Jason Kilar's New Startup Has a Name, and a Whole Lot of Money". Recode.
- ^ Kosoff, Maya. "WeWork, a startup that rents out office space to other startups, may soon be valued at $10 billion". www.businessinsider.com. Retrieved 18 September 2015.
- ^ Rusli, Evelyn (March 13, 2014). "Latest Bitcoin Craze? Actual Bank Vaults". The Wall Street Journal.
- ^ Schonfeld, Erick (13 March 2008). "Benchmark and Benioff Put $6.5 Million Into Zuora to Create a Salesforce for Online Billing". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2 May 2013.
- ^ "Benchmark, Marissa Mayer Put $5.5M In Stationery Design And Retail Site Minted". TechCrunch.