Benchmark Capital

Benchmark Capital is a venture capital firm responsible for the early stage funding of some very successful startups. Benchmark made its mark as the sole early investor in eBay. In 1997, the firm invested $6.7 million in eBay, which became worth more than $5 billion by the spring of 1999 and resulted in one of Silicon Valley's best-performing investments ever . Other high profile investments yielding big returns for the firm include Ariba, Juniper Networks, and Red Hat. Such investments helped establish Benchmark as a top-tier Silicon Valley venture capital firm, despite its relatively young age.

Benchmark Capital is unusual in that its partners are compensated equally, rather than using the standard venture capital "star" model. The firm was made popular by their successes in venture capital as well as the book eBoys by Randall Stross.

Investments

Benchmark has invested in more than 150 startups since its inception in 1995, including Infinera, MySQL, OpenTable, Second Life, Tellme Networks, Yelp, Inc., and Zillow, as well as franchise companies like eBay, Juniper Networks, and Red Hat. The firm manages nearly $3 billion in committed capital and has been widely recognized for its commitment to open source. Other notable investments include AOL, 1-800-Flowers, eBags,Friendster, JAMDAT, MetaCafe, Palm Computing, Seeking Alpha, and Zipcar.

Recent Exits:

Company	Description	Outcome
Business.com	The Internet's largest business directory of companies, products, services, and resources	Acquired by R.H. Donnelly
Entrisphere	Universal service aggregation equipment	Acquired by Ericcson
Good Technology	Devices, software and services for mobile professionals in the enterprise	Acquired by Motorola
Infinera	Solutions for optical networks	IPO -- INFN
Ingenio	Provider of pay-per-call technology	Acquired by AT&T
MySQL	Open source database software and services	Acquired by Sun
Tellme Networks	Service that improves call center experience with Internet and voice technologies	Acquired by Microsoft
Vontu	Data firewall software to detect leakage of confidential information	Acquired by Symantec
Zimbra	Enterprise messaging systems	Acquired by Yahoo!

New Investments:

Company	Description
EngineYard	Ruby deployment platform
Conduit	White label toolbar creation technology
Coverity	Automated source code analysis tools
FriendFeed	Customized, shared content feeds
Metaweb	Open database of the world’s information
Mint	Online financial management solution
Move Networks	Provider of Internet television services
New Relic	Rails performance management
Numobiq	Global provider of the next- generation platform for enabling mobile content and services
Riot Games	Video game development studio charged with creating innovative online next-generation titles for consoles and the PC
Right Scale	Automated cloud computing management system to create web applications on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud
SpringSource	Open source software for mission-critical enterprise applications
Pentaho	Open source business intelligence platform
Prosper.com	The online marketplace for person-to-person lending
Vivox	Provider of integrated voice services for online games and virtual worlds
Vudu	Delivers instant access to thousands of movies
Zuora	On-demand subscription management

Team

The firm is made up of the following members:

General Partners

• Bruce Dunlevie -- investments include: Accept.com (acquired by Amazon.com), Good Technology (acquired by Motorola), Handspring (acquired by Palm), and Pure Digital Technologies
• Bill Gurley -- investments include: Second Life, OpenTable, Vudu, Nanosolar, and Zillow
• Kevin Harvey -- investments include: Tellme Networks (sold to Microsoft), Zimbra (sold to Yahoo!), Ingenio (sold to AT&T), MySQL (sold to Sun for $1 billion)
• Bob Kagle-- investments include eBay (EBAY), mint.com, prosper.com, Gaia Online, Jamba Juice, and Zipcar
• Peter Fenton -- investments include: FriendFeed, EngineYard, New Relic, Pentaho, Polyvore, Coremetrics, XenSource, SpringSource, Yelp, Inc., Zuora, and Zimbra
• Alex Balkanski -- investments include: Infinera (INFN), Entrisphere (sold to Ericsson), Ambarella, and Mu Security
• Steve Spurlock -- operating partner who runs day-to-day operations and acts as counsel to the firm
• Mitch Lasky -- investments include: Numobiq, Vivox, and a new Ruby on Rails company -- Engine Yard
• Matt Cohler -- former vice president of product management at Facebook and former vice president & general manager at LinkedIn; joined Benchmark in Fall, 2008.

Partners

• David Beirne
• Andy Rachleff

Venture Partner

• Rich Barton

Benchmark Israel Partners

• Michael Eisenberg -- investments include: Conduit, Clarizen, Digital Fuel, Finjan, Funtactix, G.ho.st, Gigya, Gurunet (Amex GRU), Picturevison (acquired: EK), Seeking Alpha, Shopping.com (Nasdaq: EBAY), Tradeum (acquired: VERT), Tunewiki, Xacct (acquired: DOX), and Zlango.
• Arad Naveh -- investments include: Broadlight, Compass-EOS, Finjan Software, Metacafe, Mirage, Oplus Technologies (acquired by Intel), OpTun (acquired by NeoPhotonics), Panaya, RaySat, Resolute Networks, Sentrigo, Skybox Security, Vollee, Wilocity, and Xeround.
• Elie Wurtman -- investments include: Double Fusion (Former Chairman of the Board), FilesX, Game Array, Gizmoz, GreenRoad Technologies, Funtactix, and Power Challenge.

EIRs

• Rob Bearden
• Mike Cassidy
• Lewis Cirne
• Dave Finnigan
• Dave Goldberg
• Keith Krach
• Sarah Leary
• Nirav Tolia

Former EIRs Jim Norris and Bret Taylor left Benchmark to found and run FriendFeed

Publications

Randall E. Stross (2001). eBoys : The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work. New York: Ballantine Books.

External links

• Benchmark Capital
• Backing Tech Winners
• Andy Rachleff podcast interview on iinnovate
• Bill Gurley's Above the Crowd Newsletter / Blog

References