Benchmark (venture capital firm)
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Limited liability company | |
Industry | Venture capital |
Founded | 1995 |
Headquarters | Menlo Park, California, United States San Francisco, California, United States |
Website | www.benchmark.com |
Benchmark is an American venture capital firm responsible for the early stage funding of numerous successful startups including Dropbox,[1] Twitter, Uber,[2] Snapchat,[3] and Instagram.[4]
In 1997, the firm invested $6.7 million in eBay, which made it worth more than $5 billion by the spring of 1999.[5]
Other high-profile investments include CyanogenMod,[6] Domo,[7] New Relic,[8] Nextdoor,[9] Stitch Fix,[10] WeWork,[11] Xapo,[12] Yelp,[13] Zendesk,[14] Zillow[15] and Zipcar.[16]
Benchmark is noted for creating the first equal ownership and compensation structure for its partners.[17] The "maverick" firm[18] differs from most VC firms, which are named for their founders and are structured hierarchically; Benchmark is "a lean operation in which its six full-time partners share profits equally."[18]
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.[19]
General partners
The firm's general partners are Matt Cohler, Peter Fenton, Bill Gurley, Mitch Lasky and Eric Vishria.[20][21][22][23]
Investments
Benchmark has invested in more than 250 startups[24] since its inception in 1995, including Art.com/Allposters.com, Baixing, CTERA Networks, Confluent,[25] Cockroach,[26] Cyanogen,[27] Duo,[28] Domo,[29] Docker,[30] Dropbox, eBay, HackerOne,[31] Instagram,[32] Juniper Networks, Marin Software,[33] Minted, MySQL, New Relic,[34] Nextdoor,[35] OpenTable, ResearchGate,[36] Snapchat,[3] Stitch Fix,[37] Twitter,[38] Tellme Networks, Uber,[39] Vessel,[40] Yelp, Inc., WeWork,[41] Zillow, and Zuora,[42][43] The firm manages nearly $3 billion in committed capital and has been widely recognized for its commitment to open source.[44] Other notable investments include AOL, 1-800-Flowers, Ebags.com, Friendster, JAMDAT, MetaCafe, Palm Computing, Seeking Alpha, ServiceSource, Xapo,[45] and Zipcar.[46]
Since early 2011, Benchmark has had 25 exits, including 10 IPOs and 15 mergers and acquisitions, representing a total market value of more than $55 billion (as of January 2014).[24]
Over the years, Benchmark’s eight funds have paid out $22.6 billion to investors, and its backers received a 1,000% gain—net of fees—over the past decade.[47]
References
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External links
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