Above the Crowd

Today Benchmark announced that Eric Vishria has joined us as a General Partner. Eric is one of the up-and-coming stars in the technology industry, and we are very excited he is becoming our partner. In Benchmark’s team dynamic, character and attitude really matter. Eric’s keen intellect, his experience as an entrepreneur and CEO, his depth in infrastructure and enterprise software, and his infectious optimism about technology make him an ideal Benchmark partner. Eric demonstrated a unique passion for startups and entrepreneurship from an early age. After graduating from Stanford in mathematical and computer science when he was just 19, Eric […]

On June 18, Aswath Damodaran , a finance professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, published an article on FiveThirtyEight titled “ Uber Isn’t Worth $17 Billion. ” This post was a shortened version of a more detailed post he had written for his own blog titled “ A Disruptive Cab Ride to Riches: The Uber Payoff .” Using a combination of market data, math, and financial analysis, Professor Damodaran concluded that his best estimate of the value of Uber is $5.9 billion, far short of the value recently determined by the market. This estimate of value was tied to certain “assumptions” with respect to TAM (total available market) as well as Uber’s market share within […]

Today Benchmark is excited to announce that we will be partners with Jason Kilar and Richard Tom on their next exciting project — Vessel . Working with amazing entrepreneurs is the number one reason we enjoy venture capital, and rarely do you have the opportunity to work with a team that has a track record like these two. While they are not planning to disclose any specifics today about the company, you can rest assured that they plan to bring their amazing product instincts and cultural leadership that were at the heart of Hulu’s success. We are also excited to be partnering again […]

Many entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley believe that the financial services industry in the United States is “ripe for disruption. ” The basis of this argument is really two fold. First, they believe that the current offerings from the financial incumbents are lacking. They would argue that credit card fees are too high, that there is a lack of true competition amongst American financial institutions, and that the ACH process is borderline asinine. They also believe that today’s technologies, most notably the smartphone, should allow for remarkably simpler one-click paperless transactions that have transaction costs that are a fraction of the status quo. Consumers want faster, simpler, and cheaper transactions, and entrepreneurs want to give it to them. The problem […]

In early April, Neel Mehta of Google first publicly reported the web vulnerability that we now refer to as the Heartbleed bug . Early analysis suggested that 17% of the servers on the Internet were vulnerable, which represents about half a million unique computers. This list included some of the world’s most heavily trafficked sites including Facebook, Google, and Yahoo. On Monday May 5th, Target Corporation removed Gregg Steinhafel from his role as CEO as a result of his unsatisfactory response to a cyber security threat that compromised millions of user accounts at the retail giant. The Boston Globe suggested that “ Target’s data theft leaves CEOs everywhere on the hot seat .” The Seattle Times declared […]