Is Benchmark a Renegade Firm?

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I knew I wanted to be in venture at age 24, 25. At that time I had this false dream that Benchmark would break the model and hire it a principle. And Bruce Donlevi blew me off a few times. It did sit down with Bruce who was at like, you know, 7 p.m. He says, like, I'd rather be with my daughters right now respectfully, but I'm doing this as a favor. The feeling of the Benchmark culture particularly resonated with me. Anti-authoritarian, there was no hierarchy. And I abhor authority and hierarchy. Doesn't mean you don't have to have hierarchy in companies,. You have to allocate resources

In the 40th episode Benchmark’s Peter Fenton joins to discuss his early VC aspirations and path to get where he is now, the successful VC and entrepreneurial mindsets, plus inflation and the current market state. Rashad also joins to discuss Rahul Ligma, Twitter layoffs, and his brand new show No Agenda.

(0:00) Intro/Rahul Ligma

(04:56) Rashad’s new podcast “No Agenda”

(9:28) Introducing Peter Fenton

(17:06) Working at Accel

(24:59) Mentorship

(28:50) Benchmark

(39:21) Entrepreneurial mindset

(49:19) Successful founder characteristic

(54:08) Estimating timelines

(1:03:07) Everyone gets worse in venture over time

(1:13:48) VC websites

(1:19:18) Inflation

(1:26:55) Robert Sapolsky

(1:32:06) Outro

Show Notes:

Subscribe to No Agenda: https://open.spotify.com/show/2KHruq3qC0IKm5U9wOIjKZ?si=13bab75351d74c70

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBgv57GHyNgjhl3CBB3XtXp2JylaVKdNs

Rahul Ligma: https://twitter.com/Rezowan_/status/1586047782351441920?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1586047782351441920%7Ctwgr%5Ef725476e02dc15cc5f19f20bc8c3527e61e44c4f%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theverge.com%2F2022%2F10%2F28%2F23428775%2Ftwitter-fake-employee-layoff-rahul-ligma-elon-musk

Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky

Produced: Andrew Nadeau and Rashad Assir

Executive Producer: Josh Machiz

Music: Griff Lawson

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A Saturday morning podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett (Partner and Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures) covering the tech news with his friends and other people with industry expertise.

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Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes.