Bill Gurley is a general partner at Benchmark Capital, a venture capital firm behind the early stage funding of several top startups including Dropbox, Instagram, Twitter, Uber, Snapchat, and Discord. Other companies listed in the fund’s impressive portfolio include eBay, Yelp, ZenDesk, WeWork, and Zillow.
Bill constantly ranks among the world’s most successful venture capitalists by any metric. In 2016, he was named VC of the Year at TechCrunch’s Crunchies awards. He constantly ranks towards the top of Forbes’ Midas List, ranking at #3 in the 2019 edition. Bill also landed at #3 on CB Insights list of top 20 VCs.
Prior to joining Benchmark, Bill was a partner with Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Before launching a career in venture capital, he was a top-ranked research analyst on Wall Street and worked at CS First Boston, covering companies such as as Dell, Compaq, and Microsoft. He was the lead analyst on the Amazon IPO. In the mid-90s, Bill was part of the Institutional Investor All-American Research Team. Bill also worked as a design engineer at Compaq.
After the 2008 economic crash, Bill advised his portfolio companies to exercise caution when looking for opportunities. His blog, Above the Crowd, has also gathered attention for the warnings and insights he’s posted about venture capital spending.
“The real key is to have a keen understanding of the game on the field and to be the one that adjusts swiftly, rather than the one that moves after it’s become blatantly obvious to everyone else it’s time to move,” he said in a memo from 2008.
Tags: Benchmark, Investment and Funding, VC
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