“John Doerr for example excelled at promoting the visibility of John Doerr, but he evinced no ability or wish to raise up his partners to the same prominence he enjoyed, (and after hearing so much about Doerr, what entrepreneur who approached his firm, Kleiner Perkins, wanted to be deflected to one of the other partners, an unknown not-Doerr?). Benchmark partners had selected one another on the basis of perceived ability to subordinate individual ego to the larger interests of the collective.” Page xviii
“Obtaining the opportunity to invest in a cash burning company that had only just launched its service and had yet to sign a single significant customer was not an instant win at Benchmark. One partner summed up the situation: ‘the good news is we won. The bad news is we won.’” Page xxi
On cold calling: “We have no fear. If we could find God’s phone number, we’d call him.” Page 6
“In year two, Beirne convinced Ramsey and their first associate, Alan Seiler, to abandon the low rent contingency fee model and instead adopt a high rent retainer fee model, the one that the elite search firms used. To be a success, one must act the part, and a retainer fee was the way to communicate that one’s services were in demand. That was the theory. It was not easy however to remain confident when Ramsey Beirne’s revenue dropped to zero — and remained there. Beirne was barely able to keep his colleagues from abandoning the experiment as the months went by and their personal savings evaporated. Finally, six months later they got their first retainer.” Page 7
“’Hi we’re Ramsey Beirne, the leading retained executive search firm in high technology.’ If said with sufficient force, it would not be questioned. And if a client laughed at the audacity, Beirne and his colleagues would reply ‘we brought in the COO of Central Point. We built the whole management team.’ The prospect probably never heard of Central Point, but it must have been an important client for Ramsey to lay claim to it the way that it did.” Page 8
“’I have nothing to sell you today — let’s take that off the table and just talk,’ he would say. ‘My goal is to earn the right to have a relationship with you, and I know it’s my responsibility to earn that right.’ He had removed anything uncouth in his appearance that would provide an excuse to be turned away. He didn’t display the know it all arrogance seen in many who have coasted through the most selective colleges, nor was he handicapped by a parvenu’s tendency to try to bluster his way to status parity by talking incessantly.” Page 9
“The Benchmark boys would make his career transition instantaneous. They believe in equal partnerships and were not going to ask him to go through a let’s get to better acquainted probationary trial. He would be a fully enfranchised partner, with an equal share, on his first day.” Page 14
“Arthur Rock, the senior dean of American venture capitalists and an early investor in Intel, always insisted whenever his venture firm put money into a startup that the entrepreneur co-invest one third of his total net worth, whether it be large or small.” Page 34
“The collective value of a typical venture capital portfolio will go down before it goes up — the pattern is called the J curve — because the companies that are not going to survive die before the best performers begin to shine and pull the value of the portfolio up with them.” Page 75
“after two years in the saddle, he’d expect to be a director at 8 companies. That would be what his Benchmark partners considered the maximum number of directorships he could hold without diluting the quality of service to the entrepreneurs.” Page 144
“The art framing business was ripe for consolidation because competitors were not solely interested in making the greatest amount of money, as he was.” Page 170
“Webvan faced a choice: owning fewer customers, who shopped more frequently, or more customers, who shopped less frequently, and the strongest base of customers to have would be the former group.” Page 198
“He showed sides that illustrated the volatility of Yahoo’s and Amazon’s stock. In the month of June, Yahoo’s market cap had jumped by $4 billion. Do you think Yahoo was actually a really different company on Jun 30 than it was on Jun 1? Probably not. The few number of shares circulating intensified the trading activity. Only 3.5 million shares, or 10 percent, were in the hands of the public.” Page 208
“What’s it like recruiting when the stock price is so high? Really hard. The options offered to new employees were certain to be valueless, as they would depend on the stock ascending still higher. I mean, it’s at such a ridiculous level, there’s going to be a big fall here. The question is sort of when and how.” Page 215
“One of the best ways to have a nice Silicon Valley company is to keep your headcount as low as possible as long as possible.” Page 301
Visit us at blossomstreetventures.com and email us directly with Series A or B opportunities at sammy@blossomstreetventures.com