“When Benchmark invested $6.7mm in eBay in 1997, the auction company’s valuation was put at $20 million. By the next spring, the company was valued at more than $21 billion; the value of Benchmark’s stake had grown 100,000 percent in less than two years’ time, making it the Valley’s best performing venture investment ever.” Page xv
“Two met with the entrepreneur that night; the others met with him the next day. At the end of day two Benchmark and Mohr Davidow made an offer.” Page xxi
“Eighteen months after Benchmark invested and seven months after Critical Path’s IPO, its trading price gave it a market capitalization of $2.9 billion. Benchmark’s investment was now worth 87 times the original sum.” Page xxii
“He also left out the way he and his colleagues had to project an aura of success for years before it actually existed, the way credit card debt and second mortgages had to tide the business over in the interim.” Page 6
“The founders held off installing voicemail. The phone was to be answered, promptly, by a human — even in the after hours.” Page 8
“a client would be willing to hear a pitch from Ramsey Beirne the next morning at 8:30, then Beirne would call back and ask that it be moved to 7:30, just to show that his blood was Type A.” Page 8
On collecting receivables: “Office lore had Beirne leaving a voicemail and saying ‘Joe. David Beirne here. Here’s the deal. I want my fucking money Federal Expressed over fucking night right now. This is the most unprofessional bullshit I’ve ever heard goddamn it. You’re better than that, and you know you’re better than that. So stop playing this fucking game and get it done.’ After he hung up the story went, he looked over at colleagues whose mouths were agape and said ‘that was the right thing to do, right, guys? I mean, this guy owes us money.’ The others reassured him but steeled themselves for the repercussions when Beirne’s message was picked up. The CEO called back. ‘David I wanted to turn that into a tape. That’s an unbelievable message.’ He said he had transferred Beirne’s message to his own collections department saying ‘this guy is how we should be collecting our friggin money.’ The check arrived as promised via FedEx the next day.” Page 10
“Of the fifteen hundred proposals that came in, about five hundred of those seemed interesting enough to warrant a meeting with one partner. Two hundred one second meetings, and half of those received additional review.” Page 25
“Kagle was a little worried that eBay had offered her only 6 percent equity, lower than the 10 percent that had come to be the Valley standard in recruiting a seasoned CEO.” Page 58
“In eBay’s case, at the time it was still sitting in the nest and Benchmark had invested in it, The Economist estimated that there were more than 150 online auction sites on the Web. One of those was far ahead of the rest, backed by Kleiner Perkins, and was already a public company with a market capitalization of about $175 million.” Page 76
“The company’s dire financial situation, with sizable liabilities, meant that Benchmark’s capital would be financing an existing balance sheet, rather than financing growth. That was not the case with the other first round investments. ‘If you put in half of what we’re on the hook for, it goes to do these two acquisitions and Yahoo and he’s out of money again. I think it’s either walk away or do a the big financing at lower cost. I don’t think the turn-over-a-few-more –cards-on-the-cheap works.’” Page 163
“’I’d love to kill it and I’d hate to kill it.’ And Rachleff then said “you know that emotion is exactly the emotion you feel when it’s time to shut it down.’” Page 191
“we’ve been on the boards of hundreds of small companies, and the ones that focus, statistically, win at a much higher rate than the ones that try to do two or three things at once.” Page 201
“Three weeks ago the stock was at $18. Now we’re at $82.50. It’s just like what we said: it’s real volatile. Don’t get crazed. Don’t go buying Porsches or your resort home. We’ve got to focus on the long term.” Page 210
“Very few of benchmark’s startup investments had gone bust. Of 73 investments made by July 1999, only three had gone out of business. It seemed that venture investing was less exposed to the risk of failure, fundamentally different. Or had the ready supply of follow on capital — in private and public markets — merely prolonged artificially the lives of companies that would have soon perished were it not for the extraordinary infusions of capital?” Page 293
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