![]() ![]() Soon, the firm developed its own pipeline for finding the great commercial ideas of the near future. Most of the entrepreneurs who obtained financing from Benchmark were referred by business colleagues. Kagle believed the success of ventures depended mostly on finding and backing extraordinary people. They turned it into $7.8 billion, an extraordinary return of 92 times the original investment. The group raised $85 million for its first fund, Benchmark I. The group expressed a preference for high-tech ventures with the potential for creating or capturing huge consumer markets Benchmark provided seed capital for entrepreneurs at the very earliest stages of a venture. The partners were not tagged with ranks such as "senior" or "associate." The group set for itself the goal of becoming the number one venture capital firm within ten years, hence the ambitious Benchmark name. Uniquely, profits would be distributed equally among the partners, a practice said to eliminate infighting. Andrew Rachleff, with a background in network equipment and telecommunications, rounded out the founding four. Kevin Harvey, Benchmark's resident techie, had gone to Rice University like Dunlevie, and had invested in a database software company while still at Merrill Pickard. A New York native who grew up in Dallas, Dunlevie was a former football player with a secret penchant for literature. Bruce Dunlevie also had prior venture capital experience, at Merrill Pickard Anderson & Eyre, and had worked earlier at Arthur Andersen and Goldman Sachs. A native of Flint, Michigan, Kagle had a keen interest in the Depression era and loved to regale his colleagues with tales of speculative pitfalls. Kagle was a consumer marketing expert who had spent the previous dozen years with Technology Venture Investors. Benchmark's clients are managers of pension funds and college endowments, as well as wealthy individuals, and the firm prides itself on its service to the entrepreneurs behind its portfolio companies.īenchmark Capital was set up in 1995 by four ambitious young men. Benchmark's 1997 investment of $6.7 million in online auctioneer eBay holds the record for best-performing Silicon Valley investment ever: by the spring of 1999, this stake was worth $5 billion. SWFI is a minority-owned organization.Venture capital firm Benchmark Capital stresses a team approach, and the team has shared in some spectacular results. SWFI facilitates sovereign fund, pension, endowment, superannuation fund and central bank events around the world. Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute (SWFI) is a global organization designed to study sovereign wealth funds, pensions, endowments, superannuation funds, family offices, central banks and other long-term institutional investors in the areas of investing, asset allocation, risk, governance, economics, policy, trade and other relevant issues. Registration on or use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms of use agreement which includes our privacy policy. All material subject to strictly enforced copyright laws. No affiliation or endorsement, express or implied, is provided by their use. Other third-party content, logos and trademarks are owned by their perspective entities and used for informational purposes only. Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute® and SWFI® are registered trademarks of the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute. © 2008-2023 Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute. ![]()
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