Uncapped with Jack Altman
· Peter Fenton
[00:00:00] S2: It’s also just rooted in the culture of Benchmark. You go back to Bob, Bruce, Andy. All the founders have played their part. But it was rooted in this idea of respect and affection. You should have a partnership where you really respect and admire your partners. You’d give all your money to any of your partners but then you admire them. There’s an old saying that a virtuoso is somebody who surprises even themself. I believe that about all my partners practicing the business. They’re virtuosos in the aspects of the business that motivate us to do the work. So Bob raised his hand, I was there, and just said, “It’s time. I’m out.” Others had left before, Andy and others, but there was never a conversation. It was actually the opposite. We gave him economics in the fund. They weren’t giant economics, but it was just a way of saying thank you. I think as soon as you get into the parts of everyone’s identity that are ego-driven, they lay claim to things psychically that make sense to them. It would never make sense to ask for something from this firm that would entail taking more than you’re giving. It’s a weird thing to say, but it’s a pressure that I feel as the last of the prior generations. I want to be raising my hand first, before I realize I’m not contributing more than I’ve taken out. Not because it’s an explicit trade, but it’s a cultural ethic. Cultures, as you’ve found in your company, are so durable. The inertial forces of a culture that gets founded… You asked, what is Benchmark? If I read one book that captures Benchmark, it’s Carl Rogers’ book, On Becoming a Person. The premise of the book is very simplistic in a sense. It was the apex of client-centered psychotherapy. The premise of the book is that to be useful in a relationship, you have to first permit yourself to understand the other person fully. I think if Benchmark is doing its best work, an entrepreneur comes in here and says, “They see me.” I bet if you ask Andrew at Cerebras who understands him and the founding team most fully—the purpose and the vision of the company—it wasn’t that we found this hire for him, or we gave him this advice about negotiating a contract with company XYZ. It’s that Benchmark understands what he wants to do. We then do something else that I think is equally important: unconditional positive regard.
· Peter Fenton, Jack Altman, Eric Vishria
There are examples in the past at Benchmark where that’s been broken. I think an immune system builds around those failures and says, “How do we not do that again?” as opposed to saying we’re defined by that one act. So what you see in the current lineup at Benchmark is a really emboldened immune system. We’ve had some vaccinations from past experiences to basically say that we never want to be in a position where the relationship degrades, where there isn’t that faith that we’ve delivered unconditional positive regard. We believe in founders, oftentimes more than they believe in themselves. If you understand the founder fully and you have unconditional positive regard, then you really can empathize with what they’re going through. I think that nurtures the sorts of success possible with founder-entrepreneurs that we all hold out as the great examples of why we do this job. [00:00:00] S0: I remember when we spoke last, you talked about the fact that when the Benchmark seat was given to you, from the beginning it’s like, “I’m going to give this to the next person.” I can see why. You’re saying the seminal moment was actually the handoff, because that creates the instigation for all the future handoffs. [00:00:00] S3: Yeah and you feel responsibility with that. I think all of us feel responsibility. That was one of the big things we talked to Ev about as Ev was joining. [00:00:00] S0: The responsibility. [00:00:00] S3: That responsibility, you just feel it. Not everyone feels that, which is fine, but—
· Eric Vishria, Jack Altman, Peter Fenton
[00:00:00] S3: That responsibility, you just feel it. Not everyone feels that, which is fine, but— [00:00:00] S0: Totally. Also, I think if you’re walking in and it’s equal from the beginning, a bunch is given to you at the start. You’re like, “I gotta pay this off to somebody. The people who set me up from the beginning, I can’t really pay them back anymore.” So I can see why you’d be like, “I gotta make sure I give enough before I go”, even though you’re, in a weird way, paying back prior generations. That makes sense. [00:00:00] S2: Rooted in that as well, Eric says responsibility and I think he feels it and I respect that. I think the founders gave us permission to basically not take it too seriously. [00:00:00] S3: Yeah, they did. [00:00:00] S2: They said, “Listen, come on. There’s a group of you. No one’s going to be around in a million years.” [00:00:00] S0: It doesn’t have to be so heavy.
· Jack Altman, Peter Fenton
[00:00:00] S0: It doesn’t have to be so heavy. [00:00:00] S2: “Everything’s ephemeral.” So what you want is a tight-knit group of people at maximum potential manifestation. The energy, the joy. The heaviness of “Oh, we’re going to have to maintain this relic and wheel it out. The old tablets in the back about what the founders said…” None of that bullshit. This is a day-to-day thing. By the way, forgive me. We’re in an entrepreneurial environment where when somebody has a legacy, we want to destroy it. We’re in the business of creative destruction, not permanence and enduring. Forgive me. Our startups bubble up from nothing, and we stay true to that. I think the firm’s premise is that we should have our own form of creative destruction. There’s no legacy or claim to it at Benchmark. It’s the immediacy and present moment that we deliver. Everything else is secondary.
· Jack Altman
[00:00:00] S0: One of the things you just said, I hope is okay for me to press on. I’ve wanted you guys to talk about this. I know each of you individually and I know you all are founder friendly. It’s very easy for people in a competitive venture landscape to poke at one historical example that everybody else has done. If you’re just loud, you can poke at people. I would say you’re not loud externally and you have a mindset of “we’re going to let our actions speak.” But I’ve wanted you guys to speak because I know you’re very founder friendly. I’ve talked to founders you work with and all of that. So I’m actually curious to hear your thoughts. You’ve seen some of this stuff. Is it important for you to talk about… It’s what you just said. There’s a thing and then you have an immune reaction to it and the firm updates? How do you process all of that?
· Peter Fenton
[00:00:00] S2: Humans are storytelling animals. Every firm has their story, and depending on the situation and the motivations of the counterparty, you accentuate certain parts of a firm’s history. The ethic of the firm—and I think this is borne out even in our worst moments—is that the company must come first. We’re not more important than the company. Nobody’s more important than the company. It’s the initiative, the collective premise of an entity that’s bigger than one individual. There are moments in the past—and I’ve been around through the generations—where it used to be the standard model that at some point you’d ask, “When are you going to get a real management team?” That sort of faded to, “Well, perhaps we can go the distance. You have the Steve Jobs narrative, which raises the question of what crimes were committed against this notion of general management versus the founder mode reality that we all support. The part that’s most relevant, and this is what happens every day here, is that we view our job—I do personally, and this has been borne out in the references—as making the founders the best version of themselves. Like any relationship, if it’s simply sycophantic and enabling and codependent, we make them worse. If it’s harsh and judgmental or absent, we make them worse. So one of the things you need to figure out in references is, what questions should you ask? If you’re going to engage with any great firm, you want to do references. First it’s a phone call but I actually think you could go a level deeper and ask, “How does this person make you a better entrepreneur? How have they unlocked your potential?” What we care about more than happiness is flourishing. In our companies, I think what’s borne out in the work we’ve done is that if I work with that group, I’m going to be a better version. I’m not going to be living in fear, because then you’re not a better version of yourself. Nor am I going to be getting… Forgive me, what happens in our job right now, I’m struck by the number of boards where I see a relationship that’s sycophantic, where people are afraid to pursue truth because they don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Worse, I think the greatest crime that occurs in many boards is that somebody says something behind the entrepreneur’s back that they won’t say to their face.