Bill Gurley

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John William Gurley (born May 10, 1966) is an American businessman. He is a general partner at Benchmark, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm in San Francisco, California.

Education and early career

John William Gurley was born in Dickinson, Texas, outside of Houston, on May 10, 1966. Gurley graduated from the University of Florida in 1989 with a Bachelor of Science degree.[1] While at the University of Florida, he was a member of the men’s basketball team.[1] Gurley received his Masters of Business Administration degree from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business in 1993.[2]

Prior to his investment career, Gurley was a design engineer at Compaq Computer, where he worked on products such as the 486/50 and Compaq's first multi-processor server. Before Compaq, he worked in the technical marketing group of AMD's embedded processor division.[3]

Gurley was a partner at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. He spent four years on Wall Street as a research analyst, including three years at CS First Boston. Author Jeffrey Pfeffer called him “one of Wall Street’s premier technology analysts."[4] He covered companies including Dell, Compaq and Microsoft and was the lead analyst on the Amazon.com IPO.[5]

Benchmark

At Benchmark, Gurley has led investments in and holds (or held) board seats on Brighter, DogVacay,[6] Good Eggs,[7] GrubHub, HackerOne,[8] Linden Lab, LiveOps, Nextdoor, OpenTable, Sailthru,[9] Scale Computing,[10] Stitch Fix,[11] Vessel,[12] and Zillow.[13]

Other investments of his have included: Avamar Technologies (acquired by EMC Corporation), Business.com (acquired by R.H. Donnelley), Clicker.com (acquired by CBS Interactive), Demandforce (acquired by Intuit), Employease (acquired by ADP, Inc.), JAMDAT Mobile (acquired by Electronic Arts), Nordstrom.com (acquired by Nordstrom), Shopping.com (acquired by eBay), The Knot, Uber, and Vudu (acquired by Walmart).[3] He is listed consistently on the Forbes Midas List.[14]

2008 recession

With the economic collapse in the fall of 2008, Gurley garnered attention[15] when he sent a letter[16] to his portfolio companies, advising CEOs to exercise caution in spending but to look for and take advantage of opportunities[17] that become available during harsh economic times. In a 2015 interview Gurley said of private tech investing, "It’s my belief that Silicon Valley and the venture-backed businesses have moved into a world that is both speculative and unsustainable."[18] Gurley’s warnings, and posts on his personal blog,[19] Above the Crowd, on venture capital spending, have been widely discussed in the industry.[20][21]

In March 2016, Gurley was named VC of the Year at TechCrunch’s annual Crunchies awards.[22]

Uber

Gurley left Uber's board of directors in June 2017. The announcement was released one day after the company announced the resignation of CEO Travis Kalanick following months of controversy over Uber's corporate culture.[23][24][25]

Gurley reportedly had a close relationship with CEO Travis Kalanick. He was Uber’s most engaged board member and the closest thing Mr. Kalanick had to a consigliere.[26] Gurley shared his support for Kalanick on Twitter, stating "There will be many pages in the history books devoted to @travisk - very few entrepreneurs have had such a lasting impact on the world."[27]

In April 2020, The Wall Street Journal reported that Gurley would be stepping back from Benchmark as he was not investing in a new fund that his venture capital firm was raising.[28][29]

In popular culture

A fictionalized version of Gurley portrayed by actor Kyle Chandler appeared in the Showtime drama series Super Pumped.[30]

Personal life

Gurley is known for his above-average height; he is Template:Cvt.[31] The title of his blog, Above the Crowd, and the book eBoys: The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists that profiles the Benchmark team, both reference his height; the subtitle of eBoys is “The true story of the six tall men who backed eBay, Webvan, and other billion-dollar start-ups."[32]

Gurley is married with three children and currently lives in Austin, Texas.[33][34]

References

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  1. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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  3. ↑ a b Benchmark Capital: Silicon Valley Team: General Partners: Bill Gurley Template:Webarchive
  4. ↑ Jeffrey Pfeffer, The Human Equation. (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1998) p.82.
  5. ↑ Byran Eisenberg, Call to Action: Simple Formulas to Improve Online Results. (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 2006) p. 27.
  6. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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  15. ↑ How To Survive Great Depression 2.0 Without Firing Everyone article by Henry Blodget on Business Insider October 17, 2008, accessed March 16, 2015
  16. ↑ How Tech Start-ups Plan on Getting By
  17. ↑ Benchmark Capital Advises Startups To Conserve Capital, Look For Opportunities
  18. ↑ Bill Gurley Sees Silicon Valley on a Dangerous Path Wall Street Journal. October 28, 2015
  19. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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  32. ↑ Amazon.com: eBoys: The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work: Randall E. Stross: Books
  33. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  34. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".

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Further reading

  • Randall E. Stross, eBoys : The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work. (New York: Ballantine Books, 2000). Template:ISBN.

External links

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