Bill Gurley

Bill Gurley
Born	May 10, 1966 Dickinson, Texas
Nationality	American
Alma mater	University of Florida University of Texas

Bill Gurley (born May 10, 1966) is a general partner at Benchmark, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm in Menlo Park, California. He is listed consistently on the Forbes Midas List^[1][2] and is considered one of technology’s top dealmakers.^[3]

Education and early career

Gurley was born in Dickinson, Texas, outside of Houston, on May 10, 1966. Gurley received his MBA from the University of Texas in 1993 and his Bachelor of Science from the University of Florida in 1989, where he was a member of the men’s basketball team.^[4]

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 Advanced Micro Devices' embedded processor division.^[5] With both a financial/business and engineering background he “has a way of sizing things up that makes him both intriguing and highly quotable."^[6]

Before joining Benchmark in 1999,^[7] Gurley was a partner at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. He had also spent four years on Wall Street as a research analyst, including three years at CS First Boston. He was considered “one of Wall Street’s premier technology analysts."^[8] He covered companies including Dell, Compaq and Microsoft and was the lead analyst on the Amazon.com IPO.^[9]

Benchmark

At Benchmark, Gurley has led investments in and holds board seats on Brighter, DogVacay, GrubHub, HackerOne, Linden Lab, LiveOps, Nextdoor, OpenTable, Sailthru, Scale Computing, Stitch Fix, Uber, Vessel, and Zillow.^{[7][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]}

Previous investments 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 Automatic Data Processing), JAMDAT Mobile (acquired by Electronic Arts), Nordstrom.com (acquired by Nordstrom), Shopping.com (acquired by eBay), The Knot, and Vudu (acquired by Walmart).^[5]

With the economic collapse in the fall of 2008, Gurley garnered attention^[17] when he sent a letter^[18] to his portfolio companies, advising CEOs to exercise caution in spending but to look for and take advantage of opportunities^[19] 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."^[20] Gurley’s warnings, and post on his personal blog,^[21] Above the Crowd, on venture capital spending, have been widely discussed in the industry.^[22][23]

In March 2016, Gurley was named VC of the Year at TechCrunch’s annual Crunchies awards.^[24]

Personal life

Gurley is known for his above average height; he is 6’9”.^[4] The title of his blog, Above the Crowd,^[25] 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."^[26]

Gurley is on the advisory council of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas and is a board member at KIPP Bay Area Schools.^[7] He is married with three children and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

References

Further reading

• Randall E. Stross, eBoys : The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work. (New York: Ballantine Books, 2000). ISBN 0-345-42889-7.

External links

• Bill Gurley and Matt Cohler interview on TechCrunch
• PersonRatings Profile
• Bill Gurley on CNBC September 14, 2007 with Bill Griffeth
• Above the Crowd blog
• Bill Gurley on LinkedIn
• Bill Gurley on CrunchBase