If you’re a partner at Benchmark Capital, you’re having a very good day and celebrating two separate portfolio acquisitions.
That’s sort of like an unassisted triple play in baseball, it just doesn’t happen that often. Maybe that’s why the team looks so darn happy in their website picture. Partner Peter Fenton (labeled Rock Star in photo) led both deals.
The first is Friendfeed, which was acquired by Facebook for an undisclosed sum. Benchmark was the sole venture capital investor in Friendfeed, which raised a $5 million in an early 2008. Benchmark now has stock in Facebook, the hottest IPO prospect in Silicon Valley right now.
The second is the much larger deal – VMWare’s $400+ million acquisition of Springsource, an enterprise and web application development and management startup. Benchmark was the biggest investor in Springsource, which raised a total of $15 million in two rounds of financing prior to the acquisition.
These weren’t the only wins for Benchmark this year, either. They were also investors in Pure Digital (acquired by Cisco for $590 million) and OpenTable (went public in May).
Benchmark still holds the record for (probably) the best venture investment in history – they turned a $6.7 million investment in eBay in 1997 into $5 billion by 1999. Partner Bill Gurley talks about that deal and Benchmark in general in our video interview with him last year.
Just to be clear, both of these companies were investments by Peter Fenton, now at Benchmark and formerly at Accel. His investing track record is among the best in the business over the past five years, and he’s still a young guy. He deserves all kinds of credit, especially for not aggressively seeking the limelight like many of his peers who have far less enviable returns.
Well, once you have money, investing it wisely really isn’t that much of an achievement.
Actually starting and scaling up a company, that’s something you can be proud of.
All these pale VCs could never do anything like it. They’re just sitting behind their desks, investing the money they inherited from their rich parents.
Besides, why did they sell now when they could have earned much more later? They must be in dire need of money.
The fact that someone actually bought the piece of sh.t called SpringSource is a surprise, though. This was a last-minute sale. In some months, VMWare will find out they bought very expensive crap.
Well you couldn’t be more wrong on that.
SpringSource has amazing mindshare in the enterprise space. That you would even type what you did betrays a solid lack of understanding.
Cail, you obviously don’t understand the enterprise Java space at all. Do some research before writing nonsense like that.
Guys, believe it or not, I have a solid Java Enterprise background.
Spring is one framework in the Java EE stack of many. And it isn’t the best for what it was intended. We stopped using Spring 2 years ago and never regretted it.
Just take a look where’s Struts now. Nowhere.
Besides, all these technologies are open source. Nobody owns them. How can you make money of an open source framework? Sell trainings, certifications and books? Bleh.
All the guys in the front row look like clones. Don’t know if that anything to do with this amazing success.
zillow looks like a dog!
Your poor.
Benchmark Capital has strict dress code based on performance. Shirt color ranges from dark color (noob) to progressively lighter shades of blue (ninja).
+1
DOJ should be all over these gentleman
Why?
what a day for those guys at that firm
Gurley has his teeth in LiveOps too. That should be another billion+ exit if they dont f-up.
These brilliant gentlemen, these cutting-edge thinkers, should be running our country, and not the likes of Pelosi, Bush, Barney Frank, Barbara Boxer, Sanford and Obama — America wakeup!
Elect Entrepreneurs and Doctors and not idiots (or attorneys)!
Bah. These are not entrepreneurs. They don’t run companies, they only invest in them.
Wouldn’t the $100K investment by Andy Bechtolsheim in Google be the all time record?
I agree… and I think that David Cheriton made the same investment as Bechtolsheim back in 1998… on a percentage gain basis, it’s got to be the record… $100,000 turning to over $1 billion… longer time frame than the eBay investment by Benchmark, but a much higher percentage gain…
kudos to Benchmark. Still, look for the black sheep (there’s always one in every family). Tip: not in the picture.
Michael A, your “$400+ million acquisition” is broken; just letting you know
Michael,
The link to …VMWare’s “$400+ million acquisition” is broken.
Rod Johnson gave a wonderful gift to the Java community back in 2003: Spring. It’s great to see he’s rewarded for his contributions.
I have known and worked closely with Peter Fenton since 2001, when he invested in my previous company, Wily Technology. I convinced him to be chairman of my current company, and I’m lucky and honored to work with him again. He’s a world class investor and a brilliant business strategist. He deserves every bit of his hard-earned success. Congrats to Spring Source and FriendFeed!
Congrats, Peter! The news today evoked in me equal parts admiration, inspiration and jealousy.
who are these guys?
Load of shit. I remember couple of months / years back, numerous people were complaining that they don’t reply their emails.
Bottom line : Arrogance is rewarding.
And i’m speechless.
facebook is NOT google, so the FF deal hardly qualifies as news.
go find a story…
yawn.
Secret of success seems pretty transparent – make sure your team resembles a Georgia country club membership committee.
Oh wait, my mistake. I do see a slightly non standard shirt color in there…
doesn’t seem like a very diverse bunch, does it?