Bill Gurley
Bill Gurley | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 10, 1966 Dickinson, Texas, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Entrepreneur, venture capitalist |
| Known for | General partner at Benchmark |
John William Gurley (born May 10, 1966) is an American entrepreneur and a general partner at Benchmark, a leading venture capital firm located in Silicon Valley, San Francisco.
Education and early career
Originally from Dickinson, Texas, Gurley completed a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Florida in 1989, where he was also a member of the men’s basketball team. He later earned an MBA from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business in 1993.
Prior to his venture capital career, Gurley worked as a design engineer at Compaq Computer, contributing to key projects such as the 486/50 processor and Compaq’s inaugural multi-processor server. He also held a position in technical marketing within the embedded processor division at AMD.
Gurley’s professional background includes a partnership at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and four years as a technology research analyst on Wall Street, including three years at CS First Boston. During this time, he covered major tech firms like Dell, Compaq, and Microsoft, and served as the lead analyst for the Amazon.com initial public offering. Author Jeffrey Pfeffer recognized him as “one of Wall Street’s premier technology analysts."
Benchmark
At Benchmark, Gurley has spearheaded investments and served on the boards of companies such as Brighter, DogVacay, Good Eggs, GrubHub, HackerOne, Linden Lab, LiveOps, Nextdoor, OpenTable, Sailthru, Scale Computing, Stitch Fix, Vessel, and Zillow.
His portfolio also includes investments in Avamar Technologies (later 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). He frequently appears on the Forbes Midas List.
2008 recession
Amid the 2008 financial crisis, Gurley attracted notice for advising CEOs of his portfolio companies to carefully control expenditures while capitalizing on opportunities presented by the downturn. In a 2015 interview, he criticized private tech investing in Silicon Valley as overly speculative and lacking sustainability. His perspectives on venture capital spending, shared through his blog Above the Crowd, have been influential across the industry.
In March 2016, Gurley received the VC of the Year award at TechCrunch’s Crunchies ceremony.
Uber
Gurley departed from Uber’s board in June 2017 shortly after CEO Travis Kalanick resigned amid controversies surrounding corporate culture. As Uber’s most active board member and a close advisor to Kalanick, Gurley had publicly praised the CEO’s transformative influence on the industry.
By April 2020, reports indicated that Gurley would reduce his active involvement at Benchmark by not participating in its upcoming fundraising round after more than twenty years with the firm.
In popular culture
A dramatized version of Bill Gurley is portrayed by actor Kyle Chandler in the Showtime television series Super Pumped.
Personal life
Standing at an impressive height of , Gurley’s stature has been mentioned both in his blog Above the Crowd and in the book eBoys: The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists, which highlights the Benchmark team. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his spouse and their three children.
Further reading
- Randall E. Stross, eBoys: The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work. (New York: Ballantine Books, 2000). .
External links
- Pages with script errors
- Articles with short description
- Articles with hCards
- No local image but image on Wikidata
- American financial businesspeople
- Living people
- University of Florida alumni
- McCombs School of Business alumni
- American venture capitalists
- 1966 births
- People from Dickinson, Texas
- Florida Gators men's basketball players
- People from Atherton, California
- CFA charterholders
- Midas List
- Directors of Uber