Benchmark is thrilled to announce that Jason Droege has joined Benchmark as a Venture Partner to work closely with our portfolio founders, drawing on decades of experience and knowledge of how to build consumer scale businesses. He’s one of a small group of Venture Partners at Benchmark, including Rich Barton…

For any consumer startup that works, hype — the moment, either organic or manufactured, when the perception of a startup’s significance expands ahead of the startup’s lived reality — is an inevitability. And yet, it’s hard not to view hype with a mix of both awe and fear. Hype applied…

Benchmark is thrilled to announce Miles Grimshaw has joined the firm as our newest General Partner. At age 29, Miles has emerged as one of the world’s great venture capitalists, embodying the early-stage focus and company building purpose that defines Benchmark. Miles’s fiercely independent thinking has allowed him to identify…

The #1 question I got after publishing my Hierarchy of Marketplaces series is how to know if you are on the right track in Level 1 as you wait for your cohorts to mature, and whether you can use Net Promoter Score (“NPS”) to measure happiness. Honestly, I’m skeptical of…

If you’ve read Level 1 and Level 2 of my Hierarchy of Marketplaces series, and are biting at the bit to go big, Level 3 is for you. Level 1 and Level 2 were all about single-threaded focus. If reaching Minimum Viable Happiness is hard enough, reaching the second happiness…

In the Introduction and Level 1 of the Hierarchy of Marketplaces, I laid out the core insight that drives the hierarchy: that the tireless pursuit of happiness (not GMV) is ultimately what distinguishes the marketplaces that endure. This is not to say that you shouldn’t pursue growth when building a…

A few years ago, I published a framework I called The Hierarchy of Engagement (Version 1, and updated “Expanded” Version) which synthesized my thinking on how to build enduring consumer products. The Hierarchy of Marketplaces synthesizes my thinking on how to build enduring marketplaces. Marketplaces that are able to…

Social distancing has dramatically changed how we spend our time. With all in person gatherings canceled, people suddenly have a lot more free time on their hands. New and incumbent consumer internet companies are racing to claim that time. As an investor in and lover of consumer products, I’m incredibly…

One of the questions I get a lot is, “Is there any white space left to build a consumer marketplace?” I get it. Name a category or vertical and you can probably think of a company that is either a) already there, or b) seemingly in a better position than…