VENTURE CAPITAL
Bill Gurley, the newest partner at venture firm Benchmark Capital, may not have the star power of Morgan Stanley's Mary Meeker, his cohost at July's Internet Summit '99 conference. But just give the 33-year-old a few months.
Gurley cuts an imposing figure - both physically (6'9") and among venture capitalists. His "Above the Crowd" column in Fortune and on CNET - incisive takes on high tech peppered with classic rock lyrics - has become a crib sheet for business strategists. Formerly a design engineer at Compaq, Gurley hit it big in investment banking as the lead analyst on Amazon.com's IPO. Now at Benchmark - which he likens to the old Chicago Bulls - Gurley personifies the new breed of young investor-consultants who, so far at least, can do no wrong.
Lately, Benchmark's hit nothing but Net. The company funded eBay and shared in billion-dollar IPOs for Critical Path, Scient, and NorthPoint Communications. Nasdaq permitting, the firm may score again with upcoming IPOs for Ariba and Red Hat Software.
"We're having fun," Gurley confesses, looking almost guilty. "With this job, you get a look at everything. You think about where the world is going."
One clue to where he thinks it's going came in June with his investment in Respond.com, a site Gurley says will revolutionize online retailing. For the sold-out Internet Summit, sponsored by IDG's Industry Standard, he and Meeker attracted AOL's o Pittman, Amazon's Bezos, Excite's Bell, Broadcast.com's Cuban, Yahoo!'s Koogle, VC legend Doerr, and Net pioneer Andreessen. Even Gurley claims astonishment at the lineup.
"I'm just a simple guy from Texas," he says.
Yeah, and Amazon's just a place to buy books.
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