The Origins of the Benchmark Dinner

1. BGBen Gilbert0:00

   Okay, so our first question is what are we doing here? Like, what are we at? And Peter, it feels like you would be the best person to explain this dinner tradition.

2. SPSpeaker0:09

   Yeah.

3. SPSpeaker0:09

   Why do we have a dining room in an office?

4. SPSpeaker0:11

   [laughs] On the nineteenth floor.

5. BGBen Gilbert0:12

   [laughs]

6. SPSpeaker0:13

   When I joined Benchmark, there was great optimism between Bill and me about, you know, injecting new practices, new habits, new ideas into the firm. And Bill had just read the Ben Franklin, uh, biography, and Ben had four dinners, if I recall, a week, but they were, like, going deep on finance, then on, you know, chemistry, and then on life sciences. And, uh, and he took the catalyst to say, like, "Why aren't we doing dinners?" And anyway, we had this, like, playful, you know, experiment where we said, "Well, let's try a few of them." And we did a, a big dinner towards the end of the year in I think it was, like, two thousand and seven. Maybe two thousand and six. Two thousand and six. It was actually my first year. And, uh, it was amazing. Like, time stood still. And, and we realized, like-

7. BGBen Gilbert0:59

   Just, just the partners, or?

8. SPSpeaker1:00

   No, we had four outside guests, uh, Katharina Fake, uh, Mike McCue-

9. SPSpeaker1:05

   Yep

10. SPSpeaker1:05

    ... um, Gideon Yu, and Martin Mikos, if I'm not mistaken. And it was electric. And we came out of that... Bill had this habit, he'd always call me in the car after, like, "What'd you think of the dinner?" I'm like, "Ah, I think it was fun, but I wanna go to bed."

11. BGBen Gilbert1:21

    [laughs]

12. SPSpeaker1:21

    He's like, "Uh, uh."

13. BGBen Gilbert1:21

    [laughs]

14. SPSpeaker1:22

    And alcohol had been served. People were in a good-

15. BGBen Gilbert1:24

    Like, it was his baby. He wanted to, like, keep working on the concept?

16. SPSpeaker1:27

    Well, well, we, we danced with this idea. And so the concept that, that I came to is that firms are full of strategies that aren't coupled to reality. And if you look at a venture firm, eventually it's just a collection of habits. And this is stealing from William James, who I think was the greatest American thinker, um, that, you know, we are nothing but an amalgamation of our habits, and habits sow character, they sow everything. So the idea that we should be nurturing curiosity, which is the essential lifeblood of the firm, needed a habit. And, and, and Mondays, as much as they're an attempt at that, you sit around the office and you joke around, you try and d- dive into topics, they're, they're limited. And so the dynamic range of a dinner with, um, you know, uh, an open-ended, no agenda, wild explorations of the most bizarre things your partners might be curious about, and I've definitely got in a few, you know, rat holes th- with this group-

17. BGBen Gilbert2:20

    [laughs]

18. SPSpeaker2:20

    ... and they pulled me out. Uh, you know, it just became one of those things that honored the purpose of the firm, which is the sense of, like, constantly learning and, and activating our curiosity, but, um, you know, collective effervescence of a group that we could never get in a one-on-one dinner. Um, one of the challenges, which is being manifest right now, is that-

19. BGBen Gilbert2:39

    [laughs]

20. SPSpeaker2:39

    ... in a table, you know, where there's a head of the table, you can get a dominant participant in the dinner conversation.

21. BGBen Gilbert2:47

    [laughs]

22. SPSpeaker2:47

    But the problem with the table is that you either have a rectangular, uh, structure which carries power structure embedded in it, um, or you have a circular table which atomizes the group. And so I'd seen this table, uh, The Seven, by Jean-Marie Massaud, who's a French designer, and, um, I ran with the idea. Something that would be organic, that could expand and collapse, but most essentially destruct or deconstruct power centers and, and create a non-hierarchical construct with intimacy. But this table ends up being, um, Ole Lundberg designed it. We gave him... I gave him a hand sketch and, and he ran with it. And, uh, it's, um, allowed Ole's lifestyle to meaningfully upgrade because-

23. BGBen Gilbert3:28

    [laughs]

24. SPSpeaker3:28

    [laughs]

25. SPSpeaker3:28

    ... the number of people with means that have sat at this table have decided they need a table just like this, uh, so-

26. BGBen Gilbert3:33

    Well, and the people you have at this table, just for listeners who don't understand the gravity of this dinner, it tends not to just be the five partners. You have f- pretty esteemed guests come to these.

27. SPSpeaker3:43

    It's the spotlight of attention, which is the biggest gift you can give to another human being, on an individual. And more often than not, it's somebody that we haven't worked with or invested in. And, uh, I think you guys might have mentioned this in the podcast, that, uh, we've had dinners with people like, um, Dylan Field, and oh, you come away, you're swept off your feet. You're like, "Why? This is why we exist, to serve people like that." Um, Tobi from Shopify. Um, you know, Jeff Bezos has been, um... We travel to Jeff. [laughs]

28. BGBen Gilbert4:13

    [laughs]

29. SPSpeaker4:13

    [laughs]

30. SPSpeaker4:13

    Do you bring the table?

Episode duration: 6:03