ABOUT SF VENTURE
Keith Benjamin’s perspectives on venture and related topics. The purpose of this blog is to share my views with friends and acquaintances in and around the venture community.
DISCLAIMER
Opinions expressed are my own and do not reflect the opinion of Levensohn Venture Partners (www.levp.com).
ABOUT ME
I am third generation Wall Street. My father started his career at Lehman Brothers, making some of the early investments in the venture industry before focusing on public market investing. My grandfather ran the retail operations for L.F. Rothschild, at the time a mid-sized, New York investment bank. Prior generations on my father’s side were mostly haberdashers, mostly manufacturers of men’s overcoats, tracing back to England.
I was born and raised in Manhattan. My investment credentials include a B.S. and M.B.A from N.Y.U. and a C.F.A. I started my career as a sell-side research analyst, initially at a research boutique called Silberberg, Rosenthal & Company. An analyst who specialized in technology turnarounds mentored me in the trade. The partnership performed research for commissions only, taking no banking fees, which was a good way to learn about how to make money picking stocks. I later graduated to larger investment banks, following companies exploiting technologies to create new media business. I’d watched a lot of television as a child and figured it would be a way to make money while having fun. I eventually moved to San Francisco in 1993 to join Robertson Stephens. I followed a broad range of companies exploiting new technologies, including education and entertainment software, Internet and e-commerce and enterprise software.
I was best known at Robertson as an early believer in the long-term value potential for the internet. I created a weekly email, hosted at www.internetstocks.com, which eventually reached over 100,000 readers. My experience building “The Weekly Web Report” partially prompted my interest in starting this blog.
I started to be active in the venture community at Robertson, where I was a frequent sponsor of venture investments through Robertson’s internal investment vehicle, Bayview Capital. In 1999, I joined Highland Capital Partners, a Boston-based venture capital firm, where I was a General Partner and opened the firm's San Francisco office. I led a number of investments at Highland, including Coremetrics. I joined Levensohn Venture partners in 2002.
Investment Focus
I’ve been following a handful of trends in software over the last few years. I don’t see a next big thing, but that there are plenty of big problems where second and third generations of technologies are finally evolving to provide viable solutions. For example, after years of building bulky software infrastructures, many creating huge data pools, we can now layer on applications that use that data for valuable business purposes. I have been following the trend to make more applications available on demand. I try to be open to a broad range of technologies around software as the breakout markets are often the ones we’re not expecting.
FAVORITE QUOTES
“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”
Scaramouche, A Romance of the French Revolution, by Rafael Sabatini
"What we have here is a failure to communicate."
Strother Martin, in the movie, Cool Hand Luke
