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“The bigger risk I face isn’t that you’re going to fail and we’re going to get rid of you. It’s that you get tired and you fall out of love.” - @peterfenton
Introducing Real Time, a new podcast from ClickHouse. In our first episode, Aaron Katz (@ceo_clickhouse) sits down with Benchmark's Peter Fenton on backing founders, building open-source businesses, and the AI supercycle.
A few highlights:
- You can't fake open-source adoption. But how do you turn it into a business? Peter on why ClickHouse's cloud aligned value creation with value capture.
- On the scale of the AI opportunity: “In 10 years, we’ll look back and dream about being here.” His advice to founders: stay curious, take risks, and make failure cheap.
- Benchmark's new playbook: four to six big, decade-long bets on generational founders.
- Peter flew Aaron to Big Sur himself and landed the helicopter on the roof of a house. Aaron took an Uber home.
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒:
0:00 Introduction
1:32 Nearly 30 years of backing founders
6:18 What did Peter see in ClickHouse
10:10 Turning open-source adoption into a business
14:27 Benchmark and Uber
21:51 Helicopters and an eight-hour ski trip
25:21 Silicon Valley ambition and a global engineering team
32:32 Why Benchmark is evolving its investment approach
40:58 AI’s long-term potential and the financial cycle
45:55 Curiosity, risk-taking, and making failure cheap
The first episode is linked in the comments. ⬇️
Introducing Real Time, a new podcast from ClickHouse. In our first episode, Aaron Katz (@ceo_clickhouse) sits down with Benchmark's Peter Fenton on backing founders, building open-source businesses, and the AI supercycle.
A few highlights:
- You can't fake open-source adoption. But how do you turn it into a business? Peter on why ClickHouse's cloud aligned value creation with value capture.
- On the scale of the AI opportunity: “In 10 years, we’ll look back and dream about being here.” His advice to founders: stay curious, take risks, and make failure cheap.
- Benchmark's new playbook: four to six big, decade-long bets on generational founders.
- Peter flew Aaron to Big Sur himself and landed the helicopter on the roof of a house. Aaron took an Uber home.
𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒:
0:00 Introduction
1:32 Nearly 30 years of backing founders
6:18 What did Peter see in ClickHouse
10:10 Turning open-source adoption into a business
14:27 Benchmark and Uber
21:51 Helicopters and an eight-hour ski trip
25:21 Silicon Valley ambition and a global engineering team
32:32 Why Benchmark is evolving its investment approach
40:58 AI’s long-term potential and the financial cycle
45:55 Curiosity, risk-taking, and making failure cheap
The first episode is linked in the comments. ⬇️
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