‘The Technology Opportunity of Our Lifetimes’: Bessemer's Byron Deeter
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Welcome to Goldman Sachs exchanges, great investors. I'm Ken Hirsch, co chairman of the global technology, media, and telecom group and head of venture capital coverage within Goldman Sachs' global banking and markets business. Today, I have the great pleasure of speaking with Byron Dieter, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. Bessemer is one of the largest and best known venture capital funds out there, and Byron himself has backed 26 companies that are currently valued over a billion dollars. Byron and I will discuss the venture landscape and the most promising developments in AI and the so
Always fun to be with you, Ken.
Thank you. So before you were a venture investor at Bessemer working with CEOs of promising companies, you were a CEO of a promising software company yourself working with the venture investors at Bessemer. Tell us about Trigo Technologies. What was the genesis of that company?
I got the bug for tech. So I was actually working at TA Associates at the time back when they did venture. They've moved into private equity more now. Mhmm. But saw the market opportunity, went looking to invest in a business that was addressing the supply side of the e commerce and marketplace wave, didn't find a company to invest in, and so decided to start it instead, and was fortunate to get matched up with the Bessemer team as our investors at the time, Built the business through the dot com crash and the early craziness of the early two thousands, and we're fortunate to build it up, got
And what motivated your decision to join Bessemer yourself?
I saw their product on the other side. As a CEO and founder, we were fortunate to work with a number of great investors, but Bessemer was the firm that I thought was most authentic to the art of serving an entrepreneur in our team. They were the ones that very sincerely I'd call when I was driving home from work, and things went very badly that day. Customers canceled us. Employees were trying to resign, or we had issues. The And other investors were the ones I called when we had good news, when I felt like I needed to put on a show or perform or share things. And we we I mean, we had many of
So let's pause and talk about Bessemer for a moment. The firm goes back more than a hundred years tracing its roots to a cofounder of Carnegie Steel. Very much so. So not as old as Goldman Sachs, but close. Many venture firms will tell you about their most successful investments, and Bessemer has many. But one thing that caught our eye on your website is the anti portfolio. Yep. And I know you've talked about this a lot publicly, but it's a list of massively successful companies that you had the opportunity to invest in and missed out. And I love the way you say it. I think you say we've had a
Yes. Largely so. Obviously, we've had a lot of success, and so the portfolio page is one we're very proud of. But we like to have fun, and we're constantly in learning mode, the anti portfolio is that. It's not the companies that we've invested in and have failed. Those are shared errors. We also try to learn from those. But this is very much what were the big opportunities that could have been. And in our business, the crimes of omission are much greater than the crimes of commission. Yeah. And the deals that we miss and the opportunities to work with transformative companies are truly the th
Yeah. Two incredible companies. Do you often go back to investments you missed and invest in a later round? We do. And, actually, that's one
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