Even Benchmark thinks AI is eroding the venture pact against backing rivals
Benchmark has always been the firm that picks one horse. Small partnership, concentrated bets, famously wrote the early checks into eBay and Uber and told other founders to get lost. So when a firm like that says the old rule against backing rivals is crumbling, it's worth taking seriously, not as hand-wringing but as a practical admission.
AI is doing two things at once here. It's compressing the time between a startup's founding and its first real traction, which makes exclusivity feel like a luxury. And it's making the definition of a competitor genuinely fuzzy. Two companies selling different things can both claim to be AI companies, but they're not necessarily rivals. That grey zone gives firms cover to invest broadly, and honestly, the old pact was always more of a norm than a law anyway.
I'd want to know how Benchmark actually changes its behavior. Are they going to stop worrying about board conflicts? Will they disclose more to founders? The pact existed to protect information and trust, and that need doesn't disappear just because the market got faster. I suspect the real shift is that founders now expect their investors to be in several boats, and that changes the pitch from we choose you to we're hedging.