Bill Gurley built an unusually well-rounded technical and financial foundation before venture capital - a computer science degree from the University of Florida, engineering roles at Compaq and AMD, and years as a Wall Street technology analyst covering the Amazon IPO - before joining Benchmark as a General Partner in 1999. He became one of the most influential investors of the 2010s through early, high-conviction bets on Uber, Zillow, GrubHub, OpenTable, and Nextdoor, and built a parallel reputation as a widely read commentator through his blog, Above the Crowd. He stepped down from Uber's board in 2017 amid the company's leadership crisis and has since relocated to Austin, Texas, while remaining active on several portfolio company boards.
Education
B.S. Computer Science, University of Florida (1989)
M.B.A., University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business (1993)