Bill Gurley

Bill Gurley has spent over 20 years as a General Partner at Benchmark, joining in 1999. Before entering the venture capital business, Bill spent four years on Wall Street as a top-ranked research analyst, including three years at CS First Boston.

Over his venture career, he has worked with such companies as GrubHub, Nextdoor, OpenTable, Stitch Fix, Uber, and Zillow.

Education: BS in computer science from the University of Florida, and an MBA from the University of Texas. He is also a Chartered Financial Analyst. Bill is a board trustee at the Santa Fe Institute, a research and education center focused on the study and understanding of complex adaptive systems.

Dr. Van Truskett

Dr. Truskett is dually appointed at The University of Texas at Austin as the Executive Director of the Texas Innovation Center by the Cockrell School of Engineering and the Director of Technology Innovation Development by Discovery to Impact.

She brings her expertise in innovation and entrepreneurship to foster and enable the commercialization of university-based discoveries and young startup companies to succeed. She received her Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University and her B.S. from The University of Texas at Austin, both degrees in chemical engineering.