Bigger target than I was expecting for the AI rollups.

I’m really excited to share that I’m joining Benchmark. The past two years as a full time investor have been the most rewarding of my career. I really love venture capital, which is not something I ever imagined I’d say when I was kid, but here we are. I love new ideas and being part of a team with a mission. I love getting to be there for people who are struggling towards goals they really care about. I love learning from people who are better CEOs than I ever was. I love the texture of the work, the competition, and the way the job lets you invest in relationships. I love it so much that I’ve even turned into a little venture nerd with a podcast who goes around harassing great investors and founders, trying to learn as much as I can as fast as possible. I’ve certainly learned what I care most about, and what kind of investor I want to be. What I’ve realized is that I love investing at the Series A, when there’s enough going on that an investor can be useful but not so much that you can’t have an impact. I think there are many amazing ways to practice venture, it’s just the way that most speaks to me. And as I came to realize that, I started to think about how to best set myself up to do that craft as well as possible. It became clear to me there is nowhere better for this than Benchmark; the way they’re structured, their principles, their overall approach to investing, and their track record all create an environment that I believe will let me do my best work as an investor and help founders the most I possibly can. As I’ve gotten to know the team at Benchmark I’ve come to admire so much about each of them. Peter is truly playing his own game. A lot of what he says sounds like poetry at first, but as the ideas roll around in your head for a while you realize how much depth they have. I first heard about Eric many years ago from my friend Saji at Benchling while I was building Lattice, who described him as the most amazing board member and attributed him with a lot of the company’s success. That’s the kind of partner I want to be one day. Chetan is brilliant and truly thinks for himself; I’ve realized over time what a courageous guy he is. And then there’s my friend Ev, whose skills complement mine and who I just love to be around. I can’t wait to have him as a partner in crime. When given the chance to work with this group I just knew I had to go. One of my motivating north stars with Alt Capital was to build a firm and be a partner that I most would have wanted as an entrepreneur. Although I haven’t gotten everywhere I want to be yet, I’m proud of the work so far. And now I’m excited to build on that work at Benchmark, where I hope to increase my rate of learning and get armed with the power of a partnership so I can help founders reach their dreams even more. Thank you to the companies who’ve let me invest with them at Alt Cap. I’m keeping all my board seats and supporting everyone just the same as before. Thank you to the LPs who’ve backed me as well. I am so excited about the portfolio we have and am grateful I can stick with all those companies. And finally thank you to my teammates, Bala, Vivek, and Nate. Bala took a bet on me and started investing with me before it was remotely obvious, and we’ve been able to grow so much figuring it out together as investors. I credit Nate with helping Alt start feeling like a firm. He joined us from First Round over a year ago and made everything run smoothly. And while Vivek joined just a little while ago, even in the short time we’ve worked together he’s had a meaningful impact on how we think and invest. They’re all joining Benchmark with me. So pumped for this chapter.

Thomas Peterffy is the 23rd richest person in the world, a chief architect of modern finance, and has one of the most remarkable stories in business. Yet he remains virtually unknown. Born in a Budapest basement during a Soviet bombing raid in September 1944, his father left when he was 2, his mother couldn't hold a job, and for the first 20 years of his life, Peterffy lived in fear of starvation as an ‘enemy of the communist state.’ At 21, he escaped to New York. Within a year, he was drafted to fight in Vietnam. A sympathetic NYU dean saved him from the war. A chance encounter with programming opened the door to everything else. Over the next three decades, he transformed Wall Street's chaotic trading floors into computerized markets that worked on math. He invented options pricing theory before the Black-Scholes model, a handheld computer before the iPad, and the first automated trading system in Wall Street history. His firm, Timber Hill, became the largest options market maker on Earth. In 1993, he launched Interactive Brokers to give ordinary investors the same technological advantages he had built for himself. That business is now worth over $100 billion, and Peterffy owns 70% of it. It operates with higher profit margins than Visa while offering some of the lowest trading costs in the industry. The man who grew up where markets were forbidden devoted the rest of his life to building systems so everyone could participate in capitalism. At 80, he's still working on that mission every day. Thomas Peterffy is one of the most important people in finance, and you can learn about him in @domcooke's latest profile.