Benchmark’s Lawyer Joins Firm as Partner –

MENLO PARK, Calif. – Steve Spurlock, an attorney for Benchmark Capital for the last four years, was hired as a partner in July to help with the firm’s daily operations.

Unlike Benchmark’s six other partners, Spurlock will not work on investments in portfolio companies but instead serve as an “operating partner,” managing the firm’s non-investment business and assisting with fund raising.

“There’s so much activity going on that we decided we wanted to bring someone in to run our firm,” said Partner Andy Rachleff, adding that Benchmark chose Spurlock for his sound judgment and leadership skills.

Benchmark, which spun out of Technology Venture Investors and Merrill, Pickard, Anderson & Eyre in 1995, is an early-stage firm focusing on technology, including e-commerce, networking equipment, software, telecommunications services, consumer devices, application services and semiconductors.

In addition to Spurlock and Radchleff, the firm’s partner are David Beirne, Bruce Dunlevie, Bill Gurley, Kevin Harvey and Bob Kagle.

Spurlock was a partner and founder of the four-year-old law firm of Gunderson Dettmer, and prior to that, he was an attorney at Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison focusing on venture capital firms, their portfolio companies and investment bankers, he said.

Gunderson Dettmer will continue representing Benchmark, Rachleff said.

“I’d worked with Benchmark ever since they started the firm and enjoyed the relationship, and it seemed like a good opportunity to expand it,” Spurlock said of his choice to join the firm.

Spurlock is a co-author of Formation and Financing of Emerging Growth Companies, which was published in 1997.