Bill Gurley Has Made a Fortune From VC Investing

To date, Bill Gurley has been one of the most polarizing figures in the investing world, and not just for being very tall at 6’9, but rather because he has been a part of so many historic IPOs. He’s known for his initial investment in Uber, but the analyst invested in many global companies before they went public. What is Bill Gurley’s net worth?

In 2021, Gurley publicly admitted that he has a personal position in Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency behind Bitcoin. The news came as a surprise since the investor is mainly involved with stocks, but Gurley expressed that the Ethereum community won him over even though he was late getting involved with crypto.

One of the reasons why Gurley has so much success in analyzing tech companies was because he was first a computer engineer. He has an undergraduate degree in computer engineering from the University of Florida, as well as a Master’s Degree in Finance from Texas McCombs School of Business.

Gurley used a combination of his finance and engineering skills in his venture capital investing career. Before becoming heavily involved in investing, he was first a design engineer at Compaq Computer. He designed the company’s first-ever multi-processor server. Compaq Computer was acquired by HP (Hewlett-Packard) in 2002.

After having success as an engineer, Gurley took his talents to Wall Street, where he became a popular figure as a research analyst. The Texas native specialized in analyzing computer hardware and software companies such as Dell, Microsoft, and Amazon. His institutional research skills were widely recognized. Gurley was named to the Institutional Investor All-American Research Team in 1995 and 1996.

Gurley was the lead analyst in Amazon’s IPO. Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world. The analyst spent four years in Wall Street doing various research roles before taking on the venture capital industry.

Gurley has been a General Partner at Benchmark Capital, a venture capital firm, for over 15 years. With his tenure at Benchmark, he has been an analyst and partner for many companies we know today. Benchmark and Gurley have invested in the companies in their startup phases. The companies include GrubHub, Zillow, and Instawork.

Gurley has a net worth of approximately $1 billion. After making an $11 million investment in Uber in 2011 before its IPO, the investor is expected to have $1 billion worth of the company’s shares. Gurley made Forbes’ 2021 Midas List for Top Tech Investors of 2021.