SAN FRANCISCO: The lauded Silicon Valley venture capitalist Bill Gurley who – along with his partners at Benchmark – was an early investor in companies such as Instagram, Uber, Stitch Fix and Snap Inc, spent a recent afternoon scrolling through the neighbourhood social network, Nextdoor, studying the ways people use the service.
As a 51-year-old man, Gurley is not often the target demographic of the companies in which his firm invests. Snapchat is for teens. Instagram is for millennials. Stitch Fix is women's fashion. "Although they've just launched men's," he said, hunched over his laptop, "I can't use the product. I'm too unusually tall." (Gurley is 6 feet, 9 inches.)