Brian Smiga: Hi, this is Brian Smiga at Driving Alpha. I’m a partner at Alpha Partners. We are the early VC’s Growth Fund. We help early-stage VCs capitalize on their best companies at Series B and later rounds. And as a true partner, we share the caring.
With me today is one of our earliest relationships in the VC world and a real pioneer in tech—Eric Benhamou of Benhamou Global Ventures. Welcome, Eric.
Eric Benhamou: Thanks, Brian.
Brian Smiga: Yeah. Well, I hope the audience won’t hold it against us, but I think I met you in person back at the launch of Palm—U.S. Robotics, as it was then called—and I was a leading Palm developer. It didn’t make me a lot of money, but it was a ton of fun pioneering on PDAs and mobile computing in those days.
Eric Benhamou: Yeah, this brings us back a generation.
Brian Smiga: It does. But you were a fantastic CEO at 3Com, and from what I read, you expanded revenue 25-fold and brought it onto the Fortune 500. So you must have learned some lessons in that enterprise CEO role that you’re applying today as you invest in companies you call Enterprise 5.0.
Could you unpack that term for us and then get into how what you learned 20 years ago is involved and applied in your playbook to get alpha?
Eric Benhamou: Well, Enterprise 5.0 is a phrase that we coined at BGV to designate, with a shorthand, a new generation of companies focused on transforming the enterprise using AI as a transformative ingredient to deliver complete solutions.
Most of these solutions are aligned with a particular vertical industry that they’re trying to transform. A few are focused on transforming a function within an enterprise. But the important thing is that, first of all, AI is not just a veneer. It is absolutely essential—a core ingredient of the solution.
And second is the word “solution”—as opposed to a component. There are some very good venture firms who will fund the best-in-class component of a solution. We don’t particularly like that. We prefer to back companies that will sell a complete solution that can deliver transformative, tangible outcomes within an enterprise.
This is the overall thesis of the firm and certainly the focus of the last couple of funds we’ve raised. Enterprise 5.0 combines all flavors of AI: the discriminative AI of 2010 to 2015–16, and the transformer-based generative AI we’re more familiar with today.
Brian Smiga: So Enterprise 4.0 to 5.0—can you unpack that for the layperson on the call?
Eric Benhamou: The big change between 4.0 and 5.0 is the arrival of generative AI and all the consequences it brought. The important idea is that these AI solutions are there to augment human capabilities. The human is very much involved in these solutions, and these solutions expand the human’s reach and impact—freeing them from tedious tasks and enabling them to perform more strategic work.
If we go back to Enterprise 4.0, it was about using AI to detect interesting patterns—like machine vision in various industries. That was transformative, but not to the same degree as 5.0, which includes generative AI.
Brian Smiga: That’s fantastic, and thank you—so clear. Could you cite one company and its full solution, where AI plays an essential role? Not as a component, but as a true ingredient?
Eric Benhamou: I’ll give the example of a company where I led the investment for BGV and also serve on the board. The company is called Evinced.
Evinced focuses on a very specific problem that application developers face—accessibility. In the physical world, we understand accessibility to mean things like ramps for wheelchairs. In the digital world, accessibility means ensuring, for example, that users who are visually impaired can navigate a screen using the tab key.
You have to make sure that every field in your interface is accessible to visually impaired users. This applies to both web and mobile applications. And it’s not just a nice-to-have—it’s a must-have. If you don’t comply, you risk six- or seven-figure fines. All banks, insurance companies, and large consumer-facing companies have to pay close attention to this.
The challenge is that as applications become more complex and update more frequently, the cost of manual accessibility testing skyrockets. What Evinced has done is build tools that not only detect accessibility flaws but also fix them automatically.
The first piece helps compliance teams detect problems before release. The second piece helps development teams fix those problems—or even avoid making them in the first place.
Evinced combines these tools into a complete platform for accessibility. Because of their architecture and timing—they were born during the rise of generative AI—they’ve been able to take advantage of the latest advances and are performing extremely well in the market.
Brian Smiga: Well, that sounds essential for so many regulated and large industries. I suppose they’re the leader and the first to be able to do the accessibility work for enterprises—is that right?
Eric Benhamou: Yes, they are. They’ve received a lot of accolades. They have a leading share and are enjoying a very rapid rate of growth.
Brian Smiga: Amazing.
Eric Benhamou: A very typical example of an Enterprise 5.0 company. This one happens to focus on a specific function within an enterprise. I could have given you other examples that are more vertically oriented, but this gives you a sense of why we’re excited about Enterprise 5.0 companies.
Brian Smiga: Now, coming back to your experience as a Fortune 500 CEO of 3Com, a tech company—when you’re mentoring and coaching these companies, I suppose you bring real experience on the whole buying journey, the whole selling journey of solutions like the one we just mentioned.
Can you tease out some of the things that you feel are your secret playbook for coaching companies on selling into the enterprise?
Eric Benhamou: Sure. In general, the majority of our portfolio companies tend to sell directly to enterprises. That’s not their only sales motion, but if you sell directly to the enterprise at a strategic level, it’s very important that you convey not just the value of the product today, but also the value of your vision and roadmap—your ability to become a strategic partner over time.
There’s a strategic discussion you have to unlock, and that’s the key to building a lasting relationship that creates the kind of returns you expect from enterprise selling.
I always encourage my portfolio companies to focus beyond the product of today, to be able to have a conversation not just about solving today’s problem but about what’s coming next—what’s around the corner—and why the company will become even more strategically important. That’s what enables you to elevate the conversation to a very senior level within the enterprise IT organization.
It’s something I always try to get founders to make room for. I know that, in general, founders have to live in the moment. They have to make sure they bring in revenue today to survive another quarter. But they also have to keep in mind the long-term vision and the roadmap that leads there.
Brian Smiga: That’s great. So, it’s a consultative sale—where the founder and the team come in as experts, say about accessibility, and share what’s happening next and what’s in their roadmap. That’s great.
Another aspect of your fund is that it’s global—truly global. Perhaps 60% or more of your capital is deployed outside of Silicon Valley, where you’re based in Menlo Park. I’ve been to your beautiful office.
I wonder—do you have a thesis around that? Is there an edge to having the majority of your capital outside Silicon Valley?
Eric Benhamou: Yes. It didn’t happen by accident. It probably happened because we experienced what it’s like to be cross-border founders. Most of the members of my team have a similar experience to mine.
I came to Silicon Valley about 50 years ago as a graduate student. I had an extra level of motivation to prove myself, given the opportunity I was given to go to grad school at a place like Stanford. And I believe that extra degree of motivation—that chip on my shoulder, so to speak—is something you’ll find with most immigrant entrepreneurs. They have an extra level of grit, which is essential when you’re building a company.
In addition to this, particularly in the age of AI, there’s this interesting dichotomy: the biggest market in the world remains the U.S., so you have a concentration of deployment and market size. But the distribution of talent is very broad geographically. You can find top-level talent not just in Silicon Valley or the U.S., but all over the world—and at a small fraction of the cost you’d pay here in Silicon Valley.
So, there’s a labor arbitrage for top AI talent that’s never been as pronounced.
It follows from this that the best way to take advantage of the situation is to structure your companies so that you have a talent recruitment advantage in your country or region of origin, and place all of your market-facing resources close to your biggest market—in the U.S.
You create a cross-border company. Most of your R&D is where you come from, where you can build a strong team at low cost, and all of your go-to-market operations are in the U.S. For all practical purposes, you look like a U.S. company—but with a sustainable cost advantage.
That’s the underpinning of the cross-border rationale.
Now, to take advantage of it, you have to viscerally understand how it works. And you have to have feet on the ground in the different regions where entrepreneurs may emerge. So, with this in mind, we have an office in Israel, one in Paris, an incubator in Bangalore, and in the future, we expect to have a presence in Japan as well. That defines the major cross-border corridors where we feel we can contribute.
Brian Smiga: That’s great. You know, I see in the U.S. the rise of emerging managers who focus exclusively on immigrant founders—funds like One Way and Unshackled. You may know of others. I think the thesis around immigrants is compelling.
First, to even get the opportunity to attend graduate school at a place like Stanford means there was already a high bar. So there’s a positive selection bias. Then there’s that grit—that attitude that failure is not an option, that intense determination. I think that really adds something, and your life is certainly an exemplar of that.
Thanks for sharing. I wonder if you have a sense of where the heat map is. I mean, you’re in Paris, Tel Aviv, Bangalore, and soon Japan. Why those locations? What’s the logic behind that heat map?
Eric Benhamou: Israel, as you know, is also known as the “Startup Nation.” They pioneered the cross-border model out of necessity because they didn’t have a large enough domestic market to support big businesses. So from the very beginning, Israeli founders were focused on global markets, particularly the U.S.
They had to figure out how to make the cross-border structure work. That model was pioneered in the 1990s, and it proved successful—so it was eventually imitated by other countries.
Now, if you’re an entrepreneur coming out of Europe, you probably have a decent domestic market size. So it can be tempting to just focus locally. But if you only do that, it becomes much harder to scale into the U.S. later—you’re just too comfortable in your home market.
As you know, Brian, if a company doesn’t address a big enough market, it won’t generate the kind of VC returns we all expect.
Today, we’re at a moment when entrepreneurial thinking has gone global. The tools for collaboration across geographies have improved so much that it’s now more practical than ever to build cross-border companies. But that doesn’t mean everyone can—or should—do it.
There’s a lot of practical knowledge required to be a good cross-border entrepreneur or investor. For example, when a founder tells us from 5,000 miles away, “I’m thinking of relocating to the U.S. to build a sales team,” they often don’t know what questions to ask. They don’t know where to start, what kind of people to hire, how fast to scale. They don’t know about relocating their family, where to live, how to find schools for their kids.
All these things have to be figured out quickly. Having been through this so many times before, I think we’re in a better position to help these entrepreneurs than most firms. So it’s become a specialty of ours.
Brian Smiga: So we all know about Israel as Startup Nation—and to a degree, Bangalore. In fact, Alpha is starting an Alpha Israel Fund, because it’s such a fertile market for growth capital investing into early-stage funds. We’re really excited about it, and I think you’re going to meet our partner there later this month.
But tell us more about Paris and Japan. They’re obviously important in your strategy, but I think my knowledge—and probably the audience’s—is a little limited. Can you unpack those?
Eric Benhamou: Sure. Paris is close to home for me. I did my undergraduate studies there, so I know the place a bit better. And there’s been a real transformation in the French entrepreneurial ecosystem over the last 20 years.
Interestingly, the word “entrepreneur” is French in origin, but until 20 years ago, it didn’t mean much in France.
Venture capital started to become a real force in France about two decades ago. Capital formation accelerated, and some of that was thanks to public-private initiatives like Bpifrance, the sovereign wealth fund of France, which helped bootstrap a lot of local venture funds.
That made it much more feasible to start companies in France. There were also structural reforms that helped. But more importantly for today’s conversation—France has always had a very strong tradition in mathematics. They teach math extremely well.
I was good at math not because I was an exceptional student, but because I had exceptional teachers. That tradition means France is now home to a lot of AI talent.
And that’s why, for example, the only competitive frontier model company in Europe today is Mistral—and it’s based in Paris.
So yes, there are deep reasons why France has become a quality ecosystem for entrepreneurship, especially for AI-driven companies.
Now Japan is a different story—and a more recent one. For the first 20 years of the 21st century, Japan was largely absent from the global innovation scene. They had ceded that role. China was far more active.
But as China has withdrawn somewhat in the last five to six years—largely due to geopolitical tensions—Japan has begun to step forward into the vacuum.
That shift coincided with Shinzo Abe’s leadership. He was a forward-looking Prime Minister who encouraged Japanese corporations to innovate, to invest in entrepreneurship, and to move away from traditional industrial models.
Around the time of COVID, we began to sense that Japan was on the verge of breaking out.
We saw it through more frequent visits from Japanese academics and entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley. We saw Japanese universities partnering with American institutions on AI research. We saw large Japanese corporates becoming LPs in U.S. funds and launching their own CVCs.
All these signals started coming together. And we took notice.
Two funds ago, Japanese LPs represented less than 5% of our capital. In our last fund, it was closer to 10–12%. In our current fund, it will be more than 20%.
Brian Smiga: Amazing. And what a great insight. I think you’re probably a first mover in working so closely with Japanese entrepreneurs.
And who knew “entrepreneur” is a French word, right? We’ve been saying it like mad around the globe and online, but I don’t think most people realize the etymology—it comes from French.
That’s fantastic. It means “to make something,” “to be a maker,” “to do something amazing.”
So, on top of this global effort—where you find talent arbitrage and cross-border investing—what stands out is that even with relatively modest-sized funds, you’ve stayed nimble. You’ve really pursued your art—your craft—in choosing and building companies.
You’ve also layered on a network. And I think this whole area of smart networks—expert networks, BURG networks—is going to explode with the addition of AI. It’s part of this sea change where resources are distributed, but founders can stay “glocal” while addressing larger markets.
How do you play that game? Because I think you play it very well—quietly, but very successfully. Can you share your playbook for building a network, whether it’s of CTOs or another enterprise function? And how do you attract and keep those folks interested in your companies and in your work?
Eric Benhamou: Our advisors play a vital role in our success.
Given our investment style—which is very active—it makes perfect sense to have advisors. Because for us to be good advisors to our companies, we need to have good advisors ourselves.
We didn’t come to venture capital from business school. We came from long careers as operating executives. You mentioned some of the work I did before—leading 3Com, Palm, and other companies. All of my partners have a similar mix of backgrounds: first operators, then entrepreneurs, and then investors.
As a result, we built a lot of relationships during our operating years, and we now leverage those by bringing advisors into strategic conversations.
They fall into three main groups.
The first is highly technical advisors—people who have had successful careers as CTOs, CIOs, or CISOs. We rely on them to test the product strategy and roadmap of our portfolio companies.
The second group is more sales- and marketing-oriented. They help improve go-to-market strategies, competitive positioning, pricing, and so on.
The third group is newer. It’s an AI advisory group—people who live and breathe AI and work in some of the most prominent AI companies. They help us keep track of what’s happening in this incredibly fast-moving space.
These three groups all have different roles in our decision-making and coaching processes.
Often, we’ll host sessions where we bring a portfolio company in front of, say, our technology advisor circle. And we tell the founders, “This is going to be friendly, but it may be uncomfortable. For the next two hours, you’re going to talk about your plans. You can speak in full confidence. You’ll be questioned, you’ll be pushed back—but you’ll probably learn more in this session than you have in your last four board meetings.”
These people have deep domain knowledge. They won’t hesitate to call out mistakes. And afterward, the founder can choose which advice to take or not.
The trick is: for these advisors to remain engaged, they need to get something in return.
In most cases, what they get is the opportunity to engage with cutting-edge founders and stay connected to the state of the art in innovation. These are extremely stimulating conversations. There’s no bureaucracy—just a fast track to the real stuff. And they love that.
They also enjoy the banter and exchange with each other—sometimes even a little competition. That adds to the energy of the conversation.
For many, that intellectual stimulation is enough.
But quite often, they’ll connect deeply with a company and want to stay involved. In those cases, the CEO will reach out after the session and say, “I really liked your input—how would you like to be a formal advisor to our company?”
And they work out an arrangement. The advisor gets some equity, maybe some cash, and they build a sustained relationship—not just a one-off conversation.
There’s also a small group of advisors who may not go deep with any one company but spend a lot of time with us. We pay them a modest stipend and give them a little piece of carry across our fund. That way, they have a financial incentive to help us succeed—and they share in the upside.
So, by using a mix of tools—advisory sessions, equity, carry—we create real alignment. And that’s a big part of how we compete.
Founders see that we bring more than capital. We bring knowledge, experience, and strategic advice. And it’s not just one meeting—it’s sustained over the life of the engagement.
Brian Smiga: Amazing. So if I had an AI expert and I thought they’d be a great addition to your advisor network, how often might they meet with your companies, and for how long? You mentioned two-hour sessions—does that happen once a month? Six times a year?
Eric Benhamou: I’d say six times a year—every other month is the natural cadence.
That way, even if they have a full-time job, they can fit it into their schedule. It’s not a huge time commitment, and it actually enriches their professional life. So it works both ways.
Brian Smiga: I think that’s a great note to end on. I really appreciate how you’re this quiet convener of experts for your companies. You’ve built almost a family that helps your founders. And there’s so much value in it for everyone involved.
It’s truly a center of excellence you’re building at Benhamou Global Ventures.
Thanks for sharing that. I’m sure many of the VC funds listening to this podcast will want to borrow that playbook.
Eric, we’ll sign off here. Thanks so much—it was really great.
