Person
Sales executive and startup advisor who previously served as chief revenue officer of Snowflake.
Benchmark's partners told TechCrunch Disrupt that AI is straining venture capital's rule against backing direct rivals. Founders with board observers or investors in rival startups now have reason to decide what each of them can see.
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Factory CEO Matan Grinberg says he fired advisor Chris Degnan, who two hours later announced he is chief revenue officer at $48 billion rival Cognition. Founders whose investors also back their rivals carry the same exposure on their own boards.
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Vinod Khosla publicly sided with Cognition against Factory AI, which his firm helped fund in a $200 million round last month. For founders who share investors with a rival, the episode argues for writing observer access and investor conflicts into the contract.
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Factory CEO Matan Grinberg says board observer Chris Degnan passed confidential information to Cognition, the $48 billion rival that made him revenue chief. Degnan denies it, and the accounts published so far do not establish that anything changed hands.
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Factory CEO Matan Grinberg says he terminated board observer Chris Degnan for weeks of talks with Cognition, the $48 billion rival hiring him as revenue chief. Degnan and Cognition deny wrongdoing, so the fight turns on when an observer owes a board notice of talks with a rival.
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