Gus Fuldner

Higher One has always had higher education at its core. When it was founded in 2000, Higher One’s initial goal was to create an electronic process that would allow students to get their financial aid refunds faster and save colleges time and money. That single purpose has evolved into a comprehensive suite of products and services that aim to improve the lives and promote the success of more than 13 million students across the country.

Benchmark is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in AI, open-source, marketplaces, infrastructure and enterprise software. Based in San Francisco and Woodside, Benchmark works alongside entrepreneurs building startups into transformational companies. Benchmarks $425 million fund is comprised of equal general partners who take board seats and a hands-on approach to every entrepreneur and company we back, with no junior investment staff. Benchmark’s current portfolio of early-stage venture investments includes AI-native companies such as Cerebras, Cursor, DeepCogito, Fireworks AI, Greptile, HeyGen, LangChain, Legora, Manus AI, Reducto and Sema4.ai; public companies such as Asana, Amplitude, Confluent, Elastic, New Relic, Nextdoor, Stitch Fix, Snap, and Uber; and Fortune 500 companies from Juniper to eBay to Red Hat.

Higher One has always had higher education at its core. When it was founded in 2000, Higher One’s initial goal was to create an electronic process that would allow students to get their financial aid refunds faster and save colleges time and money. That single purpose has evolved into a comprehensive suite of products and services that aim to improve the lives and promote the success of more than 13 million students across the country.