The No-Agenda Dinner
A ritual dinner without an agenda that keeps a partnership curious, equal, and connected.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 80%
Benchmark's weekly partner dinner has no agenda, no minutes, and no assigned topics. Modeled after Benjamin Franklin's rotating dinner clubs, the ritual was built to counteract a venture firm's tendency to become 'a collection of habits' that drift away from curiosity. A custom expandable table — designed specifically to avoid both the hierarchy of a rectangular table and the atomization of a circular one — forces a single, non-hierarchical conversation everyone can hear, so no side deals or private lobbying can happen. Outside guests are regularly invited into the same open structure. The mechanism is simple: remove the agenda, remove the head of the table, and let roving curiosity surface whatever matters most that week, whether that's a portfolio crisis or a tangent about psychedelics.
Origin
Founding partner Bill Gurley read a biography of Benjamin Franklin, who hosted regular themed dinners, and challenged Peter Fenton to bring the practice into Benchmark; the first experimental dinner in 2006 with outside guests convinced the partners to make it permanent.
Core principles
- 01Structure should express purpose, not hierarchy
- 02Habits, repeated, become culture
- 03One conversation for the whole group beats side conversations
- 04Curiosity needs unstructured time to surface
- 05Rituals should be playful, not transactional
How to run it
- 1
Remove the agenda
Enter the dinner/meeting with zero pre-set topics; let the conversation go wherever curiosity leads instead of working through a list.
Pro tip If you catch yourself scripting talking points beforehand, you've already broken the format.
- 2
Design the room to kill hierarchy
Choose a table/format that prevents a 'head of the table' dynamic (rectangular) or fragmenting into side chats (circular); Benchmark commissioned a custom expandable table for this purpose.
Watch out A wrong table shape can quietly re-introduce the power structure you're trying to remove.
- 3
Enforce one conversation
Make sure everyone can hear everyone else at all times so no sidebar lobbying or pre-selling can happen.
- 4
Invite outside voices periodically
Bring in guests (founders, execs, outside experts) so the group's curiosity gets fresh input, not just internal echo.
Pro tip Give the guest the 'spotlight of attention' — it's often the most valuable gift you can offer.
- 5
Repeat the ritual on a fixed cadence
Hold the unstructured session regularly (weekly/monthly) so it becomes a genuine habit rather than a one-off event.
- 6
Let hard topics surface naturally
Trust that when something serious needs discussing (a bad quarter, a founder crisis), it will emerge organically rather than needing to be scheduled.
Watch out Don't panic if the 'real' topic doesn't come up right away — forcing it defeats the purpose.
In the wild
Bill and Peter tested the format with a big year-end dinner and four outside guests, including Caterina Fake and Martin Micko. Alcohol was served, there was no agenda, and 'time stood still.' Bill called Peter in the car afterward, obsessed with refining the concept.
→ The experiment became a permanent weekly ritual that now anchors Benchmark's partner culture.
Benchmark has flown its custom table-anchored dinner practice to guests like Jeff Bezos, Dylan Field, and Toby Lütke, giving them the full spotlight in a room with no hierarchy or agenda.
→ Guests reportedly leave 'swept off their feet,' reinforcing why the ritual exists: to serve exceptional people.
Common mistakes
Bringing a rectangular 'boardroom' table
A rectangular table has a built-in head-of-table power structure that recreates the hierarchy the dinner is meant to dissolve.
Letting side conversations happen
Sidebar chats let information and influence flow unevenly, undermining the single-conversation trust the format depends on.
Treating it as a status meeting
Sneaking in an agenda or forcing a topic list turns the dinner back into a transactional meeting and kills the curiosity it's designed to protect.
Is it for you?
Best for
Small, tight-knit leadership teams or partnerships that want to preserve equality and curiosity as they scale.
Not ideal for
Large teams needing efficient status updates or fast operational decision-making.
From the transcript
“the idea is people are coming out beaming smiling after dinner as opposed to um you know this sort of rigid structure of a typical…”
“firms are full of strategies that aren't coupled to reality and if you look at a venture firm eventually it's just a collection of habits”
“you can't have a sidebar conversation in this table because everybody else can hear it and so it's all one conversation”
From the episode
Benchmark Part II: The Dinner