Ethan Kurzweil on Venture Investing in the Post-ZIRP, AI Era
Odd Lots
Bloomberg
4.4 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 6 December 2024
⏱️ 51 minutes
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Summary
In the 2010s, we saw an incredible boom in the venture capital space, fueled in part by cheap capital as well as cheap compute. Fast forward to today, and many things look very different. We're not in the ZIRP era anymore. And computing power has become a scarce resource, particularly when it comes to AI. So how do things look different today from the perspective of a veteran venture capitalist? In this episode, recorded live in San Francisco in November, we speak to Ethan Kurzweil, a founder and managing partner at the new VC firm Chemistry. Ethan spent years at Bessemer Venture Partners, where he was involved in numerous software deals. He talks to us about his strategy for the new fund, the case for starting a small firm, what technologies excite him most right now, and the general landscape for seed-stage investing.
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| 0:30.1 | I'm Rachel Fulman, and I host a podcast from Popular Science called The Weirdest Thing I Learn |
| 0:35.0 | this week. |
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| 1:08.5 | Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News |
| 1:13.2 | Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthal. And I'm Tracy |
| 1:31.5 | Alloway. OddLod's listeners, you are going to be listening to a special recording of the podcast, |
| 1:37.9 | one that we recorded live in San Francisco. Yep, that's right. This was a conversation that we had |
| 1:43.9 | at the San Francisco MoMA on November 20th. It was an event sponsored by principal asset management. And our guest is Ethan Kurzweil, the founder and managing partner of Chemistry VC. Yep, we talked about all things tech, software investing, how investing today is different than it was, say, in 2014 when rates are at zero. We obviously talked about AI and how that changes the game of software investing. Take a listen. |
| 2:14.1 | Thrilled to be here with the perfect guest, Ethan Kurzweil, as his new fund chemistry. |
| 2:20.3 | It basically launched like three weeks ago or something like that. |
| 2:24.3 | And prior to that, 16 years at Bessemer, so literally the perfect guest to talk about, you know, VCs, the landscape changing over time or something like that. Well, thanks |
... |
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