Ethan Kurzweil

Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Chemistry · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

investorfounderoperator@ethankurz ↗LinkedIn ↗chemistry.vc ↗

Before launching Chemistry, Kurzweil spent 16 years at Bessemer Venture Partners, where he led marquee early-stage developer platform and software investments including Twitch, Twilio, SendGrid, Intercom, and PagerDuty. In 2024, he co-founded Chemistry, a boutique early-stage venture firm targeting Seed and Series A investments in software, AI, and developer tools.

10statements → 4claims → 1claims resolved → 3.3/5average certainty → 2.5/5average debate potential → 4.5/5argument clarity · the sources → 14said about them ↓

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 3 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 predictions · 1 assertion · 1 opinion · 3 insights · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertion are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Ethan argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Prediction Held up

Kurzweil: Most Esports Equity Value Will Lie in Enabling Technology

“As far as a VC, interpreting the question is sort of where do we think the most equity value will be where will the biggest companies be formed? I think it is around the technology around enabling esports to become on par with traditional sports, and so all th…”

Ethan Kurzweil Jun 28, 2017 ▶ 15:51 20VC: Bessemer's Ethan Kurzweil on How To View Pattern Recognition and Deal With The Anti-Portfolio, The Next Frontier In Developer Focussed Businesses & Why eSports Is Interesting Again

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.5 / 5 directness 4.9 · coherence 4.8 · precision 4.2 · compression 4

answered every one of 23 assessed questions directly

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

238 words/min while actually speaking · 6 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,019 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 5/10

pushed back at the host ▾ 2/10

setup questions received 25%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play “has this decentralization of spending power increased the TAM, or has it just dispersed the concentration of capital that people can spend on software products?” ▶ 9:33“Is that something you'd agree with? Or is it something that maybe you'd see an alternative view towards?” ▶ 17:03“Do you think there's enough of a regulatory framework set up around esports as an industry with regards to the actual regulation down to kind of media publishers and your League of…”

when Ethan pushed back ▶ 7:15“I don't think it's increased the TAM.” ▶ 9:38“I'm not sure I agree with that.”

What they said10 What others said14 Episodes1

Everything Ethan Kurzweil said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Kurzweil: Pre-Sold ICO Demand Is a Better Success Indicator Than VCs

“I'm one of the ones that think it might, and I think the way it disrupts our business is it allows folks to transact directly with the buyer of their product before they have said product. So, In a block in, in these ICOs that we're seeing now, you can put out…”

Ethan Kurzweil Jun 28, 2017 ▶ 22:44 20VC: Bessemer's Ethan Kurzweil on How To View Pattern Recognition and Deal With The Anti-Portfolio, The Next Frontier In Developer Focussed Businesses & Why eSports Is Interesting Again

Insight

Kurzweil: Efficient Developer Tools May Actually Shrink Total Software TAM

“So I think if anything, these products are more efficient. There's less waste. And so if anything, you may see actually a shrinking of TAM.”

Ethan Kurzweil Jun 28, 2017 ▶ 7:50 20VC: Bessemer's Ethan Kurzweil on How To View Pattern Recognition and Deal With The Anti-Portfolio, The Next Frontier In Developer Focussed Businesses & Why eSports Is Interesting Again

Insight

Kurzweil: Accelerators Reduce Early Founder Screening Without Making Scaling Easier

“Being an entrepreneur has become sort of trendy in recent years, as I'm sure you're aware, and it's not for everyone. And so there, there's less of a natural screening process. It just comes with the leap now because there's so many accelerators and things tha…”

Ethan Kurzweil Jun 28, 2017 ▶ 5:23 20VC: Bessemer's Ethan Kurzweil on How To View Pattern Recognition and Deal With The Anti-Portfolio, The Next Frontier In Developer Focussed Businesses & Why eSports Is Interesting Again

Opinion

Kurzweil: Machine Learning Does Not Mandate Fundamental GTM Strategy Shifts

“I'm not sure I agree with that. I think new technologies open up new means of go to markets, but also they make existing ones more efficient.”

Ethan Kurzweil Jun 28, 2017 ▶ 9:39 20VC: Bessemer's Ethan Kurzweil on How To View Pattern Recognition and Deal With The Anti-Portfolio, The Next Frontier In Developer Focussed Businesses & Why eSports Is Interesting Again

Disclosure

Bessemer Passed on Yammer by Overfocusing on Technical Buyers

“Well, one early on in my career was a company called Yammer that we missed. You know, I had a number of opportunities to invest, and I think the reason we missed is we were very focused in those days, the developer platform, on selling a sort of API-like servi…”

Ethan Kurzweil Jun 28, 2017 ▶ 20:16 20VC: Bessemer's Ethan Kurzweil on How To View Pattern Recognition and Deal With The Anti-Portfolio, The Next Frontier In Developer Focussed Businesses & Why eSports Is Interesting Again

Disclosure

Bessemer Passed on Dollar Shave Club by Overanalyzing Unit Economics

“It was Dollar Shave Club meeting meeting Michael, the founder there very early on, and just, I was always very, he was just an impressive guy. You could see it in his videos. You can see it in his personality. This is someone that'll just will this thing to su…”

Ethan Kurzweil Jun 28, 2017 ▶ 21:31 20VC: Bessemer's Ethan Kurzweil on How To View Pattern Recognition and Deal With The Anti-Portfolio, The Next Frontier In Developer Focussed Businesses & Why eSports Is Interesting Again

Assertion Not checkable as stated

David Cowan Called Kurzweil's Startup Pitch the Worst Idea He'd Ever Heard

“And he told me it was the worst fucking idea he'd ever heard in his life and that I should not pursue that at all.”

Ethan Kurzweil Jun 28, 2017 ▶ 2:49 20VC: Bessemer's Ethan Kurzweil on How To View Pattern Recognition and Deal With The Anti-Portfolio, The Next Frontier In Developer Focussed Businesses & Why eSports Is Interesting Again

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Kurzweil: Next Developer Platforms Will Tackle AI and Deep Learning

“I think the next frontier is to take the deeper technical challenges, the data science, the artificial intelligence, which is, I know, a very hot buzzword these days, but the, you know, the practical applications of it are going to be real, as well as neural n…”

Ethan Kurzweil Jun 28, 2017 ▶ 8:42 20VC: Bessemer's Ethan Kurzweil on How To View Pattern Recognition and Deal With The Anti-Portfolio, The Next Frontier In Developer Focussed Businesses & Why eSports Is Interesting Again

Insight

Kurzweil: Direct Pattern Matching in VC Creates Investment Traps

“A lot of people do look for the exact repetition of history, and they'll look for the pattern recognition of this type of founder, this type of company, and just applying it to some other area, and I'd say, you know, it's very tempting to do that, and I think …”

Ethan Kurzweil Jun 28, 2017 ▶ 10:49 20VC: Bessemer's Ethan Kurzweil on How To View Pattern Recognition and Deal With The Anti-Portfolio, The Next Frontier In Developer Focussed Businesses & Why eSports Is Interesting Again

Prediction Held up

Kurzweil: Most Esports Equity Value Will Lie in Enabling Technology

The other half of the tape: Ethan Kurzweil's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 14 times in 8 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Mark Goldberg 5 Byron Deeter 4 Harry Stebbings 3 Mike Maples 1 David Cohen 1