Peter Levine
57 statements across 16 episodes · 24 bullish · 7 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Jul 15, 2017 by Peter Levine · said 13 times in 10 episodes since 2017 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Peter Levine's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Sonal Chokshi (4), Michael Copeland (4), Martin Casado (1), Frank Chen (1), David George (1), Ben Horowitz (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2025 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 8 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
- a16z Podcast | Telepresence and Tech for a Distributed Workforce
- a16z Podcast | A Copernican Update ... In Tech, the Smartphone is the Center
- a16z Podcast | Monetizing Open Source (Or, All Enterprise Software)
- a16z Podcast | Infrastructure... Is Everything
- a16z Podcast | Finding and Hiring for (Expectations) Fit on Both Sides
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
2018 1 mention in 1 episode
2017 1 mention in 1 episode
Everything said about Peter Levine, oldest first
Jul 15, 2017
Jul 15, 2017 bullish
Jul 15, 2017 neutral
Levine: The centralized cloud's primary future role will be training machine learning
“The cloud is going to be all about learning. And that happens centrally. So I'm going to take all of this information that I have out at the edge, I'm going to connect these devices, I'll curate that information, and learning will occur centrally, and then pro…”
Jul 15, 2017 bearish
Levine: The explosion of sensor data will kill the cloud
“Sensor data explosion will kill the cloud. Sensors are going to produce massive amounts of data. The existing infrastructure will not be able to handle the data volumes or the rates, and data is going to be stuck at the edge, and computing is going to move alo…”
Jul 15, 2017 bullish
Jul 15, 2017 bullish
Jul 15, 2017 bullish
Levine: Next generation of coders will be mathematicians, not logic writers
“The other thing is that we are going to move to a world of Data-centric programming. It's kind of interesting in the same way that, you know, I believe that cloud disaggregates into this new model. We're teaching everyone to code now, and we're teaching everyo…”
Jul 15, 2017 bearish
Levine: The replacement of cloud computing is already underway
“About six months ago, I started to think, well, what happens when cloud computing goes away? You know, of course, to myself, I'm like, well, it's so popular, and now how could it go away? I think it's actually happening right under our nose, and let me show yo…”
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Levine: Mobile hardware will solve data center power and cooling constraints
“Power and cooling are critical elements in designing a data center these days, so to the extent that we can go design a data center that uses much less power, requires much less cooling is optimizing on floor space, those are the ingredients for massive scale-…”
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Levine: Mobile hardware supply chains will replace PC architectures in data centers
“What I'm specifically talking about with respect to the consumerization of IT is the idea that the components of mobile devices will become the basis for hardware in the data center of the future. And so, not unlike we saw the PC revolution replace mainframes …”
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Levine: On-premise data centers give large companies an advantage over SMBs
“Large organizations who have the expertise and budgets to go create on-prem data centers have a huge competitive advantage over the hundreds of thousands of small to mid-sized companies that are probably using Excel spreadsheets as their data analytics tool ri…”
Jan 2, 2019 bearish
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Levine: Computing and analytics will shift from the cloud to edge devices
“And I think the Internet of Things and drones and however you want to define these, this sort of range of computers that exist not so much in our pocket but out there in the world, I believe that there's going to be computing that will be fundamental to how we…”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Levine: Freemium software functions primarily as a proxy for marketing spend
“The way I think about freemium is that it's a proxy for marketing spend. You tend to have to spend quite a bit on marketing in order to get the user to see the value of a given product. What freemium does is it offsets the marketing costs.”
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Levine: Monetizing freemium products requires a dedicated sales organization
“And with that, I believe that you need to have a sales organization actually come in to sell the premium products such that the users can be educated. The organization can be educated on the additional features that are available outside the base freemium prod…”
Jan 2, 2019
Levine: Delivering open source as SaaS bypasses traditional support model friction
“When open source is offered as a service, the pricing. Is based on the service that you actually provide, and it makes for a very nice way to work around some of the nuances of open source and the whole, what's your support model and all these other bits and p…”
Jan 2, 2019
Levine: Open source SaaS companies often grow by expanding on-premises
“We've seen many companies, you start with a cloud, I'll say a cloud SaaS offering based on open source. Viral adoption, great uptake. And then enterprises say, well, like we need to have that inside our firewall. We want a copy of that. So then the expansion, …”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Levine: Modern open-source communities accept that companies must generate revenue
“The open source community has matured over the years, and I do believe that the community... Is sensitive and is appreciative of companies needing to actually make revenue and kind of have a business as opposed to just being a charity where everything's given …”
Jan 2, 2019
Levine: Open-source startups should charge for scalability and security
“There are discrete sort of components of open source that one could argue, here's all the functionality needed for a given user, a given server, a given environment. And then the added value components may be along areas such as scalability, security, Enterpri…”
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Jan 2, 2019 bearish
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Levine: Cloud and SaaS enabled the commercial monetization of open source
“Well, the element, I believe, that has brought open source from fringe hobby project out of academia to mainstream is the fact that you can actually build commercial businesses On top of open source. Right. And a lot of that, which you guys at Databricks are d…”
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Levine: Data-driven digital assistants will augment workers across all professions
“I mean, in some ways it's already happening. There are companies out there who look at Salesforce productivity, looking at the most productive salespeople in an organization, learn what they do, modify that, and then go give that information to, so where every…”
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Levine: Data science will replace traditional coding as computer science foundation
“You know, I think that data science will become the new academic approach in computer science. There'll be less coding and more about data science. New algorithms for data science, new Approaches to understand the world around us. So, you know, we can call thi…”
Feb 26, 2019
Feb 26, 2019
Levine: GTM fit requires 70% of sales reps generating 3x loaded cost
“What I like to look at is that a sales person is generating greater than three times their loaded cost, meaning Base plus commission. Let's say a salesperson cost 500,000 dollars a year or 200,000 dollars a year. They need to generate a three X multiple on tha…”
Feb 26, 2019
Feb 26, 2019
Feb 26, 2019
Levine: Startups need 4x pipeline coverage to hit quarterly sales numbers
“One of the metrics to be used in the industry is at the beginning of the quarter, you want to have between three and five times the pipeline to close the quarter. Ok? If you don't have four times the pipeline At the beginning of the quarter, you're not gonna m…”
Feb 26, 2019 negative
Levine: Delay sales team expansion until strong customer demand emerges
“We're not going to in, we're not going to expand the sales organization till we see the whites of their eyes... When the customer starts demanding this, then we're going to go build a sales organization, right? Or add the reproducibility.”
Feb 26, 2019
Peter Levine: New products or international expansion reset go-to-market fit
“Now, let me point out that if I enter into a new geography or I build another product as part of the company, you start over again. Let's say a U S geography and I want to expand internationally. Maybe my go to market model is actually different. It very well …”
Feb 26, 2019
Feb 26, 2019
Levine: Buyers cannot appreciate non-obvious software value without a sales team
“Often what gets missed in the whole product adoption cycle is the idea of selling value into the customer where value is not necessarily felt through a self-service product or whatever. You just can't see the value or appreciate the value until an organization…”
Feb 26, 2019
Levine: Product features must inherit elements of the target sales motion
“The product, the features of the product need to inherit part of the sales motion itself, right? And that if you're going after a certain Motion or certain customer, the product needs to be reflective of that, and I think we often miss there.”
Oct 21, 2019 positive
Levine: Product Management Is Critical for Balancing Communities and Roadmaps
“Product management is a critical role in any software organization, particularly open source, because here's where you balance not only the bridge between engineering and your go-to-market organization, but you also Manage the bridge between your community and…”
Oct 21, 2019
Oct 21, 2019 neutral
Levine: Drawing the Line Between Free and Paid Features Is an Ongoing Journey
“In this particular area of analytics and telemetry, I would encourage you to experiment with SKUs, with product bundling, unbundling, bundling, you know, kind of go back and forth to find the correct line between free and paid functionality. This is really a n…”
Oct 21, 2019 positive
Oct 21, 2019
Oct 21, 2019 neutral
Oct 21, 2019 negative
Oct 21, 2019 neutral
Levine: Open-Source Product-Market Fit Does Not Guarantee Enterprise Buyers
“One is your open source user doesn't lead to a buyer, and this is an example of where product market fit might be really great, but there's not value market fit to tie into it. So you have a lot of open source users, but there's no buyers.”