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Ethan Kurzweil

Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Chemistry. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.

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.

1shows
1appearances
10statements
1resolved
1supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
14said about them ↓

Everything Ethan Kurzweil said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.

20VC 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
20VC 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
20VC 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
20VC 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
20VC 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
20VC 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
20VC 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
20VC 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
20VC 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
20VC 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

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 across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →

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

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
003152201720182019202020212022202320242025episodesmentions
012201720182019202020212022202320242025episodes it came up in
002.5152201720182019202020212022202320242025episodesmentions per episode

20VC 14

2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 5 mentions in 1 episode
2021 3 mentions in 1 episode
2020 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2019 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2017 1 mention in 1 episode

One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Ethan's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.

ShowRole thereEpsStatementsRecord
20VCLEDGER Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Chemistry 1 10 100% 1/1 full record on 20VC →
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