Jeremy Levine
Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners. On 2 shows, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investor@jeremyl ↗bvp.com ↗
Jeremy Levine is a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. He is known for leading early-stage investments in tech companies that became publicly traded enterprises, including Pinterest, Shopify, Yelp, and LinkedIn.
2shows
3appearances
50statements
16resolved
8supported
1contradicted
50%fully supported
50said about them ↓ Everything Jeremy Levine said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Levine: Competition Is the Most Destructive Force in Capitalism
“Competition is tough. It motivates all of us, but it's the most destructive force in capitalism, no doubt about it.”
Levine: Claims that operational VCs add superior value are bogus
“So I think this whole idea of VC being better or adding a lot of value to their operational experience, I think it's bogus. And I think it's sort of a, it's a new idea that's been perpetrated by folks who are competing as VCs who happen to have a lot of operat…”
Levine: Every US sportsbook runs on legacy European software
“And every sports book that has launched in America is built on the back of software that was initially built for the UK and Europe.”
Levine: Underdog built the only US-tailored regulated sports betting tech stack
“So now, as we've built the technology that now is the only tech that has been purpose-built for the American market that is licensed and regulated and has been licensed by this test lab that license every single slice of it that regulators then rely on.”
Levine: Underdog Fantasy will soon launch federally regulated prediction markets nationwide
“Prediction markets are federally regulated now, and we're going to be offering that soon across the country.”
Levine: Bessemer Would Have Missed Pinterest Without Partner Sarah Tavel
“Had we not had, at least on a gender basis, A diverse duo of people looking at the investment. I think we would have missed it, too.”
Levine: Media Startups Need 5M-10M Users Before Earning Ad Revenue
“And critical mass in the U.S. Is probably around between five and ten million users. You need to get there before you can get the first dollar of advertising revenue.”
Levine: Publicizing Early VC Funding Rounds Hurts Long-Term Startup Prospects
“A lot of people, particularly around their early financings, like to go tell the world about it. It's validation. If nothing else, it's nice to have your mom read about you in TechCrunch. But the truth is, that does almost no value. It adds no value to your co…”
Levine: Put operational experts in independent board seats, not VC seats
“If you're a founder, you want to have phenomenal operational experience on your board, but you don't want to have it in the seat that's controlled by a VC because now you've made a contractual commitment to have someone on your board who for most of his or her…”
Levine: Great consumer tech startups will drop to one every three years
“And so my prediction is that the quantity of great new consumer applications, consumer tech companies that will become household names, went from a couple a year to one every three years, which is depressing because it's a really fun place to invest.”
Levine: High startup entry valuations will drag down overall VC returns
“And so if you're making much lower returns on your rate investments, you won't be able to afford to cover the bad investments. And basically that just means the returns of the industry are going to get dragged down.”
Levine: Publicly announcing startup funding rounds is counterproductive for VCs
“Announcing investments was a bad strategy. Because the only people who read about new VC investments are other VCs, And entrepreneurs and other VCs, if they see you've invested in a company, they either, if they think it was a good investment, will start doggi…”
Levine: Underdog Fantasy is pacing for over $400M in 2025 revenue
“And we're just over five years old and we've,
Been the fastest growing sports gaming company ever, zero to five, do well over four hundred million in revenue this year, and we believe that more than ever.”
Levine: US sports fandom for players is surpassing team loyalty
“It's definitely more player focused than any other country, and I do think we're seeing fandom for players. Start to transcend fandom for teams.”
Levine: Pinterest's $1M Seed Stock Buyback Was Its Best Capital Use
“The company actually bought back some of the stock from those very early investors. It wasn't a large amount, but it might've been another million dollars. And so it was probably the best use of capital the company ever could have come up with, given what that…”
Levine: Bessemer's Pinterest Memo Assigned 25-30% Chance of Total Failure
“And the chance of it being a big zero for a company at that stage is at least 25 or 30%, which means that the chance of it working is also not going to be huge.”
Levine: Pinterest Generated $40M Revenue in Its First Year of Monetization
“I think in the first year they tried to monetize, I think they made forty million dollars of revenue. That was extraordinary. I'd never seen anything like that before, to go from zero to forty million of revenue. Now, there are many other companies that have d…”
Levine: Experienced VCs must exercise caution; words carry unearned weight
“Once you've been part of a few successful companies, your opinions tend to carry a little bit more weight, and so in some sense, you have to be more careful once you've been doing it for 10 or 15 years, because you might say something in passing based on sort …”
Levine: Board members should counterbalance founders' emotional highs and lows
“For me, though, I think my own style has always been to sort of try to identify whether an entrepreneur with whom I'm working is currently on a high or a low, and I kind of try to take more or less the opposite, and so when things are going unbelievably well, …”
Levine: Consumer distribution is controlled entirely by Facebook, Apple, and Google
“And today, virtually all consumer distribution is controlled by only three companies, Facebook, Apple, and Google.”
Levine: Evaluating consumer apps via DAU/MAU ratios is a backward-looking strategy
“Everyone's looking for the next consumer application that has a high DAU over MAU ratio, which I think is sort of, is very much a rearview mirror way of looking at things.”
Levine: 14 state AGs declared daily fantasy sports illegal starting in 2015
“In 2015 the New York Attorney General said that daily fantasy sports were illegal. For the course of the next Six months, 13 other attorney generals said daily fantasy sports was illegal, and we as an industry came together and worked to go past legislation cl…”
Levine: Draft sale to Flutter was the largest exit in fantasy sports history
“We ultimately sold Draft to the business now known as Flutter in 2017. At the time it was the largest exit in the history of fantasy sports.”
Levine: M&A promises mean nothing if the acquiring executive leaves
“And I think with M and A is the same thing. It's our, do you believe in that person? And do you believe they're going to be there in the longterm? And if so, if they give you their word, then I think you can believe that. But if they're not going to be there f…”
The other half of the tape: Jeremy Levine's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 49 times in 23 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 34Sarah Tavel 6Harley Finkelstein 5Hans Tung 2Kevin Hartz 1Byron Deeter 1
Statements about Jeremy Levine, by other people (1)
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 49
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2022 11 mentions in 2 episodes 6 per episode
2021 2 mentions in 1 episode
2020 3 mentions in 1 episode
2019 1 mention in 1 episode
2018 13 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Why This Is Just The Start for Consumer Mobile, 3 Lessons China Taught About How To Invest Better In The US & How To Think About The Opportunity Cost of Capital Deployment with Hans Tung, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital
- 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital
- 20VC: USV's Rebecca Kaden on Whether Venture Returns Can Be Made At Scale In Consumer Today & How To Navigate Consumer Investing In A World of Amazon
- 20VC: Index's Danny Rimer on His Biggest Lessons On Price, Ownership, Board Dynamics & Building Consumer Businesses from Backing The Likes of King, Skype, Farfetch, Glossier and more...
- 20VC: 3 Core Considerations When Investing In Physical Product Co's, Are We In A Direct-To-Consumer Bubble & Why Many Sub $100m Funds Are Moving Earlier and Earlier with Nick Brown, Managing Partner @ Imaginary
- 20VC: The Metrics That Matter In Early-Stage Consumer, Why Moats Matter More Than Brand Today and How VCs Deal with S*** Hit The Fan Moments with Jason Stoffer, Managing Partner @ Maveron
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
2017 13 mentions in 8 episodes 2 per episode
- 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: What Metrics LPs Really Use To Measure Manager Success, Why 10 Year Fund Structures Really Do Not Work & Why Venture Is So Similar To The Movie Business with Will Porteous, General Partner @ RRE Ventures
- 20VC: How To Balance Between Vision and Stubbornness, Why Speed Is The Most Important Startup Superpower & The Main Role of A Startup Founder Today with James Currier, Managing Director @ NFX
- 20VC: a16z's Alex Rampell on The Struggle Between Innovation vs Distribution, When How To Determine Whether An Application is Optimised Through Centralised or Decentralised Networks & Why Most ICOs Today Are Ridiculous
- 20VC: Lightspeed's Nicole Quinn on Why We Are Not In A Consumer Downturn, Why M&A Has Not Been This Exciting For A Long Time & Why Amazon Is Never Your Friend
- 20VC: The Blurring of Early & Late Stage, Why Your Go To Market Strategy Is More Important Now Than Ever & Why Venture Is The Academia Of Tech with Roseanne Wincek @ IVP
- 20VC: Kevin Rose on Putting The Entire Fund Into Uber, The Future For Mobile & Whether Angels Should Have Super Pro-Rata Rights?
- 20VC: Building Shopify From $5m To IPO, Why The Future Of Retail Is Not Online vs Offline & Why Law School Is Like Finishing School For Entrepreneurs with Harley Finkelstein, COO @ Shopify
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Jeremy's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners | 2 | 33 | 0% 0/5 | full record on 20VC → |
 MASTERS OF SCALELEDGER | Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners | 1 | 17 | 73% 8/11 | full record on Masters of Scale → |