Ethan Kurzweil
Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
Discussion
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
I’m Ethan Kurzweil and I heart entrepreneurs. As an investor at Bessemer Venture Partners, I’ve worked with incredible teams at Twitch, Twilio, Intercom, Sendgrid, PagerDuty, Periscope, Periscope Data and NPM. If you count The Cat Company (and somehow, most people don’t), I’ve been a founder since age 11; otherwise, I co-founded my first real company, SSB-Bart Group, as an undergrad at Stanford and have been enamored with startups ever since. I’m a proud Boston native (GO SOX!) and Stanford alum. Ask me anything!
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Scott Raney
@sraney · Investor, Redpoint Ventures
What do you think are the characteristics of developer-led businesses that scale revenues (and not just developer usage)? And is Byron a nightmare to work with?
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@sraney Ha! I'll take the second question first.
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@sraney Woah. Product Hunt censored my response. Strange. Byron must have pull there.
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@sraney But seriously, Byron is great! (Not just saying that because this is a public forum). As for the first question, I look for businesses that do 7 things: -deliver products in a metered (cloud-connected way); -have a way of scaling utility as the underlying business grows; -replace a non-core skill-set for the customer (e.g., accepting payments or sending SMS messages aren't core to an e-commerce company); -offers an amazing developer user experience; -is an area with major enterprise spend attached to it (e.g., replaces something the company already pays for); -demonstrates strong customer love; and -exhibits network effects or economies of scale.
Dylan Qian
@dylan_qian
Hi Ethan,
Thanks for doing this! I was wondering if you had a favorite side project you have done or if there was a side project done by someone else that you thought was particularly interesting?
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@dylan_qian You're welcome!
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@dylan_qian As for side projects from me, my current one is teaching my son to read (he's 5 but just missed Kindergarten) but I suspect that's not what you had in mind. My favorite side project I've seen recently is this Typing Speed Test I saw on Product Hunt last week: https://www.producthunt.com/post...
Dylan Qian
@dylan_qian
@ethankurz thanks for the reply! I remember trying out that typing test and thinking it had a great UI!
Please let me know if you're interested in coming to NYU to speak to students sometime if you're in NYC, would love to host you through our VC club on campus!
Andrew Ettinger
@andrewett · Product Marketing, Twitter (ex-PH)
Hey Ethan!
Which of your investments are you most proud of?
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@andrewett That's like asking me to pick which of my children I like best!
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@andrewett That said, I was proud that we made the investment in Twitch when we did - as the company had been around for a long time as JustinTV and had pivoted to focus their energies on Twitch. The traction was great off the bat but most people had forgotten about the company and dismissed it as something that was never going to work. It just shows you that great teams find a way to win and pivots can work (with great teams). So I'm proud of that one!
Andrew Ettinger
@andrewett · Product Marketing, Twitter (ex-PH)
@ethankurz That's my next question! (no one said this was going to be easy 😏)
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@andrewett Luckily my kids can't use computers yet! But they are both special of course...even when we refer to them affectionately as "monsters."
Tony Spiro
@tonyspiro · CEO & Co-Founder, Cosmic JS
Hey Ethan,
Been a follower of yours for some time, absorbing as much knowledge and insight as I can. So first off, Thank You!
My question is for myself and others in the developer platform space, which I know you have a lot of experience. What is some advice you would give startup founders in the early stage building a SAAS developer platform?
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@tonyspiro Thanks for the question, Tony. A couple of things: first off, make sure the problem you are solving is one that is felt by lots of developers, specifically ones at enterprises. Too often I see companies solving a very niche, one-off kind of issue. Second, make sure you can deliver it in a way (via the cloud) that allows you to monitor usage in a metered type of way.
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@tonyspiro The reason for this is that you want to make sure you can price it in such a way as to grow with your customer's growth - they get more users, you charge them more. Etc. Pricing on a per seat basis isn't as good for this type of company.
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@tonyspiro Finally, make sure you are addressing an issue that has a lot of spending associated with it - payments, security, communications, infrastructure - these are all areas with massive budgets at big companies. It means there is more of a chance you can justify big spending and support your costs.
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@tonyspiro And finally, focus on the user experience of the developer. Heavybit calls this DX (developer experience) - it's the single most critical things to get right in the early days. Developers must love your product!
Tony Spiro
@tonyspiro · CEO & Co-Founder, Cosmic JS
@ethankurz Thank you for your answers Ethan!
Mike Coutermarsh
@mscccc · Code @ Product Hunt
Hey Ethan!
What advice that you’ve received during your career has had them most impact on you?
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@mscccc The best advice I ever got was early on when someone told me to just do the thing I wanted to do at that moment and not worry about "setting myself up for the next job" - that's served me really well and led to some unexpected choices, like joining BVP when I thought I was going to be starting a company.
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@mscccc Other than that, I think the hardest part of building a career is learning when to follow advice and when not to. Having great mentors is great, but it's important to know when to trust your own intuition and make contrarian, risky decisions rather than just follow the "conventional" wisdom. All of the best founders have to ignore more advice than they take - I would venture to guess!
Which one of your father's books is your favorite?
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@nivo0o0 This is like the which of my kids is my favorite question. But since you asked, Age of Spiritual Machines was most transformative for me in terms of how I should think about the future and opening my mind up to the possibilities will exist. But that was more about life stage when I read it (in college) and I'd recommend the more recent books like Singularity is Near and Fantastic Voyage and How to Create a Mind at this point.
Andrew Ettinger
@andrewett · Product Marketing, Twitter (ex-PH)
Are you longer on AR, VR, or Tom Brady?
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@andrewett But seriously, I think both AR and VR will find their way into our society in meaningful ways. AR has the power to be more transformative. I'l elaborate a bit...
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@andrewett VR could be a great medium for entertainment - premium content, UGC, gaming, immersive type stuff - but I don't think it's that likely we are going to want to be in VR all day long. I do think it will happen that VR will become a big part of our lives, but still kind of like a "TV watching" or "playing League of Legends" kind of thing. I was at Linden Lab (Second Life) back in the day and everyone got ahead of themselves thinking something immersive like that might take over, but I now think it's going to be a useful medium for some applications but not an all-encompassing one.
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@andrewett On the other hand, AR is different in that it can meaningfully augment (he he unintentional word choice) our lives and not be this other world we escape into. It has applications across every different industry and many different types of interactions. I do think it could be very transformative over time if we get the form factor right - e.g., Google Glass didn't exactly nail it.
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@andrewett Just like we take medicine or get surgery or get the best sports equipment to make us better, we'll use augmented reality tech to make us better in certain situations for sure - be it every day life, medical applications or something else entirely.
Jacqueline von Tesmar
@jacqvon · Community, Product Hunt ✌️😻
What advice do you most often to new founders?
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@jacqvon do something you actually care about. Solve a problem you want solve because you've experienced the pain of it being broken. If you look at the best, strongest companies - they all have been started by founders that really cared about solving a particular issue, not just because they saw a way to make money.
Jacqueline von Tesmar
@jacqvon · Community, Product Hunt ✌️😻
Going from founder to investor, what has been the biggest lessons you’ve taken from your first companies to investing in others?
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Ethan Kurzweil
@ethankurz · Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
@jacqvon Honestly, the main lesson is that it's not easy - in fact, it's really, really difficult and we as investors need to be empathetic to that. It's a lot easier to diagram out how something should work in an investment memo that make it happen in practice.