Odd Lots

Ethan Kurzweil on Venture Investing in the Post-ZIRP, AI Era

How things changed from a decade ago.

Photographer: RANDALL GEE/Bloomberg
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In the 2010s, we saw an incredible boom in the venture capital space, fueled in part by cheap capital as well as cheap compute. Fast forward to today, and many things look very different. We're not in the ZIRP era anymore. And computing power has become a scarce resource, particularly when it comes to AI. So how do things look different today from the perspective of a veteran venture capitalist? In this episode, recorded live in San Francisco in November, we speak to Ethan Kurzweil, a founder and managing partner at the new VC firm Chemistry. Ethan spent years at Bessemer Venture Partners, where he was involved in numerous software deals. He talks to us about his strategy for the new fund, the case for starting a small firm, what technologies excite him most right now, and the general landscape for seed-stage investing.