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

Venture capital investment strategies center on the shift from traditional, top-down enterprise software procurement to bottom-up, developer-led adoption. Ethan Kurzweil, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, highlights how companies like Twilio and SendGrid succeeded by targeting technical users who influence purchasing decisions. Evaluating founders requires assessing psychological resilience and the capacity to navigate long odds, rather than relying solely on historical pattern matching. The "anti-portfolio" serves as a critical mechanism for humility, forcing investors to learn from missed opportunities like Yammer and Dollar Shave Club. Furthermore, the eSports landscape represents a significant frontier where value lies in building the underlying infrastructure—akin to traditional sports media—to support interactive viewing experiences. This evolution reflects a broader trend where technical challenges in data science and artificial intelligence increasingly demand developer-focused platforms for enterprise integration.