How Jordan Levy Left His Mark On The Venture Capital Industry

In the fall we sat down with one of the godfathers of Venture Capital, Jordan Levy, who shares his very inspiring founder story and how that led to his career as an investor.

Jordan co-founded Software Distribution Services which was acquired by Ingram Micro, before going on to be a Partner on the early-stage investing team at SoftBank Capital (SBNY) for 16 years.

Jordan has served on the boards of BuzzFeed, TalkSpace, Work Market, ACV Auctions, and many others. Using his upbringing and religion to pay it forward (Tzedakah) to the community that he grew up in, in Buffalo, New York. Jordy also co-founded Z80 Labs, a startup incubator in Buffalo, and 43North, an accelerator that hosts an annual startup competition, investing $5M per year in Buffalo, NY. We cover a lot of ground in this episode, including:

 

Topics Discussed:

• Building Software Distribution Services in the early days of venture capital.

• How to think about the private vs public markets.

• The intricacies of SPACs vs the IPO.

• Lessons learned from decades of investments.

• Betting on the first days of the internet and what has changed since.

• Investing through the dot com boom and bust.

• How ACV Auctions re-defined the auto market.

• The importance of investing in people over markets, trends, and other aspects of the business.

 

Quote of the Episode:

“You invest in the people and I will always believe that” and “if you don’t think someone can take this company to the promised land, then don’t invest in them.”

 

The Greatest Piece of Advice:

As his grandmother passed down to him, “never go to bed angry with your wife.”

Links & show notes from this episode:

• Jordan Levy’s Bio

• Jordan Levy on LinkedIn

• Jordan Levy on Twitter

• Finta

• 43North

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Kevin Siskar brings you ambitious entrepreneurs inspired by Tim Ferriss Show, How I Built This with Guy Raz, Residual Income, Entrepreneur on Fire, NPR, HBR, TED Radio Hour, the StartUp podcast with Alex Blumberg by Gimlet Media, Pat Flynn, Tony Robbins, The Uncertain Hour, Bigger Pockets, Art of Charm, Dave Ramsey, Planet Money, Jocko Podcast, EntreLeadership, Zigler, APM Marketplace, This Week In Startups with Jason Calacanis, Mixerg