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Eric Levine
Vice President at BuildGroup
Eric Levine is the Vice President at BuildGroup, a position he has held since August 2020.1 He is based in Austin, Texas, United States. Levine has an extensive background in finance and business, with experience in private equity and consulting.
Education and Early Career
Levine graduated from Yale University with a degree in Global Affairs and Economics in 2013.1 He later earned his MBA from Harvard Business School in 2020.1 His early career included roles as a Senior Associate Consultant at Bain & Company and a Private Equity Associate at Hellman & Friedman.1
Current Roles
At BuildGroup, Levine focuses on sourcing new investment opportunities and supporting portfolio companies.2 He also holds several board positions:
- Board Director at DigniFi (March 2023 - Present)
- Board Observer at Flowspace (December 2020 - Present)
- Board Observer at Cybrary (January 2023 - Present)
- Board Observer at VidMob (August 2021 - Present)
- Board Observer at Squirro (July 2021 - Present)1
Skills and Languages
Levine is proficient in English (native), Portuguese (full professional proficiency), and Spanish (limited working proficiency).1
Highlights
I interviewed four impressive leaders at the forefront of incorporating AI into product live at BuildGroup’s Annual Meeting this year:
- Ben Eachus (CEO) and Jason Harbert (CTO) of Flowspace, which powers fulfillment for merchants with software and a network of warehouses
- Mickey Alon (CTO/CPO) of VidMob, which helps enterprise brands measure & optimize creative effectiveness.
- Liam DeCoste (CTO) of PressW, a consulting firm which helps companies adopt AI into their workflows.
Here are four takeaways from our discussion:
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Tech execs should focus on real ROI for the power user as opposed to just leveraging cool technology for its own sake. For Flowspace, the power user could be a single person at a DTC company with all of the responsibility of ensuring the right product gets to the right consumers on time at minimal cost. The ability to tell a system to “freeze orders from this bad batch of dogfood” can save hours and improve consumer happiness. VidMob’s brand manager power user can instantly interpret what creative ads are appropriate for different audiences and automatically ensure that all ads adhere to brand best practices.
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I saw this at the Pablo Escobar museum: “El dinero fácil no dura" (Easy money doesn’t last). Putting a simple wrapper around GPT and up-charging customers is challenging to sustain. The hard work of automating workflow and building a proprietary data asset bolsters a company’s ability to provide outsized value to users. In the land-grab that the latest AI wave has kicked off, founders should take the high ground that they are uniquely capable of defending. For VidMob, this means leveraging 18 million analyzed videos and insights from the feedback loop of knowing which ads were successful. For Flowspace, this means leveraging millions of historical order history of addresses, warehouses, shipping times, and costs.
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This Time Really Is Different: While prior innovative cycles in AI over the decades were followed by “AI Winters”, the current deep learning renaissance is different. Foundation Models are in the early innings and ordinary organizations can leverage a host of new off-the-shelf tools.
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3/4 panelists took a $100 bet that OpenAI will be worth over $100B in 10 years, but the first mover is not always the biggest winner. Accordingly it makes sense to plan for flexibility with multiple models. And the hardware paradigm that supports these models is shifting quickly.
*Note: BuildGroup invested in Flowspace and Vidmob, & engages PressW for consulting. This content does not constitute an offer of any investment advisory services, nor does it constitute an offer to issue or sell, or of a solicitation of an offer to subscribe or buy, any securities or other financial instruments, nor a financial promotion, investment advice or an inducement or incitement to participate in any product, offering, or investment."
