#135 Abby Miller Levy, Co-Founder of Primetime Partners and Thrive Global | On Living to 100, Getting to the Key Issue, and Choosing What to Major and Minor In

About Abby Miller Levy

“If you were guaranteed a hundred year life, what would you do differently? How would you think about it? How would you plan for it? How would you live it?” – Abby Miller Levy

Abby Miller Levy is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Primetime Partners, which is a venture capital firm that Abby co-founded with venture legend Alan Patricof of Greycroft and Apex Partners fame. Primetime specializes in what they call AgeTech, or technology around the future of how we age. Before founding Primetime Partners, Abby had an epic career. She worked at McKinsey. She's worked at OXO. She led growth at SoulCycle, and she even co-founded Thrive with Ariana Huffington.

For more, explore the transcript of this episode.

Chapters

In this episode, we deconstruct Abby Miller Levy’s peak performance playbook—from her favorite book to the tiny habit that's had the biggest impact on her life. In it we cover:

(00:00:00) – Introduction
(00:02:29) – The Hundred Year Life
(00:03:57) – Lessons from McKinsey, OXO, and Alan Patricof
(00:07:09) – Zeroing in on the key issues and leaping into VC
(00:15:15) – Investing as an operator, and the nonlinear career path
(00:19:02) – Expertise vs. generalism

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Castbox, Pocket Casts, Player FM, Podcast Addict, iHeartRadio, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.

Our Favorite Quotes

Here are a few ideas we'll be thinking about weeks and months from now:

“I think delivering value to your community matters, whether that's your peer group and the people you work with, your clients, or your consumers. If you add to people's lives, that's how you have a role in this world. Certainly as a business and potentially as a human. So I think that's the piece that I've kind of taken away from those cultures is that your job is to serve other people. And that's how you stay in your job.”
“I think one of the lessons is to shut up and listen, when you're around people who are more experienced than you are.”
“It's just divine intervention in a way. It's like you have no choice, but to do this thing. And I had no choice, but to start this fund, it was just too big, an opportunity. And there were too few barriers. There was nothing stopping me from doing it to be honest.”
“Double down on what you're good at. I know we're supposed to understand our blind spots and work on our weaknesses, but ultimately you're most successful in what you're good at.”
“I think there's no room for being a mile wide and an inch deep anymore. And I think that expertise is gratifying, but also adds value then to the rest of the ecosystem.”