Jerry Levin: A Reflection by Esther Dyson
Esther Dyson and Jerry Levin at the 2016 StartUp Health Festival. Watch the video here.
It’s interesting. Many obituaries get pushback for being too kind. Think Kissinger, Roger Ailes, Steve Jobs… and probably a few more in the pipeline.
And then there’s Jerry Levin. By contrast, his obits mostly saw him as the business failure of the century. But they missed him completely. Missed who he had become.
I first met Jerry in the late 90s, several years before the Time Warner-AOL merger, at an industry event. He seemed like a standard-issue senior business exec, someone who would assess you for transaction value, but not much more. Yet somehow we started talking about his son who was teaching underprivileged kids in the Bronx, and he changed… melted into someone else entirely. But that lasted only a few moments until someone more important/valuable than I came along. Some months later I read that his son had been murdered – allegedly by a former student. An unmitigated tragedy. But I didn’t get in touch. I didn’t know Jerry that well.
A few years later, in 2010, he emailed me out of the blue. He wanted to get more involved in health and wellbeing, he said, and did I have any ideas. I invited him to come see me in my tiny office when he was next in New York City, and he did. The guy who walked in surprised me: casual, comfortable in khakis and a sweater. Maybe a rumpled blazer? But definitely not the uptight business guy I remembered.
We talked about opportunities and startups – and StartUp Health – and I couldn’t resist asking [paraphrase; I wasn’t taking notes or using an AI recorder]: "You’ve changed so much!? You just seem so… relaxed... pleasant…. What happened?" (We might already have mentioned his son, so I was especially surprised.) He told me that he had married again, and his new wife, talent-agent-turned-psychologist Laurie Perlman, had finally persuaded him to sleep more (among other things). He told me [paraphrase again]: “I used to make do on four or five hours a night, and I was proud. I thought I was managing fine, but I was wrong. Now I sleep all night through, and despite everything, I’m happier and... just more effective.” I introduced him to Steven and Unity, and he became our chairman, with results you can now see all over our website.
His story is so important these days, not just for StartUp Health, but more generally. I have been thinking recently: What Powerful Billionaires (or Powerful People surrounded by people who might not want to say “No, PP/PB, that’s not right!”) have actually become better, happier people over the past decade or two? The point about Jerry was that he no longer even wanted to be a billionaire. He wanted to love his wife, honor his son and other kids, and do good for the world. And he succeeded. That’s what should have been the highlight of his obit.
– Esther Dyson
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Published: Mar 20, 2024