EP 58: Annie Lamont (Co-founder, Oak HC/FT) - The State of the Market and Being a VC in the 90s

In the 58th episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, Annie Lamont (Co-founder, Oak HC/FT) joins to discuss the state of the market, being a woman VC in the 90s, run-ins with Steve Jobs and Elizabeth Holmes, and her duties as the First Lady of Connecticut. (0:00) Intro (2:18) State of the Market (16:23) State of the Venture Industry (28:00) Qualities of a Good Founder (32:00) Annie’s Background (35:44) Steve Jobs Stories (41:48) Gender Imbalance in the Venture Industry (49:16) Fintech (1:07:07) CT Covid Response (1:19:08) Elizabeth Holmes (1:23:18) Almost Getting Fired Mixed and edited: Sam Dewees Produced: Rashad Assir Executive Producer: Josh Machiz Music: Griff Lawson 🎙 Listen to the show Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/three-cartoon-avatars/id1606770839 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5WqBqDb4br3LlyVrdqOYYb?si=3076e6c1b5c94d63&nd=1 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9zb0hJZkhWbg 🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1 Follow on Socials 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow 🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow 🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow About the Show Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes. Executive Producer: Rashad Assir Producer: Leah Clapper Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA 🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1 Follow on Socials 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow 📱 X - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow 🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow About the Show Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member. Tap follow and enable notifications to stay ahead of the game.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Logan Bartlett?

  Annie started to say how my partners wanted to fire me in 99.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  We did an offsite, we're in Cabo by the fire. One of my partners was like, so you're not going to be part of the next fund. But by the time the next fund came, like, the world had blown up. All their deals that they thought were so incredible, you know, deflated. And so they came back and said, "Great." I mean, they acted like they'd never said it.

• 0:25Logan Bartlett?

  Welcome to the 58th episode of The Logan Bartlett Show. I am your host, Logan Bartlett, a partner at Red Point Ventures. And what you're going to hear on this episode is a conversation that I had with Annie Lamont. Annie is the founder and general partner at Oak HCFT. And before that, she was a general partner at Oak Investment Partners. Annie is one of the icons in the industry. She entered back in the early 80s and has seen a bunch of different market machinations, as well as the industry change over the years. And so, interesting to get her perspective on what was going on, what is going on in the industry today, how it compares versus different corrections that have happened, as well as how she found her way into the industry,

• 1:06Logan Bartlett?

  her interactions with Steve Jobs, among a bunch of other things. So, really appreciate Annie coming on, someone I've always looked up to in the industry. Before we get into that, just a brief plug, I'm going to be more specific in my request. On whatever platform you're listening to, if you could give a five-star review, that would be much appreciated. And then, also specifically, we're trying to grow the YouTube channel. So, if you're not subscribed, please subscribe to YouTube. Five-star review on whatever platform you're listening to and subscribe to YouTube. That's all we're looking for out of doing this. So, thanks, everyone, for listening in. And now, you'll hear this episode with Annie Lamont, general partner from Oak HCFT. Annie Lamont, thanks for coming on.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Great to be with you, Logan.

• 1:50Logan Bartlett?

  I have heard your name in the industry as one of the icons that has been defining, I guess, venture capital for a long time, but it's a pleasure. This is the benefit of having a podcast, is I get people that otherwise it might be a little weird to say, "Hey, can I meet with you?" But if I say, "Hey, I have a podcast," then it sounds very credible and like a reason to get to meet people like yourself. So, thank you for coming on.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  You are credible.

• 2:15Logan Bartlett?

  I so so in terms of maybe we'll just start with the market right now. I think it's an interesting time in the ecosystem and you've you've seen different bubbles and bursts and euphoria and people in a desolate mindset and all of that. I guess any any perspective on does this remind you of anything like the cycle we're in right now? It does have you been able to draw analogies or comparisons to either prior experiences you've had?

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah, it's interesting because some people say 2008, 2001. You know, I think the interesting thing is like about 2008 was that really wasn't did not impact on per year. Right. It was really about a macro environment, not about the micro environment that we all live in in terms of the trends and tailwind, you know, headwinds and tailwinds. So that really had very little impact, I thought, on the venture industry. I mean, maybe maybe valuations, you know, somewhat lower, which was good, maybe not great for entrepreneurs and good for, you know, for VCs. It's definitely most analogous to 2001. And, you know, I think most people who lived through it were like last

• 3:25Speaker 01

  year, two years ago, it was like, is this 99 or 2000? You know, we know it's coming, you know, but and where are we exactly? And, uh, and obviously, it was more like 2000. So I think the difference is that there were so many, there were obviously great companies created then, you know, Google, Amazon. I mean, they wouldn't exist without these manias or bubbles, right, where massive amounts of money go to, you know, go to fund innovation. And so I generally think manias from that perspective are a good thing. Because sometimes you wouldn't have those, you know, some of those great companies. But the there were so many companies that did not have real business models then. The Internet wasn't mature. And I do feel like now there were there

• 4:08Speaker 01

  were lots of great companies created. It was a really amazing time. Some of those companies are really products, and those companies will be You know, bought and merged into other companies that are really more platforms. But there are a lot of good companies now or companies, they're two parts, they're two parts. Good companies that just need to, you know, manage themselves with discipline. They're going to keep growing. They've got, and there's need in the market. They've got good management teams. There are product companies that are just small companies that'll never be big companies. They should be part of something else or really like features and products. And then there are other companies that raise a lot of money that may or not actually have the right business model. And those, like, that's where you've got to be bold. I mean, I think that's the hardest thing for boards.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  You know, you've got 200 million in the bank and you've got a business model that doesn't really work or gross margin that's just never going to get there. You know, like, blow it up. I'm like, take the money, either give the money back or blow it up and do something with it that actually works. And I think that, those, that's the hardest place to be right now.

• 5:10Logan Bartlett?

  For sure, yeah. I, I, and I'm sure people are having a reckoning right now of which bucket they're, they're in. People probably deluded themselves and everyone was in the, the first bucket you talked about. And, and now, you know, some might realize they're in the second bucket and people don't hope, they're hope that they aren't in the third. But if you are in the, in the third in that situation, like if we're talking to a founder that's either in the second or the third, and they're not just going to need to wait it out. Do you think, or are they, are they better served from a dollar standpoint and a time standpoint? Just shutting it down now rather than trying to take the risk of, or selling, or whatever, whatever you end up doing, rather than insiduing cash, you see it's cash.

• 5:54Logan Bartlett?

  You see it oftentimes in biotech that people are trading for less than the cash they have on the balance sheet. And I, I imagine we have some people in the venture market, some companies that fit into the same bucket. Would you actually, in a weird way, encourage those companies to, to quit and, and start anew?

• 6:09Speaker 01

  I think it depends on the, the team, like, is there, is there a vision, right? Is there something else they think they can do worthwhile with it? Do they have a team that can actually execute, execute it? You know, do you have a good CEO? Yeah, I think that's so much of it. So if you've got money and you've got the will and you're brave enough to do it, you know, just blow it up and keep going with the money you've got because it's hard to raise. And in other situations where you don't have a team that you trust, then I, you know, I just saw one recently, they literally took the money, they didn't take it back. They actually took the money and they invested in another startup with the money.

• 6:45Logan Bartlett?

  A startup did this. A startup took the money and kind of transformed into a VC of sorts with that money?

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the investors, really, the board took that money and, you know, invested it in another company. So that was unique.

• 6:59Logan Bartlett?

  That's fascinating. Yeah, I've never heard of that before. One of the interesting things I think that happened in the internet bubble that you did, and I guess this is a question for venture capitalists these days, young people in the industry, maybe, maybe you went all in on crypto and the industry, the asset class hasn't proven to be what it, what it's going to be. I think I've heard you use the term repotting yourself, going from biotech to healthcare. Can you tell that story of like, what was going through your mind? You're a biotech investor, I guess, in 99, 2000, and you say to yourself, hey, maybe this isn't going to be the place I want to, I'm going to be in the long term. And so you kind of pivot to healthcare and fintech?

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. So we, I did biotech for about 15 years. And it was amazing, I would think about it, you know, went from, I mean, genetic, I'd be introduced, introduced to early in my career when I joined Oak Investment Partners in 82, we founded Genzyme, and then had been involved with a number of great, you know, Seth Long, Al Currie, Lexion, we'd backed, you know, a whole host of companies. But the problem was by 99, 98, there were about two or 3,000 public biotech companies, and there were five approved products at that point. And you could just see that the, the momentum was being lost in that, you know, in that market, because people just assumed that because a biological would be

• 8:23Speaker 01

  easier to get through the FDA, would be more likely to be a successful drug than a chemical entity. And it wasn't all that much easier at that time and we hadn't, you know, got into the incredible research that we have now that's creating, you know, many more drugs that actually work. So at that point, you're looking at the advent of the internet in 99 and you're looking at funding for biotech slowing and you're thinking, okay, I gotta do something different. I had partners who were like, why bother with healthcare at all? You know, like we're making 50, 100 times on a, you know, e-commerce company or something that's

• 9:04Speaker 01

  about eyeballs in 99, 2000. And you're thinking either my career is potentially over, you know, if they think healthcare is not worthy, you know, if you can make a 10x, it's not worthy. And you've got like, wow, I don't, I think the next decade in biotech is really going to be hard. And I think it's very difficult because people feel like, well, this is my area. This is what I'm known for. This is my expertise. You know, and then they just, they just keep doing the same play. You know, like, I'm just going to keep investing in biotech and hoping it works. And I think like those that survived, and there are a lot of people that just fell out of the industry, venture capitalists that don't, you might have named in 99 of doing biotech and by 2010, they were out of the

• 9:46Speaker 01

  business. There were some that kept playing a little bit and survived enough to 2010 to, you know, then have another great run. But I just got out, you know, and there were two, I mean, there was, there were, there were a couple of imperatives to that. And one is market, I thought was going to be really bad. Two, I felt like the advent of the internet and I, you know, drugs are amazin' things, but as a VC, you're really like, you're, you're raising money all the time. That's what you're doing. You're helping a company raise money all the time because there are only so many ways that you can impact the progress of research. As a VC and I just thought, you know, we have a broken healthcare system and I've lived it personally and I, you know, I think we all have in different ways and it just felt

• 10:30Speaker 01

  like, I just want to like, let's think about technology-enabled solutions and services. You know, I'd invested in CNA Health in 2000. It was the first cloud-based healthcare company. I just thought, I just want to fix this system, lower costs, improve outcomes. If that's my mission, I can, I can buy into that. I can be really excited about that.

• 10:48Logan Bartlett?

  I imagine, I mean, you're doing this after or in the throes of, was this decision made before the big internet bubble burst or was it, was it immediately after?

• 10:58Speaker 01

  You know, it was actually before. That part was before because I was a bit in no man's land. You know, I wasn't sort of all the big wins in 98, you know, 98, 99, 2000 were in telecom or the internet, you know, and it was sort of like biotech healthcare. It was like, what's that? Who cares about that?

• 11:18Logan Bartlett?

  The intuitive thing or the logical thing that I think most people would do is glom themselves on to the, to the internet. And Oak, for, for people that don't know, and we'll talk a little bit about the history of Oak's H C F T, but Oak was one of the iconic internet investors as well as retail, right? And, and you guys had investments like Whole Foods and Office Depot and, and PetSmart and a bunch of stuff in the, the retail side and then Kayak and Seagate and a bunch of stuff on the internet side. So I assume the, the intuitive thing would have been to glom on to this internet thing, right? And so what was the, was that just a crowded space and you were like, I'm going to seem me too-ish in jumping into that area rather than picking my own lane?

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I did one or two things. Flows with Whoopi Goldberg. That was like online currencies. That was like the beginning of like fintech exposure. But no, I mean, I just, I had, I really, you have to invest in things you actually care about. And I still like, I cared about healthcare. I cared about fixing the system. I, I'm sort of one of those people that feels like, why bother be a venture capitalist if you're not actually improving things or creating innovation for good? So that was my passion. I, I did, you know, and I felt like I could. Hopefully weather the storm in terms of the returns. I mean, you just knew that this couldn't last, you know, the bubble in the internet, you know, couldn't last and it didn't. So I was glad

• 12:45Speaker 01

  that I had, you know, taken at least the internet and thought about it in a different way in terms of technology-enabled services and solutions, you know, using software in the cloud. So that was that was my take on it. Like, I could be, you know, and use, you know, have an internet take in healthcare.

• 13:01Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, no, it's impressive. I mean, the the people that didn't do what you did, I imagine your peers in in biotech that you were you were collaborating with back then are names we've long since forgotten, right? Just because the, I mean, maybe they, some of them probably waited it out, but but by and large, the people that didn't innovate there. It's a it's an interesting thought that I'm sure a lot of young VCs are are reckoning with right now. If they picked a lane or a category that just doesn't seem sustainable, right? When I look around, the the people that I grew up with in the industry, a lot of them have have risen to to, you know, be be partners or managing directors or general partners at firms. And I would say it's not because I was very good at picking friends. It was because we were all collaborating on

• 13:46Logan Bartlett?

  software deals, right? And that happened to be a good thing to be doing from 2013 to 2022, right? There's this survivorship bias that that ends up seeping in.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And if you think about think about clean tech, you know, that was something is, I don't know, maybe 2000 or 2010, anybody who's doing clean tech in that decade was wiped out. Yeah. And so, timing is everything, right? You do have to pick your, you know, pick your spots, but you do have to, I think this is repotting. I mean, it's one of the reasons I also did a hedge in fintech, you know, in 2002, started the fintech group because I thought one of the tailwinds were were there. But it was also like a hedge on not only being a healthcare investor, but it's also an intellectual curiosity, right? I mean, you've got to like, Get excited about new areas of interest and learn new things. And I mean, it's the beauty

• 14:41Speaker 01

  and the amazing part of our career, right, Logan? It was just so much fun to learn about new things and to grow and stay alive. So.

• 14:50Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, no, it's, I mean, if you're not innately curious about what it is, like if you're doing something, one of the things I always think about is if you looked at, I forget who told me this, maybe Eli Gill said, or I think it's a Keith Raboy thing. We talked about it on the episode, but if you looked at the MBA groups, people that graduated from HBS or GSB or whatever it is, in any given year, and you followed the path that they pursued, that actually is the top of most cycles, right? Because it's the hot new thing and you're getting into AI today and crypto last year. And, you know, you would have gotten into the internet in the 2000s or whatever. And so that's actually, if you're chasing what's hot, you're probably too late. And inevitably, you're going to

• 15:34Logan Bartlett?

  be behind the curve. And so finding, kind of sniffing out the right balance of your own personal passions with what you, what you actually think could accumulate value over some period of time in the future is the, the difficult thing to figure out. I, I was lucky enough that software was not something I was innately interested in originally. I don't think kids, too many kids grew up thinking like SaaS is a, is a thing, but I kind of got forced into it and then fell in love with the different elements of it, right? So that's one of the things, whenever anyone asks me about my career path, I always say, like, listen, I'll tell you, I don't think it's particularly informative or helpful because all of those doors that I walked through have since shut, right? And you're gonna, maybe you can extrapolate some lessons from it, but the specific advice of how I

• 16:19Logan Bartlett?

  did it, the tactics, that's not going to be particularly useful.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, it's true.

• 16:23Logan Bartlett?

  Now, what about the state of the, the venture industry today? So we've raised a bunch of capital as an asset class, right? And this, in that regard, is probably most similar to the internet bubble as well, in that you have these firms that 2X fund size from one fund to the next, right? And in some ways, maybe I'm a little biased in, in obfuscating. Some of the blame from the venture capitalists themselves, but we saw the dynamic like LPs were very much, they had a bunch of money that they wanted to put to work and they were trying to figure out, hey, I want to be 10% in the venture asset class. And now because publics have traded up so much, I'm down to 6% and so I need to give you a hundred million dollars or whatever. So I don't

• 17:03Logan Bartlett?

  entirely blame venture capitalists. Like it's, it is this kind of circular loop that exists in the asset class. But it's a problem that we've, we've all kind of participated in in some way. What's your perspective on, on how that's going to play out in the next little bit? Like there were firms that actually gave back capital back in the internet bubble. Do you think that's something that's going to play out here?

• 17:26Speaker 01

  I don't think that's going to play out here because I do feel like, obviously people were doing one year and 18 month cycles. So I do think it will just extend the cycle. We'll go back to more of the normal, you know, three year, maybe even four year cycles of investing the money. So I think it's like, you know, raising multiple funds, right? I also think it's like, brand is different now in terms of having scale, you know, there's some obviously early stage funds that have made impact that are smaller funds that are well known in the valley, like yours. That are, you know, that will continue to have brand and power. But I think for, you know, for us, I mean, you know, we invest all the way from seed to late stage.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  And I think the reality is having, having money is an advantage, you know, when you were, for example, starting something, funding it all the way, not worried, not as worried now about other people's money. Funding companies, you're doing consolidations, right? There are going to be a lot of companies that are products that you want to fold in so that you can like own a category. So I think there's, there's advantage that, you know, to having money.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  I just, I don't see people giving money back. I do think obviously that it's going to be slower, fewer funds will come to market, there will be less money available, but I, you know, I expect in three years, three and four years that people, you know, public markets will have returned, the balance between private and public will be back. And, you know, I, you know, now you've probably restored the balance between entrepreneur and finance, you know, the money, the money in the makers is now probably in a more appropriate place. Whereas before, you know, look at FTX, I mean, the problem with that is in part it's just fraud, but you know, sometimes you just can't prevent against that.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  But you also had so much power with the entrepreneur that, you know, VCs, investors couldn't get access to information in the way they should have, right?

• 19:34Logan Bartlett?

  Totally, yeah. I mean, and you have people creating podcasts to differentiate themselves. And so it's a, you know, we're, we're, we lived in very strange times, it seems. Now, I, I agree. The one thing I think of people potentially giving back, the crypto asset class has collapsed so much and the funds got so high that I think, Founders Fund, I guess, announced that they were going to cut their early-stage fund in size. And the tactics of it are interesting. Those dollars are, I guess, rolling into the next fund. And so I, I think that's an interesting thing that kind of guarantees their next fundraise as well. And, but it's an interesting sort of leading by example that they're doing. The crypto ones are the ones that I think are probably the most analogous to the internet bubble.

• 20:17Logan Bartlett?

  Not to say I, I happen to believe there's not going to be a ton of equity value created in that asset class, but it has collapsed in pricing. And so you, you expect some of those people to start, I don't know, figuring out ways that they're going to be able to use the capital in, in a different structure than principally investing it over some short period of time.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  No, it's true. Well, you also see, I think, people leaving those funds, right? So. When you don't have the people to invest it or the conviction around it, then you've got a problem.

• 20:48Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, we're kind of batting out of order on originally what I thought through as what we talk about. But I am curious on the, you touched on the, the strategy of, of Oak H C F T and how you, how you approach seed to late stage and it's unusual, right? At Battery Ventures, where I was before, we had one big fund and there's, there's tremendous advantages, I guess, in diversification that you can have if one thing is a little out of whack from a pricing standpoint, you can go pick the other thing. I will say also LPs don't necessarily absolutely love that they don't know where their exact dollars are going into, right?

• 21:28Logan Bartlett?

  And so for people that don't appreciate this, like LPs think about this, how much exposure do I have to early-stage venture? How much exposure do I have to late-stage venture? How much exposure do I have to healthcare or life sciences or software or crypto or whatever it is, right? And when you start bundling all it together and saying, hey, we're going to give you back some version of this, but, and you try to give guidance around it, it gets difficult on their side, right? To say, well, how much exposure do I have? So what was your thought? Was this actually one of the things from the founding that you thought, hey, we're going to do all aspects of the capital stack? Or what, what led you down that path?

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we've been doing that for the last 20 years, even in my old firm. And I think, one, I don't like to lose, so I don't want to do all early.

• 22:13Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  I just, because it's our mentality to make everything work, you know? And that just doesn't work if you're doing all early. And I, and I think we really came from domain, here's our domain expertise. We want to be the best healthcare and the best fintech investors, you know? How do we do that? Well, you do that by like knowing spaces really well and then picking the best companies. And that may be, there's an idea and there's a need and nobody's solving it. And we love this entrepreneur, so we're going to go early. Or, look, there's the best company, we're now seeing that, and they're a $20 million company, or a $40 million company, and this is their model. And so we want to be aligned with that particular entrepreneur company. And so we really just wanted to go after the best company in each opportunity in each space. And we felt like the way to do

• 22:58Speaker 01

  that was to be able to do any stage. And I, you know, I just think mentally, you cannot be a great growth investor if you don't know what's coming from early. Because, you know, it used to be, oh, you're worried, you know, some old legacy investors worried about, you know, in New York, a mid-sized company. The reality is, is now, you've got growth companies that need to be worried about something that's coming four years after them, or five or six, because they could be, right, dislocated by something new that's happening. So you actually need to understand, I think, what is happening early and late to do the best. And often, growth companies are also consolidators. So we've been very helpful to some of our companies that we know, like, every company that's been created in this space, we know well, we know, you know, where the inflection points

• 23:42Speaker 01

  are. So then we're helpful with these, you know, some of these aggregation strategies. And to your point, in LPs, we give a range. It's like, we're going to be 20 to 30% early. And we're going to be, you know, in fintech and healthcare, it's generally going to be, because we can put more money in healthcare services companies more safely, you know, and scale them, especially when the, you know, sort of payer side, payer provider side. So that tends to be 30 to 40% fintech, and, you know, 60% healthcare.

• 24:15Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, it all, people don't care too much about the sausage making, as long as it comes out delicious on the other side, right? And so I imagine, based on your returns, it's, it's worked out generally well, that they, they've stopped asking quite as many questions. But the stage thing is interesting. I, I'll joke that, like, it's, it's better to be early than late, but it's best to be right, not wrong, right?

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 24:38Logan Bartlett?

  You know, if you're getting in at $500 million valuation versus 50, sure, I'd prefer 50. But I'll tell you, if you're in the leader in the space, there's much more accumulating advantages that go along the way with being in that company than necessarily the valuation, getting a cheaper, better deal, which is a little counterintuitive versus some of the other non-venture asset classes, right, where price is such a sensitivity.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree with that. And I also think, like, our hit rate, like, in seed is very good, because You're not feeling like, I can do 15 this year. You know, I can do 15 Cs or 15 startups. You're pretty particular about the ones you do. And so your hit rate's very high. And I feel like, you know, I keep asking this over and over again, but if you look at seed startup companies, I think most of those you really thought were, you know, the ones that ended up being truly great, you probably had a pretty good idea when they started they were going to be truly great. And it's, you know, and it's the others like, ah, well, you know, like, why don't we try this? You know, that that ended up not working out as well.

• 25:37Logan Bartlett?

  Totally. Yeah. It's an interesting thought exercise because for you, right? The time, every venture capitalist is kind of constrained by their, by their time and the, the amount of diligence they can do, the number of boards they can sit on and all of that. And so for you to do an incremental slot, even if it's a $5 billion check versus a $50 million check, that while, while the dollar weighting is very different, the time weighting might even be higher to the $5 million check. And so your conviction on doing those seeds might even be higher than, than the later stage deal. Because it, it, you know, you're going to have to spend a lot of cycles working with that business to help it get off the ground. And so you better be pretty passionate about the founder and the mission and all that stuff.

• 26:19Logan Bartlett?

  Versus other people that kind of do seeds as a occasional element. I think it ends up being a rounding error, right? Uh, cause they, they don't treat it like a real investment per se.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's a hundred percent.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  I'll say that we, we've got a number of repeat entrepreneurs. So it's super helpful.

• 26:37Logan Bartlett?

  I was gonna, I was gonna touch on that. So, so you guys, you've been fortunate enough to work with a, a bunch of different, people that I think have, have come back to you, right? From one, one fund to the, to the next, maybe talk a little bit about how that's, how that's worked out. Is that a purposeful strategy? Or when X person just raises their hand and comes back around, it's a, it's a no brainer.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think, I mean, it's very purposeful and I think it's, it is the most satisfying thing about being a venture capitalist is the relationships you develop with your entrepreneurs. And so when the great ones come back, um, I, you know, I think we're probably most proud of the fact that I think. We have worked with so many great entrepreneurs and if they do start a new company, I'm proud to say I can't think of one that hasn't come back to us to fund them. And, you know, we've got one, I think we've backed four times, another, you know, three times. And so it's just, you know, it's one, it's just really fun. You know, these people, you've worked with them for years, it's super fun. And your odds of success are very, very, very high.

• 27:44Logan Bartlett?

  It's interesting, I, yeah, I guess the implicit message is if you backed an oak company, that a repeat founder, that means that, that maybe it's been passed on already. So, so do your due diligence, I guess, to everyone else there. But, I mean, these are some of the iconic names in the, in the industry like Tom Lee and Brad Smith and Doug Williams and just, just people that have, have built enduring companies and then maybe sold them or took them public or, or whatever it is. Have you, have you found a, I guess of the commonalities of these people beyond just having success? Are there anything that stand out in particular? Because I've actually, in a, in a weird way, I've, I've had the most success with first time founders, right?

• 28:27Logan Bartlett?

  And I don't know why, it's probably not enough data points to actually extrapolate anything. But I'm curious on like the commonalities of some of these people that you've had a lot of success with.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  They have to be a Pied Piper, right? I mean, great people, they have to be an A and they have to recognize A's and they have to attract them. So, you know, it starts with that and the people that they choose to have around them. I think they, you know, I hate to say this, but they have to be supremely confident, but not arrogant. Right? Because they have to be so confident, they're willing to ask any question and then, then be able to decide. So they have to be incisive, decisive, but they, you know, but they can't be afraid to ask a million questions on the way. And the ones I really love are just ultimately confident in their ability to make good judgments and opinions.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  They're not afraid to make decisions, but they are supremely, you know, they're just inquisitive and so confident. They don't, they're not concerned about asking questions, right? And I think, yeah, you've seen it relentless, resourceful, just.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Just hate to lose, you know, they're just not gonna lose.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  So they're gonna do everything they can to to win and they're just fun to work with.

• 29:43Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, no, it's it's a it's a great list of characteristics. I've I've tried to because we're more growth or I'm I'm more growth oriented. We sort of start product market first and then end up diligencing the the team and the founders after after that. And so I I've never been as prescriptive in in terms of the characteristics that that these these founders tend to have. But that's definitely a a great list of of different ones. And the one that I found most helpful is, and I guess you touched on this, but is just their iterative learning. Right. And that once they touch a stove, they don't go back to the same stove. They they burn their hand and it's fine if you make mistakes, but don't make the same mistake over and over again.

• 30:27Logan Bartlett?

  And be able to extrapolate one lesson to the next one. I I think that coupled with like competitiveness together, I I've sort of found is usually a pretty good recipe.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  That is true. I I think mainly kind of about growth and looking at, I mean, business models are like that. That's sort of a fundamental, that's a given, you know, that has to work. But I do think that I think the advantage to doing early and growth also is that you don't get confused by numbers. Because I think sometimes people look at, oh, look at the P and L, look at their growing, look at that, you know, like we're we're, you know, this is. And they they rely on that too much and they don't rely enough on the people. Because, you know, things happen, competition comes into play, markets change, you know, are they able to shift and and drive to a new model if if required or, you know, new new product or so. I I think, you know, people is fundamental to me.

• 31:21Logan Bartlett?

  Totally. And if you thought, by the way, if you thought you got it, if if you ever thought you were getting a good deal, like valuations have gone so haywire over the course of the last three years especially. And so if if ever it was, hey, this is a good deal and you did it in the back half of 2020 or in 2021, your multiples were cut, you know, by whatever, 50%, 80%, whatever it is. And so the ability to then grow out of that, like you did not get a good deal. If you did a deal in 2021, you did not get a good deal. Now, maybe it's going to be a good investment because it can grow through that and the founder can execute. But certainly there were no good deals to be had in 2021, right?

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is so true.

• 32:00Logan Bartlett?

  Now, now backing up, so we kind of dove right into it, but so, so you're one of six, right? Growing up in a small town in Wisconsin?

• 32:07Speaker 01

  That is true.

• 32:08Logan Bartlett?

  So what were your ambition? How'd you end up at Stanford and in tech? And maybe take us through their early days to, to what led you to venture capital?

• 32:18Speaker 01

  So idyllic childhood growing up. I mean, it's great to be the sixth because nobody pays any attention to. As long as you're doing well in school, you kind of run your own life.

• 32:26Logan Bartlett?

  Especially the youngest of six, right? Everyone's gotten in all the trouble. It's your parents are much more chill. I'm sure I was the first, I was the oldest and so I, I was definitely the one blazing.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  Lots of attention. Yes.

• 32:37Logan Bartlett?

  Yes, that's right.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Yes, I know. Yes, no, I kind of raised myself at some point. Yeah. And I just, you know, I love Wisconsin, but I was, I just wanted, I'd never been to California, you know, we didn't have a lot of money. I'd never gone there. Ironically, my mother had gone there junior and senior year after a junior college, East Coast. And so I'd heard of it and I was like, good school, warm weather. So I applied to UVA and Stanford, got into both and decided, you know, never been to California. I'll go, I'll go there. This will be fun. Headed out there, political science major.

• 33:12Logan Bartlett?

  Was your first day in California, actually, when you went out to enroll?

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yep. Landed. I was like, wait a minute, this is not like your websites to look at. I was like, it's all brown here. I'm so confused. Where's the ivy? Where's the red brick? It was like a completely like foreign environment to me, but you know, loved it from day one. Loved the can do attitude, you know, sort of growing up, graduated at the time of Silicon Valley, you know, was beginning to explode. And thought I wanted to be a lawyer because I loved law school. I loved my constitutional theory and political science classes, but quickly after six months working for a law firm, I was based in the basement of a computer, mini computer company that we were defending. They were completely guilty. I was like, wow, I'm a little too righteous to defend guilty clients, but I'm kind of loving working with

• 34:02Speaker 01

  these, the engineers. So.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Went to work for Hamburg and Quist, which was a boutique investment bank venture firm.

• 34:10Logan Bartlett?

  How'd you get exposed to them, by the way? I mean, they were one of the, what was it, the four horsemen of technology, investment banking, who did all the big IPOs. And I'm sure most of our listeners probably haven't haven't heard of.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  I haven't heard of them. It was bought by JP Morgan in the, you know, in the mania in 2000s.

• 34:26Logan Bartlett?

  But it was an iconic brand, right? Way back when. What, how did you get exposure to them?

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Right. Well, two things. It was sort of funny. One of my friends interviewed for the job that I then went to interview for. She said I should do that. And two, my roommate worked for E.F. Hutton at the time, another iconic name that, you know, is gone now. And he'd come home every night and say, oh, my God, we just lost another deal to Hamburg and Quist. So I was like, oh, good. I want to go work for them because he's like, they were like the tech investment bank venture firm in the city. And so I went, interviewed, you know, these are the casual days, you know, the next day you get the job. You know, you show up the following Monday and the first three months, we take Genentech and Apple public. And it's just like, oh, my God, you're working with these amazing entrepreneurs. These people are changing the world.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  I just, I get so excited. I just didn't know that work could be so fun and interesting. And, and it was all about people, right? It was all about the, like, these people that just saw the world differently. I mean, Steve Jobs is only 18 months older than I was and I was scared to death of him. So I was like, wow. I can learn something from these people and maybe I'm sane enough and grounded enough. I could work with them and, you know, try to help keep them grounded. So.

• 35:43Logan Bartlett?

  That's great. Any, any Steve Jobs stories from the IPO roadshow or anything that stands out?

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. No, he was, he was fierce. So George Quest, the co-founder of Hamburg and Quest. Like, I'm literally walking down the hall and he's like, here, come in, you know, like, you gotta sit down with me. I'm having this, I'm gonna have this fight with Steve Jobs. So I want somebody else like sitting there and just, you know, like, holding my hand. And so he was trying to convince Steve to wear a suit on the Apple IPO roadshow. And Steve was, you know, wearing his like Apple T-shirt. He came in, it was like a hour long, like screaming match, you know, where I was sort of in the middle of the, you know, the ping pong ball going back and forth. And I will, I will say George Quist won, you know, like Steve actually wore a suit on it,

• 36:32Speaker 01

  but it was, it was not easy and his passion and fire or something, you know, as simple as that. You know, where he just wasn't, didn't want to do the traditional thing. And, you know, now people don't have to wear suits.

• 36:46Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. Now, now I, I, I own a few suits, but don't, don't wear them very often. And, uh, yeah, a venture capitalist, once upon a time, I think, I think they had to. I actually don't know, uh, what the, I guess you tell me, were venture capitalists wearing, wearing suits back in the eighties or something? Yeah, okay, that's what I figured. So, so from Hamburg and Quist, you get exposure to Genentech and Steve Jobs at Apple. And then, uh, what was the path from there to VC?

• 37:14Speaker 01

  So the path to VC was me about a year in saying, I just want to be a VC. That's what I want to do. I've done a couple IPOs. I'm like, you've done one IPO. You, you know, like you, you've done it. And so I wanted to get closer to the entrepreneur. And so what I did, it just, it was one, I was just telling all my friends. Because this was a period, there weren't, I mean, it sounded like there weren't, you know, women. It was really, there were very few associates in, in venture capital. It wasn't, you know, a later infrastructure of people growing into, um, a partnership. So I, I just, it's one of those sliding door stories where we walked in at the end of the day, walked in the hallway to get in the elevator. The elevator opens, it's a friend, Mike Leventhal, who I knew from Stanford.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  Got in the elevator, we went out to have a drink, told him I wanted to be in venture. The next day, the founder of Oak on the East Coast happened to, he had, actually Mike happened to call him and say, gee, would you be interested in investing in something called the Victoria's Secrets catalog? Am I, uh, for the, no? Partner said, no, but I'm looking for a research associate. And he said, great, I've got the girl for you. And three weeks later, I moved to Westport, Connecticut.

• 38:25Logan Bartlett?

  Wow. That's a, yeah, they might have died. The return of Victoria's Secret on an investment standpoint, I don't know how that would have worked out, but probably not associating with Leslie Wechsler. Probably benefited both groups in that. I think the return maybe worked, but yeah, some of the, some of the other stuff didn't. But so then you moved back, so you're from Wisconsin. You're out on the West Coast and it's funny now. I mean, we hear people bitching about like, oh, I don't want to be in San Francisco. I want to be in New York only. But I, I'd assume for you, the job was such a high priority that going to Westport, Connecticut was something that you, you were very passionate to do

• 39:09Logan Bartlett?

  just to get a foot in the door. But it couldn't have been the most happening city to move to as a 23, 24 year olds. Right. So what was that like?

• 39:18Speaker 01

  No, no, I know. My friends thought I was crazy. You're going to San Francisco, the suburbs of Connecticut. Well, I figured out that it was about, you know, an hour and 15 minutes drive to New York City. So I was like, okay, I'll be, you know, I can have weekends there. It was just, you know, there were so few jobs in the industry and I just knew this is what I wanted to do.

• 39:36Logan Bartlett?

  Like probably, I mean, just to put it in numbers, there were probably like 20 associate jobs or third, like it was, it was a small handful of opportunities that people were, were willing to take on junior. Cause the, the path was, you know, Vinod Khosla coming over as a general partner. There wasn't this like ascension that sort of happened at the associate rigs, right?

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Exactly. It wasn't like, you know, PE firms or it's from like, you know, where you're growing from, you know, VP associate to VP to so, and, and Oak Investment Partners at the time was one of the larger firms on the, certainly on the East Coast, more well known ones. So they had this ambition, you know, to grow a team. So I, you just had to take the, you know, I just felt like I had to take the opportunity and move there. And I just, you know, I've never been afraid of trying something new. In fact, I embraced that. So that was a, obviously ended up being a good choice. Moved six houses down from my now husband. So that worked out well too.

• 40:34Logan Bartlett?

  Oh, wow.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it just, yeah, I met him the first week I was there. I threw out a friend from Wisconsin dating one of his friends. So it just, you know, it's like, I know, it's just funny in life, just you cannot plan these things. I keep telling my children, you don't, you know, man plans, God laughs, you know, it's just the way it is.

• 40:51Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, the serendipity of, you probably had friends in San Francisco saying, how are you ever going to meet a husband or something and in Westport, Connecticut? And now, now here you are. By the way, is that, or do you, I guess for people that don't know, your, your husband is the governor of Connecticut, right? Are we looking at the, is this the governor's residence?

• 41:11Speaker 01

  No, this is, he's there and I'm here in Greenwich at their home, their home office in Greenwich.

• 41:17Logan Bartlett?

  Got it, got it.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  But I do, I do spend a lot of time there. I spent a lot more time during COVID, but otherwise we're out and about, traveling again, so.

• 41:26Logan Bartlett?

  I want to ask about your responsibilities as the first lady of Connecticut, or whatever it is, in a second. But, so, so in entering the industry, I mean, there's, there's, in addition to being recognized on Midas List and New York Times List and CB Insight List and all these lists as just pure best investor in the world, you also, at that time, I mean, even still today, we can talk about the gender imbalance in the industry, but at that time, I assume it was far bigger than it is today. I don't, I don't know the, the stats on it, but was that even on your, how much was that on your radar? Was that something that you were exposed to in trying to get the job? Or was it, was it something that wasn't a consideration that you felt any of these implicit biases?

• 42:09Speaker 01

  I didn't actually think about it. And I, and I think that is generally the way to go is just don't have a chip on your shoulder. And, and I'd always had great guy friends. I, I just, you know, you come out of Stanford, you're like the Rolls-Roycester, you know? And if there were barriers, I mean, obviously there were biases. I just chose not to see them, or I would, let's say the first year that I was in the industry and have a go around a male partner, sometimes people would think that I was the assistant, you know, like some assistant, but, but I just laughed because of course, like people's biases are based on 80% of the women they were exposed to were somebody's assistant at that point, like, you know, or secretary, you know, they call them. So, you know, very quickly.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  You know, they know that I'm not, you know, and you just have to prove yourself through knowledge and how you carry yourself. And you know, it's just one of those things where if you're not looking for trouble, you know, you can, you can generally move people. And I would say with entrepreneurs, it was almost like a filter, I guess. I didn't think about this, but until later on, but you know, good, great entrepreneurs are looking for people that can help them and have money. And at that point, I was probably lucky because the money was, there wasn't as much, there were more transfers in money, let's put it that way. And now, obviously, you know, it may have flipped in the last decade. But, you know, at that time, we had the power, we had more power, and I would say wanted the

• 43:38Speaker 01

  money. But I think they also, it was like a filter in terms of good guys weren't afraid to work with a woman. You know, like it was sort of like this, and it was mostly men. There were, you know, the entrepreneurs. And so that wasn't something, they were just looking for somebody they liked, somebody they thought would be supportive, somebody that could be helpful, you know, kindred spirit. And I would say most entrepreneurs, I just never thought that that was an issue.

• 44:02Logan Bartlett?

  I've heard you say that maybe being in Westport was also, you were outside of the group think in some ways. And so your culture might have been a little more insular to just the firm, right? Rather than the broader elements of the industry as well.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Definitely. Oh, I think it was a lot easier to be a VC from the East Coast than the West Coast. I think that, you know, the West Coast was a little bit like cowboy culture, maybe more, you know, tech engineering focused. So I think there, I think actually as a woman, it was harder on the West Coast than the East Coast. And you would have maybe thought the reverse, just because you think the East Coast would have been more, I don't know, but patriarchal, or, you know, more formal. But I think, you know, in the venture industry, we just, we, I just didn't feel that in the same way. And I think if you were going to different markets, you know, if you're funding companies like I was in healthcare, in Boston, in Nashville, in Atlanta, you know, different parts of the country,

• 44:59Speaker 01

  you didn't have the, you just didn't have the bias that existed, I think, more on the West Coast.

• 45:05Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, makes sense. And so, so you joined in, what year was that that you originally joined Oak?

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Eighty-two.

• 45:13Logan Bartlett?

  Eighty-two. And so then you were there through, when did Oak HCFT actually get going? And can you talk through the desire to go found your own firm?

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Oak could become a tech, tech group and my group, the healthcare and fintech group. And I think we, there was very little reason to stay connected because we, there was no overlap in our portfolios. And I think our view was, the tech group's view was Jedi Knights, it's just individuals. We're going to do businesses as we've done it in the past. Our view was, we want to be the best at these two areas. We've done, you know, we had a great track record at that moment. And we felt like in order to stay the best, you really needed to be a service, you know, entity effectively to entrepreneurs. Like you had to serve them. And that meant you had to create a great talent group. You had to help them with marketing PR, you had to help them with tech.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  It was, we're in the service industry and we are going to be.

• 46:13Logan Bartlett?

  I've heard you compliment, by the way, Andreessen Horowitz for this, which isn't allowed on this podcast, complimentary. Andreessen isn't allowed. But that, that mindset shift, right? I mean, they were the ones that sort of came out and said, hey, we're going to be much more service oriented, right? So I assume that was some of the thought process as well. You see this going on on the internet side with what Ben and Mark were doing.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  Absolutely. You know, it's like, wow, this is the evolution. They, you know, they let it. I don't know that they're the best of it now. Um, I, you know, I think they, they did open the door to it. And I think it was great having been operating people themselves. They knew what they needed and what entrepreneurs should, should want and need. So, you know, I just think it's one of those things where it is part of like repotting of industry. Rethinking how a firm is organized and how to provide the best support to an entrepreneur in order to remain the best. So I think that was a key and critical point. And, you know, as we've done, we've gone from three people to almost 50 in the last eight years.

• 47:11Logan Bartlett?

  Wow. And how many on the investment team versus, what's the, that's the state of the service?

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's about half and half, really, in terms of half on the investment teams between healthcare and fintech. And then half, and everybody has six people in talent, you know, now. Um, a really strong team there, uh, marketing, IR, you know, four people, you know, finance, et cetera. So. It's, you know, I, I think that's what has to drive you is like, how do you help these entrepreneurs? How do you, how do they, you know, continue to reinforce with other entrepreneurs that you're a great partner? Because that's how you win.

• 47:50Logan Bartlett?

  And I imagine there's concentric circles of competency that exists within healthcare and fintech on their own. But then also there's probably, I don't know, regulatory elements. Both those industries are highly regulated and on their own, right? Right? So probably some symbiotic overlap there from a service standpoint.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And if you think about, I mean, fintech is, you could say fintech is like 30% of the economy, right? You could say healthcare is 20% of the economy. We know a lot, but I think having a team is not just about layering of, you know, VPs and associates. It's really about people understand, like, there's some people in our firm that understand,

• 48:27Speaker 01

  they understand the firm industry and firm and distribution, right? I mean, the whole PBM, firm and distribution, wholesaling, data analytics to pharma,

• 48:36Speaker 01

  being clinical research and for, you know, pharma. I mean, so there are areas that, that people have, are developing as expertises that are very, very deep. You know, and some people, I mean, employer payer, the whole pay bidder area, you know? I don't, I don't know, there are a few of us that probably know more about that area than anybody in the country in terms of, you know, we have like 20 of those companies.

• 48:59Logan Bartlett?

  Totally. I've been forced to learn more than I want. We have city block in our portfolio. And so I've been forced to learn a little more than I expected on the pay bidder model. But it is, it's definitely unique, right? It requires its own specialization and domain expertise and all that stuff.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Definitely, definitely. Yeah, and fintech is a very broad world, so.

• 49:19Logan Bartlett?

  Fintech is a, it was a new term that, like, did it exist? Was, was fintech what you were actually calling it back when you started to go into it? Or how did you think about it?

• 49:31Speaker 01

  We did. I mean, 2002 was the very beginning of fintech. You're right. Most people didn't know what that meant or what it was. There weren't that many companies. I think it was about the time of maybe Bill New later, you know, PayPal had been created. But, you know, we had invested in, well, as they said, like, we go alert and, you know, a currency. Online currency, we did Paces, which ended up being First Data Corp's back essentially their international global payment processing engine. And it just, you know, it's funny, I mean, I did a screen when the world went to hell on like public stocks and looked at where the multiples, like what it held up when everything else went to hell, what it held up.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  And it was actually like payment processors and anybody having to do with credit. It was just so interesting to look at that and think, well, that's interesting. And it just felt like no, this was going to be like banking, financial services, nothing had been reinvented. Nobody was really applying the internet and consumer friendly, you know, or efficiency to financial services. So it just felt like this was going to be an opportunity. We actually, we went after the unbanked initially, just tried to figure out how to get them basically an opportunity to use the internet, you know, net spend. If you don't have a credit card or a debit card, right, you can't, you cannot reserve a hotel room, you can't rent a car, you can't, you know, buy anything on the internet.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  So that was one of our first investments in the area.

• 51:00Logan Bartlett?

  How did you go about like both two new categories in some ways? And was it, hey, Annie's going to do this, this other bucket of stuff? When we talk about like allocation and, and time from an LP standpoint, was this, was this just, hey, you're going to get an opportunity and if, if the first one works, we'll let you do another one? Or how did this actually work?

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Well, I started then did the healthcare thing was maybe more logical. And then I think, you know, I was, I had a bunch of shell shock tech partners, right? At that point, Congress going to hell, telecom didn't look so great, you know, and I was like, hey, let's, let's try, we had Paces had worked. And so I was like, let me just, you know, get a. And by, you know, I got somebody eventually, actually it was Tricia Kemp, who's now my partner in fintech at Oak. And I said, like, I'm just like, you're not going to know this person's there. We'll just, you know, 1099 this person and, you know, just let me try this. And then, you know, and then our first couple of deals were quite successful. So that just fed on it.

• 52:06Logan Bartlett?

  It's amazing how if you're not successful early, you don't get an opportunity to be successful late, right? Better to be lucky early in your career, I think, than you don't get an opportunity to try it later.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  No, no, it's so true.

• 52:19Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, if it doesn't work out. So now HC and FT become the two kind of focus areas for you. And actually, I guess one tactical question in spinning out the, I guess, do you consider it founding a firm or spinning out a firm? What's the right nomenclature and then the brand? Yeah, it's kind of both, right?

• 52:40Speaker 01

  Both, because I think, you know, I've been part of it for so long. It's a completely separate firm and OKXFT is not an investing entity anymore. But, you know, OKXFT is a totally separate firm. It's just that people had known us when we, and as part of this, like our LPs knew us as that as individuals, the entrepreneurs knew us at that. So it just felt like, and it felt like, okay, it's like an old name. So therefore you have credibility out there. I didn't want to, it's funny how like now I feel like rebranding a firm seems a little easier. We could have rebranded it at this point. Certainly, you know, could follow that. But I think at that time, it just was easy. You know, and then we could have an associate call an entrepreneur, you know, wanting from Oak, OKXFT, you know,

• 53:25Speaker 01

  they didn't have to explain like, oh, there's this like new name and a new firm.

• 53:29Logan Bartlett?

  I remember my first day when I joined Battery, like I found just among my friends and people in the industry, I got funnier and smarter and more charismatic. And all of these things was the domain address changed, right? And it is, there is this kind of, it's something that, especially in the last year, everyone's like, oh, what does brand matter with venture capital and the commoditization of capital and Tiger Global's and all the hedge And all of that stuff, but there is something in your ability to cut through the noise and resonate with founders, particularly now, as you mentioned, the equilibrium shifted back a little bit more in the power balance. So I think it makes a lot of sense. Was there, was at the point that you all left was Oak,

• 54:13Logan Bartlett?

  had they already made the decision that they were going to keep going? And so the brand you were able to, like the IP itself, or whatever you want to call it, like, was there any discussion about your ability to use it?

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Lot of discussion, yeah. Yeah, I think we had basically Oak Investment Partners, the brand was going to end. And the thought was my tech partners will raise O-Tech someday, and they never did that. So they would get O-Tech brand, we would get O-HCFT, OIP would sunset.

• 54:42Logan Bartlett?

  And is that, is that a decision that's, I'm sure each partner individually, but is that the founder of Oak or the senior most person, was that the person that was able to kind of litigate the decisioning of that? Because venture firms are not known in their totality for the ability to make these types of decisions.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Well, even more commonly is we had four equal partners. I was one of the four equal managing partners. And so it was three people on the tech team negotiating with one person.

• 55:08Logan Bartlett?

  Oh, wow. Yeah. So you're in a corner there a little bit. The vote, you probably didn't want to go to vote. Maybe this is where your husband's career in politics helped it. And you're like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna filibuster until we get a little bit more time on the floor here.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. So it worked out, but it definitely didn't die because.

• 55:26Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, I can only imagine. So maybe, maybe shifting gears a little bit on investment style. So I heard, I heard you say that in the early days, one of your, we talked about the people side of things. I think it was one of the founders or original partners of Oak said that you didn't focus enough on the CEO or the people itself. So I'd be interested in that, that story or that lesson. And then stylistically, what is an Annie Lamont deal?

• 55:53Speaker 01

  So Jerry Gallagher, probably the greatest retail investor that ever existed in venture, sadly died young, was probably my greatest mentor.

• 56:04Logan Bartlett?

  We rattled off some of his deals, but I mean, you had the laundry list, right? This is Whole Foods and Office Depot and PetSmart and all that.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  PetSmart, Dick's Sporting Goods, Jamba Juice, Ulta. It was just, you know, on and on. And he was, you know, fundamentalist and I loved it because he came to me, it wasn't like he was giving me a review or anything. He was a partner, I was a partner, but he, I was, it was early on. I'd been in the industry, I don't know, four years or something, five years. And he, yeah, he sat me down. He said, you know, I, like, he'd been the chairman of Dayton Hudson, a major retail firm. He was the person that coined, actually, same-store sales. He was the analyst at Dallas and Luck and General, an esteemed investment bank. And he was the, he was the retail analyst. Can you imagine? Like, that never existed before?

• 56:54Speaker 01

  And he said to me, you know, I just think you need to focus on, like, you're very focused on tailwinds, sway, model, you know, opportunity, and, and your bar isn't high enough, and your CEO's. And I was like, okay, that's, I really appreciate you saying that to me. And it seems so, like, basic. But just having him say it, somebody I respected, I was like, okay, I really, I gotta focus on that in the rest of my career I have. And it's definitely held me in good stead. And I think it's not just, because he was, I mean, good Midwestern guy, too, from Minnesota. It was all about ethics and values. And like, that was like, first bar, like, make, you know,

• 57:38Speaker 01

  check that box with the entrepreneur first. And to your point, and, you know, and deals you may or may not have done because of certain characteristics of an entrepreneur. I mean, I just, if there's any question, particularly in healthcare, because you are dealing with people's lives, and it is a mission that we believe in, like, that's just the first cut, like, high ethics, high value, you know, do you care, is this a mission to you when you get into healthcare? And I think that he led me to that, just that flip the switch, that was incredibly important.

• 58:11Logan Bartlett?

  Are there tactics that you do to go about actually assessing that? Because it is ethics and values and, I mean, even, even CEO quality can be this ethereal thing. Oftentimes, ethics can be binary, right? Do you have it? Or do you not? But do you do reference checks from people that have worked with the person in the past? Do you just spend exhaustive time with them? How do you actually go about assessing that out?

• 58:37Speaker 01

  I think, I mean, one, I'm a, I'm a very instinctual investor. There's no question. I mean, to me, it's just, I Make judgments about people pretty quickly. But yes, absolutely. We, I mean, I think the, the advantage to being in an ecosystem like healthcare or fintech is that you can very easily check people. I, we know so many people in the industry that there, and obviously our talent team was very helpful on this also, and that we do extensive reference checking and back channeling on individuals. And, you know, part of it, obviously, it starts with ethics and values and goes from there in terms of all their capabilities and skills and weaknesses and strengths that we hopefully can help to bolster as we're supporting them.

• 59:21Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah. And what about, I guess, in the, the healthcare industry, right? Now that you're making these investments in founders, what, what areas, we talked about pay bidder a little bit earlier, but are there specific areas that, I guess, request for startup or, or anything along those lines, like big themes that, that have you particularly excited these days?

• 59:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Well, I think, yes. I mean, I think pay better is number one. And, and that is, 85% of the healthcare costs are in the provider side, right? I mean, it's all the caregiving that, that we all receive, whether it be, you know, drugs or, or services. And then 15% is with the payer. But the, the issue is that the provider is only incented to care about costs, really, and outcomes, if they're responsible for the total cost of care at some level. And so our view is, we are, we want to, we want to take risk. We want to be invested in provider, technology-enabled services. So on the provider's side, but taking full risk,

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  so taking the payer risk with that provider. So it often starts with, it could be, it could be in different disciplines, you know, cardiology, but we started with primary care, companies like Galileo, Village MD, where we're focused on the caregiving from the primary care side. And that, that drives 70% of all downstream costs and managing those costs and then managing those outcomes. And a primary care doc doesn't have the capability to do that by themselves, although they need institutional support to do it. And they don't even, you know, in terms of the choices that are made along the way, no doctor thinks about cost. No doc, I mean,

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  I don't know about you, but you know, the doctor who was often just prescribing the brand. And I'm like, why didn't you describe the generic? That would have saved me $1,500, you know? And it's just not their job. Like, they don't think that way. And so you have to have an entity, an institution that does think that way and has the capability and has the capability to refer you to the right doctor that has the best outcomes at the lowest cost. And so like, to me, this is a complete redesign of our healthcare system. And it's, you know, there are things that we can do. It's from a software perspective. We've invested in that make things more efficient, provide a better consumer experience. But

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  it is this whole pay provider model that devoted's coming out. They started as a payer and then introducing devoted medical group as the first virtual provider, but then, you know, creating a network. I mean, to me, it's like, unless you on the caregiving side, you can just, you're whistling in the wind, just being a payer. Like, you can't, you can only affect so much.

• 1:02:12Logan Bartlett?

  And so this, and I realize we have people that are probably on a journey or a spectrum of their healthcare knowledge in this. But so actually, people generally know payers. That's the insurance side and that the healthcare, the provider side is everyone from a hospital to all the other stuff that we've listed that might happen. And so the way this actually works at a tactical level, if there's one example that you want to use, like, where does the money come in? Where does the patients come in? And what's the big unlock of going at risk from that perspective?

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  I think the, I mean, the unlock, so if you think about, you know, just the simplest model, you know, you've got a primary care practice in your, you know, in your neighborhood, right? If that's part of a larger group that is supplying software and analytics around you as an individual or providing caregiving services beyond the doctor, providing, you know, whether it's nurses that follow up, it's all about actually looking at you as an individual and then having Care management and care coordination capabilities around you. So when you're, you know, like anticipating like an episode, so in the preventative care side,

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  right, dealing, you know, trying to look preventatively at things. And then when there's an incident, managing it so you're going to the lowest cost setting, you're going to the best doctor for that incident who has the lowest, if you have to go to hospital, readmission rate, you know, on that. I mean, we were just looking at, not to draw off here, but we were just looking at data, you know, or the PDEX for inpatient, for example, back surgery, inpatient spine surgery versus outpatient. And the readmission rate, so you're, so having an incident 30 days later, we go back in the hospital, is three times as high if you have that surgery in a hospital across the country. So it's things like that. It's like knowing that, knowing the right provider that doesn't, you know, actually create more downstream

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  costs, like managing that, that care coordination is absolutely fundamental. And then how do you, like a primary care group can't really just go to a payer like United Health or Humana or Aetna and say, great, give me a contract to manage all these people. No, you've got to have clout, you've got to have scale to do that. So we aggregated, you know, groups like a village of D, we've aggregated doctors all over the country in, you know, and in courts, concentrated in particular geographies. And we go to the payers and we say, particularly Medicare Advantage, like we'll take risk on these patients, we, you just, you give us a, on a certain amount to manage them, a capitated amount each year, we'll manage them and we'll guarantee you like 85%, like we'll guarantee you that we're,

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  you know, sort of 85, 85% of your total member premiums. And then, you know, and then often we'll say 20 to 30% on those people, providing them actually better care inside the.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that provider entity.

• 1:05:12Logan Bartlett?

  And it's going from a system of fee for service, right? And we've talked a little bit about this on other episodes, but kind of moving from, hey, if you just do X, Y, Z, the incentives within the healthcare system are very broken as you think about it compared to any other industry, really, right? Maybe government at large has some equally perverse incentives, but the downstream impact of, hey, if I do X, and then that would decrease the probability of Y happening, but if the dollars don't play out, you have no incentive. It would be like doing marketing attribution for a B2B software company, but not looking at how it went all the way through the cycle and did it actually convert customers or not, right?

• 1:05:57Logan Bartlett?

  It's just the loop is not closed. And so the pay vider model, I guess, in my simple terms of thinking about it is basically saying, we're going to vertically integrate, and we're going to take the risk ourselves that we can deliver better outcomes for you at a lower cost, right? So it is, it's trying to get those incentives back in alignment.

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  It's all about financial alignment. You're absolutely right. I'm going to use that. I'm going to use that example. I like that analogy.

• 1:06:22Logan Bartlett?

  Good, yeah. It's amazing having someone that doesn't really understand something, explain it back, right? It gets it really to the simplest terms of what it actually means, right? If you want to go a level deeper than that, I'm out, but I got that much here.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  No, you're dead on. It's all about that virtuous cycle, and the reality is it doesn't exist because right now, people forget doctors are economic beings, you know, and they're going to, and it's also their, this is their practice, and they do back surgery, they do back surgery, of course. The answer is, you know, do back surgery. You've got it. Hammer the answers and nail, yeah. So that's, that is absolutely true. And so that's why you need to put, you need to put context around it.

• 1:07:04Logan Bartlett?

  Now, one of the things as well, I mean, having, having you, you have this interesting perspective, right? Where you, you, you know, someone very well who happens to be in government. And, and so you get some exposure, especially over the course of COVID, in terms of how the healthcare system, I think people forgot how powerful governors actually were until, until COVID and vaccine rollout and all that stuff actually, actually came to be, which it seems like Connecticut did a great job of. So, so kudos, I guess, to you all on whatever, whatever role you played in part there, it seemed to have actually worked out.

• 1:07:38Speaker 01

  Well, I delivered up her chief operating officer because he'd been the CEO of one of our companies. And so he ended up, he was supposed to, you know, oversee all the departments to make government more efficient. And the reality was COVID came and he became his partner in basically running the entire COVID response. That was hugely helpful to have a business person actually under just to healthcare, you know, involved in the government. Some of that I knew well, you know, could communicate with, could help organize our hospital systems, actually have a joint response. So yeah, no, but you're right. It was amazing. I think that America learned so much about how important governors are in their states. And we know what that means in America, how much they actually drive people's daily, you know, day

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  lives from energy to education to, you know, et cetera, healthcare. It was an incredible experience. And I think from my perspective, understanding hospital point of view, understanding the, you know, the dynamics there, understanding Medicaid, like just the administration of Medicaid in different states and understanding like, we don't actually do manage Medicaid. Forty six out of 50 states do manage Medicaid. We actually manage all Medicaid from, at the state level. So just, you know, like, understanding like the workings from the governmental side is, I think, you know, been really. Educational for me.

• 1:08:57Logan Bartlett?

  Totally. Well, you so now you had this purview into both the the two biggest entities, I think, that play in our healthcare system, the government and the private sector. Are there things that or a thing, if you could wave a magic wand, or if you could if you could change just just one thing in the healthcare system itself, either a request for startup, hey, you know, Amazon bought one of your former companies, one medical as well. And so getting more of these big tech folks interested and aligned or universal healthcare or something on the other side, like, is there anything that exists that you you think is just a no brainer to help make sure that healthcare doesn't end up as a 45% cost of GDP

• 1:09:42Logan Bartlett?

  or something here in the next couple of years?

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  Right, right. Well, I do think this whole organization of the I think all primary care entities frankly should be independent of hospital systems. So I'll have some very unhappy hospital systems with me. But I think the reality is, is if if as hospital systems, you own primary care, then you really have very little incentive unless you have all value based contracts to not have those primary care docs incentive to send people to the most expensive venue. I mean, it's really a cost center, a hospital, right? It's the last place you want anybody to go. And yet, if you're a hospital system and you own primary care docs, and they can't, you're not supposed to be referring elsewhere, then, you know, I think you created a massive disincentive in the market to go to the lowest cost setting

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  to provide the best care.

• 1:10:31Logan Bartlett?

  In the vertical integration there, I mean, we could we could think of analogies of of Microsoft back in the the late 90s or whatever, and everything they did with bundling Internet Explorer versus Netscape and probably come up with some anti trust type situations that exist in the in the private sector today. But the the simple example there is Logan sick. I go into my primary care doctor that I just I check in on and say, hey, what's going on? And he or she says, well, you need a a liver scan, right? And we need you to go do that. And if they're going to say, hey, I'm a part of this hospital. Go get the liver scan right next door. It's super easy, but that gives them the opportunity to maybe charge 5X the price of what it is just to walk

• 1:11:15Logan Bartlett?

  across the block to go get that exact same liver scan, right? And as a patient, I have no knowledge, one, of like what the different costs are because it's not reported very cleanly back to me. But two, no incentive. Like, it's going to get a bill that goes to my insurance and the insurance is going to pay it or not, right? And it'll go against my deductible. But I'm not like price shopping what that liver scan looks like. And so the doctor at this top of the funnel point has a ton of power and influence on where I can end up, right?

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I always say is like, you're a consumer when you're healthy and you're a patient when you're sick. Right? You don't, like, you go to a doctor, you're not, I mean, yes, you know, people do research and they want to understand about their disease. But in terms of venue, I mean, you're just generally following what the doctor says. You're not really thinking about, oh, how can I price shop, as you say, but what was caused venue? And how will I know they have great equipment? You know, like, maybe you equate price with value, you know, like, oh, he's the most expensive doctor at the most expensive place. But again, you don't even know the price. So it is, it's a completely, you know, it's just, it's not a transparent marketplace, right?

• 1:12:25Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so is that the one, that verticalization? And so then having all the primary cares independent from the system? And so therefore, we would actually be a little bit more, the incentives would be more neutral rather than directly aligned?

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. The primary care is independent, but they're organized. Because I don't think individual primary care docs can actually influence much if they're organized in a larger entity that's actually driving, measuring, you know, has the information systems, is measuring the outcomes, and has the power to negotiate with payers. You have to, you have to have all those things. And so, yes, that, that would be a world where I think you'd actually start to change, change things. I, I think also, I mean, just think about it, commercial employers are the ones that subsidize the healthcare system. But you know, if you look at the rates they pay to hospital systems or doctors, you know, they're 2X with Medicare, sometimes 3X what the Medicare rate is.

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  And somehow organizing the employer world, so they're taking risks, they're, you know, I, I don't know why it doesn't happen. But I do feel like employers should aggregate and they should negotiate. And they, they don't, they don't do that. It's just, it's not their core business.

• 1:13:45Logan Bartlett?

  One other thread, I guess, you, you're no longer involved with One Medical, but you led the Series A in the company, is that right?

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:13:53Logan Bartlett?

  And so what, what's your perspective on Amazon and I guess Apple's getting more into care? And is this, is this a good thing for, for the industry?

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  Well, essentially because if you think about it, One Medical was like 14 years ago, we made that investment. And it was changing just the consumer experience. It wasn't taking risk. It wasn't, it was just, wow, you could email your doctor on a weekend and get a prescription. You could have same day or next day service, you know, actually going to see a provider. If I was traveling to San Francisco from New York, they'd have my lab. You know, they'd actually have an EHR there and no one would have been done to me in, you know, in New York City. So.

• 1:14:35Logan Bartlett?

  How would you describe, by the way, that original investment thesis? I, I guess, I assume people know what it is, but maybe not. Like, what was the original? It was just, hey, let's use tech and provide a subscription service to people to deliver a more competent primary care experience?

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  That was, that was it. It was really, it's a lousy primary care experience and we can create a better one. And Jerry Gallagher was, you know, involved in that investment, our retail investor, because it was a combination. It was, it was healthcare, but it was also a better retail experience effectively. And that's as simple as it was. And that's the amazing thing is, you know, it has taken all this time and they've built out across the country. It was a hard build, but it's still, it is still a premium experience for a consumer, right? I mean, it's amazing how dated the experience is at, at most primary care facilities. So. The interesting thing to me, you know, I love that Amazon, it is interesting that Amazon

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  bought Whole Foods and this, but that Amazon is putting, you know, that button to go to One Medical was immediately on the website, you know, the day after they bought the company. And I do think from a consumer experience and rolling that out, that is a good thing. But they also have this, you know, One Medical bought Iora and that's, that is a pay vider. I don't think Amazon has any idea what they're going to do with that. You know, it doesn't, like, this is the future, but they're not a healthcare company. And, you know, like figuring out how to deal with Medicare Advantage, take risk, manage it, grow it, they're going to have to, like, create a whole nother infrastructure for that.

• 1:16:18Logan Bartlett?

  One question we've had, as we think through these different healthcare-enabled services, companies, is ultimately what is the end state that these things are actually valued at, right? Because there is, it's service, right? There's elements that can be scalable in a much more linear way, like Facebook or Salesforce.com, but there's elements that need capex intensity, right, around it. You actually, One Medical needs to build facilities. You need doctors. You don't just need engineers. You need people that can actually go onsite. We've seen a range of these outcomes that have occurred. Obviously, Oak Street Health, $10 billion outcome for Medicare Advantage that's happened here in the last couple, couple

• 1:17:00Logan Bartlett?

  months, and then One Medical. Is this, do you think that the answer is, hey, maybe not at the SaaS enterprise software multiples that exist, but if you're taking the risk, then there should be better margins associated with it? Or how do you think about the business?

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  Well, you know, they're all done a little differently. But you're right, a lot of these are service businesses and they're going to be more capital intensive. They're not going to be SaaS businesses. So I said we do some that are like pure services, pure SaaS, I mean, pure SaaS, and others that are pure service, but they're service-taking risk. And I think what happens if, if you're just fee-for-service, right, you would just be the revenues of fee-for-service and the margin you get from that. If you are... If you're a service entity, provider is taking risk, then the reality is you actually, I would say you probably 3X, 4X the revenues that you're getting. And ultimately, the margins are lower, but the scale is so enormous. I mean, if you think about UnitedHealth as

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  an entity, I mean, that has grown more in the last 20 years. Their multiple is more than, has grown more than Google. So, I mean, it's kind of amazing. But when you, you know, you just think about the hundreds of billions of dollars, you know, the trillions of dollars spent in healthcare. And, you know, you can become, you can, the scale of these things are enormous. So, I mean, what we like about it is you can really create massive scale, yes, more capital intensive at times. But if you can scale the capital intensity of the provider, and then the payer element too, you know, it does give a multiple on the basic provider model.

• 1:18:40Logan Bartlett?

  If you want to be mad about the American healthcare system, just you look at UnitedHealth's stock price over how it's traded and watch how linearly it's gone up over the years. It's, yeah, it's definitely a frustrating thing. But, no, it makes sense. The changing of this provider model obviously aligns incentives in a better way and can get more of the top line revenue and all that makes sense. One last one before I let you hop. You had one experience with Elizabeth Holmes. She was in, I guess you could say, healthcare broadly, broadly speaking. But can you tell the story of your Elizabeth Holmes experience at a conference? And it sounds like she never

• 1:19:24Logan Bartlett?

  pitched you. But, yeah, just your perspectives on that?

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  No, in fact, I think she avoided VCs in order to really understand what she was doing. So, yeah, so I was speaking at a Forbes conference in New York City and I, you know, I'd left my purse in the green room and so I come out after I speak and Elizabeth Holmes is, I guess, speaking after me. So I tried to go into the green room and there were like four big bodyguards standing outside the door and they're like, no, you cannot go in again. I'm like, what the hell's going on there? Well, Elizabeth Holmes was inside the green room and she took four bodyguards with her at all times apparently. And so I literally stood there for an hour. I like, they wouldn't let me in the room, you know, to get my purse. So I eventually got it and

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  left her. But I was like, who the hell is this woman? I didn't even know who the hell, you know, was she? And why? Why does she need four bodyguards? I mean, it was so crazy.

• 1:20:20Logan Bartlett?

  She was, she was getting her voice right for, so she could talk in that, that deeper baritone, that baritone voice. Did you, as all that came out, like, did you feel like this just smelled off? And it's, I realize she didn't pitch you, but did, after you did a little research on this, were you like, this just doesn't exactly feel right?

• 1:20:38Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. So when I looked at, I mean, in part because anybody who is working to get the people around her that she got to raise the money from, you know, where she raised, I mean, clearly this is somebody who had a penchant towards secrecy, didn't want to, it's, you know, it's again, it's like FTX-like, right? You know, in the sense that you're not, I mean, maybe there were BCS there, but there wasn't the sharing of information, right? And so anytime somebody is unwilling to do that, there's usually a reason for that. And, you know, it's obviously very sad. She was one of the, there weren't that many entrepreneur, female entrepreneurs at that time. And I think that people were giving her the benefit of doubt. You know, men were really excited about, you know, funding the next deep jobs in healthcare. And unfortunately, she was a fraud, you know,

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  and that's really sad because that always sets back all of our causes.

• 1:21:27Logan Bartlett?

  She, in a weird way, like the, the stuff that people say from a bias standpoint, like women are much more factual and realistic in their pitches. She had all the opposite qualities of that, right? It was like the end of the spectrum of all of the things that, you know, you would typically characterize this like ambitious, brash male CEO telling the story that might not be true, but, and it's, it's a shame that.

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  It is. It's like, no, no, don't adopt all the bad habits and, you know, like.

• 1:22:01Logan Bartlett?

  Totally. She, she learned all Steve Jobs' worst lessons, I guess, in not wearing suits. And back in that roadshow, she would probably would have gotten yelled at as well. But much easier to take advantage, I think, of Betsy DeVos or Rupert Murdoch or whoever else was on her cap table than Sequoia. So in some ways I give SBF more credit for his willingness to go after the venture community.

• 1:22:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was, he was so bold, you know? He thought that he could fool everyone, right? And maybe she wasn't, you know, was bold. She wasn't convinced.

• 1:22:35Logan Bartlett?

  It's a shame. I think both of those stories are going to be tough to top. I feel like, especially with FTX, we got, we got the, the, nothing's going to beat that. There should be a lot more frauds that come out, but we really got the dessert at the end. Right? It was like, this should have been a slow build to the FTX story. We should have gotten like a little incremental, like a billion dollar startup goes out of debt business and then a fraud here or there. It's a shame we got that one so upfront because I feel like everything else is gonna, my senses have been dulled to future fraud.

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is true. I don't know. We, we needed, I guess something popped. Not only the Chinese balloon, but the, you know, the whole crypto balloon.

• 1:23:12Logan Bartlett?

  That's right.

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, so.

• 1:23:15Logan Bartlett?

  Well, good. Well, Annie, thanks for doing this. This is great. Just for context, we're hopping back on right now because Annie started to say how my partners wanted to fire me in 99, which I, I kind of got the feeling, if you're pivoting sectors, it's generally not from a position of strength. So wait, what was, what was that?

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  You know, I mean, back to the like 98, 99, if you weren't making 50 to 100 times your money on a deal, right? It was like, what, what purpose did you serve? And basically we just wanted to excise healthcare from the repertoire of the firm and like. I was, we did an offsite, we're in Cabo, it's not my favorite place now because we were in Cabo and by the fire, one of my partners was like, "So, like, you're probably, you're not going to be part of the next fund."

• 1:24:01Speaker 01

  So they kind of like delivered the message, but by the time the next fund came, like, you know, a year later, it was like, the world had blown up, you know, all their deals that they thought were so incredible, you know, deflated and it was like, and they wanted to raise a big fund after all the great returns, you know, we'd had the last decade. And so they came back and it's like, "Yeah, it'd be great." You know, like, I mean, they acted like they'd never said it, you know, like, "Oh, great, well, you know, we'll have healthcare, we'll have this like power fund healthcare practice." I'm like, "Well, change, you know, what I'm doing in healthcare." And yeah, so that inspired me, this is, you know, one of the reasons I did Vintag too, because it was like, "Okay, I'm gonna have a little bit more, you know, like, diversity, you know, broader platform." And I know obviously then intellectual curiosity drove me to it too, but it's just so funny because it's self-preservation, you know?

• 1:24:46Logan Bartlett?

  Totally. I had a, I had a similar, I guess, I don't know, two years into my career, my boss at the time, I had been on the job for six months and he sat me down and said, "Hey, this, this really isn't working out." And, and then the next, like, literally two days later or something, this big deal came through that I had almost single-handedly won, and we never spoke about it again. I just kept, I just kept showing up to work every day. And it was, it was pretty funny, like, had that not happened, I probably would have been looking for, for a job, but I, yeah, I mean, the ability, the timing of all that stuff and the serendipity to be able to find a new sector, were there proof points in healthcare

• 1:25:30Logan Bartlett?

  that were actually working by the time the next fund came around? Or was it that everyone was licking their wounds and, and so the change would have been too disruptive?

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it was, I mean, the next fund was like 2001, I think, so that was like immediate or, yeah, 2001. So like, market had just started crashing and, and, you know, they wanted continuity and we were going to raise bigger and bigger funds. And so needed people, like bodies, you know, and then the following, it was fun, then a fund, you know, the next fund, it wasn't even that Athena, you know, Athena we'd done in 2000 and that was beginning to work, but it wasn't, didn't go public till 2007. So it was actually like net spend, you know, looked like this enormous win at that, you know, that was like my fintech, you know, deal. Actually, weirdly, that was that.

• 1:26:19Speaker 01

  And, you know, one other thing, and it's like, that helped us raise that fund because it was on the rest of like 500, 600 million dollar win on a whatever 20 million dollar check. So.

• 1:26:29Logan Bartlett?

  Luck and survivorship bias and good intuition, right? Like had, had they raised that fund six months earlier or something? It's a.

• 1:26:37Speaker 01

  No, yeah, no, time is everything.

• 1:26:40Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:41Speaker 01

  Right. Like just, you know, sticking it out too. And.

• 1:26:44Logan Bartlett?

  You made good, you made good on it for them. I, uh, yeah, it, it all worked out for both you and, uh, and them and that. But what, uh, what, what a funny, like serendipitous thing.

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. Well, it is. Well, life is that way, isn't it? And investing is that way. Right?

• 1:27:01Logan Bartlett?

  One of the things I found is that you delude yourself too much into what is you versus what is right place, right time, what circumstance and all that. It feels like you have a pretty humble attitude about all this, despite your immense success at all the companies you've invested.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  You got, you know what? You gotta earn it every day, right? You're just, you gotta be in the game. You gotta earn it. You gotta feel like you have to.

• 1:27:21Logan Bartlett?

  There's a scoreboard, right? There's a scoreboard at entry and there's a scoreboard at exit and everyone, uh, can, can assess, you know, what those, what those data points look like. So, yeah.

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  Well, that's one thing I love about the business and I think it's, it's great about being anybody, but being a woman too, right? It was always about performance at the end of the day. So it's, uh, as you say, there is a scoreboard, not that qualitative. It's, it's pretty quantitative.

• 1:27:45Logan Bartlett?

  Well, Andy, thank you.

• 1:27:51Logan Bartlett?

  So that'll do it for the 58th episode of the Logan Bartlett Show. Thank you to Andy Lamont for coming on. Thank you to Rashad and Sam for their efforts with the production. And thank you everyone for listening, for, uh, liking and, uh, five starring on the platform that they're listening on as well as subscribing to YouTube. We really appreciate that. We're trying to grow the numbers. And so thanks, everyone for listening and look forward to seeing you next week on the 59th episode of the Logan Bartlett Show. Have a good weekend, everyone.