The CodeBreaker Mindset™ Ft. Steve Kraus, Bessemer Venture Partners, Partner

The CodeBreaker Mindset™ Ft. Steve Kraus, Bessemer Venture Partners, Partner 

Chitra Nawbatt [00:00:11]:

Welcome to The CodeBreaker Mindset™ where leaders and influencers share the rules, pivots and serendipity to achieving goals and dreams. I'm your host, Chitra Nawbatt. Joining us today is Steve Kraus, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. Steve, welcome. Thank you for joining us.

Steve Kraus [00:00:28]:

Thanks for having me, Chitra. I look forward to a fun conversation today.

Chitra Nawbatt [00:00:32]:

You've had a distinguished career as an investor at Bessemer Venture partners for roughly 20 years. The firm has about $10 billion in assets under management. You've invested half a billion dollars in over 50 companies, of which several have gone public, such as All Scripts, Kymera, Collective Medical, and a few have been acquired. You started your career as a consultant at Bain. Take us through your journey from Bain to becoming a distinguished investor.

Steve Kraus [00:01:05]:

Yeah, well, actually, my journey starts before Bain. I grew up thinking I wanted to be a journalist, which is something that I know you've been. Chitra and I wrote professionally as a stringer and had internships at major newspapers when I was first in high school and then in college. I actually went to Yale, which I was fortunate enough to go to, but my dad always tells a story when visiting the campus. The first place I wanted to go was the Yale Daily News, which is the longest standing college newspaper in the country and has a rich history of producing excellent journalists that serve in many of the major news organizations today across America. And that was my life goal. I was singularly focused on being a journalist. I burnt out on writing through that process in college and frankly didn't really know what I wanted to do. I hadn't really thought about business, honestly, as a, as a young person and even a college student was lucky to get a job at Bain & Company, as you referenced an internship and really realized there, first of all, learned how to think about business, which is not something that you necessarily do as a journalist. There are some things that I did as a journalist that actually really relate to venture capital. And we can talk about that that I didn't know at the time. 

But now I actually see the linkage. But at Bain & Company, I was lucky enough to get a job. I learned about business. I met amazing people. I really got some fundamental skills in how to think about companies, about financial levers of companies, about how to value companies. But honestly at Bain, what I loved beyond just the wonderful people I worked with, many of whom, one of whom I work with today as a fellow partner, actually, and many of whom I work with in the healthcare industry was at Bain, I really, I did a lot of different, invested or not, did consulting for a lot of different industries. Waste management. I worked on the AOL-Time Warner merger, actually, which was a massive case for many, many months. Worked on some e-commerce businesses back in the, you know, late 1990s and early 2000s when that industry was starting to, you know, really come to, to fruition. But I didn't. Well, intellectually I sort of enjoyed the casework and kind of understand those businesses. I didn't love them. But at Bain, in my, in my right, between my first and second year, I found healthcare. I wasn't a classically trained, you know, biology or chemistry major. I hadn't really thought about the healthcare industry. But it was at Bain that I found healthcare and I fell in love with healthcare. And so that's how I ultimately got into the healthcare industry, which is I, I think of my first as someone who loves healthcare, cares deeply about it, who thinks a lot about it, and I get to be an investor, which I really enjoy on the venture side too, and work with entrepreneurs who are trying to change our industry. But I credit Bain for igniting my love of healthcare.

Chitra Nawbatt [00:04:06]:

So then how do you go from Bain to actually making that transition to venture?

Steve Kraus [00:04:14]:

What's a little, still a circuitous story, Chitra. You know, I had been at Bain for about two and a half years. I realized I didn't want to be consultant for my life. I had learned a lot. I credited, as I said it, for igniting that interest in health care. But I was, you know, I think one of the reasons I like healthcare is you can do well and do good at the same time, which I think is just an awesome way to spend your time when you're working that yes, you can financially do well. Our companies and the entrepreneurs that we invest in can, you know, do well and do well for their employees and their shareholders. But we're also ultimately working in healthcare, making a difference in people's lives and in a very important industry. So I'm a do-gooder by heart. I want to spend my time and we all work super hard. We spend a lot of time at work. I want to make a difference. But when I was leaving Bain, I wasn't necessarily thinking about going to healthcare industry. 

I actually had been working on a few nonprofits and turns out that a friend that I had worked on a nonprofit board had connected me with a woman who was running for Governor of Massachusetts. And I'd always had an interest in policy and politics. And I was 24 at the time and I actually joined.  She actually was a Yale graduate too. Ironically. I actually met with her on 9/11. I saw the, I saw the planes hit the World Trade Center. She was the sitting Treasurer of the state of Massachusetts. I was getting interviewed by her and all of a sudden she was swept out of the room by, you know, state police because she had to go to a bunker because no one knew what was going on at the time. But I actually joined the campaign very soon. I was her first employee that she hired onto the campaign and I was kind of her, I ran the entire campaign, everything other than the policy and the communications. I ran all of the operations, the finance of the campaign. She ultimately became the Democratic nominee in Massachusetts. We ended up losing the race to Mitt Romney, ironically, who people know and, but in that campaign, our lieutenant governor candidate and, and this is just a story to tell I think younger people that you never know where life's going to take you. 

But our lieutenant governor candidate who we had joined forces with actually was the person who founded Bessemer Venture Partners healthcare practice. And so I had, I entered the campaign thinking I was going to work in politics. Maybe if we won I'd go work in the State House. Maybe I would work on policy or what have you, healthcare policy at that point. But on the campaign I met this guy who was exceptional. His name is Chris Gabrieli. He's my number one professional mentor. And he was an amazing person. Super smart, super compelling, super compassionate, but also really deeply schooled in healthcare and had been an early, early partner at Bessemer and built out their healthcare practice. And so I really took a liking to him. We worked on healthcare policy and the campaign together. We ended up losing that campaign as I referenced. And ultimately Chris said, hey, do you want to come join me? I actually was about ready to go back to Bain because I didn't have a job after losing the campaign. Bain was nice enough to kind of, you know, they put me on an externship and willing to have me come back. And I was about ready to accept my offer. And then Chris called me and said, hey, do you want to work together? And I had no plans of being a venture capitalist, honestly. My sister is an entrepreneur. She had raised venture capital. I sort of knew what it was, but I did not have a career vision of being a venture capitalist. I knew I wanted to be in healthcare. I knew I really admired Chris and liked him and thought was he'd be somebody who I learned a lot from and who opened doors for me. And that proved to be true.   

And so ever since then, I've been at Bessemer Venture Partners with. I took a small hiatus to go to business school, but I've been at Bessemer since. Since. Since basically the campaign ended.

Chitra Nawbatt [00:07:48]:

Wow. And you just, you talked about your sister being an entrepreneur. What did mom and dad do?

Steve Kraus [00:07:53]:

Well, my mom is. My sister is a role model of mine. She's actually ten and a half years older than me. We're, we're. We're only two. Two siblings, so she's kind of like a second mom to me. And I've, I followed her a lot in my life, but my mom was my real role model and my dad too, in a way that I'll explain. My, My mom was. I had a very different family. I was raised in a family where my mom was the breadwinner, where she, you know, my dad was an entrepreneur, but more of a blue collar entrepreneur, had some successful businesses. But when I was about three, my mom, who got an opportunity to work as the head of HR in a major bank in New England, and ultimately that was her break. She was super smart, super well educated, but got this break and ultimately became CEO of that bank and actually was the first woman to run a major commercial bank in America. And so my life was very different than my sister. I said she was born ten and a half years. 

My dad was sort of the breadwinner for my sister, and my mom had played more of the mom role. But then my parents reversed positions. My mom became the one who was, was the one who was really striving and succeeding at work and growing her career. My dad actually chose to take a step back from his career and be kind of Mr. Mom, which in the 1980s, nowadays we thank God we have a much more diverse and progressive workforce and society, although we have lots of strides to make, for sure. But back then, that was, that was very rare. Like, my dad was a very unique human being, um, and he was my mom's biggest champion. My mom was super successful, an amazing business leader, and in our community, amazing role model for so many people. And I learned a lot from her. And she taught me a lot about how to be a leader. But my dad also taught me a lot about how to be support someone and how to, you know, so many things I've learned from my dad in terms of what he did to support my mom, which have impacted me. Both of them are my role models.

Chitra Nawbatt [00:09:53]:

For those people who might want to look her up. Since you, you said she was a pioneer.[

Steve Kraus [00:09:58]:

Her name was, her name was Eileen Kraus, she's passed. Yeah, the bank. Ultimately, the bank was. No, no, the bank was. Ultimately became Fleet bank, which was acquired by Bank of America. Her, the one that she was the head of was called Shamit. So it was, you know, all these banks got rolled up, but it was the largest bank in New England and the Northeast, I believe. And ultimately now as part of Bank of America, she retired a while back. She unfortunately passed from pancreatic cancer seven years, which is a huge loss in my life. But, you know, I'm, you know, I'm just so thankful for all the things I learned from her.

Chitra Nawbatt [00:10:34]:

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Most definitely. Thank you for sharing that.

Steve Kraus [00:10:39]:

Yeah.

Chitra Nawbatt [00:10:40]:

Bessemer. Tell us about Bessemer in terms of. Give us a sense of, you know, we talked a little bit about, you know, $10 billion dollars roughly under management, but, but bring that to life for us in terms of scale, depth, areas you invest in.

Steve Kraus [00:10:56]:

Yeah. So I think the first thing to say about Bessemer is it is the oldest venture capital firm in the world. It has a very unique etymology. It started off the reason it's called Bessemer is the, family that started our firm. We were a family office for a long time. Was the family called the Phipps family. People don't. People in Pittsburgh would know the Phipps familiar. But the reason you should know about the Phipps family is Henry Phipps, who is the sort of forefather of the family, was Andrew Carnegie's business partner. And everybody knows Andrew Carnegie because he's a great American industrialist. He founded Carnegie Steel, ultimately sold it to US Steel. And the process that made that company unique was the Bessemer furnace, which had a differentiated steel-making process that was. Allowed them, that company to compete with other companies, international companies when it came to steel making. 

Anyways, that's why we're called Bessemer Venture Partners. Is that, that, that beginning. And the family, the Phipps family was. Has been a long time, still is one of our largest LPs and has been a longtime supporter of our fund. We started in 1911 as a family office. And Henry Phipps, who had made his money in steel, basically endowed a lot of money back then to his three kids. And he told them in this letter that we still have in our office is I want you to invest this money not in steel or industrials or stocks or real estate. I want you to invest in the next generation of American entrepreneurs. Ultimately it became international entrepreneurs because that's how I made my living and I want to support the next generation. And I think by doing that you can both make a difference and as, as well as make, you know, compound money over time for the family. And so that literally that letter was the start of our firm, you know, over 100 years ago. We've since grown. We now have. The family, as I said, is still a big supporter of ours and we're very close to the family, but we now have traditional LPs like endowments, foundations, pension funds. We have a bunch of healthcare LPs. 

So that's sort of the history of our firm, which is interesting because we think as a result of having the family and this long-term source of capital, I think it affects the way we think about the business of venture and it gives us some permission and latitude to really invest over a long period in companies that we're in. We don't have a, I feel lucky at Bessemer. We don't, excuse me, have a shot clock that's ticking that we have to invest in. Sorry, we have to invest in a company and then exit it, you know, five or seven years later. 

Steve Kraus [00:13:23]:

So we think in decades, which is really as an investor and I think a differentiator for us, for entrepreneurs that we work with. Like we bring that perspective. So that's really great. You asked about where we invest. We invest all across the world in terms of geography. We invest all across different industries. So we invest in healthcare, which we'll talk about, I'm sure. We invest in, you know, software companies across all different industries. We invest in financial technology, we invest in educational technology, we invest in space technology, we invest in quantum computers. We're all over the map in terms of what we'll invest in. We're looking for, we're always looking to see which industries like Wayne Gretzky said, always skate to where you think the puck's going to be, not where it is. 

And so we're looking for industries which we think are going to transform through technology and innovation, our economy and our world. And so we're really agnostic now. I focus in healthcare, we could talk about that. But that's. We're broad in the industries and then we're also broadening stage. We can invest in seed-stage companies, we can invest hundreds of million dollars in growth-stage companies. And we've ultimately also have a growth buy-in firm that we've developed over time called BVP Forge, which invests in later-stage companies. So we're very broad in the landscape that we cover and we're also all over the map. We have offices in Boston, New York, Silicon Valley, India, Israel, Asia, Europe. And so that's the, that's the landscape that we cover.

Chitra Nawbatt [00:14:47]:

And before we get into the rules of the game, you mentioned earlier about journalism, your, your linkage of journalism into how it's helped you in venture. Talk about that.

Steve Kraus [00:14:58]:

Yeah, you know, I didn't realize at the time, but as I've grown to do this, this I've realized that I really benefited from the journalism career. Because what is, what do you do when you're, especially at the early stage, when you're trying to figure out whether this is a founder and this is an idea or concept that you want to invest in, you're talking to them, right? Because there aren't financial metrics to analyze. You're trying to understand who they are, what makes them tick, what's their unique edge, what's an interesting part of the story, right? If you will, the story of the journey that they want to take in their entrepreneurial career. Right? It's the same thing you do as a journalist. If you're trying to uncover a story, you're doing the exact same things. Right? And, and the art of asking questions that aren't off putting, you know, this, you've been a journalist that aren't off putting, making someone feel comfortable that they can share their story with you. You know, asking the tough question that gets to, you know, the crux of something, but doing it in a way that's respectful and that creates trust. 

Like those are things that I learned as a journalist. So that's one thing. It's just like that art of asking questions and investigating and exploring and following up to make sure you understand, all those have served me super well in my venture career. And then I'd say part of what I do as a venture capitalist is also sell, right? And communicate. And one of the ways, the way you sell as a human being is you communicate, you figure out what that edge is. For me, it's like, what's my edge as an investor? Why does someone want to work with me? What's, what's, what makes Bessemer unique? We talked a little bit about that. And how do I, how do I sell that to the entrepreneur that they want, they want to work with me? So communication is really important. Communication is important in my firm how do I convince my fellow partners that why now? Why this business now? What makes it, what makes this opportunity? Why this entrepreneur? You know, how's this going to work out? Tell me. You know, because we're investing in things that they aren't clear when we invest in that they're going to become the next, you know, huge company, right? So you got to be able to paint that picture of why we should be excited about this versus all the other things that we see every single day. We see a lot of opportunities, right? So there's communication internally. And then, of course, what we try to do at Bessemer is also communicate our learnings and our thought leadership to the rest of the world, right? So we do a lot of actually marketing of things. 

So for instance, in healthcare, one of the things we've done is we've benchmarked, you know, we've, we've met with so many companies, we've worked with so many companies, and we realized that in the digital health space, which is relatively immature, it's a relatively new industry, really a decade and a half in the making, there hasn't been a source of, okay, if I'm at $10 million, what should my financial profile be look like? And what's the journey from 10 to $100 million? And so me and my colleague, Sofia Guerra, she's done great work on this. We've actually benchmarked all that work. And then that's data. We've got all the data. Then how do you, how do you package that data and put it into a piece that people want to read and that people say, oh, my God. Bessemer really has, they have experience in this space. They've worked with leading companies. They know how to, they know how to help me think through the journey that I'm going to take as an entrepreneur. And we've done pieces in health AI recently because we've done a lot in AI. We've been investing in health AI for like six years. We sort of saw that insight a while ago, but we've packaged a bunch of those learnings into pieces and thought leadership. 

So I think that's really important. So you're constantly communicating, you're constantly selling. And I think that's something that I learned that the ability to communicate in authentic, original, interesting, creating an edge on the thing that you're saying well you learn that as a journalist, too.

The Rules of the Game

Chitra Nawbatt [00:18:38]:

So you've actually outlined perhaps some of the rules of the game and what you've just shared. But let, let's get into the rules of the game. What are the written rules of investing?

Steve Kraus [00:18:55]:

Really good question. I mean, the clear obvious written rule is that, you know, we raise capital at Bessemer from, as I said, foundations, endowments, pension funds, some family offices. These are institutions that are investors themselves. They've chosen to invest in Bessemer over any other number of opportunities. They can invest in real estate, they can invest in hedge funds, they could invest in public stock markets. And so why are they investing in Bessemer? They're investing in Bessemer because they think they're going to get outsized returns for the risks that they're taking, right? So the number one rule of the game is you have to produce those returns, right? Like that's what drives us. But, and we have multiple customers, and our LPs are the ones who invest in our fund and keep us in business. And, and we have to do well by them by making returns. That's the number one written rule. But, but that's the explicit rule. Then how do you get there? In what I do is the way you get there is, I'd say, couple fold. You need to, in investing, you need to find an edge, okay? And there's, there's, there's many different ways that you can find an edge, but I think the, the two primary ways are, one, you have to have unique insight into where the puck is headed. 

As I said, like where do you think there's going to be huge opportunity in our industry, specifically what type of company, what type of business model is going to get there to be able to exploit that opportunity and hopefully, and exploit's a bad word, but take advantage of the opportunity and produce a service, a product, a technology that's going to, you know, be a good business. And in healthcare, in order to be a good business, you also have to improve outcomes, you know, for the most part, right? So you get, you got to find that. That's one, that's one unwritten rule. You got to find that. And, and, and the even more unwritten rule behind that, I believe, is as a venture investor, because we take a lot of risk, right? And you got to have a lot of returns to justify that risk. For those LPs that I talked about earlier, right? I think the thing you have to do is find spaces that are not consensus because when it becomes consensus when every single other investor is looking at, and we could talk about some spaces, I think are consensus versus not consensus. When everyone's looking at that space, all of a sudden prices for the assets that you're interested in, the various companies that are in that space are going to go up because you know, investing is a law of supply and demand. If there's more demand for your company, you're going to be able to raise at higher valuations, right. Once valuations go out, go up your edge in terms of financial return, i.e. You can invest $5 million dollars at a $20 million dollar valuation, or you can invest $5 million dollars at a $200 million dollar valuation. Right? It's just a matter of supply and demand. What that valuation is. The, the more non-consensus, the more, the earlier you find something, the better, the better opportunity. You're going to be able to invest the money and own a lot more of that company. And that's what drives venture returns. Owning, getting early, owning a lot of ownership, ultimately you're going to lose money because these things aren't always going to work. But you got to own a lot of the companies that are successful. 

So that's sort of, that's one thing. You gotta find the companies, you gotta find them early. You gotta, I think you have to be non-consensus. You have to take the risk, but you will ultimately, if you're right, get huge financial rewards. That's one unwritten. The second unwritten rule is, you gotta find great people, right? You gotta find great founders who are exceptional, who are themselves have some kind of edge. It could be lots of different reasons. I was just talking to my colleague about what drives different founders. Some it can be money, some it can be competitive spite, some it can be they just love this idea. They think it needs to exist in the world. They don't care about the money they make. Right? It could be that they love to build great teams, they're great recruiters, they're great motivated. Lots of different entrepreneurs have a lot of different profiles of what drives them. But you got to find a great entrepreneur and you got to be able to not just find that person, but then convince them that they need to work with you, they need to work with you, they need to work with Bessemer and by working with us in Bessemer, they can trust us. They, they've talked to other entrepreneurs who worked with us, who like to work with us. But that, that combination, ultimately it's the entrepreneur who's the one that is our other customer. They make it happen. They do all the work, but they need to want to work with us. And so you need to be able to, that's the second unwritten rule. You need to be able to find great people and convince them to work with you.

Chitra Nawbatt [00:22:57]:

I want to go into three words you talked about. You said insights, edge and consensus versus the non-consensus. So take us into your secret sauce on your pattern recognition. Right. What are the data, the signals, the pattern recognition that cause you to decipher? Okay. What are what is true insight? What is what you call the edge? What is consensus versus non-consensus? Take us into that process.

Steve Kraus [00:23:29]:

Yeah, I think it's a couple fold. I'd say in healthcare it really helps to be a deep domain expert. I've always said that a lot of healthcare innovation and trends and macro forces are because 50% of payments in healthcare are driven by the government. A lot of it is the intersection of where the puck's headed in terms of public policy, which is often laid out by the government and by states in terms of Medicare and Medicaid payments. Where they want to take the puck and finding those opportunities, that's really important. So we spend a lot of time thinking about big macro areas where, we think the public is, the government's going to invest. 

So I'd say that's number one. And then number two, I think I feel really lucky to work at a firm like Bessemer because and AI is a little different. But frankly, Bessemer has been investing in technologies that attack various different industries and healthcare traditionally has been a late adopter of technology. So I actually get the benefit of seeing where my other partners are investing and then seeing where it's worked in other industries and thinking about where that might apply to healthcare. So let me give you a great example of that, right? There's two examples. I was really early in investing, you mentioned Allscripts but we've invested a bunch of other EMRs early in the day. Back 15 years ago when you went to doctor's office, you talk to a doctor and they'd be writing your notes down on pen and paper. That's crazy, right? 

Like, I mean think about every other. That'd be like if you were going to a cafe or like Walmart and they were like you, they were like, they were like doing, you're going checkout and they wrote it down on a paper and they figured out how much like that didn't exist because all those other industries and these are industries at best. They were all, they had systems of record, you know, they had Oracle, they had sales, whatever. All these systems of record had been invested in every other industry like 10 years, 20 years before healthcare actually technology came to healthcare. I was like, wow, well this has got to change. And then it turns out this is a combination I was talking about. The government realized this was crazy. Like all this data wasn't captured in digital format. This didn't exist in any other industry. So the government's basically created this high tech act which plowed $40 billion dollars into doctors and health systems adopting electronic medical records. Well, okay. It was like those two insights like this can't exist in healthcare much longer because it doesn't exist in any other industry. Plus the insight from the public policy. I knew this was coming. I saw this being formulated. So we just invest. Like it was like, this is what this is where the industry's going. 

And so that was like one example. And then when you came to virtual care, right, A lot of people, I talked about consensus, non-consensus, a lot of people in our industry, partly because I was early in digital health and it was a nascent industry. There weren't a lot of investors, but a lot of people woke up to digital health around the pandemic, right? You saw a lot of people, oh my God, can't go see your doctor. And obviously saw a lot of venture capitalists funneling a lot of money into virtual care companies. Well, we started investing in virtual care companies like five years before the pandemic because once I saw that the data was captured in the electronic medical record, that's like the base layer, right? Like that's like, you know, just getting the data and then what do you do with the data, right? Well, we started investing in like Collective Medical, which is kind of like an analytics company that sat on top of EMRs. And then once you have the analytics and it's like, okay, then you're start going to start to use digital tools to affect care. 

So it's like, oh wow, in other industries you can go get a car, you know, a black car at the time, or you know, buy Uber, you can go order food and DoorDash. These are companies that Bessemer was investing in, right? You can, you can like, you know, do anything online in other industries. And yet in health care we were completely digital, you know, Luddites, right? In terms of getting. So I was like, this is going to change or has to be care delivered online. Not every type of care, but certain care. So we invested in companies like Hinge and Headspace way before people, other investors started getting into, you know, virtual care. So we were in the early rounds of those companies, not the later rounds. That's kind of like those two, that's like the mix of those. And yes, Ultimately, the government really poured money into virtual care because they had to because of the pandemic. But that wasn't the time to be investing in those companies. You want to be investing in companies ahead of that. 

And then we could talk about AI, which is a whole another thing. And again, as I said, we started investing in health AI five or six years ago. Way before, even before Gen AI and ChatGPT, we saw this sort of insight. And so again, wasn't consensus at the time, but we thought, we know the data is in the EMRs, now we're doing virtual care. Okay, now we can start to automate a lot of this stuff, right? So that's kind of the journey that we take. I'd say that's the combination.

Chitra Nawbatt [00:28:05]:

And I think this word of discernment is so critical to your business. But frankly all, everyone's business, especially with the infusion of proliferation of so much information, social media, etc. you don't know what's real versus not right. And so what, how do you discern, what is the way that you discern information, signals, feedback that comes to you that's data-driven versus perception-driven versus manipulation-driven? And when I say manipulation driven, it's that, hey, whether I'm an investor or a founder or a business person, I'm trying to drive a particular outcome. So I'm just going to say and orient the information or my statements in whatever way to get the outcome that I want, but it's not necessarily independently verifiable. So how do you discern between data-driven, perception-driven, manipulation-driven?

Steve Kraus [00:28:58]:

Really good question. I think I'm perception-driven. I don't, it's. I pay attention to what other venture capitalists do, but I don't use that as a signal because I think there's a lot of FOMO in our industry. Oh my God, this firm did this deal or blah, blah like that. I just, that's just, there's a lot of opportunities out there. There's so many great spaces and entrepreneurs to invest in. Like, you know, great, good for that company, great for that entrepreneur, that, that investor, that entrepreneur. But like, I don't, I don't lose sleep at night about that, which is weird. Some people, like, are very in tune about what deals do we miss. Like, yes, I don't like to miss investments and opportunities, but I don't let it. I don't let what other venture capitalists do, drive my decision-making. I respect them, I like to partner with them if we see the world the same. But that I don't spend a lot of time thinking about. 

So I'm not really doing that. I'm spending my time thinking about the things that we talked about earlier, like what are the areas and roadmaps that I want to be invested in and really understanding those and going deep in those so that when we see someone who's got an idea in that we've done all the work to know the space, the opportunities, the threat, the weaknesses, the different business models. And when we see something we like, we jump on it. Like we, we move really quickly. That's, that's where I choose to spend my time. And so that's sort of like there's data in. I think it is a very data-driven model. We call it Roadmaping at Bessemer. Like we have to, as a firm, each partner have to tell our other partners what we're working on, get up and present. Like this is a space we want to go after and, and really do like almost like a Bain level type of analysis and presentation on. Like you should expect to see us bring companies that look like this. Probably because we invest in so many different industries. We want to have a common language by when someone brings something it's like, oh yeah, Steve told me he was going to be looking there. It makes sense. So that's really data-driven on our part, to use your term. 

And at the early stages, the data data that you're really getting is external data on the opportunity because there might not be financial data when the entrepreneur comes and presents to you. They might not have like P&L or you know, they might not have customers. There's data in the product. Does the product sort of fit with the work that you've done? You can go talk to potential customers as data. Like if this exist in the world, would you use it? What do you use now? What are the pit, what are, what are the challenges you have with the product or the service or the software you use now? Like what could be better? And you try to take that external data and you know, jam it against what the entrepreneur is working on and sort of like triangulate if there's an opportunity and then another piece of data you get at the early stages, like as I said, spending a lot of time with the founder, talking with them, like what makes them tick, how to, you know, talk about their where, how they grew up, what, what was their background, you know, how do they have the experience to do what they want to do now? Maybe they don't like, okay, so if they don't like talk to them about what do they think the pitfalls might be, what do they think their strengths or weakness are like, that's all data. 

Those conversations at the early stage, of course, as you get in the later stages, you actually have more financial data. And then we go, we go really analyze that. As I said, we have a, we spent a lot of time on understanding how these companies grow and mature and what the metrics should look like. So that helps us when we come again, that helps us when we come to an opportunity to quickly assess it. So that's sort of the data-driven. I think we are very data-driven, but it's different, it's like different horses for different courses, if you will. Like in the early stage, you gotta play a different game than the late, the growth stage and then the malfeasance side. Listen, I've looked at some of the companies in our space that ultimately were colossal failures and maybe even some senses of fraud. You know, it's the same thing like do you get the, do you get some, do you get some skivvy, some weird feelings, some weird vibes, if you will, when you talk to the entrepreneur at the early stages or something? 

I like, I always find if I'm talking to entrepreneur in healthcare and they're not talking about outcomes and how they want to improve outcomes and it feels like it's really just financial in nature. It's so hard. What we do, you have to have some underlying, you know, thing more than just finances. Finances. Like I, that to me is like a, it's a, it's a red flag or yellow flag at least that we need to explore. And then once you get into like more mature companies, it becomes clear when you look at the data, if they're, you know, one of my partners always said the data can tell a story. A story can't tell the data. And so, you know, if an entrepreneur tells me something, listen, not everyone's always perfect and some people always sell ahead of things. But like if they start, if you start to see several times where like the data doesn't match up with the story you're telling, they're telling. Usually those aren't. Those, aren't those, those are yellow flags as well. So that's kind of, that's kind of how I try to get to the bottom of things in the work I do and our team does.

Chitra Nawbatt [00:33:46]:

You talked about those successes, you talked about quote-unquote failures. What's your review postmortem and learning process on investing and then how do you feed that into your pattern recognition and update your quote-unquote investment algorithm, quote-unquote playbook algorithm?

Steve Kraus [00:34:09]:

Yeah, great question. I love my firm. And you can see this publicly at Bessemer because two things. One is on our website, there's two types of failure. There's a failure of omission and commission. Omission meaning you didn't do the opportunity. Commission meaning you did it and it didn't work out. In venture, if you miss a big opportunity that you had an opportunity to invest in, like that's kind of bad, right? 

And what I love about Bessemer is you can go to our website bvp.com and you can find an anti portfolio. And why do we call it the anti-port? These are companies that we missed, that we saw we had the chance to invest in and we didn't do so. For instance, one story, my partner David Cowan, who's like probably one of the best venture capitalists out there, he years ago was at a party, it was like a house party. A friend of his said, hey, you got to go meet these two guys who are playing ping pong in my garage. He was like, it's a weekend. I don't really want to, you know, I want to just hang out and socialize with my friends and catch up. Those two guys ended up being Larry and Sergey of Google. Like David had the opportunity to potentially go invest in Google and we didn't do that. We didn't invest in Uber. Like we're very public about the things and I think that's actually really healthy now. We're fortunate in that we've had a lot of successes in our firm and we've, you know, we've been around for a century plus as I told you. But I think being intellectually honest and creating a culture of actually publicly being able to put out there, I was just, when I was looking at Bessemer, this existed when I was a young  and thinking about working at Bessemer, this anti-portfolio, I was just so struck by that. 

Like, wow, what does that say about the culture of a firm where they're, they know they've been successful and but at the same time they're, they can acknowledge their failures publicly. I think it's really speaks to the culture firm. It's very true. About what, how we operate. I think entrepreneurs are drawn to it because like, listen, no, we're not perfect. We've done well. We, we're really proud of the investments we made, but we make massive mistakes just like everybody else. It's okay. So I really love that about Bessemer when I joined. We still have that today. And then like just this past week, one of my partner's companies unfortunately didn't work out. It was early stage. He wrote a whole memo to the firm about his lesson, the lessons he learned from it, and was like, and so we do do postmortems. 

And that's one of the things I love that about our firm personally. But the thing I love about our industry venture is failure is just part of the code, right? That you talk about the code. Like it in venture, you're going to make, you're going to lose. Most of the companies are not going to work out. Like, by definition, I think 50% of the companies in the industry don't work out. And then the rest go on to succeed. And some go on to succeed at massive scale. Right. It's a power law business. Like the top 1 or 5% drive all your returns. 

And so that's like, really interesting industry to operate in. And it means that you have to constantly be thinking about, why did that fail and what did I learn from it? And failure is okay, by the way. Like that by definition, failure is okay because half the people are failing around you. So it's a really interesting place to. But you need to, to your point, you need to learn from those failures. And I'm constantly learning and thinking about, and, and, and, and the technology and the market landscape is shifting around you constantly. And so you always have to be. One of the reasons I love it, it's not just I get to work with a lot of great entrepreneurs, a lot of different business models and lots of ways to impact human health, but it's also like, wow, I got to, I got to stay on top of my game.

Chitra Nawbatt [00:37:32]:

Yeah.

Steve Kraus [00:37:32]:

You know, like, I got to, I got to, I got to reinvent myself as an investor. Every, like, every year I'm thinking about what did I learn from last year? And by the way, I got to also, like, think about AI now. And like, how does AI apply to healthcare? And like, what does that mean? And like, that's just been in the last couple years. Like, how cool is that to be able to constantly, you know, be thinking about how you play the game differently, how you get smarter about different things. And then also, by the way, if you fail, it's okay. Like, but just make sure you learn from that failure. I love that.

The Pivots

Chitra Nawbatt [00:38:02]:

And so you talked about the shifting market landscape. Let's get into the pivots. Earlier in the conversation, you, you've shared some of your career and life pivots, family pivots. When you make an investment, let's get into the business side. So when you make an investment, you're holding it for 5, 10 plus years. As you talked about, most of the elements, market forces, people, processes, and the economy are dynamic, not static. So what is that pivot process in business, in investing, how do you deal with it and is there a way to get ahead of the pivots, build in risk mitigation upfront?

Steve Kraus [00:38:51]:

It's a good question. I think you have to be at the meta level, most meta level, very comfortable with being uncomfortable and no one likes to be uncomfortable. And so I think, and as a young investor in the industry and for those that are listening who are in the younger, it is uncomfortably uncomfortable. Like think about it like it is weird to enter an industry where 50% of the time you're going to fail and yet at the same time you need to make money to succeed. You need to be as you know. So it's like it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a very something you. So that's one thing and then the second thing is it takes a long time. Right? You just referenced. 

Yeah, five years is a quick exit. It's probably more like people say 10. It's probably 10 to, you know, the really great companies are 15 years. I always say to people who are thinking about venture investing. It's, it's long twitch muscles versus short twitch muscles. You know, like to use a runner analogy, like marathon, not a sprint. And so if you want to be in a sprint and you want to be invested, you probably should go in the public markets or hedge funds because every single day you can see how you're doing by the way they're liquid. You could trade in and out of if you don't like it. In venture, once you make that investment, you're, you're in it for a long time and there are a lot of permutations.  As you said, like as a younger investor, where I was going is I could always remember like a company missed a quarter and you got to report it back to your partners and it's early investment and you, you told them it was going to do this and you know, you feel jittery. You're like, oh my God, like is this thing, is this thing going down? Is it going to be able to raise falling capital? But what you learn over the career once you have a broad enough portfolio is yeah, some of them are going to fail. And the thing you need to do is try and help the company navigate that to as successful place as it can get to and to try and minimize the loss for everybody. Everybody. Not just for investors, for employees. You got to think about. But as a young person, you're jittery. And I remember feeling jittery. 

But I think over time I've gotten comfortable with being uncomfortable and realizing that some companies go down and before they go up, in fact, a lot do. And we were talking about like our greatest. We were talking about this the other day and I'm meeting like some of our greatest investments. Almost all of them had some challenging financing, you know, which is like as investor you're thinking I gotta go to my partners and tell them that it's not working out. Right. But yet we still think that dream that I talked about and this entrepreneur that I believed in, we still think they're the real deal and we still think it's gonna become a reality, but we gotta put this money in to give them the lifeline to keep going. Like almost all of our successful companies had a moment like that. So that's just the reality of what the industry we're operating in. And I think recognizing those two things and by the way, developing coping skills for yourself or having a life partner who can help you or whatever, having trusting partner, whatever you need to figure out, you need to work in a place that understands those two things. I think in venture. And you have to also yourself because you know this type of work, any work to you take outside of you into your personal life, you need to develop skills to be able to just be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Chitra Nawbatt [00:42:06]:

Yeah. You talked about AI earlier, coming up with the next frontier technology which then translates into an investment and business is incredibly difficult, right? Yes. There's like voluminous technologies and startups and everything out there, but it's not about volume, it's about quality. And so what's your pattern recognition on the necessary ingredients to build and scale profitable tech and AI-driven companies?

Steve Kraus [00:42:45]:

I think, aa I think I'd say a couple things. I think at the, at the highest level you have to have, there has to be a why now? Moment, right? Because our biz, our business, the venture business, the entrepreneurship business, is driven by power law. Meaning like there are a lot of forces in our marketplace and in the economy that in favor incumbents, right? Natural distribution that they have better, you know, balance sheets, right? More scale, more girth, more power to execute more mature teams, more, you know, by the way, not always a great thing, but more mature teams. Who have experience, right? They've got regulatory capture, meaning they, the regulatory system is generally favored, set up, favor larger players. 

Well, that's changing a little bit. So you've got a lot of headwinds that you're facing as an entrepreneur. A lot of headwinds, right. You got to raise, cap all these things to combat the sort of natural market forces. So there has to be a why now? There has to be some, something that is going to change, that's going to disrupt a lot of those forces that creates a window, creates like. And it's a pretty thin path through the needle. But if you have a why now? Wow. Like we're investors in a company called Shopify, right? And everyone knows Amazon, you know, people could sell on Amazon, but there were a lot of individual, you know, businesses out there that you know, wanted to, you know, develop their own storefronts, right. And sell lots of different goods and services on the Internet. And so when you first looked at Shopify as investor, you were like, wow. Well Amazon's a huge market. You know, there's lots of online at this point, e-commerce. But Shopify realized that, wow, we could create a platform for all these individual mom and pop now much bigger. But at first it was like kind of powering the individual mom and pop community. Turns out like developing a product and a service and offering that wasn't something that Amazon was going to do. They had a different playbook. 

But that, that was the why now. And that company, we invested it, Tobi Lutke was the founder. He was literally living in, above his parents, in his parents garage. He's now a billionaire. That company is like one of the most successful. But like that was a why now? You know, in health care I talked about the EMR moment. That was a why now? Virtual care, why now? AI now in healthcare. Why now? You have to have something that allows you to do that. So I think that's, that's probably the most important thing. And then you have to find someone who's got the founder, meaning who's just got some, some edge as to why they can exploit that. Why now? And like I said we could talk about there's lots of different edges but like that's really important too. It's like the person and the opportunity and that is what our game is all about. And then you have to finance the business of course from an investor perspective the right way. But I think that's like a, that's like adding fuel to the fire. The fundamental like the wood of the fire and the kindling is like the opportunity in the person and we're just, like, we're just gas or fuel to make that happen. And. But you got to be smart about how you do that. But that, that's, that's, that's an input. Not, not, not the actual core materials.

Chitra Nawbatt [00:46:01]:

You use the word force. I want to go a little bit deeper on that. Is venture capital investing, even being a founder, akin to being a force in nature? And perhaps that also extends to, frankly, any successful company executive. But this notion of being a force in nature, willing a certain outcome. Your thoughts?

Steve Kraus [00:46:28]:

Yeah, I think when people think force of nature, they think huge personality. You know, they think about the external presentation of what it means to be a force of nature. I don't, not every entrepreneur. Like, if you met Tobi Lutke of Shopify, he is cerebral, sort of quieter, but he's a force in nature. And then I compare him to like Glenn Tullman of Livongo fame. Glenn Tullman is an external force in nature. He's also like, internally incredibly smart and everything that Tobi has, but he's extra. So I don't. Force in nature is, to me, it's more of an internal. The fabric of who you are and what drives you rather than the external presentation. But yes, you have to be like, being an entrepreneur. I've seen this through my sister's eyes. I've seen this through the founder, all the founders I've worked with. Like, you hear no a lot. 

Like, at first it's like, what are you talking about? No way is this idea going to work. And then you gotta, you know, and you gotta go get your first employees to join you. What? I have a stable career. Like, no, why would I join this? It's only. But you gotta. You sell through that again to talk about. You sell through it and say, no, let me tell you why. This is why you want to join the ship and why it's going to change your life. And so you hear no from a lot of people who are gonna. From the original team, but you finally get a team together and then you try to, like, you know, you got the product that you built, right? And then you try to go talk to some customers and lots of people like, no, I already have a software or service. 

Like, why would I use this? You know? Or no, we've got compliance issues. Or, no, it's going to violate HIPAA or whatever. You're a lot of no's. And then you got to go raise money. And by the way, that's like, you hear nos all the time raising money, but you got to find one person or a couple of people who believe in you. So like no. Every day entrepreneurs are hearing no. And yet they persist because for whatever reason they believe that this thing should exist. And they have. Again, there's lots of different elements of the force in nature, what drives them to have that force in nature, but they make it happen. So I think it is a good word. I just think it comes in many different external forms of presentation. But the internal is absolutely that.

Chitra Nawbatt [00:48:39]:

Outliers. Do you study outliers? And what's your take on outliers? Studying outliers, dissecting outliers, because the opportunity is in some cases for certain outliers, does that then become the standard, the norm over time? Like for example, when you think about the earliest marketplaces, right. In investing. And then the marketplace concept, two-sided marketplace became a common element in many companies. Right. For example, Amazon, Uber, others. So your thoughts on outliers studying, dissecting and the pattern recognition you can potentially draw from studying the outliers?

Steve Kraus [00:49:27]:

I, I'm not sure if this is exactly answering your question, but what I, I actually tried to study the successful companies, which I guess by definition are the outliers.   And what were the reasons that you would have said no at the time that you saw them early on? And what do you learn from the fact that you would have probably said no or these are the reasons you could have said no, right? It could be who the heck's going to acquire that business? I think about that a lot sometimes. Or the TAM is too small, right? Or Amazon, you know, is, is going to eat you or whatever. You know, could it be Amazon? It could be the health whatever. 

And I try to think about, you know, the best companies, like who knows what they're gonna, where they're gonna end up into or the IPO exit. Like that's not a good reason to not do the investment and the TAM is too small. We proved many, many times at Bessemer that the initial TAM, that the company was going up, the initial product in the market that they were attacking was actually small. But it turns out, guess what, you just get that, you get the revenue, you get the, you get the economics, you get financing. Again, I said that's all fuel. And then these great entrepreneurs, they take that initial wedge and they, they use it as a way to get expand the opera. The greatest entrepreneurs always like expand their market size. So that's not a good reason not to invest. You know, you have to. It's the, it's the where do you think they're going and, and do they have a credible path to get there? But the initial TAM, the exit, even, you know, and sometimes we have to think about this healthcare. Do you need healthcare experience or could you be a tech, you know, entrepreneur and come in. 

I don't think background necessarily should be a, a reason not to do something like, you know, I think it's, they might not have a healthcare background, but they should, in that conversation early on with that entrepreneur, they should acknowledge that they don't have that and they should prove that they're really getting smart very quickly about what the industry and they probably should say, hey, I need to bring in some people from the industry to my team. But background shouldn't be a reason. I mean, you got to be compelled by what they're doing and by their, you know, why they're unique to have that edge to, to prosecute that opportunity. But like I even background, like, I don't think that should be a reason. So that's what I study. It's like, look at the successful companies and look at the objections that. Think about the objections they probably faced early on and think about those, how those apply to the current opportunity you're looking at. That's, that's, that's how I think about the business.

The Magic

Chitra Nawbatt [00:52:05]:

Let's get into the magic. How do you define serendipity? How do you define intuition?

Steve Kraus [00:52:19]:

I mean, serendipity is luck and I think she, I mean, you know, there's a lot of luck in what we do. Like, you know, the best companies. There was an intuition to your point of an idea of where the puck's headed, of how to get there, of the team you need to build. Like all those are intuitions at first because what you're doing is probably hasn't been done before. And so, yeah, but you have to map out how you're going to get there and who you're going to get there with and what you're going to need. Those are intuitions. But for sure you need luck. I think every entrepreneur who's been successful and investors been successful says right place, right time, a few breaks go this way or that way can make the fate of a company. And that's just the reality of it all.

Chitra Nawbatt [00:53:27]:

Where did serendipity play a critical role in an investment return?

Steve Kraus [00:53:31]:

I mean, I'll give you an example of a current portfolio company. It's a company called the Abridge. I think people in the healthcare industry who work in the industry will know it. It is a It's one of, it is probably the leading, it is the leading venture-backed AI scribing company. And what they do is, you know, when you go into the doctor's office you can bring, the doctor can have a recording device instead of the doctor like typing as you talk to them into their, you know, computer and their electronic medical record. They can just sit and listen and have a conversation with you, record the conversation and that through, you know, AI can, that conversation can be translated into text, right? And that text then can be input into your electronic medical records so that you know, the clinical documentation is captured so that you know, the doctor can be paid. It ultimately converts into codes and it also just makes for a better patient experience with the doctor. The doctor can be more focused on you and the doctor doesn't have to spend nights and weekends, you know, doing, you know, transcription and entering data into forms. So that's what they do. 

We invested in, as I said, we invested in Abridge. Actually it was one of the last meetings I took before the pandemic. That gives you some perspective. And at that time, you know, chat GPT, Gen AI wasn't around. It wasn't even a reality. We hadn't, I mean there had been lots of progress in the AI field like AI itself has been overnight successful story, decades in the making. But this was an exceptional team which was what we call bilingual. Dr. Shiv Rao, who's the founder, is both a doctor himself and knows the healthcare field really well. He's also based in Pittsburgh, worked at UPMC so understood how health systems procure technologies, he worked in their innovation department so he got some of that. And by the way, he UPMC had a relationship with Carnegie Mellon which is one of the leading computer science programs in the country and leading universities for producing AI talent. So, that's all the raw ingredients, right? They had built up technology. But it turns out pre Gen AI, pre the hype around this and the reality that a lot of this could be automated and folks waking up to the power of this technology like early on in the Abridges days, Health systems didn't want to buy this stuff. They had just sort of gotten their folks trained up on how to use EMRs. 

And you know, frankly they were paying people to be human scribes honestly or paying for other types of forms of scribing technology, but they weren't ready to buy Abridge. So Shiv and team, you know, gathered some resources but they built a product that actually patients would use. So you know, think about your loved one is diagnosed with cancer. If you go into that room, lots of different words are being thrown at you and it's just an onslaught of information, you know, and you're just overwhelmed obviously with the diagnosis. But then even the, it's just a very complicated disease. So you know, patients would bring the Abridge technology in and they just set their phone down and they record it and then they'd have notes that would be populated that then they, they and their loved ones and their, and they could share with the doctor and they could review. And that was sort of the first instantiation of the technology. Now Shiv had a view that ultimately they were going to get into what they are today, which is tens of like lots and lots of health systems across America are using them as a transcription technology to do documentation and ultimately hopefully doing coding and many other things. But the first instantiation was this consumer-grade product. 

Now he built a great product because consumers had to use it. And turns out when consumers use products you get a lot of feedback, you know, as opposed to enterprise, you get a lot of feedback from consumers. So it was really good from a product development perspective. And he worked on it in his team. But ultimately the luck was, I mean who knew when the chat GPT sort of like fund, fundament fundamental LLM papers were going to drop. He, he and his team at Carnegie Mellon knew it was coming. But that moment when that happened, all of a sudden the world woke up to the potential. And so that was the serendipity. It wasn't serendipity per se, but it was a moment. And that moment, you know, I mean if you started Abridge 10 years earlier, it would have been too early. But he, he got the timing right. So it's a lot of hard work, a lot of knowledge, A lot of time actually spent pre Abridge becoming a huge success story, which it is now, but a moment of right place, right time.

Chitra Nawbatt [00:57:52]:

Steve, what's your take on The CodeBreaker Mindset™?

Steve Kraus [00:58:00]:

Well, I think when you, when you say CodeBreaker Mindset™, you, you, you're thinking about like a lot of what we talked about today. It's like, you know, but to me a CodeBreaker means you're doing something that is different, unusual, challenging against status quo, disruptive, innovative, whatever you want to. Like you're, you're changing the game. So that's The CodeBreaker part to me. And then the mindset is doing that's really hard and like we talked about. And so you have to have.

Steve Kraus [00:58:42]:

A unique edge, a unique force of nature. You have to be constantly Learning, you have to be willing to be okay with failing, but learning from the failures, right? Like there's the, there's. In order to break the code, you got to be, have pretty strong mental fortitude and flexible thinking because like we're trying to, like there's a why now and, but you're also trying to, like, there's lots of headwinds we talk about and you're trying to like thread the needle to make it all happen. And so you have to, that's not easy. And so you have to be very adapt at doing that mentally. And then you have to have some luck, right? And you have to have to realize that, you know, hey, by the way, lots of entrepreneurs fail the first time and second time entrepreneurs are really interesting because they've learned from their failure. And maybe the second time they get that. They get, they learn, they iterate and they get that, you know, that luck kind of comes their way. I mean, that's, that's what it's all about.

Chitra Nawbatt [00:59:48]:

And the last question, what's your advice on how to cultivate The CodeBreaker Mindset™? You talked about the attributes, the skills, but what's your advice on how to actually cultivate that, how to do that? And part of that also too is you said this earlier about blocking yourself, meaning protecting yourself from this notion of FOMO fear of missing out that can take you off path, right? And so talk about your advice on cultivating The CodeBreaker Mindset™. Cultivating some of those attributes, including guarding yourself from the frenzy of the fear of missing out.

Steve Kraus [01:00:31]:

I mean, there's lots of investments you should make in yourself. I think every human being has some unique angle that they bring to the world and I think really exploring what that is. You know, like if you talking back to earlier conversation, for me, I did a lot of things early on. Like, I didn't have a, I didn't have, I thought I had, like, I thought I was going to be a journalist. And then I explored that really deeply, spent a lot of time doing. I realized that wasn't the path for me, I think really exploring early on in your career, what are you uniquely good at? Investing in that, testing that by trying different things. And once you find that, hopefully you're also passionate about that because I think you can be good at something. But if you don't wake up every morning liking to do that, it's going to be a long and slog and we spend a lot of time in work. 

That's probably not the thing you should do. You gotta be passionate about. So I found healthcare and I found working with entrepreneurs and innovation, that's what gets me up in the, in the morning. Um, so I really encourage people to do that. Um, cause I think that's. That's really important. And then once you find it, like, you know, be confident in it and be proud of the fact that you found something that you're uniquely good at and you're passionate about. But also always try and think about how you can learn from others. And as we talked about, continue to develop your mindset and test it and how you're going to break the code to use your language is going to change. So you got to be flexible and be able to figure that out. But I think that's the thing. Find it and be proud of it and push on it is what I'd say, because everyone has the opportunity to do that. But everybody's. Everybody's opportunity is different.

Chitra Nawbatt [01:02:34]:

Steve, this was brilliant. A masterclass. Thank you so much for joining us.

Steve Kraus [01:02:41]:

Yeah, thanks for having me Chitra. It was a lot of fun.

Chitra Nawbatt (01:02:44)

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