Businessweek Extra - Susan Lyne

though the former president of ABC Entertainment. Jason she saw time at a o L dot com directed the board of Guilt Group. Love catching up with her. Yeah, it was a wide range of conversation. To be sure, the things she's seen and the thing she's expecting to see are really really interesting. Check it out. Your career has spanned so many different industries and multimedia. I think about publishing, venture capitalism. I want to ask you, there's so much

going on in these worlds. What is it that you find kind of interesting in terms of disruptive trends? Right now? Oh? Wow? UM, I know it's broad, but I just curs there are so many things and they, um, they fall into a couple of categories. So I still think that there are a lot of industries that are that have not been disrupted. Actually, health care is probably the biggest opportunity that exists right now.

There are still so many consumer unfriendly parts of of the health care journey UM, and everybody, every single group at the table, believes that we need to have new solutions, whether it's insurers or it's it's health care providers or its consumers UM. So that's always a good moment to

be be investing. And we're actually seeing a lot of I think more interesting models for delivery of either mental health care or or physical health care UM that will need to scale to prove themselves out, but could be very viable over time. Well, and I looked at your investment more family. I mean, since then, you guys are in a lot of different areas. Are in retail, UM, You're in you know, property, You're in so many different areas in terms of healthcare. What are some of the

new models that you're seeing. What are some of the interesting opportunities that you find that you want to commit money. Well, we've made a couple of investments. We're in a company called spring Health that takes over healthcare coverage for employees so they sell to companies, They say, let us do this for you. We will be able to get your employees to the right kind of care faster than you could possibly do it. And they do that using algorithms.

They have a great database UM, and they can both save companies money and at the same time they can get employees the care they need so much faster that Uh, it's a real bonus for a company culture. How difficult do you think that it is to kind of untangle the existing healthcare infrastructure. I think this is such a tough one, and I think it's why you're not seeing

it one of the earlier cases of disruption. So how how much you know the traditional healthcare companies that we have today will be ultimately five years, ten years, they're not going to be the major players because there's companies like the ones that you're investing in UM under the I think it completely depends on which part of this

you're talking about. So I think the insurers are probably not going to change in the short term, but I think they are looking for more cost effective and more successful solutions to a lot of different issues for consumers UM. So they're actually aligned with with all of us right, if you can find the right product for them, if you can find something that you can show them you're spending X. Now we can do this for why and you're going to save money. So I think there are

there are definitely alliances to be made. UM. Yeah. One of the biggest issues has been how slow it is to get change at UM at large health care institutions, whether their hospitals or their UM but there are far fewer providers and so and by that I mean insurance providers, UH that it's probably easier if you can find an alliance with them. Now. There are also a lot of companies that are starting clinics and new models for delivery of either women's health care or UM or prenatal and

postpartum care. They're taking some piece of this and they're saying we can do this better UM and so I think it will take time for those to scale up. But as startups, a lot of them are doing very well right and when it starts to show UM an impact on bottom lines or something, it's very easy for them to ramp up. I have to ask you about the media world because I feel like there's so much going on. You're the former president of ABC Entertainment Streaming

Wars already laying it out in Business Week magazine. This is going to be one of the big themes to watch. Um who who will you be watching? There's Disney, plus, there's Apple plus, Comcasts got Peacock, HBO has got a new entry. Yeah. Who do you think it's interesting? Well? I think Disney is really interesting. Now I'm I'm probably biased because I was a little bit company for a decade, but I do think they have unique assets and that's one of the things I has done that I think

it's been incredibly smart. Um. If you look at the movie business that Disney has because of the companies that have acquired, because of Pixar, because of Marvel, um, because of the Star Wars franchise. Uh, they have you know, I'm gonna say more than half of the billion dollar

films that have come out in the last five years. Um, you want to see it exactly and again for exactly Um and who who know the franchise right, so so they don't have to hear a long description of it before they know, Hey, I want to I want to watch this. Um. And now with Fox they have an even bigger library. So I think they're going to be hard to beat among the new entrants, and they're coming out pretty inexpectedly. I think it's six, So it's easy

to kind of tack that on absolutely. Um, it's cable dead or getting slowly towards that. I mean, there's still like eighty million US cable subscribers. But what what happens? You know, I think it's going to take time. But I look at my children and they are not cable customers.

So this is largely a generational shift. I think that, uh, that people who have grown up with digital assets and to understand how to use Apple TV and how to use Roku and can put together their own you know what would have been a cable assortment, right right, they can do that themselves for a lot less money. Do their own bundling exactly, although some say that you could ultimately see a bundling of streaming services down the road. Do you think that. I think that's very possible. Yeah,

why not? Right? So what about building a brand in this environment? You did it with Lifetime. You did so well. It was a very clear message, ramped up so successful. Can we do that again today on television? In the in the broadcast or or or cable world, I think you can. I think that tougher the Yes, it's definitely tougher, But it all comes down to programming. To be honest, if you look at how every single one of the cable networks became successful, it's because they had a single

show that defined what they were about, right um. For for HBO, it was the Sopranos for um uh, for FX, it was Madman um for UH for Showtime. You can go through all of them. You knew what you were getting, you did. And then once they realized they had an audience for that right, they could begin to develop shows that had a similar feel or were for similar group of people. And the great thing about cable always was that it was not about the number of people watching.

It was about the passion of the people who were watching. So if they really, really really loved to show, right, that meant more than having an extra million people viewing it. Has It made it that much harder for a cable carrier to kick them off, right because they have a revolution right right. And I also do think like in today's social media world, where there's so much data collection,

you had a very clear identity. So if you're trying to market it two advertisers, right, you knew exactly what you're getting. So I think you're going to see that the new streaming services to where initially a single show or a single series is going to define what this one is all about, and that's going to be what people kind of choose their sides with. I'm not sure if you got to watch any of Mark Zuckerberg today upon Capitol Hill, if he talked a lot about Libra

it was the House Financial Services Committee? What do you think will happen to social media going forward? And these big players? Are you see it? Should they be broken up? In your view? I I feel like I am not really the person to answer that question, but I do believe that there is too much power in too few platforms at this moment, and uh, that's always dangerous. So whether they get regulated, whether they get broken up, that's

for other people to decide. But I don't think you can leave things the way they are where where a single platform like Facebook has the power that it does. BBG Ventures are you finding all the opportunities you want? I mean, we talked about, we talked before we got started that there's so much capital out there, whether it's private equity, family offices, venture capital. Are you finding enough opportunities because I feel like there's a lot of money there.

We absolutely are. We've seen five thousand companies with a female founder since we launched BBG Ventures five years and this is what you do. If you're making investment, there has to be at least one female founder. That's exactly right. Yeah, And we do that not to be a do good organization, but because we think there's a real competitive advantage to having a founder who intuitively understands that end user. Women are the dominant consumer. We're responsible for of all consumer purchases.

So in all likelihood, if you are building a consumer product or you're building a consumer service, women are going to be the early adopters. They're going to be the people who determine whether or not you scale. And uh so we saw both an opportunity because the rest of the venture capital world was focused on something else. Um, we saw a big opportunity to invest in the best of these female founders. I'd love to hear you say that. I know you've also been on corporate boards, are on

corporate boards. I think it's getting a little bit better in terms of female representation, Um, what do we need to do to get it much much better? Where it's le parody and there is and when I think about it, it should be diverse and all. Absolutely so no question does it take to get there? So we've been having

this conversation for a long time. Absolutely in my world now, the venture capital world, I think that it takes probably five to ten female founded companies going public um and maybe five to ten exiting as unicorns right for there to be a major shift. We're already seeing a number of storied old um boys club vcs bring on their first female partner and it's all because of FOMO, right, It's because they fear they're going to miss the next

wave of big successful companies. Um. So you have to have somebody on your team, on your your investing team, who who has those networks, who knows those women, and who can make sure that your firm gets a chance to at least compete to invest. That's what's going to change it. One last question in terms of investing. You make investments, and I'm curious is the endgame still taking

companies public? Because we've seen what an interesting year with we working disappointments our I p O s. What is the ultimate endgame or does that not have to be it anymore? Will it not be? So? I think that UM more companies end up getting sold than go public,

and that's always been the case. UM. I do think there are a number of female founded companies out there that will go public during the next let's call it two years, three years, UM that are are on that trajectory, that are preparing themselves for it, and that are trying

not to make the same mistakes. So the real issue for the companies that have gone public and have either failed or there yes exactly UM is that they were focused on on growth over everything else and they went public still losing billions of dollars in some cases billions of dollars a quarter, and the public market has just said we don't like this. So there there was clearly a big disconnect between what the private markets value right

now and what public markets are looking for. UM. I think the the female founders I've seen out there UM they're watching this very closely, and so are every VC UM UH. And I do think that there are lessons that have been learned that you have to take seriously more than just you know, x percent year over year growth.

You really have to be able to show that there's a business model here that can be successful even if you're not profitable right now, that there's a path to profitability that is very very clear, which I feel like is you know NBA one one um Susan Lyne, Thank you so much. It was fun and you've been listening to Bloomberg Business Week extra, be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Live Monday through Friday at tpm Wall Street Time. I'm Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Messer and I'm

Jason Kelly. Thanks for listening. This is Bloomberg