Unlocking $500Bn Market Opportunity: Cybersecurity w/ Sidra Ahmed Lefort, Munich Re Ventures

Sarah Chen-Spellings (Intro):

I'm so excited to introduce today's episode featuring Sidra Ahmed Lefort, Investment Director of Munich Re Ventures. Of course we'll hear more about this. But Munich Re Ventures is the venture capital group of Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurance company and a leading global provider of primary insurance and insurance related resolutions.

Now Munich Re Ventures is a billion plus platform. Yes, a billion class platform that is financially driven while focusing on the strategic interests of Munich Re. In this episode, Sidra takes us on a deep dive into the landscape of cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and health care, which she focuses on.

And we chat about everything from pricing mistakes VCs make, market trends, access, acquisitions on the ground, and how valuations and mindsets are shifting.

Sidra Ahmed Lefort, Investment Director of Munich Re Ventures. Let's go.

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

I grew up in Singapore and I had no sort of inkling of this world that I'm in today. Had every ambition of a typical South Asian good daughter of becoming a doctor or an engineer or a lawyer. Happened upon my first VC and thought, well, this is an amazing job.

You get to be at the forefront of technology. You get to be talking to some of the smartest people in the world and backing them with both your time and your money and your resources. And that, that kind of changed the trajectory of my career and where I ended up.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Who was this VC and how old were you at that point in time? Was there like something specific that this VC said to you that was like, what? You get to do that?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

At that point in time, I was studying to become a scientist. And so I was studying biomedical science in the National University of Singapore.

I knew I wanted to be at the forefront of innovation and maybe be an inventor, but I also, I'm being honest, didn't like being a scientist either and spending my entire day in the lab and, was on the side, helping the intellectual property office of the university. And as part of that, they hosted this event where they invited VCs, they invited large corporates to attend.

And I met the VC where he basically talked about how they were looking to invest in a company that was potentially going to be a cure for patients who had glioblastomas, which are tumors in the brain, very hard to operate.

And the way they were going to do that for the company that he was looking at would be to inject these iron nanoparticles into those tumors and then put the patient into a machine that would eventually, an MRI like machine, that would eventually change the magnetic poles, which would cause these nanoparticles to vibrate and burn the tumor inside out.

And I was like, that is fascinating because you're taking basic science, essentially, up leveling it multiple folds and then solving this really difficult problem where patients really had a poor prognosis in terms of life expectancy, and really solving it in a very elegant way.

And so I was totally hooked after that. This was the CEO of Nanostart, Marco Beckmann. I kept in touch with him and two months later he was opening an office and, wanted to extend his team to Singapore and I jumped on the opportunity.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Love it. Love it. And how did that, you know, conversation bring you then from Singapore to San Francisco?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

So I started in very early stage investing. It was a fund that was focused on nanotechnology that was doing very early stage. Pre-seed to seed stage companies, so almost like science fiction. And the mandate was to look at Asia and Europe for opportunities to invest in. And I did that for a while and I really enjoyed it, but I wanted to kind of go to that next level of product market fit and growth.

And there were not many later stage VCs in Singapore at that time. I basically applied and got into EDBI, which at that time, was looking at investing in companies globally and had a very large breadth of areas that they covered as well.

So I ended up joining them as essentially an investor looking at MedTech. And then they do this thing where basically you go from a specialist to a generalist. so I then looked at enterprise tech, and as part of my work with them, they sent me to the U.S. to head up their U.S. office, and I ended up staying, and found myself at Munich Re Ventures, where they were looking to have somebody lead out 2 sectors for them.

One was in cyber security and one was in health tech. And because of my experience in that generalist movement, where I basically was looking at a broader enterprise tech and ended up doing a lot of cyber security investments, I was able to do both. And so they hired me for, for essentially that.

And, I haven't looked back. I've been here with them for five years now and looking at seed to series B stage companies. So now I've had the full motion of very early stage, very late stage with EDBI, which was series B onwards. and now back to, I would say earlier stage seed to series B.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

I want to spend some time, of course, in your current work, and we'll go into Munich and all that. Because we actually do have an interesting audience of the US-Asia intersection, that's quite a large one.

I wanted to ask you in terms of your experience as someone who came from Singapore investing into broadly the U.S. and beyond, what do investors from the East get wrong in investing in America?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

So investing from the East into America, I would say investing in each country and each geography is very different. Right now with Munich Re Ventures, we have a global mandate, so we can invest globally as well. With EDBI, I also have that mandate of being able to invest globally.

The problem is that, for the most part, Where you tend to look rather when it comes to companies and opportunities in your specific radius or sphere. All the people that are starting out companies or are in a different motion of scaling their companies, in the space and region that you're in really well, you understand the problem statements of that region really well.

So you have this Edge sitting in the market that you're investing in. That's why a lot of US based investors tend to just focus on the US and don't go outside. There've been some exceptions where they've set out teams in different countries and now we're kind of seeing them shift into also having these teams become offshoots and maybe independent brands as well.

So on the reverse, I feel like it's the same, right? Each investment that you're making each company that you're trying to support you're trying to bring them some additional value add that goes beyond capital because, to be honest capital is a commodity, right?

And so what is the additional support that you're bringing? Are you a good fit for that? All of those things I think matter. EDBI had a very good position where essentially they would invest in these late stage companies in the U.S. or actually anywhere in the world and then help them sort of expand into Asia through Singapore and sort of leverage that as their home base for Asia.

And I feel like investing in the company that is perceived as a brand name is great. But really for it to work, it needs to go much deeper than that.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Yeah. And just for context in terms of the government relationship, could you speak a little bit about that?

And in terms of the goals, was it purely financial returns that you were tasked with? Was it also foreign direct investment?

Tell us a little bit about this for the audience that doesn't know the context of EDBI.

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

EDBI is the investment arm of the Economic Development Board of Singapore. And so you're absolutely right in that there was a dual mandate.

One was obviously to invest money for returns because it's not strategic to lose money. And then the other piece was essentially, how do you bring in additional economic activity into the country?

I would say layer to that, which was essentially to also upskill the manpower in the country, because as, as you may know, in Singapore, it's a very small country, we don't have natural resources.

And so, making sure that our manpower is very skilled and being able to represent the technologies and the industries of the future. It's very important. So that was a very big push towards making sure that it was investments in future areas that would add value to the manpower skills of the country as well.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

I know it's been a couple of years, but what would you say surprised you in the approach that governments took in terms of their expansion strategy through technology investments?

Was there some lessons learned that you can share with us there?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

I wouldn't sort of make this more of a Singapore answer, I would say in general, Asia is a little at that time as well. Let's put that caveat in there.

At that time was new to this motion of adopting SAAS based solution. So software as a service based solution. So really understanding the value of the technologies and seeing these technological advancements. There was a lot of excitement around that, but when it came to contracting, it would take a long time for them to get their heads around, like, okay, this is going from an on prem solution that has an annual license to a cloud based solution. That's now going to be a SAAS based license.

And so the contracting took much longer. I would say the adoption of these technologies took much longer. I think a lot of this has changed now but when I was doing it back then, I remember it would take months and months to just help bridge that gap of understanding.

It's like, okay, this is a new payment model. But actually, you do want this technology. You do want to adopt this way of running your systems. This difference in financial approaches is not a big deal but it did hinder a lot of the progress that could have been made much earlier with companies that were trying to work with not only parts of the government, but other, I would say enterprises and small media businesses in the country.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Yeah, which is always the struggle between, the David and Goliath, right? Sort of trying to figure out, like, what's the best way to get the Davids of the world to continue to bring the Goliaths along.

So now you’re in Munich Re Ventures, it's been five years, half a decade, hard to imagine that time has flown by.

Tell us a little bit about how this is structured. I was sort of having a conversation with you earlier about how I came from a CVC world as well.

Whether this is balance sheet money, do you have external LPs or how is this structured and what's the mandate with Munich Re?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

So we are the venture capital arm of Munich Reinsurance, hence our name, Munich Re Ventures. It is a closed ended fund, and so it's not balance sheet investing, and we have financial targets as well, and so we are investing in areas of future risk that are relevant to Munich Re.

And so those would be areas like cybersecurity, like insure tech, health tech, transportation tech and IOT. And because we are the investment arm and we're looking at companies that are earlier in the seed to series B stages.

For the most part, these companies eventually could be partners to Munich Re or customers even for Munich Re. So eventually this will happen, but when we're making the investments, we're making it much ahead than those partnerships will play out. And so it's a different flavor of CVC.

I feel like there are many different flavors of CVC. this one is, I would say, we're making investments from a strategic lens, but for financial returns.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

What's the size of the fund and are the external LPs or is this purely Munich Re's money?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

So it's around a billion dollars right now, that we're managing. There are, you know, Munich Re and Munich Re subsidiaries that are part of it. Potentially, you could say more than one LP, but essentially it's Munich Re. That's the sole LP in the fund.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Yeah, and tell us a little bit about, how the thinking came about, I think it's almost commonplace now that every corporate has a venture arm. But I think we've seen the cycles throughout the years, right?

Where some are stood up and then it doesn't work in the end, if you can comment a little bit in terms of what you were seeing, and I guess what works in the structure that you're building.

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

So I can take no credit for building this. I joined when it was all built up. And so all the credit goes to our managing partner, Jacqueline. I would say what's been really cool to see. And so maybe I could talk about the 2 sectors I cover.

For cyber, for example, Munich Re is one of the largest risk takers in cyber, both on the insurance side and reinsurance side. And when we're looking to invest in the area of cybersecurity, we're looking at the next generation of technologies that could potentially be used to thwart attacks.

And so if you think about that from a downstream perspective, that means that it would be fewer claims and fewer issues as it pertains to taking on that risk of cyber. And so we're really going after cyber security companies that are solving these, these issues that will eventually plague the industry.

We also do invest in cyber insurtech. We have made those investments as well. And so it's a broad mandate from that perspective. But in both ways, we're doing additional work to add value to the broader industry and ecosystem. And so if we can help our customers, our companies become customers to the broader insure tech and financial services ecosystem, that's a win.

And if we can help our companies connect to other companies that are not in the financial services world, that's a win as well. And so for me, it is finding these moments of intersection where really, there's some value add that can be provided because we're on the cap table and also from maybe the strategic lens, help me to kind of think about also the edge cases and so what's coming in the future in terms of their risk transfer products. And so that's really exciting to see.

Similarly on the health tech side, we're doing exactly that, right? We're investing in the intersection of health tech and FinTech. We're investing in data and infrastructure as it pertains to healthcare.

And then the third bucket is essentially, proactive care management for patients so that they are able to titrate their care and not have to go to the hospital and results in a lot more claims than they need to.

And so everything we do is from the lens of, how do we manage that risk? How do we help support our companies to eventually in the long run be a partner for the different sectors to manage and decrease any risk exposure that's there.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Yeah, completely makes sense. So when you think about cyber and health, those are two very broad themes. And I know you've sort of sectioned it in different ways, but when you think about what you're excited by and talking about the moment that we're in, right, we're recording this as ChatGPT released the latest iteration, and that was Google IO as well.

And I've heard you speak a little bit about the vectors of attack that that continues to expand because of these, improvements in our technology. Can you talk to us a little bit? And you just came out of RSA as well.

What is top of mind for those of us that are not in cyber in the way that you are, what's new, what's coming, and also maybe spend a little bit of time in the same way for healthcare.

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

So it's a mind shift. Okay, so I would say for cyber, it's a really interesting moment because, we are seeing a technological shift as it pertains to infrastructure, right?

We are seeing an interest in adopting AI. and technologies that are going to help companies and enterprises become better, have better experiences for their customers, but also manage their own data internally better as well.

And so it's a very exciting time. These technological shifts have happened in the past when you went from, I would say, the mainframe to the PC, the PC to cloud, PC to mobile, mobile to cloud, right?

So it's not something that we've never experienced before, but it's for me personally, to be here in that moment in time is really exciting. And as more and more companies start thinking about adopting AI, I think it's become clear that, there's a real need to understand what that means from their security perimeter, right?

You're adopting a new type of technology. You will need to understand what type of data that you have in your in your enterprise that can actually then be touched by this technology and then eventually do not only customers, but also users within your enterprise have the ability to access that data because lot of time right now.

When users try and use these technologies, they have these birthright access to data that they should not have just by changing some of the prompts that you can kind of put into ChatGPT and other tools like that.

And so there is a need to, I would say, have an ability to not only have better data security posture management, but also layer in this need to make sure that everyone who is accessing that data has the right authorization to access that data.

And so we're seeing a lot of companies come out and try and solve for that. And that's just one part of the issue. The other part is obviously a lot of these models, are currently open sourced, or the tools and solutions that you're using to build these models are open source.

That means invariably that you are adding this additional layer off of risk because  open source means that there's one, maybe two, maybe 10 people managing that tool. And so really is it hardened for the enterprise? No.

And if you look at Hugging Face, which is the main platform that people are using for building their AI tools, there are a lot of gaps and security issues that have been bubbled up. And so there is a need to make sure that if these models are going to start to be integrated into an enterprise infrastructure, that they are hardened in the right way, or they are managed in the right way.

So many different, additional things need to happen before we can start adopting and seeing these solutions in the tools that we use every day as consumers, as well as enterprise users. And so I would say more to come.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

And just out of interest, I mean, because we're not experts that in the way that you are, what is the CAGR or the market size for what is being spent on cyber security by corporates? Like, what are we talking about here?

As I can imagine, this is a market that's growing exponentially because of all these new innovations that we're excited by, but often in on in the lens of most entrepreneurs were optimist. So we're not thinking about the risk there, but you are.

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

so I would say if there's any space that's being that money is being spent on, it's cyber that continues to be critical infrastructure for any company. If you look at the top two areas that right now companies are spending money on, it's AI and cyber.

That's going to continue to grow. You kind of think about the cyberspace, there's so much money that's been invested into cyber security solutions. And if you looked at RSA, there were more than 4000 vendors on the RSA floor, with 45, 000 people attending. It was a pretty big conference.

And so there's a lot already out there in terms of tools and solutions. Even now that we have all of that, we're still getting attacks and we're still reading about attacks that are happening.

So I feel like, it's a solution that's going to continue to be necessary for an enterprise as well as users and consumers, of software. And so, yeah, I don't see it going away anytime soon. It's top of mind. And there's still more to be done, given that we're still facing these attacks.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

And how about for healthcare? I interrupted your train of thought there, but I suppose we're talking about more digitization, personalization, and I also like sort of the preemptive type of care solutions that you're looking at.

Tell us a little bit more about how you're seeing healthcare unfold and how you're bringing investing to that.

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

I think health care is facing kind of the same problem globally, where cost of care is increasing, and essentially the quality of that care is hard to measure and manage.

And so there is definitely a lot of interesting opportunities that we're focusing on looking at in that intersection of health tech and FinTech, because the consumer is bearing the brunt of the cost of health care.

One company we're really excited about that we just made an investment in earlier this year is looking at it from the lens of really expensive, high cost, curative, transformative treatments in cell and gene therapy. And so these are therapies that are curative for patients and each dose can cost between 1 million to 5 million.

And so you really need to be a high net worth individual or have a GoFundMe campaign to be able to pay for this care, right? And so, this company it's called Quantile Health. They've done two things. One is they've figure out a way to underwrite these type of therapies. These are very new therapies, so there's not a lot of data out there yet.

They've also built up a risk transfer product that helps the patient population within a payer population to be covered by these therapies by creating a risk transfer product between the payer and the manufacturer directly. So taking out essentially insurance and reinsurance, which is a really interesting way of aligning incentives in this space.

And so those are the types of companies we're trying to invest in back where essentially they're solving the really hard problems in health care, dealing with increasing costs, increasing burden on the cost and the patient or the customer, and also doing it in very innovative ways, whether it's through financial engineering or other sort of tools and solutions that help them get there.

And so, um, definitely really excited about companies in that health tech to fintech intersection, I would say.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

I know this is Yutong Sun, right? With Quantal Health. A really interesting company and the way that they framed it. That of course is a company that you managed to win in and get in on the deal.

I wanted to ask you, and this is something that I asked a lot of the VCs that come on, what is one sort of anti portfolio. One or two deals that you really thought hard about, but it just didn't get through the IC, or it just didn't have enough for you to have conviction in it, but regret it later.

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

There's so many. One from cyber would be CrowdStrike. I saw it when I was at EDBI, we were looking at, I want to say maybe they're a series C or D round. They have these grand ambitions of being this endpoint, security platform and we couldn't get there on price in terms of our conviction.

We were convinced this was a team to back. And we just didn't know whether it could be as big as the team had suggested they would be. And, we were proven wrong. They are a really big platform company. They're doing really well.

It definitely made me kind of rethink my mental model of like pricing and kind of thinking about companies in the cyberspace because most companies in the cyberspace do actually get acquired very early on.

And so there are very few big platforms that actually make it and they were definitely one. There's a lot of regret there.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

The reason I asked this is, of course, in terms of an investor, right?

The joke is for VCs. Unfortunately, it takes a very long time to actually know if you're good at this job because the signals, there’s a latency there, right?

With this mental model, you specifically mentioned that, right? With pricing, I think, for us as VCs, as LPs, when we look at the pricing, it's something that we always think twice, especially when the entrepreneur claims their once in a lifetime type investments.

But how are you nowadays thinking about that? And how should we be a little bit more mindful in terms of strategy portfolio construction.

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

I think I look at it in three ways, right? Do you have in front of you an outlier founders? Is this a founder that has some sort of information or experience asymmetry that gives them an edge that nobody else has.

Are they somebody who is resilient and will be able to continue down this path of executing on their vision and will not be swayed? And that's a very big part of that decision, especially in the earlier days. And then is this an outsized opportunities?

Is this is the is the timing right from the standpoint of other tailwinds here? Because you can get timing wrong, right? The iPhone was not the 1st, essentially product that that got envisioned. There was general magic. And there was pocket crystal. And so I think timing is a very big part of it.

So really kind of getting a sense of the tailwinds and seeing whether or not, it makes sense to do this now. VCs like, we like to tell ourselves that we're making contrarian bets. That's what we do. And for the most part, we're all kind of looking at the same deals. This is probably a little too spicy, but like, I don't know whether that's a very true statement.

I feel like, when I'm in a deal and I don't see anyone around me and I'm getting conviction and getting excited about an opportunity. That's when I feel like, okay, this is going to be a great opportunity. This is going to be a great deal. when no one's really looking, I think that to me is a contrarian bet, right?

Right now, everyone's looking at AI. Everyone's looking at every part of that stack. I don't know whether that's going to be a contrarian bet for anyone. But if you're convinced about the market opportunity and the founder and the tailwinds, I would say that that's kind of what I would want to see to move forward on the deal.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

How does Munich Re Ventures think about sort of follow on funding? I think there's two camps of investors that I've met, right? One is you think that, follow ons are necessary for those that you see good signals; and on the other one believes that no follow on is the best way, because no matter how smart you are, it's actually really hard to pick the winners.

Which camp are you on?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

I think it really depends on the fund structure and the fund size. I definitely see both sides of that coin and in terms of putting in a large check in the beginning and getting that ownership so that you have a sufficient amount of capture on the cap table to get the upside, regardless of what that is.

Our fund does do follow ons. Obviously, we still go through a process of weighing the pros and cons of continuing to invest in a company. So we are essentially stewards of the capital that's been provided to us. And so we have to do that.

And so we do make a decision when we decide to follow 1, but that's something that we do if we're seeing the company is hitting their targets. They're doing well. Maybe we want to double down on our position. Then we would absolutely follow on and even do more in some instances.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

What sort of check sizes are you writing between seed to series B? Is there like a target ownership that you're working towards?

What's the strategy here in terms of portfolio construction?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

So I would say check sizes range anywhere from, you know, $500k at the small end all the way to like $9 million at the top end is the first check in. And then we do have reserves as well. Ownership targets really varied. I don't think it's been consistent.

Mainly because I think it really depends on the market opportunity. What we think the exit's going to look like, we obviously try and get a double digit percentage on the ownership and try and make sure that there's enough room for dilution as the company grows to future rounds, because then, at the much later stages, it's unlikely we'll be able to participate if those round sizes get really big.

And so it's better to sort of double down and do more in the earlier stages for us. We try and kind of triangulate between the check size, the valuation of that stage for that company, the market opportunity and the exit as well.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Talking about valuations, how are valuations these days in cyber and health tech?

Are we getting more grounded after the highs of what, ‘21, ‘22? Or are we still floating on high here because AI is the thing now?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

Yeah, every company's an AI company now. So for cyber evaluations is still very high. We're still seeing companies doing seed rounds, $20 million seed rounds, $18 million seeds, seed rounds, which is massive, for that stage and at very high valuations. And so that's still happening.

On health tech, there's a little bit of recalibration that's going on. There was a lot of capital poured into that sector during covid pandemic period. And so, there are a lot of companies in the later stages who are catching up to their valuations.

And so we're starting to see some flat rounds, even some down rounds on the later stage companies. On the earlier stage companies, it's also been a little harder to raise, I would say, than usual. But I think that's sort of like the natural shakeup that needs to happen because of the amount of capital and amount of companies that were birthed essentially during that period.

And so I think it will all level off eventually. But anything that's cyber and AI these days, it's just really expensive.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Yeah. So how are you evolving your thinking? I mean, on one hand, you see a contraction, I suppose, right? Like the market correction is sort of shooting out those that aren't able to juggle the fundamentals.

And then on the cyber, and it still feels like we're in La La Land, especially if you have a plug on that's AI.

How are you evolving your thinking? And how should investors be thinking about, I guess, this investment cycle?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

I mean, we're trying to be as disciplined as possible. And so if we see at the stage that the companies that, it doesn't meet the typical dynamics of where it should be at, then does it really make sense for us to do that investment into that round.

So we have walked away from deals where the company had zero revenue, and expected a 3 digit million valuation. That was not something we were comfortable with. And so we try and be as disciplined as we can, even though we're excited about these opportunities. And then eventually, we try and see if it makes sense to do future rounds.

We want to see a lot more execution from the company, but yeah, it is what it is. It will recorrect eventually, but you try and find these companies a little earlier, maybe go in at the pre-seed seed levels, even just to just to get a better price for some of these companies.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Are you telling founders these days to, I guess strap in for a protracted period of time? What are we feeling on the ground here?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

I think founders need to be a little bit more level headed on in terms of their expectations. And for the most part, they are.

I think for the really hot companies where there's still no dearth of capital, investors are still willing to pay that high price. We'll see what happens. These things are very cyclical anyway.

We try and stay away from the hype. But yeah, our advice is don't raise more than you need to. The nice high valuation looks great on paper, but it's on paper. And so, manage that expectation, start with a lower valuation, the right investor, that's more important than the wrong investor at a high valuation.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

What about the exits landscape here? I mean, I think you mentioned for cyber. It's typically going to be strategic acquisitions, but are we seeing more activity these days? Are people more excited about doing deals at that level?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

Yeah, I mean, in the last two weeks, I feel like I've heard about at least six different acquisitions in the cyber space. It's been really, really busy.

There's a lot more pickup recently, and that could be also, these announcements tend to also happen around the RSA conference. And so there's a bit of that, but there's a lot of vendors in the space. So there needs to be consolidation. There are larger Cyber platform companies that want to add to their platform to continue to hold their market positions and increase their growth as well.

And so that will continue. And I think for the most part, for cyber, it seems like these companies have been able to get through. We'll see what happens with the recent announcement, but like the biggest hurdle right now has been the FTC in terms of really having these acquisitions be complete.

We'll see whether or not the pace of exits is able to continue the way it has historically. But for cyber, it's been very, very typical for companies to be acquired even before they hit speed velocity. So some of these, most of these companies are below $2 million in revenue or so, so they get swooped up much earlier than other sectors.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

What's the holding period for you in cyber? I mean, you've been doing this for five years. What sort of exit rates are we seeing here?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

I don't think it's anything that's abnormal in terms of the pace. There's a pretty large private equity firm that does a lot of cyber acquisitions. Some of their acquisitions are currently being contested, right?

So if that kind of, Friction continues in the acquisition landscape. It's going to get harder. But this interest around acquiring tools to have a, essentially a platform play in cyber, that's not new. It goes through like best of suite to platform quite frequently.

We'll continue to see that growth. I don't see I don't see that slowing down anytime soon but that could happen if a lot of these acquisitions cannot be completed.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Yeah, I mean we saw what was it not long ago, was the Adobe and Figma right? And then that was a lot of time wasted on hand, but yeah, and how about for health care?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

Kind of the same. A lot of the companies are consolidating because of the fact that they're trying to add, additional breath to their solutions that they're providing to whether it's, you know, payers and, employers or providers, or even consumers that they're selling into.

So I think that will continue to happen. A lot of startups are merging together to do that as well. And so maybe they're not exits. In the pure sense of the word, or mergers. And so that's, that feels like more of what's going to continue to happen.

I'm not sure whether we're going to see any massive exits the way we saw with, Teledoc and the Livongo but, you know, that's something that we're continuing to monitor. Because of all that capital that went into healthcare, and health tech in the last two, two years to three years and so more, more observation, more kind of sitting around and kind of seeing how that plays out.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Zooming out a little bit. You've been in venture now for quite some time in different chapters, but also touching innovation in the ways that you are.

What needs to change in venture?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

What needs to change in venture? How much time do we have?

I think it has been evolving, right? If you had asked me this question when I first started, I would say that there was no transparency in venture. It was very hard to at least see, when positions would open up or what exactly firms did in terms of getting the outcomes that they wanted.

And there's a lot more openness now in terms of talking about strategies and hiring and also creating diversity at the top. And so there's a lot that's happened that I think has positive for the industry. I think it just kind of needs to continue to go on this journey that it's been.

There's still very few female GPs. And so we'd love to see that continue to grow. I think Aileen and her team at All Raise have done a great job at highlighting the issues and, putting in the frameworks to help the next generation of female leaders in venture capital.

So I would say, more of that.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

And if I may, this just as someone who's in it, as someone who, you got promoted, I guess last year. So congratulations on that.

But what is the one thing that you feel is holding women from rising to the senior ranks here in the way that they should?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

When I talk to my peers, I think it's really the combination of when you kind of hit your stride and venture. It's also converging at a time or a moment in time where you're also starting to build out a family. And so, that kind of overlap has been a struggle for a lot of my peers.

I've done a lot of informal chats with people and kind of helping them think about not only how to think about this next phase of now being a mom and a VC, but also kind of thinking about their own career trajectory and not stalling out.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely agree there.

Okay, rapid fire. So these are one liner, billion dollar questions is where we're at. All right. Your guilty pleasure.

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

Oh, chocolate for sure. Dark chocolate.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

A habit you've picked up that has changed your life?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

I would say getting up at, you know, 5.30, 6a.m.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Every day?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

Well, now that I'm a mom, yes.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Wow, yes. Makes sense. What would you tell your younger self, a younger Sidra?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

Keep going. Stop getting into your head about what other people think.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

And what's your biggest insecurity still?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

Oh, this one's hard. I would say whether or not I am the best partner I could be.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

What is the best leadership advice?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

Every day you experience something new for the first time.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Fill in the blank. Success is?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

Success is winning.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Failure is?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

Failure is also, I'd say, failure is learning.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

And final one, what are you obsessed with that others rarely talk about?

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

I'm right now very interested in basically culture and habits converging together. I've been thinking a lot about, why we're not seeing essentially the Silicon Valley in Asia, which is what Singapore has always wanted to be.

I'm becoming very interested in sort of digging into like, is this a more cultural issue, you know, where we are? As Asians mostly thought to succeed and not fail. And so culture and that culture crash when it comes to essentially thinking about succeeding in society.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

That's a really good thought, resonates with me. What is going to be your legacy when all is said and done?

She did what was not expected for her.

Sarah Chen-Spellings:

Oh, love it. Great. And with that, Sidra, thank you for doing what is not expected of you already by going into venture, right? And showing us what is possible here and for leading in the way that you have. And keep making billion dollar moves.

Sidra Ahmed Lefort:

Thank you.