I can't give a specific answer to that because, as you know, there is a process in the Justice Department and all before things get to my desk for decision. And I don't know whether or anything, I never have any warning when they complete their processing and all the recommendations are sent here. I don't seem to me that would be very likely that they will be able to complete anything with this being the last day in office. Well, they have a lot over here already, recommendations, so you obviously have made up your mind not to do it. Well, no, there have been some recommendations as there are routinely and some fairly recently, but I have no knowledge of any that are imminent that are coming here. You've said, Mr. President, that you felt the judicial process, of course, with regard to the ideology of the North and John point of view. Is that still your feeling? Well, yes, because I still think that to step in in advance is going to leave them under a cloud of guilt for the rest of their lives. Mr. President, in 1980 you sharply criticized President Carter for the inability to do anything about getting the hostage at home. It is now eight years later, and a matter of fact, eight years from tomorrow, Mr. President, when you were sworn in, 52 hostages did come home in retrospect, sir. What I would like to ask you is, do you feel perhaps you were a little too harsh on Carter during the campaign, and do you now, after eight years, have perhaps an appreciation of some of the limits of power as to what an American president can do with these situations with third world terrorist nations? Well, I think we're facing two very different situations. One, more than 50 people in an embassy, knowledge of where they were kidnapped by the government of that country. This is another one in which some terrorist group has kidnapped several individuals. We don't know where they are. We know that any overt attempt at rescue, even if we did have a hint or a clue, would run the risk of their assassination or execution before we could get them out. And there hasn't been a moment that this isn't on our minds and that we haven't been exploring quietly and privately as you must in this kind of a situation. Whatever opening there could be to get them back. I think these two situations are completely different. I want you to know also that at the end of President Carter's term, I made a number of statements and so forth that were aimed at helping, in other words, portraying myself and the things that I said to that government that was holding them that maybe they'd rather deal with him than deal with me. If I could follow up, sir, your recent initiative with respect to the PLO, is this, aside from the issues of the Middle East peace process and the intricacies there, is there a recognition or has there been a recognition on your part and would you advise George Boyce and will we see an evolution in American policy that in effect uses perhaps a stance of attempting to deal with these third world countries in a way of some moderation that accepts at least their influence, if not their legitimacy in the world, as well as the policy you've been willing to use in the past, of course, which is to use American power where you felt it was needed, such as in Libya in 1986. Well, ever since we've been here, we have been trying to be helpful in bringing about peace in the Middle East. Actually, a technical state of war does still exist between the Arab nations and Israel. We believe that that peace can only come about when the principles themselves agree to negotiations. And so we've been trying to do everything we can to be helpful in bringing that about. And it's not one in which we think that we can dictate a peace in any way. You've never made a statement against the Israeli violence against the Palestinians, killing them every day, blowing up their homes.  Not one public statement in this human right situation. Well, and I'm not going to talk about diplomatic relations that we may have. Just as we right now, we still have an ambassador that is in negotiations with the PLO as a result of our recent decision on that. But, Helen, no, this is one of the things is to get the violence and the killing stopped on both sides. But you have to look at this one in which the violence is being perpetrated against the governing authority of the area. And yes, we hope the killing will stop. If you were under occupation and your land was under a military occupation for 40 years, would you fight? I can't say about this because whatever the terms you have to look at what the situation would be in such a case. I think you fight. Mr. President, you seem to have established quite a good personal chemistry relationship with Soviet leader Gorbachev. The Bush administration has said that they're going to take some time to review the bidding in the arms control negotiations. Do you think that's a good idea to kind of stand back and take a look at what's gone forward, or should we press ahead on the start of negotiations? Well, now, wait a minute again. And at the beginning, this is... I haven't switched my mind yet. Do you think the President Bush is well advised to stand back and review the bidding as they put it in the arms control negotiations between the U.S. and the Soviets? Or should we press ahead on what has been done? Oh, I think you'll be there and if pressing ahead is the appropriate thing to do. But again, I think we have to realize that in these negotiations and all that have taken place so far, they're not just based on what someone says. They're based on the deeds and I think the George would be very prepared there based on what the deeds were. Remember that in these arms negotiations, one thing that seems to escape many people's attention is that their superiority has been such that so far they still, in spite of the cuts that they have proposed making, they still have a superiority, an edge. Now what must happen is get down to parity and then see if both sides don't want to continue reducing down as long as we're at a parity. Where are we at this point in the starting negotiations? Are we halfway through further along than that? I know these are being very difficult. They're much more complicated than the INF treaty was. It would be hard for me to say. I think some of the things that are holding it up is that there has not been the agreement on verification that we had with the INF treaty. Mr. President, were you ever in a situation where you might have to push the ultimate button or put us on red alert or anything where it was really a touch-and-go? No, I don't think there's ever been a moment of that kind that has come up while we've been here. I'm happy to say. Would you have taken the decision to go on the doomsday plane or stay here? That would have to depend on the circumstances also. I'm quite sure that we would never be the first to push the button, and so if ever such a situation had arisen, very possibly those hostile missiles would be on their way here, and then it would depend on what information we had.  No, I think I was always aware that, well, from the very first I said a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. You never said that until about the third year in office. Did you always believe that? Because we felt that during the campaign you felt that if we had to have nuclear superiority and you said you could have a little war in Europe with tactical nuclear. Well, I know that the situation we inherited here was that our nuclear superiority had been the basic NATO position because we had it, but the nuclear superiority by the time we got here was rapidly disappearing. Mr. President, how do you explain the fact that Mr. Gorbachev is much more popular in Europe than you are? Are you concerned about that? Is there fear that Europe could drift toward neutrality? Well, actually I have just finished reading a document here that was citing authorities and press media and so forth all over the world, and I can't quite accept that he's more popular than I am. I was quite moved and touched by the words that were spoken about me and my departure from office. But as the second part of the question, is there any concern that because of this dealing with Mr. Gorbachev, because of this American attitude that Europe could drift toward neutrality, especially after 92 when there will be more, let's say, more unity and it could lead toward protectionism? Is there any threat to the alliance? I don't think so. I know that every country, literally including our own, has elements within that country that speak out and that demonstrate and so forth, but who are philosophically more attuned to the Soviet Union and its philosophy than to the democratic philosophy that the rest of the world is being guided by. And I think we have to be careful and not take that as national opinion. Mr. President, you formally headed the Screen Actors Guild and you've been talking in these recent spate of interviews about the high spots of your presidency and some of the low spots. I'd like to ask you, sir, in retrospect, if you had it to do over again, would you have fired the air traffic controllers in 1981 during the strike? And secondly, does it bother you, sir, as a former head of the Screen Actors Guild, that there's a perception, at least within major elements of organized labor or the leadership of the Union movement, that your administration was somehow hostile to workers who are members of unions or to the legitimacy of the Union movement in this country? There's nothing, there's no way that I am opposed to the legitimacy of the Union movement and certainly I am supportive. First of all, I'm a lifetime member of an AFL-CIO Union, was given a lifetime membership card when I left the Screen Actors Guild to come here. I do feel this, I have been critical many times at authorities or authorities seized at the Federation level without taking into consideration the interests of each individual union or, for that matter, union member. For example, when I came here as the head of a union to appear before a congressional committee on a tax matter and I was representing 36 unions of the motion picture industry, not just our own, they had authorized me to represent them. And I was accosted in the capital corridors by two representatives of the AFL-CIO and they were showing me that the position was counter on this tax matter than the one that I was going to defend and put before the Congress. And I said to them, I said, I'm the president of an AFL-CIO Union. No one from the AFL-CIO has ever suggested anything of this kind to me nor to any of the unions that I know of. Now, what their proposal was, they were supportive of higher and more taxes because, as they showed me, the AFL-CIO had a great package of social reforms that would need more money, that would cost more. And yet none of us out there who were the member unions of this federation have been told about this. So there, I made a claim, this is a yes, I've taken a position on that. For example, my union, the Screen Actors Guild, had a provision in its Constitution that no decision taken even by a general membership meeting could become guilt policy if it affected guilt policy until it was submitted to the entire membership for a secret mail ballot. And hearing the history and seeing other unions there in the industry at work, recognizing how many times in meetings of other unions there was fear on the part of the membership to stand up and take a position that they thought might be counter to the executive's position. I tried to promote and I had union members from many other unions and not only picture unions but other unions when I was campaigning on this that said, please get that for us, that secret ballot. And I tried and I couldn't get it off the ground and because the leadership of the AFL-CIO was opposed to such a thing for union members, I think what I was proposing was the height of democracy for any union member. Mr. President, I'd like to be back to your relationship with Mr. Gorbachev. During the last summit at Governor's Island there was some talk that there might be some follow-on meetings that you'd have with him as a private citizen. Are there any firm plans for him to come visit you in California or are you and Mrs. Reagan to go to Moscow? No, but there was a mutual exchange of invitations that any time we felt we could or that they could. I had extended that invitation and he counted with the same suggestion to me. What do you think of the possibilities that happened? I don't know.  I don't know what I can schedule or what my plans can be. Mr. President, Casey apparently knew according to what I've read. That he had a brain tumor two years before he died. Did you know it? No. You did not know it? No, I did not know. He would have told you, do you think? I should have told you. Well, I don't know. I could see where probably he had concern that this might create a doubt or a suspicion that he wasn't up to the job or what he was doing. So I'm not going to judge him on that. I'm puzzled, Mr. President, and it's probably the last time we'll ever be able to ask you the question. Why do you insist that North and Point Dexter did nothing wrong when you fired them for diverting funds? They burned and shredded official documents after a government inquiry was underway. They thwarted your power. They usurped your power. They're two military men when we have a civilian government. Why do you continue to forgive them? Helen, because when I said doing nothing wrong, this was in countering what I have to say is the total media distortion of the process that was underway. And I can't understand it because I, as you know, the day after that leak revealed the covert operation, I went before the press and told them exactly what the operation was. We were not doing business with the Ayatollah. We were not trading arms for hostages. We had received word by way of a third country, Israel, that a delegation of people at a time when everyone was saying that the Ayatollah was not going to live out the week and that factions were rising up as to who was going to be the government of Iran. This group was vouched for by, as I say, a third country responsible citizens who wanted to meet, a meeting somehow with representatives of the United States as to how there could be a better relationship between a government of Iran and the United States. And it had to be covert because these people would obviously have been executed if anyone in the government had known that they were doing what they were doing. So these people of ours were there meeting on that setup. I told exactly what, how the thing of arms came about. They, word came back to us that the people they were dealing with for two reasons wanted a token shipment of arms, of weapons. One, this would convince them that the people they were dealing with actually had access to the top of government here. The second one was they would turn it over to the Revolutionary Guard in Iran but to the regular military which had been created you might say in large part by the United States and it would give them the prestige they would need if they were to be able to take over the government and establish a democratic government there. My reply, first reply to them was we can't do business with countries that support terrorism. Their reply back was that they themselves were opposed to terrorism. There would be no support for it if they were governing Iran and they gave some personal incidents of where they as individuals had opposed terrorism. So my word went back to them, all right, but we believe that the group that is holding our people hostage has a philosophical relationship with Iran. If you will use your influence to try and get our hostages free, we will meet your request. And they were the ones who specified the tow missiles. The tow missiles could be shipped on one airplane. They didn't in any way alter the balance between the Iran and Iraq and the war that was going on because we were trying to help bring about an end to that war. So this we did, and it was all covert and so forth. And it wasn't until the thing was exposed by that Beirut paper, not too reliable sheet, but the whole press, as you know, took off on what had been exposed. But no, because they said it was trading arms for hostages. Well, I don't think we had people here that said this is what it's going to appear to be. And I said, wait a minute, if I've got someone kidnapped in my family and I don't pay ransom because that just encourages further kidnapping, but if I find there is someone else that possibly could get my family member back for me, yes, I'd be happy to do something for that individual. Well, that's what this situation was. These were people, we were never dealing with the kidnappers. These were people who I thought could have an influence and help get it back and they were asking a favor for themselves. So this was the, and the day after was when the attorney general came in. He had been looking in to make sure there were no smoking guns or things we didn't know about. And he had found a paper that for the first time we'd gotten our price that we'd asked for the weapons been sent to us. He found a paper that indicated there was more money. In other words, someone had increased the price. And that's what I went in and told. And the same day I told the congressional leadership. But we're saying that why do you keep absolving North and Point Dexter? And they obviously raised the price. They took the money and they gave some of it to the Contras, some in a Swiss bank. That we have no way of knowing any of that. This is the thing that I'm still waiting to find out. This is why I was the first one to appoint a commission to look into this, to find out. How was their extra money? They admitted they did it under immunity. But how that money was obtained, I don't know. I knew that we couldn't deliver the weapons all the way to Iran. Then that wouldn't be a covert operation anymore. We delivered them to the people we were doing business with. How they got the weapons on, I don't know. How the price was increased to see that there was more money. I did not know. And I believe that, well, I don't think that there has been yet any declaration of a crime, a violation of law. Well, they've been charged. They've both been charged. But you've seen that the charges that have been dropped also. Sir, can we just stick with this for a second? Is it fair to say, is it fair to summarize your feelings about this business of partners for North and Point Dexter? That short of having the release of information, you consider too sensitive to the national security to be released in a public trial. Is it your feeling as you leave the presidency that these trials should go forward? Because neither Ronald Reagan nor the American people know precisely what became of the money. And that's your attitude is that that should come out even if, for example, it creates a lot of distractions for George Bush's first 100 days. Well, as I've said before, there have been implications of, well, that would be crimes, personal gain and so forth. A pardon now before a trial would leave them forever after with that guilt hanging over them. I see that they let the legal process go forward and then determine with regard to pardon. I have to say this. I think there is a great likelihood that their operating covertly and then not telling me some things could have been an effort to protect me. In other words, to not involve me in any way, not in crime, but in some of the procedures that they followed. Have you ever talked to them about it? No, because I felt, and it was felt by all of us, that when this thing was exposed, and obviously there had been things not told to me, that I had to do what I did and that is ask for the resignation. Do you still believe these trials should be held at least in part to get the story out of what happened, to have a system of justice resolve what really happened? Yes, because I can't believe that either one of these men was guilty of any criminal activity myself. And I think that this is what would be hanging over them, the shadow that they were, unless the process goes forward. Why does Bush Shades was out of the loop on all this? When you said he was part of every decision? Well, he did not get into the discussions. There was a difference between some of our cabinet members and me. Now, the difference was never, as it has been again reported. Secretary Schulz, Secretary Weinberg, they were opposed, not on the basis that this was arms for hostages. They both felt very strongly that if it was ever exposed or came to light, that this is what it would be made to appear. Well, they turned out to be right. It didn't take 24 hours for this to be portrayed as arms for hostages. Well, he was present at some meetings when this took place, but he did not enter into the discussion because it was a decision of mine and with regard to some disagreements in the part of others. Mr. President, the final question. If you had just one single piece of advice that you could leave with George Bush, what would that be? Well, I have reserved ever suggesting any advice or giving any advice. I would give it if it were asked, but I don't think it's proper for me to just volunteer such advice. What would your role be as an ex-president? Will you be kind of a president emeritus? Have you talked with Mr. Bush about being in consultation about the affairs of state? No, because there is a system that prevails in which all former presidents are regularly advised of what is going on in the government here. Now, I have approved and sent on those reports to the existing previous presidents and all of them, and when I've been doing it, I've been saying to myself, well, pretty soon I'll be getting these reports. So, no, but if ever he thought there was anything that I could be helpful in or wanted to ask advice, well, I would probably try to do my best to comply. We must know how to handle something on how to handle the presidency. Some one little quick reward? Well, as I say, he's been so close to this and every week we lunch together and he's the president of the cabinet meetings. Mr.  He has a big advantage in that. Yes. I made up my mind long before I was here, in fact, when I was a governor with regard to a lieutenant governor, that this whole concept down through the years of a vice president and a lieutenant governor in the state level just keeps someone sitting there waiting to see if something happens to me was a waste of great talent. That they should be like an executive vice president of a corporation, and that's what I did as governor with a lieutenant governor, and that's what I did here. George had very, very much a part in the things that we did. I put him in charge of the task force to see how many regulations we could get rid of. Thank you, sir. You were supposed to be nice from the beginning. Thank you very much.


Hi, I'm Marianne Sasaki. You're watching Life in the Law and Think Tech Hawaii. We discuss issues in the law, current events, and historical events. Today we're so lucky to have eminent criminal attorney, Victor Bakke, with me. Welcome, Victor. I'm so glad you're here. And Victor's going to tell us a little bit about what practicing criminal law is like, and then we're going to talk about the big, big case that's been in the news for months and months and months since I've been here, which is the Kaloha case. Kaloha case. Okay, so welcome. Thank you for having me. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming. Where should we start? So are you from, are you local? I'm originally from Seattle, but I've been here 30 years now. Okay. So I've been here longer than any place else, so I guess you could say. And I did my research, and I saw that you went to Bolt Law School, yeah? Yes. I went to University of Washington for undergrad, and then University of California, Berkeley, also known as Bolt Hall, for law school. And you clerked at the Supreme Court as well of Hawaii, yeah? Correct. While I was in law school, I served as a judicial extern for Chief Judge David Ezra, who is now retired from the District of Hawaii, but he was a pretty high-powered judge here, and then I also clerked for the Supreme Court of Hawaii before starting a career at the city prosecutor's office. Okay, did you always know you wanted to be a criminal lawyer? Yes. Really? Yeah. Even before law school? Well, I wanted to be a doctor first, you know, like most lawyers, and then when I decided not to do that, I decided to go to law school, and then from then on, though, it was pretty much always criminal law. Because criminal is, you know, I'm a business lawyer, and it's so far from my practice, and I've on several occasions been the last person in the office, and so I've had to go down and do an arraignment or something, and it's just a whole different world for me. I mean, it's a whole different set of rules, and it's a different way of practicing law. Well, the thing that always intrigued me about the criminal law is it's pure law. It really is the essence of society. I mean, it's the rule of law. It's what keeps everything together. It's what allows people like you to practice business law, because you need to have that history that we have. I mean, it's almost a historical degree when you're going through law school. You're learning law, but you really have to learn the history, and how did we get here? How did we end up with a right to a jury trial? How did we end up with proof beyond a reasonable doubt? Just things like that, innocent until proven guilty. All those type of concepts that people tend to take for granted. It's fascinating in a lot of different ways.  I very rarely burden of proof, very rarely comes across my desk.  They think of the criminal lawyer. That's what they see on TV, and that's what they think of as a lawyer. So really, I wanted to discuss this fascinating case with the police chief. And it's been going on. I've only been here for a year and a half, but I think it's been going on since I've been here. I know it's been going on for a very long time. So could you give us a little background about how did this begin, and where are we going, and where it is now? Because I know that there's a new federal civil case filed against the chief, yeah? Correct. In a nutshell, the chief of police is married to one of the high-ranking deputy prosecuting attorneys, a woman that I used to work with named Kathy K. Aloha. And she's been under a cloud of suspicion for some irregular activity, let's say, within the prosecutor's office. And then there was also some suspicion cast on her about some of her business dealings with family members when she was working as a private attorney. And that ended up working its way through the court system, and she actually was awarded a judgment in her favor for that. But the biggest problem they had in that case was at some point she accused her uncle, who was the person that was suing her, and she was countersuing, she accused that uncle of stealing her mailbox. And now it's turning out that that whole thing was completely faked. Fabricated, huh? It was completely fabricated. And she used her connections with the police department to get this elite group of officers that answer only to the chief. And the first thing that's funny about that is almost nobody knew that this special division even existed. It was almost kind of like the secret... That's like Stasi or something. It was like the Gestapo, it was like the chief's secret police. And so, you know... There's no provision in the law made for it, nobody knew. They just... How did they... How did they get them... Gather them together? What... They swear them to secrecy? I mean, how did they do it? Well, that's what it looks like. And one of them now has broken ranks and has pled guilty to fraud and to basically framing this uncle. Right. And so, that's now... Since that just came down last week, now the chief has been given a target letter which means he's being requested to testify before the grand jury, but he's also being warned that he is also a suspect in all of this and so that he should be careful when testifying because he may incriminate himself. Wow. That's kind of amazing. It's kind of amazing just that the chief of police and somebody from the prosecutor's office would be...  But it doesn't sound like these two are extra careful at all. No. And you say TV. This almost reads like a made-for-TV script because some of it just seems so ridiculous and unnecessary. I know. It's very dramatic. That's the thing that caught my attention because I don't usually... I watch political news. I'm a political news junkie, so I don't usually watch the local news. But when I do watch the local news, it really is such a... Each turn of events is so dramatic and it's silly and dramatic, you know what I mean?  It's not murders, it's not drugs, it's nothing like that. It's like a family dispute over money. But what's happened is it's taken over a year for this investigation to be coming forth with. And it really started, in part, with the chief because what happened was during the trial, they actually tried the uncle in federal court with a criminal offense for stealing the mailbox. And the chief actually blurted out information during his testimony that he was specifically told not to say. Really? It was in federal court because it was the mail? What? It was in federal court because it was a theft of a mailbox. Amazing. Okay. So it was a federal offense and the uncle was appointed a public defender. But during that trial, the chief engaged in misconduct and the judge threw the case out. And that's what triggered then the investigation because they started realizing that this evidence wasn't really credible. And so when it's coming from police officers, there's a bigger problem. If you have a regular witness and they're not credible, the case just gets dismissed. But when the police officers are found... You need an investigation. You need an investigation. And there's just been a long series. This chief came into power, which we shouldn't even say that we're like power. They think it's something, it's some huge political thing. But once he became acting chief, he's had nothing but problems. There's been nothing but arrest after arrest, after indictment, after civil lawsuit. I personally filed a lawsuit against the chief in which the city awarded me $4.7 million. Really? The largest... Well, not me personally, but on behalf of my clients. That was the largest single settlement against the Honolulu Police Department in state history. Wow. So... So it sounds like a field day for lawyers, actually. It actually is right now. But to their credit, they are not lying down. They are firing back, filing all of their own lawsuits. So now the city's running up a couple million dollars again in bills to defend them. They're saying that they're suing the Ethics Commission. They're saying that they're being targeted. For no reason by the Ethics Commission. Their names are being dragged through the mud. And I pointed out in several interviews that it's very ironic to hear those kinds of accusations coming from a police chief and the prosecutor who all they do all day long is file accusation against people. They throw people in jail. They don't give them a chance to clear their names.  You've spoken like a true criminal attorney. I have to say, Victor, that's a very... I wouldn't... Yeah. No, I'll say this. I mean, personally, I spent seven and a half years in the prosecutors here. So I'm not a bleeding heart liberal, you know, hide-behind-the-constitution type of defense attorney. But I can see the whole thing. I've seen the inner workings of the prosecutor's office. I've seen the inner workings of the police department. And I've been in prison, which is why I'm wearing this aloha shirt today. I just came from the federal detention center visiting the court. Yes. We know that you look very handsome, but had you not been to prison, you would have worn a suit and tie. I'd been in court, yes. If he had been before you, right. Exactly. But no reason to suit and tie here. No, but I dealt with the probation system. I dealt with the parole system, the prison. And, you know, the only way you can truly be at the top of the game is to have been on the inside of all those organizations, because the criminal justice system depends on a lot of moving parts. And if any of those moving parts fail, then the system fails, including the judiciary. So like I said, I've worked with the judiciary. I know what it's like. I haven't been a judge, but I've worked by side of Ben the clerk for the judge. So, and you can really see, whether it's a victim that is harmed by the prosecutors not prevailing a case in a case, it's just you need everything to work. And if it doesn't, then people actually get hurt. In the civil world, as you know, it's all about money. You can always make money. How do you make whole people whole? You make them with money.  How do you give them back their reputations? And that's where... Well, those, yes, those are certainly very weighty matters when you're considering, you know, that you're doing, you're like a surgeon, right?  And you... You have to get it right. That's the bottom line. And... But you need everybody to do that. And you need people to believe in the system. So when you have the chief of police and a high-ranking prosecutor coming under this kind of suspicion, and they just seem to keep blowing it off, blowing it off, not taking any responsibility for anything, erodes the confidence, and that's another problem in terms of... It did for me.  My husband's local. He's from Kailua. I said to him, you know, this makes Honolulu seem like a 20s gangster movie. Not like 20s gangsters, but like a 20s gangster movie. It's like almost like a movie, like, you know, because it's so dramatic and event after event and so intertwined, the husband and wife and, you know, being in the prosecutor's office and the chief of police. And it has also a little bit of a small town vibe, doesn't it? Or is it me? No. It is a very small town vibe. I mean, I've always said about Honolulu. But Honolulu isn't. Are you thinking this? It's not. There's 700,000 people in this county. Yeah, I think it's a big city. But this has a very... But political-wise, I mean, you know, I've never been any place where I can walk down the street like I can here and see the prosecutor, see one of the federal judges, and they'll say hello to you. You know, no security, no running around. Right. You know. I agree. I agree. You have access to people here like you just never would. I mean, you don't drive on the mainland and see people waving signs and actually have, you know, Kirk Caldwell, the mayor, with a beautiful lay on the corner and them waving at you. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And then it gives you that connection with these people. But at the same time, that small town feel can breed corruption real quick. And the police department's been under suspicion for a lot of stuff for a long time, which is really unfortunate. But they're responsible for the way things are handled. So, let me ask you, so why wouldn't the chief of the prosecutor's office, wouldn't they put somebody even on paid suspension or suspend them or...? That is a very good question. And it's one that hasn't been answered yet because it's expected that the prosecutor Keith Connoisseur may at some point be a target of this corruption scandal as well. For example, I was personally involved in... We had a huge case here before you got here. Let me stop you. I'd love to hear about your case. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll talk about your huge case, which I'm dying to hear about. Aloha, Howard Wigg. I am the proud host of Code Green, Think Tech-Away-ee. I appear every other Monday at three in the afternoon. Do not tune in in the morning. My topic is energy efficiency. It sounds dry as heck, but it's not. We're paying five billion dollars a year for imported oil. My job is to shave that, shave that, shave that down in homes and buildings while delivering better comfort, better light, better air conditioning, better everything. If you're interested in your future, you'd better tune in to me, three o'clock every other Monday Code Green Aloha, and thank you very much. Hi. You're watching Marianne Sasaki and Life in the Law on Wednesdays between 1.00 and 1.30 on Think Tech-Away-ee. We're lucky today to have Victor Bakke. We're talking about the Kaloha case. I don't know why I can't say that the issue of the police chief and corruption going on in the police force and in the prosecutor's office. Tell me about this big case you had that you thought would be interesting that we went to break right before winter break you mentioned. You were asking about the prosecutor, and how has the prosecutor come into play in all this? Right. Why wouldn't he sanction- Well, because they've worked very closely together on some other big cases, which I was starting to mention about the largest gambling case that we had here in history, where they shut down all these game rooms that were operating in broad daylight had been approved for operation by the Likert Commission, and Keith Kahnashiro decided on his own that these were illegal. But he couldn't prove it under the law, so they went through it. It's a long story. But at the end of the day, they presented indictments, the largest, I guess, in state history, and then within a very short time myself and several other lawyers were able to uncover that the grand jury proceeding had been made up almost completely of fabricated testimony, improper evidence, and the judge threw the case out, and Kathy Kalo had disappeared. She was subpoenaed as a witness to testify for it. She wasn't ordered held accountable for anything. The other prosecutor that was involved, he left the office immediately thereafter. And then for two years we heard nothing, and then Keith Kahnashiro, the prosecutor, tries to re-indict, gives the case right back to Kathy Kalo-Hot, and that time we went right back in, made the same arguments, basically, and the second judge threw it out and said, I believe something to the effect of, like, at the very best case this was complete incompetence and at the worst it was absolutely fraud. Some nefarious. Yeah. I'm awestruck that there are no consequences, although I suppose, you know what, there's lots of great crimes and no consequences. But this is such a transparent issue. I mean, people can see what's going on, and isn't anybody demanding justice, or somebody must be infuriated. Well, the police commission is supposed to be watching the chief, and they've come under great criticism, and in my opinion, rightfully so. They did nothing. They knew that all this is going on, and they just said, well, we don't know anything about this.  The way is a land of relationships, right? When I first came here, people were saying it's all about relationships. And I mean, I knew that in New York, it was a little like that, but New York is very much a meritocracy.  But this is sort of the dark side of that this is a state based upon relationships, a culture based upon relationships, because it seems like there actually are relationships where there shouldn't be any relationships. So is there a way to go outside even the police commission? I mean, can a special prosecutor be appointed or somebody? That's really where we're at right now. The feds have come in. The federal government has come in. They brought a prosecutor in from San Diego. So that's usually the step in police corruption cases, or like when you see these police shootings, okay? They can't trust the local community, so they bring in the Department of Justice. Right, right. So we're at that point right now. And we have been for over a year. The police commission was so one-sided backing up the police, they refused to even acknowledge that there was even a grand jury investigation going on. So now, and the problem is the police commission is appointed in large part by the mayor. So that reflects poorly on the mayor. So to keep himself looking good, he's now put two new appointees, a former lawyer and former prosecutor, I believe she was, and a former Supreme Court justice and circuit court judge, to come in and be a little more law enforcement with a little more legal experience rather than just a bunch of people saying... That's like closing the door after the horse's cut out. I mean, it's a little bit, you know... Oh, it's very self-serving. It's very self-serving. Those people should have been on there from day one. Right, right, right. I mean, the police commission here really has no teeth at all, and the teeth that they do have, they don't use. So how do we clean things up? What do we do? Well, we wait for the grand jury indictment to come down, and the federal government will sweep pretty heavily. They've already gotten one conviction out of this, and I think there's going to be several more. Really? Yeah. Really? Of the major players, do you think? Of the major players. I think Kathy Kale... It all seems to center around Kathy Kale-Loha, and, you know, the chief... Did you work with her when you worked there? I worked with her for several years, yeah. Oh, okay. So you know her personally also? Yes. So it centers on her that, I guess, you know, one reason, you know, I'm very, very, very liberal, and I got an offer from the DA's office, and I didn't... I wasn't that interested in criminal law, but I also was very trepidatious about working for the state, because you have so much power when you work for the state, you know. I mean, I don't mean the state like is in Hawaii. I mean, the government. And you know, it's really amazing how you sort of isolated and you really think you can do anything, and you can have a secret police force, and you can manipulate facts, and it's just stunning. And when abused, when that power is abused, it's just devastating. I mean, it's a real front to the citizenry, I think. Well, you know, I spent almost ten years in government work, and one of the problems there is, you don't have the invisible hand of the market motivating people. So people aren't there for the money, they're there for the stability, and the paycheck, and some of them enjoy their work, other it's very tedious, clerical type work. But the problem, in my opinion, that you really run into is you have these people that their whole lifestyle is dependent, especially in Hawaii. They're paycheck to paycheck, they need those jobs. So when their supervisors lean on them and say, this is the way something's going to be done, it's very difficult for them to speak up. They don't really have any leverage, and they go along with it. And hand in hand with that goes the supervisor, because the supervisor is not there as part of a private business trying to get that huge bonus. What they tend to do is they tend to be more into the power aspect of it. Right. Well, I think I always thought that the police attracted people who like to exert a certain amount of power over others, and it has to be the same with the prosecutor's office.  And I'm sure people will say exactly the same thing about private practice and everything.  But like I said, there's that invisible hand of the market that if you act that way too long or too often, hopefully your company will fail, because you're cheating customers, you're abusing people, things like that. But when you're the government, you don't have that buffer. You can go on. It's very difficult to challenge. That's why even in these recent police shootings, and my brother's actually a retired police officer who was shot once on duty, but nowadays you start to really get a different story sometimes of things with these body cams and video cameras and everything. And it goes both ways. Sometimes they show the cops are completely lying, and other times they show that the victims and their family are completely lying. Do you support that as a criminal lawyer? Do you support body cams? Oh, absolutely. I think the body cams and any cams, cameras, recording devices, anything that they can use to get the best evidence is what it's about. Right. You know, there's an example. This is a classic example of problems with HPD here. They treat prostitution here as a petty misdemeanor. Okay. Okay. And because of that, the person cannot get a trial by a jury. It has to just be settled by a judge. So because they know it's never going to go in front of a jury, they never record the conversations between their decoy officers and the John, so to speak, that are soliciting it. And why wouldn't they do that? Why wouldn't they do that? Because they know that they're lying and cheating and tricking these people in the game. Right. They can make it up. Exactly. And it's just going to be a judge saying, well, the police officer says this and the poor other person says this. It makes absolutely no reason when the actual crime is the words exchanged. Right. Right. Because people don't actually have sex. They make an agreement to have sex. Right. So why wouldn't you record that? Right. Right. And they refuse to do it. That's fascinating. Right. And if they had to go before a jury, they would record it because a jury would demand to say, well, if you're saying this guy's guilty because he said things, why didn't you record it? Right. Why should I believe you over somebody else? Right. Right. But like you're right, in the bench trial setting, there's a lot of implicit power there in the respect of the implicit power and the institution. That's fascinating. Somebody should organize prostitutes for civil rights. Civil rights. Actually, I know somebody that's doing that actually, but I mean, that's a civil rights issue. There's, well, prostitution has been a long problem, but it's also been the source of a lot of accusations and misconduct by the police department. Anyone in this town can drive down Capulani Boulevard or anywhere down Waikiki and see these stores that have black windows that just have a sign that says open. Right. Right. Okay? Everybody knows what's going on in there, but it's selective enforcement, and that's why you always, every so often, they sweep the place out and you get this allegation of somebody taking bribes from the mamasans or the girls or whatever, and it's a very small town. Right. If they really wanted to crack down on these morals offenses, for example, they could, but people get paid off and things get done on the side, and it's gone on that way forever. And I think that's why this particular grand jury investigation that's being done by the federal government is taking so long, simply because every time they get onto one, you know, one idea of wrongdoing, it uncovers three others. It's rich. It's so rich. It's so awesome. They just keep, they have more than they have to bargain for. Right. There must be like, it's, you know, what is going on over there? Like, isolated from the, you know, well, actually, but the FBI, the prosecutor would be from the state. I mean, the federal prosecutor is located in the state. I'm thinking like they're coming from Washington. No, the federal prosecutor that's doing this investigation is out of San Diego. Right. Oh, that's what I thought.  Nobody thinks, everybody thinks they can do whatever they want. Nobody's watching. I mean, I kind of feel that way sometimes, you know, it must be wild for them. It must be, you know, I can just imagine their conversations. Yeah. It's, you know, it's, we're not the only jurisdiction with these kind of problems. Oh no, not at all. So not at all, but. But there is a sense of security that, you know, we are isolated and we do have our own ways.  I think that's right. But, but at this time, you know, to be fair to everyone, this is the process. And I always tell my clients, you know, justice is a process. It's not a verdict. Okay. Because anytime there's a verdict in a trial, one side thinks they didn't get justice. Right. There's a murder case and the guy gets acquitted. The family thinks, well, he murdered my brother and got away with it. Right. And if the guy gets convicted, the other, that person's family think, oh, he was innocent and he was wrongfully convicted. Right. So justice is the process, not the verdict. And that's where we're still are with these guys, is in the process. Right, the process. But the process, though, alone should be enough for these two people to step back. And I've called for them along, I believe, with Senator Esparro, for these two individuals to step down and let the investigation. Well, did the police chief step down for a month? No, he just stepped down once he was notified that he's a possible subject of investigation. A restricted duty. And he's on restricted duty for 30 days. Well, what happens is whenever officers are involved in some type of misconduct, like just a simple shooting, okay, they'll be, they'll be restricted of police powers. That's ropa, you'll see the thing. Right. But in his case, because he's the chief, he actually was removed completely. Oh, okay. Hmm. Well, this is fascinating.  And so I'm so happy you joined us today. But I do just want to make clear that right now, the KLOAs have not been charged with anything. Okay. There's just simply an investigation going on.  Right. We should, innocent until proven guilty. Yeah, we should, yes. That's a very good disclaimer, and I'm glad you said it. So thank you, Victor Bakke. If you're a criminal lawyer, this is your man. This guy's all over the place. And thank you for coming by today. Thank you for watching Life in the Law. I'm Mary Ann Sasaki. Until next time.


Hey everyone, welcome to Snowbreak Containment Zone and we are here with a re-roll guide, the simplest guide that I can put together so that you guys can give, you know, I could give you guys a head start in terms of gameplay before the launch or during the launch. So again, this re-roll guide is going to be limited because, again, it's gonna revert what I said yesterday with problems in re-rolling. This re-rolling guide is going to be centering on Google accounts. As far as I know, there are no guest accounts up to before the launch. So you might discover guest accounts once the launch starts. So right now, I'm assuming that there aren't any guest accounts once you open your accounts during launch. So we're going to go with the Google route version or Gmail version for this re-roll. Okay, first notice is that Android will not have a Gmail, you know, Gmail option. I'm not sure why it happened, but I actually discussed it in my previous video. If you want to still see that, it's actually there in my playlist. But again, Android doesn't have, at this point, I think you should check your phones or Android phones if there is Gmail or Gmail option already, but yesterday there wasn't one. So this re-roll guide applies only to iOS and to PC versions. Okay, with that out of the way, let's move on. So if you click here, again, you have Gmail here, you can check. If you have various Gmail accounts, obviously some of you have multiple accounts, you could use them. It's really a bummer that you have to create new email accounts. But again, we haven't tested out salted email accounts, meaning creating aliases for your existing Gmail account. I'm not sure if aliases will work as a login here or multiple logins for aliases that we have to test out once the game launches, but that can be used as well. So usually if you guys want a simple explanation of alias, so an alias is usually created within your Gmail account and it has usually a numbering in between your name and the at at Gmail. So, WaterMobileGaming1 at Gmail. So those are usually called, you can actually create alias for, it really depends on what type of Gmail account you have again. So again, take this with a grain of salt, guys. You may experiment with aliases. You may experiment with multiple email accounts, different email accounts for this one. But based on what I have experienced before, Gmail accounts, multiple Gmail accounts work. Some games actually do not allow salted emails or aliases, so please check them out. Okay. So again, just create a couple of emails, re-roll up until you get the best character that you have. So so far for the best character options, I'm going to be reverting back to the selector ticket picture here. So this one, although you're going to be getting a selector ticket for an orange tier operative, it doesn't really hurt that you have another one before the re-roll, right? So again, it really depends on what you prefer to start with or who you prefer to start with. But again, the preference based on also also take note based on your level in terms of play are your beginner for third person shooter, because shooting takes a lot of aiming and directing your character to wherever aim or what you want to aim at. But basically what I'm saying is it all boils down first and foremost to the gun that she is using. So the gun, the skill, support skill, my first recommendation again, we'll go back to what they call this, to this one too. The selector is life, well, life. You can't go wrong with their amazing gun, amazing support, ultimate and basic skill. I think she will provide you with balance in terms of starting out. Then once you get life for the re-roll, then the others you can actually choose in the selector ticket. But number one option is life. Number two option for the re-roll would be yaw, fanny or frita. Okay, all three of them would be your number two option.  Okay, and the skills, their skills as well are actually good. Again, it really boils down to preference and play, which are you comfortable with. But life is actually a must at this point. You can't go wrong with her. The other option that you could go with, basically these five will be available in your basic banner. Okay, not sure if the limited banner, which they confirm it's going to be Akasha Kaguya. Not sure if both banners will have the same currency. If it's the same currency, you can do your re-roll in the limited banner. If it's the same currency, so you could get Kaguya first, then selector ticket later for life. So again, Kaguya as we confirm as a limited banner option for you for the re-roll. But again, I'm not sure if the limited banner is going to appear at the start. Again, she is going to be not your primary option. She is going to be part of the re-roll. If you guys, if you can spend your, if both banners have the same currency, then most probably all of those five will be in her banner as well. So you can take note, these are things you should consider. We don't know yet on what will happen with the banners. So again, I'm just giving you guys a direction on what are your options here for the re-roll. So her, she's also a second option together with Frisha, Fenny, and Yao. Life is still number one. Again, her kit is well balanced actually for beginners. And for those starting out that you won't really regret bring her at this point, all of the others will be secondary except for Marian Swift. Marian Swift, because we have Yao already as a sniper, I don't think you'll be going for her. So Hush, Fenny, Yao, and Akasha, if you can do your re-roll in the limited banner for Akasha. But again, if you ask me, I would still go for life, then probably for the selector ticket, still go with Yao. Again, Akasha's kit is nice, but it is a question mark right now. If you could do your re-roll in the limited banner for Akasha. So that is it. That is my short re-roll guide for you. So hopefully you guys will be able to decide for yourself on the process and on who you're going to pull for. So thank you very much guys for staying this far.  This is The Warden and I'm out of here.


So it's my pleasure to introduce you to this topic on customer success for long-term growth in the context of customer experience, tech, monetization when evaluating companies future success. Peter Weed is the global co-head of McKinsey's growth tech practice. Since its launch three years ago, they've served 130 growth stage venture backed companies and their respective VCPE investors. Kent Bennett is a partner in Bessemer's Cambridge office focusing on investments in big data, infrastructure sexers and consumer service models. Some of the examples of their companies are andeca, vertica, blue apron, and gold.com. This chair, that chair, okay. Your chair is bigger than mine. Great. Hello. Good afternoon. So in a non McKinsey style, we decided not to have any slides back there. I hope this does not like ruin any expectations. I do have a laptop over there if you want to be assaulted with words on pages. We can do lots of that. So look, we're here today. Kent has been an investor for quite a while now doing some pretty amazing things. We were talking about what might be some interesting topics to dig into. And the kind of interesting thing with Kent and I is we both kind of come out this industry from a slightly different perspective. Kent, well, he started on the B2B side, has been doing some pretty amazing stuff on the B2C end. My background before McKinsey, I was a software entrepreneur on the enterprise side. I worked in Microsoft on the enterprise side. And since I've been at McKinsey, I've been spending years working with software companies. And most recently, as they mentioned, working with a lot of growth stage, B2B, mostly SaaS companies, right? And so we thought this could be a really interesting way to actually play off of our experiences and ask around one of these topics, let's take consumer, right? Because this is a little bit of the precious snowflake type phenomenon where people are like, you can't predict what's going to be a winner. And I think based on Kent's experience, and then let's bounce up against that some of the things we've been observing in B2B and, unfortunately, with your nice background as well, and ask, are there some things that actually are more predictable? And are there some interesting learnings that kind of come across? But I don't know if you want to introduce yourself a little bit, Kent? Yeah, so the intro hit it a little bit, but I've been at Bestmer for eight years. Bestmer is the largest venture capital fund in Boston, 1.6 billion, every stage of venture, as well as pretty much every sector. Certainly a B2B SaaS is probably where we've been externally the most noisy, but internally we focus on all aspects of consumer health care, etc. And my journey at Bestmer was from, I mean, I heard that bio and I kind of laugh because, you know, big data, well, that's six years ago, man. I'm all consumer now, babe. So, but at Bestmer, the approach is sort of general athlete investors, not necessarily, you know, deep sector background, who can dive in and out of various roadmaps is the phrase we use and apply, you know, a lot of forward thinking, much sort of Mackenzie Bain style, I'm from Bain originally, but Mackenzie Bain style forward thinking to these sectors so that when we see the incredible deals in the sectors, we sort of recognize it. And what's interesting, we've known each other for a while, but what's been interesting in our conversations. And as I've transitioned from more B2B to B2C investing is exactly what you said.  And coming from the B2B world, where Bestmer has had a lot of sort of metric driven sort of formulas for predicting B2B success, we've begun to apply some of the same to B2C and seen some real success there. And so I think it's really interesting to think about how B2C and B2B compare in what success criteria sort of are shared among the two. Well, you know, just to kind of dig in on that, I really liked as we were kind of talking before, you know, you feel like there are actually some threads that you look for in B2C businesses. Well, they all feel like precious snowflakes, they're all made out of ice, right? You know, like what are those common themes that kind of help pull together those that are successful? And so, you know, the number one, and I think it sort of gets to the biggest myth in B2C investing is you simply cannot buy your way to a big successful consumer product. And what I mean by that is, you know, every B2C, many B2C investors and certainly entrepreneurs are very focused on this concept of customer acquisition cost and the idea of how quickly do I get paid back there?  And the reality is, as we've looked at it, no great consumer business. And another part of the problem is there aren't that many great consumer businesses founded. We're talking about two, three, four businesses a year, period domestically, that would have sort of a huge consumer impact. But no great consumer business has been built that way. Instead, every great consumer business we've ever been seen has been built in a much simpler way. Okay, today, you have some amount of revenue from all your customers. Tomorrow, you will have less revenue from those customers because human beings, unfortunately, all churn in the end, right? And we move and we have children and we, you know, we have life changes. So in general, every consumer cohort shows some declining spend over time. So you have a gap. And the question is, how do you fill that hole in the bucket? And every great consumer business fills it the same way. Their existing customers love their product so much that because the product market fit is sort of radical in some way, that they go out and tell their friends and they tweet about it and they share it on Facebook and drive the growth thusly. And so you get some resting, we call it internally the resting growth rate of these consumer businesses is positive, which is a good thing. But another way, if you stopped spending on paid marketing entirely, you would still grow.  But when that resting growth rate is positive, we think it's a pretty rare, unique thing in the consumer world. And that's what we look for. And I think there are some comparables in B2B. I don't know if you sort of have the impression. But yeah, you know, it's it's interesting because, you know, certainly in B2B, when you get out of the small business, I mean, small business B2B looks a lot like consumer, right? When you get into the enterprise, things tend to get stickier, right? It's harder to change. There's there's a lot of benefits. But it is interesting. You know, the the same complaints come up with enterprise buyers as I think consumer, which is there's all this just structural churn. The company goes out of business, you know, I lost my sponsor, whatever it is, is that same type of thing. And so your real question you need to be asking yourself is, are you just throwing up your hand at that type of activity? And by the way, as you get smaller and smaller businesses, the more likely some of that's going to occur, are there some practical things that you can do about it? And I wonder if it's some of the same things that you've observed on the consumer side. But you know, the types of things that you do on the enterprise side to solve that. Okay, well, what let's say your problem is the business is going to go defund. What you're really trying to do is build a relationship with whoever the buyer was in the first place, because they're going to go work someplace else. And you want to want to get them to go bring you someplace else. In fact, there was a really fantastic small business software company who when you actually looked at the real churn that they were achieving, it was very small because while they were doing retail storefront software and retailers churn fast, right? But the cash flow should stay there. But the same person who was doing that, what did they go do? They go build another one, maybe even in the same space. Yeah, they want bankrupt on that one, but they essentially continue to get their revenue streams. Or if you take the other side, which is you take a look at the, hey, I lost my sponsor type issue, right? Well, this is actually more of a, am I proving to this person's broader ecosystem in the enterprise side? What do we do? We give metrics, we help them tell their boss why it's being successful. So if that person goes away, the boss is asking for that same report. Well, where's the larger community around that person that you're convincing? It's great. So if they are looking to churn, all of a sudden, it's actually sticky for a broader reason. Yeah, and it's not rocket science. And it's the, and it's, we've seen the same thing. And we're investors locally in a business called Toast, which sells to the restaurant industry. And everybody knows that the restaurant industry is the worst industry on the planet, as they all told me when I invested. And the churn would be massive. Well, it turns out, you churn the restaurant, but the stove is still there, and the new restaurant opens in its place. And if the product is fundamentally fantastic, then the new owner, maybe a different owner, will want to turn on the same technology in the same spot. In B2C, I think you see this more starkly, more dramatically. Consumers just don't care at all about firing the products they don't like. And so give them two seconds of an excuse, their credit card expires. And if the product is crappy, they're gone. I mean, you'll never hear from them again. If the product is fantastic, they will climb through the desert to sort of get to you, and you want to make that as easy as possible for them. But so this, I mean, we hear people say product market fit a lot, but I think this fundamental force of radical product market fit is still not emphasized as much as it should be, especially in businesses where you do have the ability to pull levers and drive some growth for the short term. I think that can be intoxicating and can mask the long term sort of rot of a product that's not fantastic. How do you look at metric these businesses to both figure out the product market fit and then whether or not they've got the health across the rest of the operations? Yeah. Well, so, and again, B2C, B2B, very similar. I mean, I think fundamentally we're looking at resting growth rate. So does the product just grow? And then we start to look at can you efficiently grow beyond that with paid marketing? So can you get efficient payback on paid acquisition? You know, details, but we like products that have positive margins. There are some negative margin products that have come and gone and been popular at times, but we think that fundamentally if a product starts off with negative margins and there isn't just a dead obvious plan to get it to positive margins, that unfortunately if you find radical product market fit and you're growing as many of these consumer businesses do not a hundred percent a year, but like five, six, seven, eight hundred percent a year for three years, your margins aren't going to improve while that's happening, right? That is you're just flying off of a cliff trying to try and improve your margins and it's not going to happen when you're having to open, you know, triple the capacity next year that you have this year. So if we don't have positive margins on day one, we're very nervous and often we'll hear somebody say something like, well, as soon as our machine learning kicks in, like our margin margins will be positive and we're like, okay, well, let's talk that because until then we're terrified. But I think that's it. So resting growth rate, efficient paid acquisition, if you've got that option is great. Some products are going to have such a low lifetime value that they can only rely on their organic resting growth rate and then, you know, positive margins that lead to a positive lifetime value. So let me tell you how I look at it B2B because I think there's a lot of similarities here and maybe what we're saying is there's some fundamental ways that you want to look at any business. And by the way, one of the interesting things that we were debating and you can go look at this yourself is like even go to NRF. NRF publishes their Fast 100 or whatever every year. They just did it here in January and take a look. Where have they gotten funding? How much money have they taken? I was shocked when we were looking at this list and a very significant portion of this list, much more than you would see on the B2B side have taken little to no funding. And it actually I think emphasizes what you're getting at, which is there's too many consumer businesses that have had an old mantra, which is about attracting as many users as possible and not having something that is really valuable and people will pay you for on day one. Whereas if you actually find something that people are willing to pay you for very early on, you might actually, if you can do all the rest of the consumer business really well, you may be able to take very limited amounts of capital because the cash that you're throwing off from the core business and the viral growth that you're getting from everywhere else actually allows you to take off. Now, will that work everywhere? Probably not. There are certain consumer businesses that look like you're building a hyperloop system where you've got to have a tremendous amount of capital expenditure. But the question is, should that be the case for all these businesses? And certainly the evidence would suggest way more than B2B that it's not the case. On the B2B side, it's interesting, right? I've done this big piece of work that took a look at what are successful B2B businesses look like. And what you observe is that let's say that there's a few times in your lifespan of a business, right? You're founding it, you get product market fit, and then what are you trying to get? You're trying to get through the growth phase to hopefully get to an exit. Well, once you enter that growth phase, which is you've proven the product, right? When you're getting up to say 50 million ARR, what you observe, and if you look back at the history of software businesses is that if you want to grow 10 times more from that point, you have to have built a business by that point that can achieve and sustain at least for the forward kind of two to three years, 50% or higher growth rates, which by the way, once you get to 50 million, it starts to be challenging. And what I say it's important to do that. In the last 35 years for software businesses, more than half of software businesses by the time they made 50 to 100 million, they were growing through that path there at 50% or more grew 10 times more. Almost none of all the remaining software businesses grew 10 times more.  Today, about 25% of the correlation goes to the efficiency of that growth. And so if you say I am in an environment where I'm going to be burning cash potentially to do this, you have this, it's something that we call zero burn growth rate, but it's this concept of the resting heartbeat of the business, right? You have an existing subscription business off the cash that it generates, how much growth can you get at a baseline, right? So you're starting to break this this business down into its pieces between the resting heartbeat and the efficiency of that growth engine. And if you look at the underlying, you know, things that are driving that for those businesses on the enterprise side, most of them have a reasonably good, you know, cash generation.   So the real question becomes how efficient are you on the other side, which is essentially my logo acquisition efficiency, and my retention or, you know, churn and upsell, cross-sell efficiency, right? And it's interesting when you, at least the the businesses that I spend a lot of time with, they emphasize that first piece, the logo portion of it. But it's very interesting, this whole concept of how much should I invest on the other side. And part of the reason we decided for the topic of this conversation was around, you know, this whole retention, churn management, this type of thing. It seems to be low on Maslow's hierarchy. Is that the same that you see in the consumer side, or is that just something that we're observing on the enterprise? Well, I would say by number, absolutely. The vast majority of consumer businesses we see are much more focused on paid acquisition and sort of that piece. And that's because if they haven't fundamentally got a great product or they haven't focused on the core retention, then they're suffering because of that. And they've gotten themselves stuck in this. I have to spend a choir to stay above water and maybe grow. And the problem that you see with the 50 million ARR, SaaS businesses that many consumer businesses see, and it tends to be unfortunately often, you know, around the time some of them begin to think about going public or exiting, is that at the margins, they just don't have more opportunities for efficient acquisition. You can't hire more salespeople to call more of your prospect businesses. You've got it covered. And so when you've sort of maxed out on these sort of marginally efficient acquisition opportunities, what's left? Now, if you've got instead an incredible retention at your core, well, first of all, you've got a smaller gap to fill every month to grow because you've got less churn. You can get more upsell from your existing customers. And I think, importantly, those customers are out promoting you. So at some of our best, you know, SaaS and consumer businesses, the majority of the leads they get are the new customers are coming in organic ways because people are hearing directly about great products or they're reading online. And so it's I think there's a trap, though. And I know there's some prospective investors in the audience. I think investors bring this transactional mindset and often entrepreneurs to these enterprises where they think they think in Excel sheets.  It's just you're so stressed and busy. And what is the next thing I can do to sort of affect change of my business? And so much easier to do the math on paid acquisition and payback like the investments you make in core retention and product are often fuzzier, harder ROI to sort of capture. Well, how do you even how do you even metric it? I mean, when you think of churn, I feel like there's this constant debate of like, how do we even measure it? And especially if you've got a business got got a freemium component to it and a paid component, like how do you deal with them? How do you even think about? I think churn is one of the most abused metrics, you know, in investing period.   Right. And I get some new customers. In week one, you know, probably if I'm a typical consumer product, a quarter of those customers, it's just not going to work. You know, it just didn't, you know, or the new hotel concept you sold them like it's just not what they were looking for. For whatever reason, consumers are a vast and very different population. And so you lose a lot of people right away. It's because consumers, they don't like do a long investigative sales cycle where they pilot the thing. They just, they buy the one of them and they see and they're going to go away.   It will spike, right? So churn, I've just told you, is like a positive indicator for accelerating growth in consumer businesses, right? What is much, so I find churn to be totally useless and B2C as a concept to think about, I find it much more useful to think about cohorts. And so I've got customers, they trial with me initially, they stick with me with some predictable weight. What I'm really looking for is do they flatten out and even then grow over time? So six months in, am I getting really, really sticky with those customers? On a cohort level, do I get really smooth retention and even upsell at the end? So it's interesting that you're going that way with the expansion. You know, on the enterprise side, certainly you have this big emphasis and people talk about wanting to have, I don't know if folks in the audience, they've heard terms like net churn and gross churn. On the enterprise side, essentially what that means, gross churn, you can do it on a logo or a dollar basis, but on a dollar basis would be, hey, for all the things that are up for renewal right now, how many of them came back and renewed? Whereas a net churn would also include your expansion. So if you sold more units of it, you sold another product long to your existing customers. So a net churn number essentially is, it tells you the whole business of your existing base, how much more is that? And folks are saying, hey, I'd love to get 110, 115. It would be amazing if I could get that type of expansion regularly. But I think frequently here when I go into consumer conversations, you know, they're only going to buy this much.  But I think you've got maybe a different perspective on that. Well, I think it's, you know, for many that's the case. I think, you know, what's fun for me is to think back 10 years ago, right? When MapQuest was the top map product in the world and, you know, the world was very, very different. There aren't saying that that I'm supposed to use something. Yeah, I've got a new one. Okay. But, you know, these consumer businesses do not last.  And I think by definition, the ones that will be will have significantly expanded their product roadmap in some way along that path.  But I think the really successful ones in Amazon is like, you know, probably the greatest example we'll ever see of this have significantly expanded their consumption. It's incredibly rare. I mean, once you get a consumer to love you, but they're in a routine with you to convince them to spend a lot more money with you over time is very, very, very hard. But some businesses do it. Some of the best consumer business in the world, we see do it. And they do it for a couple of reasons. This the customers who have stuck around after the first period are real evangelists. They really love this product and they and they often will seek to find ways to consume more of it. You know, if you expand your view to the consumer cohort of not just that consumer, but their entire family, often we can almost never do the math on this. But often if you can do that anecdotally, you know that among their group of peers and friends and family that they are consuming more of your product, if they really, really love it. And so I think, you know, product expansion is one way to think about it. Increased consumption over time for certain products. You know, Uber is an example where I think over time after they've gotten through the sort of initial churn of a one time user who's, you know, travels in from a town where they don't need Uber and then they go back home. But with stable customers, people start thinking, gosh, I could sell my car and I could consume more of this over time. And then and then for others just thinking about how this becomes a pervasive thing in your social circle and the sort of net negative family cohort churn there, I think would be an equivalent concept. So, you know, the interesting thing that comes with these cohorts then it's I feel like I get into these debates all the time. And I was like in a board meeting yesterday where it was debated yet again, which is do I look at customer lifetime value? Or do I look at something more like the magic number? And on the on the enterprise side, essentially what I mean by this is if you know that you're, you know, average lifespan of a customer is going to be seven years, you can say, well, I estimate the total value of this customer once I have them is going to be X. The other way to look at it would be, you know, there's this concept of magic number that says I'm going to ignore the long tail. I just want to know how quickly I pay back the amount of the sales and marketing that I that I had. And if that's short enough, I should feel pretty comfortable about these because all SAS businesses, unless you're pretty screwy, are not going to be churning too badly. Like, how do you think about that debate on the consumer side? Well, so again, for these incredibly rare, but the only ones I really want to invest in consumer businesses that that just grow, that have a resting growth rate that is positive. If you limit yourself to lifetime value, you're really not doing the full math because you're saying, wow, this, you know, this person I acquired for this product is worth $50 to me discounted present value of all of the future margins that are going to come in. OK, $50, that's, you know, that's not great. But if it turns out that person is going to go out and bring in two of their friends who are going to bring in four of their friends who are going to bring in eight of their friends, well, that math gets really stupid, really fast.  I was like slack, right? It's like slack. This is like I was an early customer of Blue Apron and there are, you know, several thousand customers who have descended from people have invited who have invited who have invited people, right? So so I think lifetime value for the best in class consumer products ends up being not that helpful. Whereas an enterprise, I can see it as a much more helpful concept because enterprises don't have the same sort of viral, you know, organic acquisition beyond, you know, but if you have a consumer product that is not one of these and your customers, you know, let's say you're selling acting medication and people probably aren't going to go scream from the rooftops about it, then it's critical to know what your lifetime value is, how quickly you're going to be paid back on that, what multiple overtime you're going to get on the marketing spend upfront because that's going to be a gating factor for the return on equity in your business. Well, it almost sounds like you're making the argument that is something similar but done in a different way on the consumer side, which is that when you think of your net churn, it's really what is my viral add on that I'm getting and how healthy is a business? By the way, I will if anybody wants to come argue with me, I also do not like lifetime value on the enterprise side. We can talk about why that is at some other point, but it's very interesting because I think you're getting at this this question of so there's similarly the churn like a gross churn but also on a net churn basis. Is there a different way of looking at it, which is how viral, how much are you getting out of your existing customer base? And it's there a way to measure that so that you can actually understand the true efficiency because you know how much it costs you to capture that first customer but how much does it cost you to get all of their network as well? Yeah, and it's funny, but we talk about this in theory and in my experience, every time I'm in one of these situations, it's so good. OK, you can't believe it. And if you were to plan based on it, it would seem insane, right? It would say, oh my gosh, we can afford to spend 10 times the individual LTV of this customer to acquire a customer and we're still getting efficient payback at the margin. And so not to mention, it's just really, really hard to track like how this virality truly plays out over time, just because limitations of like graph databases and, you know, internally at the companies they can't do this really well. And so what ends up happening is they end up using maybe a lifetime value metric as just sort of a guideline for, you know, marketing spend at the margin. And and that's probably a pretty conservative way to manage a business. You could probably get much more aggressive with much fancier math. But then, you know, I think we don't have enough experience with how these products mature over time to know when that math might turn on you, what the signs of that might be and and how how far over your skis you might be at that moment of paid acquisition. So not to geek out. Yeah, well, as you're looking at these consumer businesses and you, you know, I think you're clearly convincing me and hopefully others the importance of why the retention and focusing on the success is very important. What are you looking for in these businesses in terms of the investments that they've made that give you an indication that they are going down the right path? And, you know, some of the things, some of the questions that I often get on that on the enterprise side are going to be things like, hey, what portion of my sales time should be spent hunting versus farming? You know, should I split hunters versus farmers and have customer success managers?  Are there similar types of questions that you are looking for for the really smart consumer businesses where you like these guys get it, right? They're going to succeed versus the ones that aren't. Right. I think it's people who are just fundamentally focused on product quality. But let me break that down into a couple of dimensions. These incredible products should be time savers. They should be easier to consume than some of the products they're competing with. They should have value to them. So they should, in an ideal world, save you money relative to the alternatives. They should be better quality. Sometimes the Shake Shack burger just has to taste better or it doesn't work. Right. And then they need to have what I call like the fuzzies. Some set of it's an authentic brand. Like this is a company that really does care about their customers in the world. That they're a fun brand to be associated with. It's often a beautiful brand because they care about visual design and the aesthetics of it. The companies that are focused on anything but those aspects of just product quality before they put the marginal dollar into paid acquisition are the ones that, well, we're interested in the ones that are focused on the former first. Right.  They just can't be bothered. They'd much rather focus on, you know, the new thing they're putting in at the new facility or the incredible taste of the new thing that's just come off the line, et cetera. So that's the thing.  Like, fundamentally, they're typically in the consumer world solving a problem that they had as this consumer. They're a big consumer of their product and they want it to be more awesome. And that's what they're spending all their time doing. Well, thank you very much. I think we've blown through our time here. Great. I'm sure could talk about this forever. And if any of you have any questions, I'm sure that our contact information is part of this. But again, Kent and the stuff he's been doing at Bessemer, pretty amazing, you know, applying a lot more rigor, I think. And actually, you see it in the performance of the businesses that you've been participating with. And there aren't a ton of folks that are doing consumer, but the folks that seem to do it, you know, they are figuring it out. And if you have any prize questions, you can always come find me later. Thanks, Peter. Thank you guys.