JPMorgan’s Melissa Smith on Middle Market Banking

25:38We serve 32 ,000 middle market companies today across our commercial banks. So certainly, again, there's back to a lot that we want to do and can do to support small business as kind of an engine of the economy overall that we very much think there's an opportunity there for us, but it's also sort of a responsibility for us to serve those businesses. I think on the innovation economy side, just back to – I mean, when you look at the disruption going on across every industry today and the innovation, J.P. Morgan clearly wants to be there to support those founders with sort of the next innovative idea.

26:10And I always like to point to the fact that we've been serving innovative companies literally for over 200 years when you look back at our history, right? We supported Thomas Edison and the invention of the light bulb, the railroads, the automobile. Like, those were disruptors at that time. But I think on the innovation economy business specifically, when we first started – I'll give you a little history of the business. When we first sort of started a dedicated focus – so we had always served early-stage tech companies in the commercial bank, but just by sort of a local banker that didn't have any expertise in tech, right?

26:41That covered all industries. So back in 2016, 2017, we put in place sort of a dedicated team of bankers. At that point in time, I would say we primarily did – we were very good in terms of our capabilities at serving, let's call it kind of Series C and beyond, right? And when I came into this role, we very much noticed that a founder, right, for their company would walk into a Chase branch. They'd open a bank account. And then they would quickly leave that Chase branch and move to one of our competitors who were very good at serving early stage, high-growth, early-stage VC-backed companies. And then they'd come back to us at sort of Series C, right, generalization.

27:18So when I came into this role, sort of said, what are we missing, right, in that very early stage in terms of our capabilities? Like, let's skip that part where they leave the J.P. Morgan sort of franchise, right? And really what we were missing was sort of a very simplified treasury, what we call treasury kind of payments bundle for companies to manage working capital, a simple digital platform for earlier stage companies, and a venture debt capability. And that's what we really built out sort of from kind of 2017, 2018 over the course of the past several years so that we had best in class capabilities both for early stage companies as well as late stage companies where everybody thinks about J.P.

27:56Morgan as serving later stage. So you mentioned earlier that you're expanding geographically. We'll talk about international in a few minutes, but let's stay in the United States for a bit. I think of J.P. Morgan down on Wall Street, very New York-based. What geographies have you been expanding to? What parts of the country seem to be very fast-growing these days? Sure. Well, so I would just say today our commercial banking business is in the 85 you know, fastest growing top sort of MSAs across the country. We have 125 offices across the country, 2000 plus bankers across the country. A big part of that expansion over really the last decade has been sort of California and the West Coast overall, where we prior to the WAMU acquisition didn't have a ton of sort of like retail presence and or sort of boots on the ground there.

28:46So that's accounted for a lot of that geographic expansion, as well as, you know, expansion into the Southeast and sort of other states in the west obviously sort of moving from what historically you know decades and decades ago was more of a kind of east coast dominated business and that's what's accounted for a lot of the growth within the business as a whole what what about down south places like charlotte or nashville or texas or florida absolutely i mean when you look at um again kind of depends on the industry but um when you look at um the innovation economy business and kind of where some of the newer markets are from a VC funding perspective.

29:21You are seeing a lot of growth in the Phillies of the world, the DCs of the world, San Diego. I mean, certainly there's still like a huge concentration in kind of the Bay Area and then kind of New York, Boston area. But there are cities. Miami is a good example. For our healthcare business, Nashville has has exploded over the past several years. So again, depending on the industry, it depends on sort of where our concentration of bankers are. But back to that's why we are in 125 cities across the country. So let's talk international. You spent, was it a year in London? Three years. Three years.

29:57Oh, so you're an old hand at dealing with Europe. So let's talk a little bit about what's happening in the UK and what's going on in Europe. How do you look at those markets? Can you play in those spaces? Tell us a little bit about what the work is like. Sure. So I would say from a commercial banking perspective, we definitely support companies globally. And I do think that's, again, one of J.P. Morgan's competitive advantages. As earlier stage companies are looking to expand internationally, we can support them across, you know, basically any market they're going to, across, you know, both EMEA and APAC.

30:32So yes, we support companies there. And then we have teams on the ground in Europe and Asia, et cetera, that are supporting early stage companies that are headquarters in Europe and APAC, and then their expansion into the U.S. So kind of doing it both ways, inbound and outbound. And again, I think that that's something that with our long history of operating in these various jurisdictions, helping to advise companies on sort of the right strategy as they think about those international expansions. Really, really interesting. What percentage of your business is international? I can't imagine. J.P.

31:04Morgan feels like it's so dominant in the U.S. What's the perception like overseas? How is it? So I would say for our commercial banking business, so let me separate this out a moment. So again, the commercial banking business in the U.S. is serving U.S. headquartered companies, but when they have a European sub or an Asian sub, that clearly is a smaller percentage of the company's overall revenue. So a smaller percentage of like the revenue that we would earn as well. But we're supporting them globally. The commercial banking sort of build out in Europe and in Asia for bankers on the ground supporting European and Asian headquarter companies is a newer effort.

31:44Newer over the past seven or eight years. So it's not as robust in terms of our robust is the wrong word. It's not as far along as our business in the U.S. It's clearly well established here for hundreds of years. Hundreds of years. And we've been in Europe and Asia for hundreds of years from an investment banking perspective. Hundreds of years is maybe a strong word. But for many, many, many decades from an investment banking perspective. But the build-out of the commercial banks supporting smaller-sized companies in those markets is newer, seven or eight years ago. And that's a white space. That's got to be wide open now, right?

32:18Absolutely. Absolutely. And again, we're finding great traction because there is so much, obviously, as we all are well aware, economies and companies operate in such a global fashion today that a company sitting in Europe obviously has, generally speaking, plans to expand in other parts of the globe, the U.S. being a huge market, particularly across tech and consumer-facing businesses, etc. So that connectivity is important. And you said earlier from checking to IPO, how do you think about the IPO market, which has been so quiet the past few years? We really haven't seen a lot of companies coming public.

32:54How do you view this? When might that change? And how does this impact your business? Sure. So we are definitely optimistic on the IPO market this year. And I think even in 2024, I saw a significant uptick in issuance versus 2023. Obviously, we were coming off a low base, but we saw about$33 billion in IPO volume in 2024. We think that that could double this year, just given, I think, a stable backdrop, more kind of confidence all around the markets. We've also just seen a more stable U.S. economy. Obviously, so far, knock on wood, feels like we sort of took a soft landing right in the U.S. We now have rates on the decline, which is supportive of the IPO market.

33:39We'll sort of see how that kind of plays out over the course of the year. And then I think the expectation of sort of double-digit earnings growth in the coming year is also very supportive of the equity market. So we do think you're going to see a lot more activity in the IPO market this year. Obviously, there's just a ton of supply that's built up over the past couple of years as companies have stayed private longer and waiting for a better window to access that IPO market. So we're recording this at the end of January. I don't recall seeing anybody's forecast for the year ahead saying, hey, really inexpensive AI from China, DeepSeek, is going to completely disrupt everything.

34:19How do you look at not just the technological disruption that we're all experiencing, but the incredible pace as to how rapid everything is advancing? How do you think about this and how does that impact the day job? How does it impact the work? Sure. So clearly, just talking about DeepSeek specifically, obviously just a huge impact on the equity markets. You know, as you saw, a lot of some of the larger names trading down significantly. We did see a rebound sort of the following day, which was beneficial. I do think, you know, AI is obviously going to continue to be a big story over the course of 2025.

35:00There's also just a tremendous amount of capital that needs to be raised to kind of support that industry overall. And so I do think like back to sort of the comments about sort of stable macroeconomic backdrop rates declining, all of that will be supportive of the broader IPO market and the ability to access those markets. Yes, we're going to kind of continue to see volatility with some of these surprises like the deep stake example. But it hasn't really changed our view, our very constructive view on the market going forward. This is Scarlett Fu. And I'm Paul Sweeney, inviting you to join us for the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast.

35:35Every day, we harness the power of Bloomberg Intelligence to bring you deep dives into the companies that are moving markets from publicly traded companies like Apple to those that are privately owned but known by everyone on Earth like OpenAI. Now, I helped to build Bloomberg Intelligence to what it is today, Scarlett. And now our analysts are the best in the world, covering more than 2 ,000 global companies. That is your legacy, Paul. And we speak to those in-house experts every day. They are Bloomberg's go-to authorities on sectors, companies and legal processes. And we do it all live each weekday, then bring you the best conversations in our daily podcast.

36:07So be sure to search for Bloomberg Intelligence on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen. Listen in the afternoons on your way home from work to catch up on the market news you miss during the business day. That is the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. I'm Scarlett Fu. And I'm Paul Sweeney. Subscribe today wherever you get your podcasts. Let's talk a little bit about some of your thoughts on leadership at the bank and long-term strategy. If we go back five or six years, you're a managing director and head of specialized industries. What types of firms were you working with then? And are you still working with the same firms or has your portfolio widened since then?

36:48Well, I would say the portfolio has widened in the sense that we've continued to add various industries. So specialized industries, I think I mentioned before, it's 19 different industries that we've covered. Give us some examples. Yeah, so that spans a very wide remit. So some of our very mature businesses, for instance, our government business, supporting states and municipalities and school districts across the country. We've been doing that since J.P. Warren was founded. So the government business, our not-for-profit healthcare, higher ed and nonprofit business, again, two very mature businesses.

37:18We also have, you know, beverage, food and ag, our M &C business supporting some of the subsidiaries, media, communications and digital infrastructure. Very hot sector right now in terms of the huge need for data centers and capital for data centers overall. The innovation economy business, again, as I mentioned, sort of part of all that. So those are some examples of the industries that fall within that remit. So again, when we first started specialized industries, I'm not going to remember the exact number, but we probably had five industries within that, right? And so we've just continued to build out that dedicated expertise over the course of the past several years, which we've just found great success in.

37:56So how do you assess risk when you're rolling into a new sector or specialized industry? When you're working in a space for a while, you kind of learn where the minds are laid. when you move into a new space, how do you approach that? Well, I would just say it's not as if we weren't banking companies in each of those industries before. It's simply that we did not have dedicated bankers that only did that, right? So back to this is why we very much believe and it's been proven out in terms of the growth that we've seen in sort of the specialized industries business. So we sort of focus in on the sectors where we think It makes a difference for the banker to have that industry expertise.

38:38Keep in mind, we partner with the investment bank on the M &A advisory and strategic capital raising, and they are all industry-focused, right? But does the commercial banker need that industry expertise? Is there something very different about the credit risk associated with those industries that banker expertise helps and that we need sort of dedicated credit teams, again, with the focus on those specific industries? Is there something different about the product and solution set for those companies that would require us to have that dedicated focus. Back to kind of the innovation economy business, as I was saying earlier, we didn't have the early stage capabilities that we needed, you know, seven, eight years ago.

39:15And it was a very kind of bespoke to those high growth companies and the challenges that they face that led us to kind of build out those digital capabilities and bundled solutions. So that's a good example of why we felt like we needed to build that as an industry. So it's kind of fascinating that you're serving clients who are rapidly innovating, expanding into spaces that wholly unforeseen. How do you keep up with that? How do you make sure that you're innovative and cutting edge? And how do you build this when it's almost as if your clients are outpacing the rest of the market? Absolutely.

39:53And I would say that is one of the best parts of my job is meeting with founders all day long and really obviously hearing about their businesses and what they are doing to kind of disrupt industries, new technologies. And that is extraordinarily rewarding in terms of hearing about that and how we can help support that growth overall. It is very different meeting with, again, kind of back to my earlier background, spending time in debt capital markets. You're basically covering Fortune 500 companies. It's very, which is its own unique circumstances, and those companies have their own challenges.

40:30But it's very different speaking to the treasurer, CFO, or CEO of Fortune 500 company than a founder, right? Like, it's a very different. Different focus, different priorities. Exactly. Different experience and skill sets. So that, again, is sort of the most fun part of my job is being able to interact with all of those founders and hear about sort of the technology to come. So I'm intrigued about the work you did in debt capital markets, especially when you were in Europe for three years. What are the major differences between the way we manage debt capital markets and the way they do? Is it structural?

41:05Tell us about why is it that – are they very similar or are they different? Well, so a couple things I would say that. Just one in terms of how we think about covering companies in debt capital markets. In the U.S., we're organized by industry team. In Europe, for obvious reasons, we're organized by country team, given language differences. So that, again, was something that I very much enjoyed, was sitting back to NDC and you're in the trading floor environment. I would have my U.K. team over here, my Germany team, my Italy team. So, you know, everyone's speaking different languages. I kept thinking I was going to learn five languages by osmosis.

41:39That did not work. So, unfortunately, that's not the case. But that was a great experience overall. all. The European debt capital markets tend to be a little bit more volatile than the U.S. It's also because they are a lot smaller in terms of just the total volume, the investor base that supports those markets all around. And so that's one of the major differences. What I would say is for larger global companies, having access to that European market has been quite advantageous, both from a capacity perspective, if they were running up against capacity constraints for a very frequent issuer, obviously, in the U.S., and two, just from a cost of funding perspective.

42:20So over the last several years, given the divergence in interest rates between the U.S. and Europe, for many companies, it's actually been cheaper to issue bonds or access the debt markets in Europe than it has been in the U.S., right? U.S. interest rates were higher. So that's obviously just a great alternative for companies when they need to access enormous amounts of capital and are obviously very focused on sort of what the most advantageous cost is. So I know you're not an economist, so I'm not going to ask you that question, but it just feels like Europe cannot get out of its own way for, I don't know, past five years, 10 years.

42:58Go back to Brexit and nearly Grexit. What's going on that Europe seems to be almost structurally lagging the U.S. and having such difficulty finding its footing? Well, I'm also not an expert on politics, so I'm not going to comment on that because I think there's something to be said there. But what I would say from sort of a structural perspective is I think probably one of the bigger differences today is demographics, where kind of working age population in Europe is declining. I think it's still growing modestly in the U.S., and obviously that will turn in the U.S. at some point in time. But so that has been sort of one issue in Europe.

43:36I think the post-COVID recovery in Europe was a lot more challenging primarily because of the Russia-Ukraine war and sort of the energy crisis that they faced given a lot of their energy was coming from – or energy supply was coming from Russia. So that had a very different impact in Europe than it did in the U.S. overall. If you look at Germany, obviously the largest economy in Europe, it's very still sort of heavily manufacturing-based. higher interest rates have really had hurt manufacturing global manufacturing and so that's had a bigger impact i think on on germany with those manufacturers operating globally so those are some of the things that i would point to and you know there's just never been the same labor productivity across europe as there has been in the u.s and quite frankly just the support for innovation and tech right and new technology and i think that's just had a big impact back to germany's heavily manufacturing based right the u.s probably less so Because we're more service oriented?

44:34Is that more service oriented? And I think, again, you don't have the same. I think a lot of countries in Europe are looking to put in place policies to better incentivize some of the technological development. But I mean, you don't have a Bay Area type. Right. Right. I mean, you have little pockets of that kind of concept. Right. Where you have sort of this ecosystem coming together to disrupt and innovate and support new technology. But there's not there's nothing as sort of big as the Bay Area. and Europe. But you do have world-class manufacturing throughout Europe. And I think of Mercedes, Porsche, BMW in Germany, you think of all the, I guess it really doesn't scale watchmaking and things like that, but there are some really high-end companies that are incredibly successful.

45:24Are they just the exceptions? What is it? I'm trying to conceptualize. Sure. But I also think it's much more fragmented, obviously, than the U.S. market with each different country with its own rules and regulations and some sort of more nationalist policies than others. And I think that just has an impact on their ability to kind of dominate. We're talking about Europe as if it's one thing. But it's not. It's not. So you're saying really it is structural. So the combination of these structural challenges, relatively high interest rate, less productivity gains, and a focus that's less service-oriented, more manufacturing-oriented.

46:03Demographics. And demographics. So the people who have been waiting for, hey, Europe is going to catch up, it's going to mean revert any second, that doesn't seem to be in the imminent cards anytime soon. I don't think that's in the 2025 cards. Let's put it that way. Hey, that's fair. That's a perfectly fair thing. I want to talk a little bit about some of the work you've done on women in banking. You were on the Women on the Move podcast. and one of the things you said that struck me was women don't have as robust of a network as men do. Explain. So that was a little bit of a generalization probably, but I think what I meant by that was if women tend to stick to, because I think often earlier in their career, and probably I did the same thing early on, that you stick to sort of the women's network that you develop, right?

47:02And there's a lot of sort of women's networking events. I'll speak for financial services specifically. If you only stick to that network, there's still a lot fewer women in banking or pick many industries than there are men. And so that limits kind of that network overall. And so I think important that you're spending time with people across the organization, picking mentors across the organization, networking across the organization to make sure that you're developing the same robust network that sort of some of your male colleagues would already be doing. So I also read you value and prioritize mentorship.

47:39How do you approach this at your job? We'll get to questions about who your mentors were, but do you have mentees? Are you practicing what you preach? Yes, and I very much take that as a serious responsibility and sort of part of my day job. You know, we have various, I would say, organized programs, and then there's more informal, you know, mentorship programs, and I think both are important. But I think over the years, you know, making sure that all of the senior individuals are sort of participating in those mentorship sponsorship programs, giving younger people sort of the opportunity to learn from someone else about their career.

48:20And again, sort of doing the informal mentoring. I think back to the J.P. Morgan culture, I think it's just very endemic there. Someone reaches out to have a cup of coffee with you, you go do that, right? And it's just sort of something that's expected and something that sort of I grew up with, if you will. And so certainly something that I, again, take very seriously. So when I first started this podcast, I want to say almost 11 years ago, it was very hard finding women in senior leadership roles and having them come on as guests. That has become much easier. I'm curious how you see the industry as once male-dominated.

49:02It's still mostly male-dominated, but it feels like it's improving somewhat. What's your perspective? I do think that a lot of progress has been made overall. I think JP Morgan, not to toot our own horn, but I think is a great example for the industry where you look at our operating committee, which are the individuals that report directly to Jamie. It is heavily female. Jamie? I'm sorry. I'm not familiar. Who is that? There are many, many females on the operating committee, so we've done a great job there. And I think that that's kind of, you know, filtered down throughout the organization. So, yes, I do think it has improved substantially.

49:38I do still think there's a lot of challenges, particularly at that sort of VP, late VP, early ED level, early executive director level. A lot of times when people are having sort of their first children and sort of making sure that we're providing a supportive environment that they're able to obviously, you know, come back to work as they would like to. But, yes, I think significant progress has been made. But I think that is a very intentional effort back to kind of understanding why, if we are losing female employees or diverse employees, why that is in the same way that we want to understand why we're losing any employee, right?

50:11Any talented employee we don't want to lose. But I think you have to be just very intentional about measuring progress and understanding what the challenges are and if there's anything that you can do or should be doing to have a more sort of accommodative environment and inclusive environment. So I have a question later about advice to recent college grads, but as long as we're talking about women in banking, let's stay focused on that here. What advice do you have for any young woman who wants to become part of the financial sector or banking industry? I would just say really taking advantage of friends, colleagues, your network, peers to understand all aspects of the industry.

51:00And that's hard to do sometimes when you're in college and you're not sort of sitting in the organization. But I do think, and this is not a commentary on females versus males, but just sort of back to the networking point. you have kind of a natural advantage if your parent was an investment banker or a lawyer or you're right that dealt with sort of the banking industry or you know pick another sort of adjacent profession and so you know those individuals know the right questions to ask are more aware of the opportunities across the firm it's not just investment banking there's lots of other things we do at J.P.

51:35Morgan or any firm so I think just making sure that you're figuring out how to kind of gather that information and ask all of those questions so that you're a little more educated coming in about sort of what the opportunities are overall. Really interesting. So let me throw you a curveball question. We talked earlier not only about your ballet at age four, but dancing professionally for three years. You're a member of the Board of Trustees for American Ballet Theater. That's the pinnacle of dance in America. Tell us a little bit about the organization, how you found your way to it? What are you doing with them?

52:14Sure. So I have been on the board since 2009. Oh, wow. That's 15 plus years. Yes. So a long time. So again, American Ballet Theater, one of the greatest ballet companies in the world based here in New York, officially designated by Congress as America's National Ballet Company. And actually, as of January of this year, I'm the new chair of the board of ABT, which is super exciting. But, you know, the board obviously has its basic sort of governance functions. But, you know, we spend a lot of time helping with fundraising for the organization and helping provide, you know, expertise where each individual has it.

52:53Any nonprofit obviously has a much more limited sort of staff overall. So if there's people on the board that have real estate expertise or finance expertise or HR expertise, that is very valuable to the organization as a whole. So there's always sort of special projects that we, you know, sort of participate in from that perspective. But a big chunk of what the board does is really making sure people are aware of ABT, helping with fundraising, helping attract new donors, helping attract and develop new audience members. Really, really interesting. Have past board members and or chair people been former professional ballet dancers or is this unusual?

53:34There's always a few, but certainly the majority of people on the board don't have a background in dance. And as I always remind everybody, I call it the separation between church and state. The board is there to sort of help with the business of running the ballet company. They have no input whatsoever to anything artistic, which is why it's not required that you have any sort of background in dance. But I'm curious if there have been previous chairpeople who were professional ballet dancers. That I would have. I don't think so, but I'm not 100 % positive. All right. But I don't think so. Our previous chair, who retired at the end of last year, his sister danced with the company for many years.

54:10And that's really how he became involved and obviously very passionate about the ballet. Really, it's one of those fascinating things that just I don't see on people's resumes all that often. And I had no idea you were chairman, but it's really fascinating. All right. So while I still have you, let's jump to our favorite questions that we ask all of our guests. speaking of entertainment, let's start with what are you streaming these days? What's keeping you entertained? It could be Netflix, podcasts, whatever. What are you enjoying these days? So first, I would say I am sort of an avid reader.

54:44I was talking with a colleague on my way over here. Everybody consumes information differently. I consume it better reading, I think, than always listening. So I'm sort of very religious about getting through The Economist and The New Yorker every week. And I won't let myself read the next issue of The Economist until I finish the first one. So even if I'm behind, I do that. I'm in 1986 if I follow that rule. There you go. I might have to get that up at some point. I am currently streaming, I guess, the second season of The Diplomat, which I'm very much enjoying. I love the political action thrillers, but I think I'm running out of them because I've watched all of them at this point.

55:22Lioness, have you seen that? Oh, no, I haven't seen that. Okay. So a little more intelligence community slash tip of the spear. Okay. But, you know, the same sort of back and forth layers of intrigue. But I really enjoyed The Diplomata. I thought that was fascinating. And then what was it? Secretary of State was the other one? Madam Secretary. That same concept. I will admit I've watched it a couple of times. Oh, really? I thought it was great. Yes, exactly. I think it's a good pick-me-up, particularly when partisan politics are depressing everyone. It's good. It's just a happy – there's always a happy ending.

56:01I appreciate that. Any time you have an ability to go to a space you're wholly unfamiliar with and be challenged, it's not just entertaining, but it clears the cobwebs out a little bit. Exactly, exactly. Really interesting. So we talked about you as a mentor. Who were your mentors who helped shape your career? So I would say I feel very lucky when I was most of my career when I was in debt capital markets, I worked for a woman who ran DCM at the time. And then she went on to do different things at the firm who was very much a sponsor mentor for me overall. And it's just, you know, over time she's retired now from JP Morgan, but sort of, you know, become a friend.

56:43But I think that's where I really, I think, learned and embraced kind of just this concept of attracting talent, retaining talent, helping to kind of bring up the next generation of women is a responsibility of senior people. And she really demonstrated that. And certainly I took that to heart. So since you are a reader, let's talk about books. What are your favorites and what are you reading right now? So favorites are hard. But what I'm reading right now – so I actually just finished Over the Holidays. I tend to alternate between fiction and nonfiction. I do a lot of both because I think both are important.

57:23I finished Chasing Hope, the Nicholas Kristof book. He's a foreign correspondent for The Times, which is interesting. I finished a biography of Alexei Ropmanski, who's a choreographer. I don't think many listening to this podcast may find that book interesting, but I did. a new fiction by Michael Cunningham called Day. So those were all really good. Some of my favorite authors, Isabella Ending, Dave Edgars. That's what I would say. Edgars is kind of funny if we're talking about the same guy, right? And he has funny titles, which I love. Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, one of his first books.

58:00Love that book. Yeah. So we're down to our last two questions. and this is a broader question than I asked earlier, what sort of advice would you give to a recent college grad interested in a career in either banking or finance? I think to make sure that they embrace risk-taking. And I say that because maybe just because I myself maybe am a little bit risk-averse, but I think over the course of your career, you have the opportunity often to do many different things. And a lot of times people are afraid to sort of leave their current group and do something different. And it just opens up a whole world of possibilities.

58:44So I think sort of taking a little bit more risk than you might naturally do is always good advice. And when you have no spouse, no mortgage, no kids, that's the time to fall on your face because you get up, dust yourself off, and start over again. And it's funny how when you're a few years past being young, that's obvious. But at the time, it doesn't feel that way. Well, and it feels like such a big risk. It's so risky. Right. Exactly. And our final question, what do you know about the world of banking and investment and growth companies today that would have been really helpful 25 or so years ago?

59:22That's a really good question. And it's not, I should have bought Nvidia when it was 50 cents. it's like what philosophically would have been useful to know that you eventually figured out i think because i started in the investment bank and then by definition was really working with primarily larger size companies i think i you know as i kind of mentioned earlier understanding how different it is and and the fact that you have the ability to make an even bigger difference for a smaller size company that needs that sort of trusted advisor even more, I think it would be sort of good to know, right?

1:00:00Because it is, I think financial services overall, you have the ability to take on a lot more responsibility at an early age than other industries. But I think, again, the ability to kind of influence and advise an early stage company is just incredibly rewarding given the limited resources staff that they have. Melissa, this has been absolutely fascinating. Thank you for being so generous with your time. We have been speaking with Melissa Smith. She is co-head of commercial banking for JP Morgan. If you enjoy this conversation, well, be sure and check out any of the past 500 or so we've done over the previous 10 years.

1:00:39You can find those at iTunes, Spotify, Bloomberg, YouTube, wherever you find your favorite podcasts. and be sure to check out my new book, How Not to Invest, coming March 17th, wherever you get your favorite books from. I would be remiss if I did not thank the crack team that helps put these conversations together each week. Sarah Livesey is my audio engineer. Anna Luke is my producer. Sean Russo is my researcher. Sage Bauman is the head of podcasts at Bloomberg. I'm Barry Ritholtz. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.

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