>> (Announcer) Live, from Las Vegas it's the Cube. Covering VM World 2018. Brought to you by VM Ware and it's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to the Cube's continuing coverage of VM World 2018, I'm Lisa Marin, with Dave Vellante >> Hey, Lisa. >> Dave, day three, we have had tremendous guests the last couple of days. And we're- a lot of alumni, a lot of new guests, another alumni joining us, Calline Sanchez, vice president of IMB Enterprise System Storage. Welcome back, Calline, it's great to have you here. >> No, thank you very much for letting me be here. >> And I want to congratulate Calline, because she was just named for the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, 2018 Businesswoman of the Year. Just a few weeks ago. Amazing. >> Lovin' Tucson, by the way. >> Thank you. >> U of A. >> Yes. >> Bear Down. >> I appreciate the Wildcats reference, so, >> Haha. >> No doubt. And so, this Saturday, oh, I'm sorry. This Saturday, the first game, so- >> My daughter is a freshman at U of A, Hi, Pilar, I love you, baby. Good luck. You're going to crush it, I know you are. >> Haha. >> Dad of the year going on here. So, just before we get into all the storage stuff- >> Yeah. >> They're doing a, they're honoring you, just in about a month and a half or so, with this- >> Yeah. Yes, and I'm very excited about that. Just like you were saying with the community aspect, it's a high-touch award, and I was very thankful for it, because they gave me specific examples of, what I've done in Southern Arizona, in Tucson in particular, that they'll name. For instance, Excite for Girls, and things like that. >> That's awesome. >> Girls in STEM, right? >> Congratulations, that's fantastic. >> We need more inspiration, so, it's great that we, >> Ah, thank you. >> Now count you as one of our distinguished alumni. So, let's talk about what going on at IMB. Here we are at VM World 2018, we're hearing Dave, numbers of upwards of 21,000 people that have been here the last few days. 100,000 more engaging with, expecting to engage with the live streaming and the on demand experiences. What's going on with IBM, you know, from a revenue perspective, a growth perspective? What is exciting you about where you are today? >> So, I will talk in particular about storage. I'm really, really proud about this, being that we work in partnership with, like, Ed Walsh, and then also Eric Herzog. They've inspired me to get closer to building solutions with our end users. So we meet and work with our clients to build up cloud deployment solutions, in partnership with VM Ware, and we enable things like, okay, so there's tape, and then there's cloud-to-tier, so there's fundamental solutions out there in the marketplace that we as developers want to go and play with. It's almost like a great big sandbox. So to speak. >> So, I've got to ask you, because, I mean, everybody in storage says, well, Tape, tape is dead. And every time I see you we talk about tape. We talk about FLAPE. We talk about innovations that are coming to tape. You're a technologist. Right, you just said, as a developer we love to- dot-dot-dot. So, what is it about things like tape, things like mainframe, DS8000, these technologies that have, tried, true, running businesses, what is about those that excite you as a developer? >> Everything old is new again, >> Yeah, right. >> If we just go back to the basics of like, table stakes, right? Security is table stakes, right? Delivering on-time quality releases with optimizers like, tier-to-cloud, things like that. That's fundamental for us. Now, as it relates to tape, so, everything old is new again, like I mentioned a moment ago. Tape was the first device to fully encrypt. So every drive, if it fell off the truck, it was fully encrypted. So, tape is actually training the rest of our portfolio in similar skills, on how we do the end-to-end encryption elements. So, right now with DS8000, we're working in partnership with system Z, to deliver pervasive encryption. >> I got to ask you, so as a development executive, I see you at a lot of these shows. You like coming here? A lot of times, development execs want to, sort of, stay in the lab. But you're out and about, talking to customers. What are you learning? What is that about you that draws you to these shows? >> I was afraid that WE as a lab team would not be relevant unless we have conversations with end users, partners. You know, to really substantiate what's possible from being innovative. So, I would say, number one is relevance, and I felt like, I wanted to more social, because, I'm definitely in some cases, an introvert, though I'm looking above my shoes. That's I'm wearing- >> That's the definition, of an introvert and an extrovert in the tech world. You know that the difference is, right? >> I don't. >> An introvert looks at his or her own shoes, an extrovert looks at your shoes. >> Well, there you go. I've been looking at some shoes- >> Alright, so you're, you're extrovert oriented out here, what are you learning at VM World? what are the customers saying? What are they asking you for? What are you going to take back to the lab? >> A single pane of glass associated with what we intend with like, v-stream, or some of the aspects of automation, with regards to cloud deployment, to make it, like, completely- connected. If that, so to speak. And what I think is really great about all of that is I hate to put it this way, it's very iTunes like. Where it's like, sticky, and it's easy to use, or and, by the way, it's not so expensive, at least to start up. So, a lot of the discussions we've been having are with the various vendors on the expo floor, that they want to build solutions. IBM solutions associate with the cloud, and then the AWS guys, we meet with them. And they're like, well, how are, how can we ensure that we live in an interconnected data-centric world? And so that's what I think is very exciting is that, it's this idea of coopetition. Let's all be well connected, and do it well. >> Let's talk about the customer collaboration, as you mentioned, everything old is new again, we see that, in every aspect of life. Tape, mainframe, but you talked about we need to be relevant, but also need to developing solutions that you end user customers need to solve their business problems. How are you collaborating with customers to stay relevant, and to ensure that their businesses are able to take advantage of the super powers that Pat Gelsinger talked about on Monday, AI, machine learning, emerging technologies, what's that collaboration like? >> I would say the biggest collaborations that I've been participating recently is with cloud servers providers. And they appreciate the economics of physical media, or tape. And so, they think to themselves or they know the data, it's like, okay, less than a half-cent per gig, that's a big deal, right? So, and then we have discussions about total cost of ownership, aspects like that. So the partnership is also, how do we serve the data? And really having discussions about the data. And then, if evaluating the various work streams where, we would want to serve appropriately based on whatever specific cloud infrastructure. And then, also, taking a step back, we have to be interconnected. There's no question. So, I would say the number one set of skills our end users are working with right now happen to be the cloud service providers. >> What are some of the big business benefits that they're achieving, we think, new business models, new revenue streams, market expansion. What are some of the things that you're proud of that IBM storage solutions are helping your customers to deliver? >> Going to tape, it's the economics, yes. It's the security based on encryption, yes. And then also, the other aspect of, is, we're serving big data. I mean, it's like we're having discussions about they're going to grow to, zettabytes by 2020, things like that. I never thought in my life, especially as an engineering student, or in computer science, I would ever be talking about this big of data. And now we're here. And so, we're learning how to enable in partnership with clients, what would be the right, or appropriate solution. >> So, I'm searching our video library, because somebody said this week something that was really interesting to me and I wanted to get your perspective from a development mind, someone who's technical. We're hearing a lot about migrating to the cloud. And how easy that is. And then, I think it was Pat Gelsinger said, there's three laws. There's the law of physics, the laws of a company, and the law of the land. And, those are immutable, generally. But I want to ask you about the laws of physics. So, in terms of just moving data into the cloud, we talk about petabyte, exabytes, there's so much data. How feasible is it for a customer to move data, and just stuff it all into the cloud, and what are you doing to either help them do that, or bring the cloud experience to their data? >> Depending on the client interests of on-prem, off-prem, or hybrid, right? We work to evaluate APIs in collaborations, so we enable a streamline, so it's not only just understanding the components of the cloud deployment, but it's also partnering with all elements of the entire ecosystem's stack. So, it depends but we really start with the client's end use case. What do you want? What kind of security do you want? Are you okay with off-prem, public clouds? Or, maybe it's specific data, how do we go about managing the data so we secure it, like, we bucket-ize it. So those are some of the discussions we've been having on the floor, here, at VM world, but also, within our labs, and also with the clients directly. >> You know what I love about that answer? I'll translate it. It's not a biz- it's not a technical problem, Dave, it's a business problem, >> Yes. >> Is really what you're tell me. >> And that's a fundament- you asked the question before. That's fundamentally why I am here. >> Right. >> I don't believe we can live in this world anymore, where it's like, we build it, and then they come. >> Field of Dreams does not exist anymore. >> Yeah. And so, now we've got to have conversations with our end users, to develop, what we've going to put on the roadmap. And so I always felt like, okay, well, when I'd see the roadmap in the lab, I'm like, okay, well, who wants this? Who asked for this, right? And those ended up becoming some of my fundamental questions. So then, I started to come here, or conferences like this, because I could have those conversations with the end users and partners. >> That's interesting, who wants this? Who needs this? What problems does it solve? Why us, why now? Those are the kinds of things you're asking. >> Let's talk about why us? IBM has been around for a very long time. What do you think, again, in this got to be relevant, we need it to be really defined by customer needs and uses. Everything old is new again. What, in your opinion, makes, why should a customer go, in my VM environment, IBM. >> I'm going to start with why I even personally want to remain with IBM. It's a great big candy store. >> Haha. >> And what I have to remind myself is, just don't eat too much, right? And, by the way, I still eat way too much. But what's great about it is, it's a sandbox, so, I can talk to you software engineers one day, who are telling me about certain APIs they're building in Python. Then, oh, by the way, I meet with a mechanical set of engineers, cuz they want to enable robot arms. Oh, and by the way, should we have a discussion on microcode and firmware for the entire stack. So I take a step back, and I'm thinking, Wow- the only set of conversation I really prior was not having, is about services. And to me, services is like the wrapping paper, for a present that you're about to receive. And really understanding the overall, end-to-end stack infrastructure. So, I believe from an IBM perspective, it's the ecosystem. It's a great big candy store. Just don't eat too much. >> Haha. So, how do you spend your time? Do you spend your time thinking, collaborating with team on, architecture, on, vision, on, northstar, writing code. How do you spend your time day-to-day? >> Can I say, all of the above? And, the vast majority, right now, really just making sure we're relevant in the marketplace, so that we re-fresh the right amount of cycles. So, right now, what we're going to be doing in 2019, we're going to be talking about it right now. Architecting what the future looks like. And that's part of the reason why I'm here at VM World 2018, is I'm wanting to verify my roadmap. Am I taking the right approach with the extended team? Cuz it is team, and I work with them. These engineers and scientists are so right, and have great ideas. Let's just make sure they're great ideas that will keep us relevant and keep us paid. >> So, have you gotten that validation, in the last few days at VM World? >> Give me one more day. >> Haha. Well, Calline, thanks so much for stopping by and sharing. Not only what IBM is doing to continue to innovate and stay relevant, but also what's exciting to you- >> Yeah. >> About working for IBM, and again, Congrats on getting the award. >> Yes, and thank you very much for highlighting that, cuz it's, I'm very excited as just an individual, it's like, it was unexpected. >> Well, you're representing women in tech, women in STEM, it's awesome, congratulations. >> Thank you very much. >> We're really happy. >> And, by the way, I'll definitely reach out to your daughter at some point. >> Oh, great. >> Say, hey, let's go to a tailgate. >> Love it. >> I won't corrupt. >> Haha. Fantastic, Calline, thank you so much for your time. I'm Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante. We want to thank you for watching the Cube, we are in day three of our continue coverage from VM World 2018. Stick around, we'll be right back with our next guest.

>> Live, from Toronto, Canada, it's theCUBE! Covering Global Cloud and Blockchain Summit 2018, brought to you by theCUBE. >> So, welcome to the Global Cloud and Blockchain Summit. I'm about to hand you over to John Furrier, who is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of SiliconANGLE Media and Executive Editor at theCUBE, he's about to do a Fireside Chat with Al and Mathew, I'll let him introduce you to them as well. He's also involved in a major blockchain project himself, so he's going to get into that with those guys as well. So, and tomorrow we start at nine, in the meantime, enjoy the evening, enjoy the food, enjoy the chat, and I'll let you go. >> Okay. Hello? Thank you Ruth, appreciate it, thanks everyone for being part of this panel, Fireside Chat, want to make it loose, but high impact for you guys, I know, having some cocktails, having a good time. If there's any questions during, then at the end we'll pass the mic around, but. We want to have a conversation, kind of like we always do down in the lobby bar, just talking about crypto and cloud, and we ended up talking about cloud computing and crypto a lot because those are two areas that are kind of converging, and the purpose of this event. So we really wanted to share some thoughts around those two massively growing markets, one is already growing, it's continuing to be great: the cloud, and blockchain certainly is changing everything. These two important topics, we want to flesh them out, Al Burgio is the Serial Entrepreneur/Founder of DigitalBits, he's founded companies both in cloud and blockchain, so he brings a great perspective. And Matt Roszak, leading crypto investor, entrepreneur and advocate, well known in the crypto space for goin' way back, I think you gave a couple bitcoins to some very famous people early on, we'll get into that a little bit later. So guys, thanks for being part of the panel and Fireside. First question is: we know how big the money is, I mean the money is crypto is is flowin' around the world, and cloud computing we've seen specifically, and certainly in coverage now with Amazon's success, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft and others. Trillions of dollars being disrupted in the traditional kind of the enterprise, data center area, and blockchain is doing that too, so we want to get into that. But first, before we get into it, I want you guys to take a minute to explain for the folks, just to set the context, the kinds of projects you're working on. Now Al, you have DigitalBits, Matt you're investing and you're finding a lot of interesting token dynamics. So just take a minute. Al, start. >> (mic off) So-- Everybody hear me okay? Alright, perfect. Well thanks for that lovely intro. Yes, my name is Al Burgio, I'm, I've founded a few companies, as John mentioned. Before the cloud there was internet, (light laugh) and so it started for me in the late '90s in the e-commerce era. But more recently I pioneered what's known as Interconnection 2.0, and I did that with the company called Console, for those that may know PCCW, recently it was acquired by PCCW. And with that we disrupted the way networks at the core of the internet were connected together More recently I've founded the DigitalBits project, and now DigitalBits blockchain network, and with that, you can kind of think of that as the trading and transaction layer for the points economy and other digital assets, and you can do a lot of really interesting thing with that, it's really about bringing blockchain to the masses. >> Matt, what're you workin' on? >> So, Matthew Roszak, Co-Founder and Chairman of Bloq. Bloq is a enterprise software company, we do two things, the premise is the tokenization of things, so we think the money identity, new layers of the internet are going to be tokenized. And so, we go to market in two ways, one is through Bloq Enterprise, and these are all the software layers you need to to connect to tokenized networks, so think a wallet, a node, a router, etc. And then Bloq Labs we build, and partner with, some of the leading tokenize networks and applications, so we build a connective tissue and then we actually build these new networks. I started this space as an investor over five/six years ago, investing in some of the best entrepreneurs and technologists in the space build a great network. But I love building companies, and so my Co-Founder and I, Jeff Garzik, built Bloq two and a half years ago. And then lastly, also serve of Chairman of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, so, so if you believe in these new tokenized money layers, identity layers, etc, regulation comes into play. Certainly today from an institutional adoption level, and so if you care about this space, you need to spend time to kind of help that dialogue improve; this technology moves way faster than folks in DC and elsewhere, so. >> And the project that we're workin' on at SiliconANGLE, is we've tokenized our media platform, and we're opening it up to a token model, and have kind of changed the game. So all three of us have projects, want to put those in context, we build everything on Amazon Web Services, so, the view of the cloud, we also cover it. The cloud computing market is booming, we see that Amazon Web Services numbers empower the earnings for Amazon's company, obviously Apple's trillion dollar evaluation those are clear case studies; but blockchain could potentially disrupt it all, and Al, I want to get your thoughts, because even today in the news at Microsoft Azure, which is their big cloud provider, announced blockchain as a service. And folks that are in either the data center business or in cloud know the shift that's happening in the IT world, but no ones really connected the dots on where blockchain intersects, and also, is it an opportunity for the cloud guys, what's the landscape look like, so. What's your thoughts on that, how are they connected, what does it mean, how does a cloud company maintain their relevance and competitiveness with blockchain? >> Well, just pointing on the fact that, you know, today we had that new Microsoft, the Azure cloud, their support and evangelism for blockchain. You know, a company, I think it's very important that this isn't an ICO, two kids in a garage saying their doing something blockchain this is a massive, multi-billion dollar company; and making a decision like that is not trivial, it's many, many departments, a lot of resources, before such a thing's announced. So, that's, not only is it validation, but it's a leading indicator as to this trend, that this is clearly something that's important. And a lot of people, if you're not paying attention, you need to be paying attention, including if you're in the cloud industry, 'cause many companies obviously do compete with, with Microsoft and AWS, so. It may be still early, but it's not that early, in light of the news that we saw today. With that, I would say that, a lot of the parallels I like to kind of, if I was an infrastructure provider I'd look at this from the standpoint of the emergence of Linux when it first came on the scene. What was important for companies like Red Hat to be successful, they had competition at the time, and you had shortages of Linux, let's say engineers, and what have you. And so, a company like Red Hat built a business around that, and they did that by how they kind of surfaced and validated themselves to the enterprise of that era, was partnering with hardware companies, so, it was Intel, IBM, and then Dell, HP, and they all followed, and then all of a sudden, which version of Linux do you want to use? It's Red Hat, you're paying for that support, you're paying Red Hat. And, you know, then they had their hockey stick moment. Today, you know, it's not about hardware companies per se, it's about the cloud, right? So cloud is the new hardware per se, and many enterprises obviously are looking at cloud computing companies and cloud computing providers, infrastructure providers, as the company that they need to support them with the infrastructure that they use, or sorry the technologies that they use, right? Because they're not necessarily supporting these things and making sure that they're always on within the basement of that enterprise, they're depending, or outsourcing, to depending on these managed IT providers. This was very important that whatever technologies they're using in the lab, that ultimately their infrastructure partners are able to support the implementation, the integration, the ongoing support of these technologies. So if you think of blockchain like an operating system or a database technology, or whatever you want to call it, it's important that you're able to really identify these key trends, and be able to support your customer and what they're going to need, and ultimately for them, they can't have a clog in their digital supply chain, right? So, it's clearly emerging. Microsoft is validating that today, you know, clearly they have the data, that they're seeing for their existing enterprise customers, and they don't want to lose them. >> Yeah, but remember when cloud came out; you and I have talked about this many times Al that it wasn't easy to use, I remember when Amazon Web Services came out, it was just basically, it was hard to command line, basically you had to use it, so, it became easier now, it's so easy and consumable. Blockchain, similar growing pains, but, we don't want to judge it too early with the opportunity that it has, it's going to get easier, what're your thoughts? And it has to scale by the way, Amazon, at a large scale. >> Yeah, I mean-- >> So blockchain has to scale and be easier, your thoughts? >> Another kind of way to think of it is, to not necessarily think of cloud computing, but the evolution the internet went, you know, in Internet 1.0, you know, we went through this dial-up modem era, things were very raw back then; great visions we had of the future, like, it's going to be amazing for video one day! But, not during dial-up modem era, and eventually, you know, it eventually happened. And user interfaces improved, and tool sets improved and so forth. You know, fast forward to today, we have all of that innovation to leverage, so things will move a lot faster with blockchain, it did start very raw, but it's, it's moving much faster than anything we've seen definitely in the '90s and in the last decade, so. It's just, you know, it's a matter of moments, not years. >> And I think Al brings up a great point on leverage, because Amazon leverages infrastructure to a point where it's larger than Google, Azure, and IBM's public cloud combined, and so yeah, massive leverage there. And so, when these big cloud providers provide this blockchain as a service, it is instrumented and built on top of their existing infrastructure, not necessarily on blockchain infrastructure. So, it's an interesting dynamic where they're putting it on top of existing infrastructure that's there, but what's being build right now is the decentralized Amazon Web Services. So you have every layer of Amazon being re-imagined, like, and incentivized so you have distributed compute and access and storage and database. And so, what will be interesting to see is that, given this massive opportunity, will Amazon and some of these other incumbent cloud providers become the provisioning networks of the future? Of all this new decentralized resources that get, again, if you want storage, you have to start having smarts to say: if I'm going to go to Sia or Filecoin or Genaro or Storj, compute, etc; you have to start being a provisioning layer on top of that to kind of, you know, make that blockchain essentially work. So, it'll be interesting to see the transition 'cause today the lightweight versions to say yeah, I have a blockchain as a service strategy, and that's like, well done, and check the box. Now, the question is how far in this new world will they go down? And, as it gets more decentralized, as universities and governments, corporations, plug their access utility into these networks, and to see how that changes. That is much bigger than the Amazon of today. >> I think that's an interesting point, I want to just drill down on that if you don't mind, 'cause I think that's a fundamental observation that every layer's going to be decentralized. The questions I think I'm asking and I'm seeing is: How does it all work together? And then what's the priorities? And the old model was easy; got to get the infrastructure, got to get servers, (laughs lightly) and you know, work your way up to the top of the stack. What cloud brings also is that: a software developer can whip up an application, maybe a dApp on a test network and go viral, and the next thing you know they have a great opportunity, and then they got to build down. So the question is: What are you seeing in terms of priorities on stacks, portions of the stack that are being decentralized and tokenized, do you see patterns, trends, as an investor, is there a hotter (laughs) area than others, how do you look at that? >> Well, I think it's, it's in motion right now it's, like I said, every layer of AWS is getting thought through in how to create these digital cooperatives, I have excess storage, I'm going to contribute it to this network, and I'm going to get paid in tokens when a user uses that storage network, and pays for it in those native tokens and so that, coupled with all the other layers, is happening. From a user perspective, we may not want to be going to pick a database provider, a storage, a compute, etc, we're likely going to say: I want a provisioning layer, and provision this and execute this, much like if we, you know, there'll be new provisioning layers for moving money, I don't care if routes through Lightning or Litecoin or Doge or whatever, as long as the value gets across the pond or the app gets provisioned appropriately based on you know, time, security, and cost, and whatever other tendance are important, that's all I care about, but; given the depth and the market for all that, I think it'll be interesting to see how these are developed with the provisioning layers, and I would think Amazon or Azure, the future of that is, is more provisioning than actually going and doing all that at the end of the day. >> That's great. I want to get your thoughts guys on innovation. My good friend Andy Kessler wrote an op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal around, an article around the government, the US government getting involved. You know, there's Twitter, Facebook, the big platforms, in terms of how they're handling their media, but it brings up a good point that with more regulation, there's less innovation. You mentioned some things outside the United States, it's a global cloud, cloud's operating globally with regions, it's a global fabric. Startups are really hot in this area so; how do you view the ecosystems of startups, in terms of being innovative, things happening that you think that're good, and things that aren't good, obviously I'm not a big of the government getting involved, and managing startups, the ecosystems but, blockchain has a lot of alpha entrepreneurs jumping in, you've looked at all the top ventures, the legit ventures, they're all alpha entrepreneurs, multi-time serial entrepreneurs, they see the opportunity and they go for it. Is the startup environment good, is there enough innovation opportunities, what're you thoughts on the opportunity to be innovative? >> Yeah, Al and I were just talking about this before the panel here, and were talking about our travels in Asia, and when we go there it is 10, 100 X of energy and get-it factor, and capital, and the markets are just wildly more vibrant than you know, going to some typical markets here in San Fran and New York in North America, and, so it's interesting to see that when you heat map the world, what's really happening. And you know, people are always saying: oh well this, this FinTech, or InsurTech, or whatever tech, is going to make a dent in Silicon Valley or Wall Street. This technology, this new frontier, is definitely going to do that. I think some of that will get put into more focus based on regulation, and there's two things that will happen; there's obviously a lot of whippersnapper countries that are promoting a safe place to innovate with crypto, I think Malta, Gibraltar, Barbados, etc, and there were-- >> Even Bermuda's getting in on the mix now. >> Yeah! I mean so there's no shortage of that, and so, and obviously this ecosystem outpaces the pace of regulation and then we'll see like the US doing something, or you know, other fast followers to try and catch up, and say hey, we're going to do the cryptocurrency act of 2022, miners get free power, tax-free, you know crypto trading, you know just try and play catch up. 'Cause it's kind of hard in the last year or 18 months we've seen this ecosystem go from this groundswell to this now institutional discussion; and how do you back end the the banking, the custody, all these form factors that are still relatively absent. And so, you know, we're right in the middle of it. >> It's a whole new way, you got to follow the money, right? Al, you and I talked about this; capital markets, you know entrepreneurs need to raise money and that's a good thing, you need to get capital to do stuff. >> Yeah, this is a new phenomenon that the world has never experienced before, it's awesomeness when it comes to capital formation; you know, without capital formation there is no innovation. And so the fact that more capital can be raised, it's the ultimate crowd sourcing in such an efficient period of time, capital being able, the ability to track capital from various different corners of the world, and deploy that capital to try to fuel innovation. Of course, you know, not all startups or what have you succeed, but that was true yesterday, right? You know, 90% of startups fail, but they all will give it some meaningful amounts of checks, people were employed and innovation was tried; and every once in a while something emerges that's amazing. If you can do that faster, right, when you have the opportunity to produce more and more innovation. And, of course with something so new as cryptocurrency, things like ICOs and what have you, people may kind of refer to it as the wild wild West, it's not, it's an evolution. And you have-- >> It's still the wild west though, you got to admit. (laughs) >> Well, it is but, we're getting better at it, right? As a world, this isn't the Silicon Valley community getting better at venture capital or some other part of the United States or Canada getting better at venture capital; this is the world as a whole getting better at capital formation. >> Yeah, that's a great point. >> In the new way of capital formation. >> And I wanted to just get an observation on that. I moved to Silicon Valley 20 years ago, and I love it there, for venture capital and new startups, it's the best place in the world. And I've seen people try to replicate Silicon Valley, we're the Silicon Valley of Canada, we're the Silicon Valley of the East or Europe, and it's always been hard to replicate, because it was a venture model, and you needed venture capitalists and you need money, you need a community, the culture, the failure, the starting over, and just, you know, gettin' back on the horse kind of thing. Crypto is the first time that I've seen the replica of that Silicon Valley dynamic, in a new way, because the money's flowing, (laughs) and there's community involved in crypto, crypto has a big community aspect to it. Do you guys see that as well? I mean I'm seeing, outside the United States, a lot of activity. Is that something that you're seeing? >> So, the first time we saw, well, last time we saw everybody trying to replicate Silicon Valley was first internet, you know, there was Silicon Swamp, there was Silicon Alley, there was silicon this-- >> Prairie. >> Every city was >> Silicon Beach. >> A silicon version of something, and then the capital evaporated, right? We had a mass correction happen. What wasn't being disrupted was value exchange, right, and so this is being created now, it is now possible for this to happen, and it's happening, we're seeing amazing things, Matt said, you know, in Asia. It's a truly awesome force, if anybody has an opportunity to go, they should go, it's unbelievable to experience it, and it really opens your eyes. >> And you've lived through a lot of investments during those .com days and through history now, you've seen a lot of different things. Your observations with the current state of the capital formation, startup landscapes, the global ecosystem around crypto and how it's different from say venture or classic rolling up companies and those kinds of things? >> Yeah, you hear a lot of this, you know, we're in a bubble, it's speculative, etc. And I think that when you look back at history of infrastructure, whether it's railroads, telephony, internet, and now crypto and blockchain, it's interesting, like, if you said: it would take this amount of money to innovate and come out the other end of internet with this kind of infrastructure, these kinds of applications, with these kinds of lessons learned, nobody would sign up for that number, right? It needs this fear, and greed, and all the other effervescence of markets to kind of come out the other end and have innovation. I think we're going through a very similar dynamic here with crypto and blockchain where you know, everything's getting tokenized, everything's getting decentralized. We're talking about fundamental things like money, you know, it's not like we're talking about pet food and women's shoes and airline tickets, we are talking about money, identity, things that will enable like other curves to really come into focus like in and out of things and the kind of compounding of intersections when some of these things get right is pretty extraordinary. And so, but I like what Al said in terms of capital formation and that friction to get from, you know, idea to capital to building, is getting compressed Yes, there will be edge cases of people taking advantage of that, but at the other end of this flow will be some amazing innovation. >> What do you guys think about the, if you had to answer the question with one answer, of what is the high order bit of why blockchain's so important? For me, I see it, from my standpoint, I'll just start, I see it making inefficient things more efficient for any use case, and that's being re-imagined, which is everything from IOT or whatever. Efficiency is a big thing, at least I see that. What do you guys see as a high order bit in terms of you know, the one thing that you'd say blockchain really impacts the world in terms of you know, impact, financial, etc? >> Well, I think with decentralization and all these things that we're seeing it's kind of evened the playing field. It's allowing for participation where parts of the world were unable to participate. And it's doing a whole lot of things in that area. And that's truly awesome, to really grow the economy, grow the global market, and the number of participants in that market in all areas. That's the ultimate trend at what's happening here. >> And your information? >> Absolutely, and I think there's two things, there's this blockchain dialogue, and then there's this crypto decentralization, tokenization dialogue, and on the blockchain side you have lots of companies engaging in blockchain and trying to figure out how it applies to their business, and you hear everything from McKinsey and Goldman saying financial services will save 100 billion dollars in operating expenses by applying blockchain technology, and that's great. That is probably low in terms of what they'll save, it's, to me, is just not the point of the technology, I think that when you kind of distill that down to say hey, for a group of folks to use this technology as a shared services thing to lower opex a trading settlement and decrease that, that's great, that is a step stone to creating these tokenized economies, these digital cooperatives. Meaning you contribute something and then you get something back, and it's measured in the value that this token is, like a barometric kind of value of how healthy that ecosystem is. And so, regulated public enterprises, and EC consortiums around insurance and financial services and banking, that is all fantastic, and that gets them in the pool, gets them exercising on what blockchain is, what it isn't, how they apply it, but it's, at the end of the day for them it's cost reduction The minute there's growth or IP, or disruption on the table, they're all going back to their boardrooms to say: hey let's do this, this, or that, but, if there's a way, my favorite class in college was industrial organization, and it sounds weird but, it was, it kind of told ya like how to dissect an industry, you know, what makes them competitive, who the market leaders are, and then, if you overlay like blockchain networks with tokens, with incentives, interesting things could happen, right? And so that future is going to be real interesting to see how market leaders think about how to tokenize their network, how to be, how to say: no I don't want to own this whole industrial network, I have to engage with some other participants and make sure everybody is incentivized to climb on board. So that I think is going to be more of the interesting part than just blockchain-ifying a workflow. >> Well let's just quickly drill down on that, token economics, what you're getting to. So let's assume blockchain just happens, as evolution of technology, let's just assume for a second that it's going to happen in a big way, it's private, public, hybrid chains, with all that good stuff happening, but the token economics is where the business value starts to be extracted, so the question for you is: How do you describe that to someone to look for, what are the key elements of token economics? When does it matter, when is it in play, and how should they be thinking about it? >> Yeah, I mean token economic design and getting a flywheel going to create a network and network effects is really important. You could have great technology, but Al could be a better marketer, and he gets tokens adopted better, and his network will do better because, you know, he was better able to get people to adopt and market a particular, you know, layer application. And so, it's really important to think about how you get that flywheel going, and how you get that kindling going on a particularly new ecosystem, and get users adoption and growth. That is really hard to do these days because some people don't even know what Bitcoin is, let alone to say I'm going to tokenize this layer, and every time you contribute, every time you take an action, you're going to get rewarded for it, and you're share the value of this network. >> Can you give me a good example of what's happening today that you can point to and say: that's a great example of token economics? >> Well, you see, I mean the most basic one is shared file storage, right? You know, it's like the Filecoin, Sia, Genaro model where, you know, you contribute you know, the unused storage in your laptop or your university data center or a corporate data center, and you say I'm going to contribute this, and when it's used I get these tokens and, you know at the end of the day or week or year you see what these tokens are worth, and was that worth your contribution? And so as these markets develop, and as utility develops, we'll see what that holds. >> Al, you got an example you could share? DigitalBits is a good use case obviously. >> Actually, I'm not going to use DigitalBits (John laughs) just to be neutral. This is one that Matt will know very well, definitely better than I, but one that I've-- the simpler something is, the easier it is for people to understand, and its like oh that makes sense, you know. You know, Binance is one that's very simple, you know it's a payment token, if you pay with some other currency, you pay, you know, Pricex, if you pay in the next few years with their token, you'll get the service at a discount. And in addition to that, they're using a percentage of profits, I think it's every quarter, to buy back up to, ultimately up to, 50% of tokens that are in circulation. So, you know, it's driving value, and driving return, in essence, if I can use that word. So for a user it's simple to understand, for someone that likes to speculate it's easy for someone to understand in terms of how the whole model works, so it's not some insanely complicated mathematical equation, that we can yes we can trust the math. And so in some cases, some adoption is going to just be, you know, attract participants based on simplicity. In other cases the math is important, and people will care about that, so, you know not all things are necessarily equal, and not necessarily one method is right, but there are some simple examples out there that that have proven to be successful. >> That's awesome, one last question, before we open it up if anyone has any questions. If anyone has any questions, if they want to come up, grab the microphone, and ask the three of us if you've got anything on your mind. And while you're thinking about that I'll get the final question for these guys is: A lot of people ask me hey, I want to be on the right side of history, what side of the street should I be on when the reality comes down that decentralization, blockchain, token economics, decentralized applications, becomes the norm, and that re-imagining actually happens? I don't want to be on the wrong side of history. What should I be doing, how should I be thinking differently, who should I be following, what should I be paying attention to? How do you answer that question? >> I think, at the basic level, you know, turn off your phone, lock your door, and study this technology for a day, it's the best advice I could give. Two: buy some crypto. Once you kind of have crypto on your phone, in your wallet, something changes in your brain, I think you just feel like you-- >> You check the prices every day. (all laugh) >> You lose a lot of sleep. And then after that, you know, I think you start engaging in this space in a very different way. So I think starting small, starting basic, is an important tenet. And then, what's amazing about this space is that it attracts the best and brightest out of industry, and law, and government, and technology, and you name it, and I'm always fascinated the people that show up and they're like yeah, I'm in a 20 year, you know, veteran in this space and I want to get into blockchain, it just attracts some of the best and brightest. And, I think we're going to see a lot of experience coming into the space, you know, this has been a, what I'd say a bottoms up groundswell of crypto and blockchain and the evolution of the space. And I think we're starting to see more some more mature folks come in the space to to add some history and perspective and helpin' the build out of this, and to build a lot of these networks. I think that the kind of intersection of both is going to be very healthy for the space. >> Al, your thoughts? >> Definitely agree with Matt. Definitely to lock yourself up and just try to absorb information, everyone has access to the internet, there's plenty of information. If you don't like to read go watch a few YouTube videos, just people explaining the stuff, it's really fascinating, the various different use cases and so forth. You definitely have to buy some, and, you know, whether it's five dollars worth, just go through the whole experience of being able to trade something of value that a few years ago didn't exist, and be able to trade it for something else of value is a pretty phenomenal experience. Then trying to go buy something with it, it's even more of a fascinating experience, I just bought something that used, again, something that didn't exist a few years ago. But, what I would add to that as well, you really have to get out there; if you keep surrounding yourself with people saying aw, this is, eh, whatever, >> It's never going to work. >> It's crazy, it's for criminals, and all that fun stuff. You're going to be last place. So coming to conferences, obviously future's conference you're going to meet a lot of interesting, great people, and that consistent experience, you'll learn something every time. You know, at the end of the day, I remember, I'm sure all three of us remember, with the birth of the internet there was many people that said you know the internet thing, it's crap, it's for kids, you know. And we had first movers, we had willing followers, and then the unwilling followed, you don't want to end up being-- >> The unwilling followers. >> Yeah, the unwilling. >> Alright. Does anyone have any questions they'd like to ask? Come on up. Yeah. We're recording, so we want to get it on film. >> So I have two questions. The first one is for you, Al: Two years ago I interviewed with IIX before it was Console, and I want to know why you didn't hire me? (Sparse laughs) No I'm kidding! That was a joke. Actually, I thought each of you brought up some good points, minus you Al. (chuckles) I'm just kidding. But what I really wanted to ask you guys is: so you talk a lot about this, the tokenized economy and kind of the roadmap and the things to get there, you talk about sediment layer, right, Fiat to crypto, sediment layer, your identity protocols, your dApps, X, Y, Z, right? The whole web 3.0 stack, I want each of you, or I want at least input from both of you or all of you, what are the hurdles to getting to a full adoption of web 3.0 stack, and make a bold prediction on the timing before we have a full web 3.0 stack that we use every day. >> That is a awesome question actually, timelines. You could be, being in technology, being in venture, you could be right, and you could be off by three, five, seven, 10 years, and be so wrong, right? And then at your retirement dinner you could say: I was right, but Tommy wasn't right. So, this is really hard technology, in terms of building systems that are distributed, creating the economic models, the incentive models, it takes a lot to go right in the intersection of all this. But it's not a question like is this happening? No, this is happening, this is like, it's in motion. The timelines are going to be a little elusive, I'm way more pragmatic, I was one of the early guys in the early internet, and you know everything was going to be .com and awesome and fantastic. But the timelines were a little elusive then, right? You know, it's like when was, people are thinking of today's Amazon was going to be the 2005 Amazon, you know, it's like, that took about another decade to get there, right? And people could easily just buy stuff and a drone or a UPS guy would just deliver it, and so, similar things apply today. And you know at the same time we all have a super computer in our pocket, and so it's a lot different. At the same time we're dealing with trusted mediums right? The medium of money, the medium of identity, all these different things they're, they're things that you know if I say download Instagram, and let's share cat pictures or whatever, it's not a big deal, our trust is really low for that, let's do it. For money, it's a different mental state, it's a different dynamic, especially if you're an individual, a government, or an enterprise, you go through a whole different adoption curve on that, so, you know, it is at grand scale five to 10 years, right? In any meaningful way. And so we still have a lot of work to do. >> My answer to that question, it's a good one, your question was a good one, my answer's a little bit weird because it's multi-generational. The first generation pivot was when the internet was born was because of standards, right? The government had investment. The OSI model, open system interconnect, actually never happened, the seven layers didn't get standardized, only a few key ones did; that created a lot of great things. And then when the we came out, that was very interesting protocol development there, the TCP/IP stuff, I mean HTP stuff. I don't see the standardization happening, because cloud flipped the stack model upside down because Amazon and these guys let the software developers drive the value. It used to be infrastructure drove the value of what software could do, then software became so proliferated that that drove the value of the infrastructure, so the whole cloud computing equation is making the infrastructure programmable for the first time, not the other way around, so. The cloud phenomenon's all about software driving the value, and that's happening, so. It's interesting because with blockchain you can almost do levels of services in a cloud-like way with crypto, I mean with blockchain and token economics, and have a partial stack. So think that this whole web 3.0 might be something that no one's every seen before. So, that's kind of my answer, I don't really know if that's going to be right or not, but just looking at the future, connecting the dots, it's probably not going to look like what we've seen before, and if the cloud's an indicator it's probably going to be some weird looking stack where certain sections are working, and then evolution might fill in the other ones, so. I mean, that's my take, I mean, but standards will play a role, the communities will have to get involved around certain things, and I think that's a timeless concept. >> Timing. >> Oh, timing. I think it's going to be pretty quick, I think if you look at the years it took for internet, and then the web, everything's being compressed down, but I think it's going to be much shorter. If it was a 20 year cycle in the past, that gets shortened down to 15 with the internet, and this could be five years. So five to 10 years, that could be the impact in my mind. The question I always ask is: what year will banks no longer be involved in anything? Is that 20 years or 10 years? (laughs) Exactly, so, yeah, follow the money. >> So I would say that in terms of trying to keep your finger on the pulse with things and how you kind of things, see things evolve; things are definitely moving a lot faster, you know in the past you would probably say seven to 10, I'm not sure if I would say five, sorry five to 10, it definitely feels to me that it's five max til we could start to see some of these key things fall into place, so. >> So could you answer the first question? >> What was the first question? >> Why didn't you hire me? (audience cringes) >> We've met before? Sorry. (all laugh) >> I have a question, this is Dave Vellante, Co-Host of theCUBE. And I want to pick up on something John you just said, and Matt you were talking about Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, it's not about them saving hundreds of millions of dollars, it's really about them transforming business, so. And John, you just asked the question about banks, I want to actually get your answer to this: Will traditional banks, in your opinion, lose control of payment systems? Not withstanding your bias. (laughter) >> Yeah, I am definitely biased on this. But, I mean, I've been in front of the C-suite of banks, credit card companies, etc, and I said, you know, in about a decade, the center of what you do and how you make money is going to be zero. And, 'cause there'll be networks, and ways to transmit money that'll be by far cheaper, or will be subsidized by other networks, meaning, and those networks are Apple, Amazon, Alibaba, you know, Tencent, whatever networks that're out there, that're engaging in collaboration and commerce and everything else, they will give away payments as just a courtesy, like people give away messaging or email or something, as a courtesy to that network, and will harden that network, and it'll be built and based on blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, so they don't necessarily have to worry about, you know, kind of subtle payments. But these new networks will start to encroach on banks, the banks are not worried about other banks today, the banks should be worried about these new networks that're being developed. >> How many people still have a home phone line? >> That was elegant, I like that. >> You know, I mean there's a generation of people that still like going to banks, they'll keep them in business for a while. But I think that comes to an end. >> I mean, when we covered a lot of the big data market when it started, the argument was mobile will kill the banks outlets, and now with ATMs there's more bank, more baking branches than ever before, so I think the services piece is interesting. >> And also, if you look at even the cloud basis, the software as a service, SaaS space, a decade, decade and a half ago, you would ask SAP, Oracle, what have you, what's your cloud strategy? And they'd be like cloud? That's just more efficient delivery model, not interested. 90 some billion dollars of M and A later, SAP, Oracle, etc, are cloud companies, right? And so, if banks kind of get into that same mode to say well, yeah, we need to play catch up and buy digital currency exchanges and multi-currency wallets, and this infrastructure and plumbing to be relevant in the next world, that would be interesting. But I think technology companies have as much an advantage to do that as as financial services companies, so it'll be interesting to see who kind of goes into that, goes into the crypto ecosystem to make that their own. >> It's interesting. We were talking before we came on and the OSS market, operational support systems is booming, and that's traditionally been these big operational outsource companies would manage big projects, but, if you look at in the first half of 2018, there's been a greater than 20 billion dollar commercial exits of companies through private equity merchants, IPOs, around OSS, and that's where we see operational things happening, CoreOS, Alfresco, MuleSoft, Pivotal went public, Magneto, GitHub, Treasure Data, Fastly, Elastic, DataStax, they're all in the pipeline. These are all companies that aren't cloud, they're like running stuff in cloud, so, this could be a tell sign that potentially the the blockchain operating market is going to be potentially a big one. >> Yeah, and then even look at BitMate, the world's largest miner in crypto. So, they did about a billion dollars in profit last year, did about a billion dollars in profit just in the first quarter going public, just raised a billion dollars last month, at a reportedly 50 to 70 billion dollar evaluation in Hong Kong in the next month, and the amount of money they'll raise will eclipse what Facebook raised. And so I think the institutional, the hardware, the cloud computing, the whole ecosystem starts to like resonate and think about this space a lot differently, and we need these milestones, we need these, whether they're room huddles or data points to kind of like think about how this is going to affect your business and what you do tomorrow morning. >> Any more questions from the crowd? Audience? Okay, great, well thanks for attending, appreciate you guys watching and listening, and guys thanks for the conversation; cloud and blockchain convergence. Collision course, or is it going to happen nicely, Al? >> Yeah, I think it's going to be a convergence, I don't see it necessarily as a collision course. >> And a lot of money to be made on this opportunity these days, and cloud convergence with blockchain. >> I concur with Al, I think there's going to be convergence, I think us most smarter players will engage and figure out their models in this new crypto and tokenized era. >> Thanks so much guys, appreciate it, give these guys a round of applause. (audience applause) Thank you very much. (bubbly music)

live from San Juan Puerto Rico the cube covering blockchain unbound brought to you by blockchain industries hey welcome back everyone live here at the cube in Puerto Rico for our extended coverage exclusive coverage two days wall-to-wall I'm John for the coast the cube co-founder Silk'n angle Media Inc we're here at Alber geo founder of digital bits I owe two days our racket here in Puerto Rico Puerto Rico great to see you thanks for having me guys keep alumnae you're like you know my wingman on the crypto yeah we both were at poly Connie - you're the only cube alumni their first show in crypto as we start our tour now we have a mask probably like 40 interviews so now have 40 new cube alumni but a great community growing a new level of interesting dynamics I want to get your reaction to in any wave there's always a start entrepreneurs making things happen then the promoters the promoters and the entrepreneurs cheerlead each other they cheer lead but it gets up to the point where there's a lot of growth and then the next levels a new set of stakeholders investors global players new stakeholders governments are it's happening now for me this is the moment I starting to see the ecosystem going to that next level blockchain unbound the event we're here at Puerto Rico is a combination of developer conference industry conference investor conference economic world forum rolled into one so it's kind of a unique thing you've been doing a lot of presentations your sponsor here even though your startup a lot of conversations do you agree with that your thoughts your reaction yeah there's definitely the topics or the presentations both yesterday and today have covered all those areas that you discussed with in addition to die would say there's a focus on Puerto Rico itself I mean this particular event that we chose to sponsor which like to point out that everyone is promoting our logo simply by wearing the lanyard for the event but you promise not even out yet no we actually we had an announcement this week so we issued a press release basically articulating for everyone to understand the vision for our blockchain and also announcing that it's going to be launched on Monday so we're really excited about that the team's been working really hard over the past you know number of months working away and we have more exciting news that obviously would be coming up very shortly in terms of what we've done and so forth but our actual blockchain network is going live on Monday I know slaughter is also a sponsor they had a hot deal you've a hot deal your Protestant alia is coming out on Monday you have an announcement what is the product the digital bits it's an open-source project yeah so what's it going to end blockchain infrastructure protocol so I'm watching you know network that we've launches but anybody can tokenize on this blockchain however the specific vision for our project is to support the loyalty rewards industry we see a huge 1/3 of points every year that I guess you go unredeemed the in the United States alone is over 100 billion dollars and perceived value points sitting on the balance sheets of these issuers from retailers airlines so on and so forth it's a huge liquidity issue that number grows every year and so that's what that's one dot o and blockchain has the opportunity to bring loyalty rewards obviously many other things into to dot o and change that game of them and eliminate tremendous amount of friction and challenges that traditionally been experienced by consumers businesses and so forth in the space and so on our blockchain businesses whether it's their existing loyalty program or new loyalty Ramkin tokenize that program on our blockchain and you know so we're not ourselves operating loyalty program but we are very much supporting that industry and in addition to that these various points that are tokenized on our blockchain can be you know consumers could trade points say four points be and so on that's awesome also al you've been also active in the community here in Puerto Rico I've noticed that you've been involved in a lot of activities here on site Puerto Rico since the hurricane sideways big problems aid now getting back on its feet of this community has been doing a lot of stuff you've been very answering that what's going on explain to the people what is the vibe in Puerto Rico is it is it rebounding is it rebound is on the rebounding coming back the role of check the attacks breaks there's a lot of things going on here and there's a number of events obviously this week and going into early next week under this theme called restart week you know from what we've all learned is that there's still a lot of parts of the cylon without power and so forth what's really great I think about this event among other things is that all the proceeds from this event it's a non-profit so go to the people of Puerto Rico and beyond that there is a community here whether it's you know early in the morning for the course of the day and so forth they can you know arrange initiatives and what-have-you to you know do things here to help give back and there's a not I don't think it's just isolated this week has obviously been a lot of news in terms of things that have been happening leading up to to now and and things happening in the future blockchain you and the botching community put the current securities and so forth are really focused on wanting to help you know this island and I think it's a wonderful Island I mean it's you know it's my first visit here but I you know it's it's not it's not hard to fall in love with Barbara Cuba's landed here for two days we're wrapping up two days of coverage what's your observation in the hallways I hear a lot of things happening I heard one VC our investor not VC but now a token investor seven deals mo use a lot of smart people here so the block tower guy earlier I see all the legacy whales are here so the entrepreneurs are here a lot money flowing around there you know so there's obviously a lot of news in terms of how regulation is evolving some jurisdictions faster than others in terms of the introduction of clarity and what-have-you but that clearly doesn't appear to be flopping the enthusiasm in blockchain I mean and it's just further validation in terms of how powerful this technology really is and and you know we'll continue to find its way into into society and so forth I you know well I think it's people have faith that you know in some of these jurisdictions that aren't necessarily moving as quickly that they'll get there and and so you know as a result of that people just continue to stay in the game because it's great to be early so I got to ask you about the just overall activities on-site off-site cowan agendas around the corner tomorrow yes response to there as well by the way well you're flush with cash why sponsor I'm just curious um so because you're a start-up you don't have a product that's right but you pray to the company yes yeah and so we were getting our brand out there now we're coming out of stealth mode this is the first event that we chose to sponsor when agent obviously being the second and so very important we want to let consumer as businesses you know the community know what what we're doing with watching and you know we have and again the course of the next few weeks additional announcements will be making in terms of great people that are involved great partners and so course we're really excited to get that up and the utter in the open and at the end of the day when you build a product marketing is important alright and so this is a great community to support proceeds are going to the this particular event foresees go to a great cause and a lot of great people here so you know among the people on the planet that we would love to have know what we were up to and so that's why we made the decision so as you're doing an IC oh we're not doing an IC engine yeah okay what what are you doing so we have a lot of interest obviously in our project and you know we basically are taking alternative compliant approach to to this and we'll be announcing that obviously at some point in the future but when I said the legal practice no one in practice that one I'll try to knock you off your game go back and rephrase the question so how are you financing this so the great thing is that we've done nothing crypto in terms of creating you know having capital to build this so meeting your own capital yeah we had our own capital so digital bits was born in a company called fuse chamber so a few chain races traditional equity to go do what it wanted to do and among those things was to give birth to this open source project called digit the digital bits project and so you know we didn't need to prematurely create a token just for the sake of having a funding event so we would have capital to build this we did not need to do anything crypto related to be able to have capital to build a blockchain now you are doing crypto related so the show what what's happening with us is that again the network goes live on Monday will be clearly distributing for the market the utility and you know organically you'll see use of what we've done and obviously during stealth mode we evangelize with key partners and prospective partners which gonna be on that your launch who's gonna be using your chain so it will be obviously businesses that are looking to tokenize but in addition you have names we have names what you know unfortunately I can't say the art this time I get announced my money we will be announcing in the future yeah so not on Monday okay I'm Monday we we've Monday on the launch will announce who are amongst the new additions to the team as well on Monday I've been following the launch will will now so who some of the partners are as well well rumor has it you got a hot deal I can tell by your body language you try not to reveal it what's been the reaction for this project it's been phenomenal I mean it's you know obviously as an entrepreneur to to see a vision become a reality and for others share to share that enthusiasm is is is you know it's humbling and so but you know we're very focused we know it's still you know it's a saying that I like you know you know you know with in early in the early days it's not necessarily the time to you know crack open the champagne you still have to demonstrate product market fit you have to help build a market in our particular case so there's a lot of hard work launch it's a start line it's just like it's only a step along the whole process so a lot more steps ahead but we're very focused we know we believe we know what we need to do and it's gonna be a phenomenal year for us all right what's coolest thing you heard this week and the weirdest thing you heard this week no coming no calm that was the weirdest thing you heard okay we know some weird things going on ow cube alumni wingman on the crypto for the cube great to see you good to have you back on thank you very much good stuff Alberto entrepreneur founder of digital bits yo I'm John furry - cube more coverage here in Puerto Rico blockchain unbound after the short break

>> Voiceover: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell EMC World 2017, brought to you by Dell EMC. >> Welcome back to Las Vegas, we are here at Dell EMC World. I'm your host Rebecca Knight along with my co-host Paul Gillin. This is going to be a great segment, I'm so excited to have you both on the program. We're here welcoming Carolyn Rodz, she is the founder of Circular Board, and Elizabeth Gore, who is an entrepreneur in residence here at Dell. Welcome both to the program. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Thanks for having us. >> So this week you unveiled Alice. This is the first AI based virtual advisor for women entrepreneurs. I want get to talking about Alice, meeting Alice, but first I want to just ask you Elizabeth, you're an entrepreneur in residence at Dell, explain to us how that program works. >> Sure, so it's my great pleasure to have worked the last almost three years now with Dell and now Dell Technologies. Every couple of years Michael Dell and his leadership team choose an individual who have a very specific focus to support eco-systems for entrepreneurs. So we use all of the muscle we have across Dell Technologies to support policy for entrepreneurs, in the 180 countries that we live and work. Also what are the best eco-systems and platforms that help entrepreneurs scale. And one of them is the Circular Board and we've been really proud to partner with them for the last two years because they use a digital platform that is very scalable and women are only getting 3% of venture capital in the US. So access to capital, mentorship, networks is really critical and so we're really excited to partner with, what you'll hear about Alice, to help solve that problem. >> So Carolyn, Elizabeth just laid out the problem, that women are just not getting a lot of easy dollars, there's not a lot of support, not a lot of encouragement, there's just a lack of community. So talk about Alice and how she fills this gap. >> Yeah so we hear a lot about the problem, and realized it was time to find a solution. And that's what Alice is all about, so Alice was started as, really the answer to what I wish I would've had when I started my first company years ago and what we saw over and over again with women everywhere. And that was integration into the existing start-up eco-system, and connectivity to resources like events, experts, content and tools to help their companies grow. And that's exactly what Alice does, is connect them based on their unique company profile and their real time needs. >> And you can go to helloalice.com and you can start using it right away. >> Exactly. >> So what does it do? How does it work? >> Yeah so a founder enters in their profile based on their industry, stage of growth and their location. Alice curates needs based on what they're looking for today. So if they're looking for a technology solution to a problem that they're having it will connect her to the right resources for her company to grow. If she needs an attorney to help her, who is the right attorney based on where she is and the industry that she's in. So for every person the answers are different, and as Alice populates she gets smarter and smarter about a founder's needs and starts to use predictive learning to make smarter responses for her. >> How do you ensure Alice will be used only by women? I mean, can anybody access this resource? >> Yeah she's open to everybody, she was really coded with gender in mind so from the start we looked at what were the unique needs of women, how did they learn and absorb information best. And that was were we started to create the platform but certainly she's open to everybody. The more the merrier. >> So give us some use cases. I know that you just unveiled her yesterday, a big deal. But talk about how you see an entrepreneur in, say, a small town somewhere in America using Alice and finding success. >> Well you look at what's happening today, it's a very fragmented eco-system. So there are great events, there are wonderful accelerators and programs around the world happening. But if you're in a place that doesn't have these resources you're certainly removed from the eco-system, or even if you are in a city that has great resources, lots of times when you're starting a company you aren't familiar with what exists and so it's a huge learning curve to just start to navigate that space. And that's where Alice comes in. It's how to help founders navigate the eco-system and also connect with expertise that may not be in their own location. So if you're in New York and working on a technology platform there are great resources available in Silicon Valley that you're missing out on and our goal is to bridge that gap. >> You mentioned Carolyn, Alice is something you wish you had had when you were starting your business. As entrepreneurs can you talk about some of the biggest challenges that you faced. >> Sure, one of the things that when you're launching a company is there are, as Carolyn said, a lot of resources out there but you're time poor as an entrepreneur. Your heads are down, you're just trying to get profitable, make sure your product is correct. So what is really critical is that this is curated exactly for that moment in the life cycle of a business. So am I just getting started, am I raising my series A or am I pre-IPO entrepreneur? I want the resources in that moment that are right for me. And what has not worked, Dell has really focused on a lot of platforms but you can't just take an existing platform and turn it pink for women, that just doesn't work. So we actually were really proud that Pivotal, one of our family of companies within Dell, did thousands of hours of user testing with the Circular Board team and actually looked at how do women access information, how do they access capital, why aren't so many of them integrating into existing systems? So all the way down to the code they've been really thinking about how to integrate women into these existing systems so they will raise their capital, get the mentorship, tap into supplier diversity programs, and that's why we think helloalice.com is going to be a huge change agent. >> I think we can agree the venture capital world, particularly in Silicon Valley, is very male dominated. There's an old boy's network there. Have you sensed that there is a willingness to change? That that attitude is changing at last? >> Yeah I think so. There's certainly some unconscious bias but women are starting companies now twice as fast as their male counterparts, so anyone who's really into-- >> Woah, where'd that number come from? >> The Chamber of Commerce announced that last year. >> Wow. >> Now unfortunately their fail rates are still unusually high and only 2% are making over a million dollars, however for an enterprise company like Dell or for a venture capital firm, I want to see those companies that are coming out rapidly and have the best products. So yes, they're starting to really understand and look at how do we interact with women in their companies. However what Alice will do is provide a great pipeline for the best companies to those venture firms. And you've already thought about that a lot. >> Yeah and we've also seen there's a huge desire from all of these resources to get more women involved in their programs. There's a huge desire from the women to get more involved and what we're trying to do is filter down to who are the right women for the right programs at the right time and make those connections. >> So tell me more, when you look ahead and at what Alice could possibly do for a generation and future generations of female entrepreneurs, what's your greatest hope? What's your greatest wish? >> Re-writing the statistics around women entrepreneurs ultimately and boosting economies, creating jobs and solving the big problems of the world. But what's exciting is, you think about the process right now where you turn to experts for advice, and imagine being able to scale that expertise, not only to the people who know that person, or where those personal relationships exist, but being able to provide access to every entrepreneur whether they reside in a rural community in Africa or in the middle of Silicon Valley. >> Where does the data come from? What are you plugging into on the back end? >> We relied heavily on partnerships and experts to find the best of the best. It isn't a numbers game in terms of quantity of content, but really looking for the very best answers to specific problems that founders have. So we've partnered with organizations like The Kauffman Foundation and Case Foundation and Small Business Administration and Department of Commerce and companies like Dell who have been really supportive in terms of getting us really quality content to help solve these problems. >> Dell, as you started talking about how Michael Dell is a big believer in this and obviously he's an entrepreneur himself. But can you tell us a little bit more about what skin Dell has in this game. >> Sure, absolutely. So we look at this as a business case for us, a business imperative as well as a social and economic comparative. So it is important to us to be the in-the-end solutions provider now that we have a suite of companies that can do that, from the day I buy my first laptop and try to launch my company, all the way up to commercial and enterprise solutions. So if we are really going to be that we have to be in front of these entrepreneurs. So Alice is way for us to get in front of fast growth entrepreneurs, provide the technology, the resources and the knowledge we have to be in front of them. So for us that's really important business. For the social and economic case, women put 90% of their income back into their communities and families and so for us, Michael and I have always believed that entrepreneurs are the ones solving the major social problems out there with solutions that are even more sustainable sometimes than Government, or most time frankly. So for us it's also a social imperative and women just happen to be the ones that are getting stuff done, both for their communities, their family and their business. >> So there's a doing good element to this-- >> Sure absolutely, absolutely. >> You both talked about a lot of entrepreneurs, and there's so much start-up activity, everybody's an entrepreneur these days. What are the characteristics of the successful ones? What do you look for Elizabeth? >> So I'm a very founder first person. I see a lot of great ideas but that founder has to have the drive, the know-how and the make it happen attitude. I also think that founders, it's really important that they understand technology. Every company is a technology company now, it doesn't matter what industry you're in. So first, do they have that drive, do they have that how-to attitude, do they surround themselves with people that are going to help their company scale 'cause every founder has weaknesses, do they understand the technology eco-system? So those are part of the things that I look for. I'm sure you might have different. >> Yeah those certainly, and I think that persistence. It is really hard to be heard among a very cluttered eco-system, and where we see the greatest success are those founders that continue to put forward and keep asking the questions and keep enlisting the help that they need to find the solutions that they're looking for. >> Before we let you go, what's your piece of advice for women out there who's starting a business, maybe struggling a bit. Beyond hook up with Alice, what's your best advice for her? >> Build the right team, find a co-founder, enlist the right investors to help provide the capital that you need, get the right partners on board and really look beyond just your employees as your team, but really look, who is the circle that you're enlisting behind your business to make it happen. >> And I would say it's really important to put purpose into profit. So really understand, while you're going after that profitability, why did you start in the first place, what is the purpose that your company is going after? On those hard days put that back into your focus. So put purpose into profit. >> And let's be sure to tell people how they get in touch, how they find Hello Alice, Twitter, a website and all. >> Visit helloalice.com to register and participate in Alice. And we want to welcome everybody, not just entrepreneurs but also experts and investors and advisors as well. And then online you can follow us at Alice Connects on Twitter and Facebook. >> Carolyn, Elizabeth, thanks so much. >> Pleasure, thank you all. >> Thanks so much. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Paul Gillin, we will have more from Dell EMC World just after this.

>> Narrator: Live from Austin, Texas, it's theCube. Covering South by Southwest 27 deeds, brought to you by Intel. Now, here's John Furrier. >> Okay, welcome back everyone. Live coverage of South by Southwest here in Austin, Texas. This is Silicon Angle's theCube, our flagship program. We're going to go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier. Our next guest Ali Vahabaznet. >> Almost, Vahabzadeh. >> Vahazbadeh, Vahabzadeh, CEO of Chariot, a hot start up that was acquired by Ford Mobility Solutions last September. Really innovating in what I call the sharing economy which has been called, not I call, the sharing economy. But this really highlights the paradigm shift. So Ali, I want to thank you for coming on, I appreciate it. >> Thank you for having me, John. >> So Chariot is one of your cities not only in the Bay Area but here in Austin. Give a quick highlight of what's going on here in Austin for you guys and the freebie from the South by Southwest goers. >> Yes, Chariot is reinventing mass transit by crowdsourcing new routes in neighborhoods that either don't have the most commuter options or there's commuter options but there's not enough space on buses and trains. So we crowdsource these routes and we launch operations in these neighborhoods once we hit a tipping point and we get vehicles on the road. We started in San Francisco in 2014. We expanded to Austin, and then most recently in September we got acquired by Ford Smart Mobility to become a cornerstone of Ford's mobility strategy for many years to come. >> So this really highlights the sharing economy as I said, but what's going on is that the users interface to the real world is becoming digital. So obviously cars are not digital yet, they'll be self driving soon and Ford's announced mass production in five years. But it points to their relationship with others, collaboration. This is the big AI trend that gets surfaced in real-world benefits. >> Yeah, it's incredible. Everyone knows that Ford makes incredible cars, but Ford also wants to be a mobility company as well. With this thing that we have in our pockets, the phone, it provides a tremendous amount of data about us, commuters, riders, people who are trying to get from A to B. By harnessing that data for now it's given to us by the users themselves. By harnessing that data we can make some really intelligent and efficient choices about where our vehicles, in our example, 14-passenger Ford transit wagons, should be and could be to pick people up at the times where they need it the most. >> All right Ali, I want to kind of get you to riff on something with me. Imagine you're re-imagining the future, I love that. Or reinventing mass transit. So re-imagine some of the amazing things that are possible in your vision. Just kind of roll forward a few years. I mean we're going to have headsets and virtual reality and holograms that can bring my experience inside the vehicle. Not only am I just getting a ride somewhere, I mean in our area in Silicon Valley the Google buses and the company buses they've all gone wifi. They're working away. So I can imagine that you must have a vision for technology into your product. Can you share you vision on that? >> Yeah, imagine most people's commute is a twice-daily worst part of their day. We've moved the needle even without a lot of experimental things going on inside of Chariot. We've move it to, it's actually a decent part of your day and you don't have to worry about it anymore. What Chariot and Ford is looking forward to doing in the next couple of years is to actually make it, believe it or not, the best part of your day. You mentioned VR, entertainment options, social connecting options with other people in a Chariot who you may either want to network with professionally in the future or maybe even socially. Perhaps your next date is onboard. So there's so many things that you could be doing in that Chariot because we know your preferences. We know where you're commuting from and to. We know what you want to eat for dinner. We know where you want to go for happy hour on Thursday night and the Chariot's AI can actually be suggesting to you what Chariot to get on at what time and these folks are going to be onboard with you at that point. >> So you now I'm craving some Buffalo wings, so you just pull off the exit and I get some wings? Or bring out a Fitbit, or Johnny's going to take a bio break. I'm kind of being over the top, but this is what you're thinking, right? >> Perhaps you're on a diet and the device on your hand or the app, the diet app on your phone knows exactly what you had for breakfast and lunch. Perhaps the Chariot is headed in a certain neighborhood with a vegetarian option and you've had too much meat in the day. It could suggest to you hey, get off on this curb because there's a wonderful option here for you to have a non-protein meal. >> John: But that's in your future, you see that vision. >> It's in the future and it's not too distant from where we are right now. I mean what I think is cool between Chariot and Ford is Ford has these incredible resources. Also has vision with what they can do in the vehicle. Chariot, in a very short amount of time, in less than three years, we were able to penetrate a very attractive market of young professionals and actually have them tell us what they want to do, where they want to go from and where they want to go to. We're just scratching the surface right now. >> Tell me about your experiences here at South by Southwest. What's the vibe of the show? We've seen some touchpoints around. It's a VR show, it's some AI. Other things that you're observing that you could surface and say are the key top story lines that are developing on day one of South by Southwest? >> Yeah, you know it's my first South by Southwest, John. I was walking over here with a friend. I was remarking to her that I actually feel this is probably what world's fairs were like 100 years ago when people were discovering new technologies and companies like Ford were actually big participants in world's fairs. This feels like a 21st century world's fair. I'm just seeing such incredible installations and companies that I've never heard of before looking to make an impression on consumers or future users. Companies that don't even have a product, don't even have a service in reality right now and are just providing you a peak into their future. It's my first day here. I can't wait for the next few days. >> Well it's also a good mash up of creativity, industry, and just people, it's a melting pot of just kind of laid-back. It's Austin so it's pretty cool here. Easy living, as they say. >> Yeah, absolutely. There are people who are looking at what the future can hold. Also there are people who I can see in the look of their eyes what is my next start up going to be? Or where can I take my career next? Is it smart transportation like Chariot? Or it is something in VR or AI? Or something that doesn't even exist today? So it's great to see this collaboration. People also meeting each other who've never met each other before. Breaking plates and meeting new people for the first time. >> Okay, so personal question, last question to give you kind of on a personal note. Take your CEO of Chariot hat off at Ford Smart Mobility, put on your personal Ali hat. What are you most excited about? Not with the Chariot, but outside of Chariot as you look at the real world technically speaking. What are you most excited about? What's floating your boat, so to speak? Or driving your car or Chariot? >> Riding in a Chariot, you don't have to drive anymore. The first thing that comes to mind is I'm honored that I'm going to have dinner with a bunch of mayors this evening including Mayor Adler and several others. And I tell you what, when I started the company three years ago, no one would pick up our phone, regulators, city officials and the like. But now I think that the city and urban leaders whether it's Chamber of Commerce, the Mayor's Office, the Transit Authority, the Housing Authority, whatever the case may be, they really are open to not just innovations in transit, but innovations in housing, innovations working together, live-work. In a very short three years I've seen that sea change in the attitude. It's going to be, I think it's a dam that's opened up. I think you're only going to see this momentum accelerate with the civic authorities and innovators and technologists actually working together. >> It's a real impact. Final, final question since one popped in my head. What is AI going to do for your business, your industry, transportation and Chariot in general? What is AI's impact to your industry? I think AI's going to take cars off the street because we are going to know where people are coming from and going to at what probable hours. So we can run much more efficient routes and much more efficient networks. We'll run larger vehicles, larger format vehicles as opposed to single occupancy vehicles like you'll see on Rainey Street tonight. So that's gets me really excited because it doesn't only improve the human experience, it helps the environment and it's all good things. I can't think of a downside for AI in transportation. >> Well there might be some disruption in some transition. Let's just take one simple example. Parking lots, what are you going to turn them into? >> I can't wait to see parking lots converted into lower-income housing, into parks. >> Public easements. >> Into public easements, into more shared office workspace. >> The impact's bigger than people think. >> Just walk down Braswell Street or Congress Street. It seems like every other building is a parking garage. Or half of a building is now a parking garage. We have to stop building parking garages. We have to stop providing free parking both at home and at work so that we can force, transition people into the different formats of commuting. >> So all these jobs that are going away are now being shifted. Now again, idea for people out there watching just get in the business of retrofitting garages into housing, that's a new opportunity. >> That's my next start up, John, are you in? >> John: I'm in. >> Okay. >> Seed funding, this is theCube here live at South by Southwest at the Intel AI Lounge. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. More after this short break. (upbeat instrumental music)