>> (Announcer) From Boston, Massachusetts, it's the Cube! Covering LiveWorx 18. Brought to you by PTC. >> Welcome back to the Seaport in Boston, everybody. This is day one of the LiveWorx show, PTC's big IoT user conference, but it's much, much more than that. My name's Dave Vellante, Stu Miniman. You're watching the Cube, the leader in LiveTech coverage. It's really our pleasure to have Devin Cleary here, he's the Director of Events at PTC. Dev, thanks so much for coming on The Cube, and thanks for putting together such a great show. >> Oh, thank you so much for having me. This is great. >> You're welcome. So, I say it's a user conference, but it's so much more. I mean, talk about what your intent was and what you've created, you and your team at LiveWorx. >> Absolutely. So for us, we take a step back in corporate events. And we're really trying to bring sort of a unique flair to the corporate events world. In a nutshell, we at PTC have a 25 year legacy of doing really powerful user events, and it was really an inspiration two years ago to kind of shake the mold. And again, no pun intended, be disruptive in the marketplace. So for us, we sort of coined a new term or strategy that we call Industry Inclusiveness. And this is something where we wanted to sort of break down the four walls of the company, and invite industry influencers, individuals who are leading the charge, inclusive of actual competitors, 'cause for us, it's better together. And the whole story and talk track around LiveWorx is collaboration accelerates innovation. So for us, we want to make sure we embrace a lot of different people, walks of life, and diversity, and the intent is to create a one time a week a year, successful program that focuses and profiles nine of the most disruptive technologies on the planet. So this is everything from robotics to AI, to IoT, to AR, blockchain, and so much more. And for us, this is really the essence of what LiveWorx has become, which again for us, we want everyone to know that this event is sort of the world's most respected digital transformation conference. >> So, couple things I want to point out. Well, so over 6,000 people here, the kickoff was in the theater-in-the-round I've only seen that-- We do over a hundred events every year, I've only seen it done twice, and it's worked both times. I think it's a home run when you do the theater-in-the-round. The intro was like, I tweeted out this morning, it was like an Olympic opening ceremony. I mean really, where do you get your inspiration from that? >> So, you know what, for us, I have a really amazing team that works with me and collaboratively. And for us, we really want to sort of challenge the status quo. So, we always look for things actually outside of the tech bubble, if you will. We look at music. We look at fashion. We look at art. We look at a lot of pop culture sort of references and that sort of stems our ideas of how we sort of nurture and create what we call the apex, or LiveWorx or what you saw this morning. And for us, I'm all about what I call delight moments. So these are moments that frankly are sort of above and beyond the core content of what the conference offers and just making people have a great time. Showmanship and entertainment is just as much important as the core again content that we offer at LiveWorx. >> Dev, you've got a big tent here with a lot of different topics. There's a show I go to, we talk about the random collision of unusual suspects, which this reminded me of. Can you talk a little bit about how in these diverse communities, yet we should see some overlap and some bumping together. >> Yeah. Absolutely. So, again with LiveWorx, and sort of again profiling these nine to ten most disruptive technologies out there, we're always trying to recruit people that are very diverse from various backgrounds. You know, one specific goal that we have, just from a geographic persepective is making sure that over half our audience is from international markets outside of the United States. So again, when you're bumping shoulders or walking the halls everywhere around us, you're guaranteed to hear someone that comes from a different walk of life, a different experience, a different educational background and that adds a lot of value to the overall conference. Now, again, we target everyone from administrators to engineers, developers and more because really this show runs the gamut on everything from product design and sort of the ideas of what you want to do, all the way through service, manufacturing, it is the full scope of industry 4.0. So, to your point, there's a lot of intersection and a lot of overlapping because every company, every person, every individual, wants to experience and learn how to embrace what we call disruptive tech. >> You know, again, we do a lot of shows and the vast majority, when someone like you guys brings us to a show, they want to showcase their products and basically pimp up their own stuff. You chose a different approach. First of all, thank you for that. So, this today has been all about thought leadership. Stu and I were saying it reminds us of some of the stuff we do with MIT. Where you have professors, you have thought leaders, talking about not, kind of frankly, some boring products. >> And it's not a sales pitch. >> Right, it's not a sales pitch. But, why that decision and what's your vision for where you want to take this thing? >> Yeah, so again, I would say that a lot of conferences, and this is no offense to my brothers and my sisters in the events world out there, but people are so sick and tired of going to the standard trade show. The days of pipe-and-drape and aisles of just being pitched to and receiving free stress balls, and hiring staff that might not even be employed by the company, but they just frankly look good, those days are completely over. In our audience, the technologists who really matter in this world, who are doing a lot of great work, they want that substance and that core content. So, for us, it's really a vision about that's embraced and sort of evolved into give back and let the content lead your success. And that is going to help amplify the voice and further the mission. We look at LiveWorx as a catalyst well beyond the company that employs me and the people that work for just these companies. We have a vision to make Boston an epicenter, a headquarters, a world-renown attraction for technologists world-wide knowing this city for IoT and for AR. And for us, we embrace the innovation district as that pallet, that backdrop, that environment to allow us to really accomplish that. So, LiveWorx is growing exponentially. We experienced double digit growth this year, which was amazing. Starting where I was only with this company two years ago and less than 25 hundred attendees and we're at 6,100 right now live on the show floor at LiveWorx. So the future is really bright for us, and we're embracing this notion of the convention center is only going to be constricting for so long. It's time that we also implode those four walls and we embrace the outside. And what our plans are going for, which I'm really excited to sort of announce, is we're going to be now becoming more of an industrial innovation week in Boston, and taking our plans mainstream. So, that means taking the content that we focus on, and the partners that we work with, and the industry thought leaders and now you start to actually replicate these events throughout the entire seaport. So, think of it, and again most of you know South by Southwest, I'm a big fan and an avid follower, think of it South by Southwest meets Industrial, and that is the future of this show. >> Love it, and you know, we're thrilled to be part of it. And it's palpable. You actually see now, in the seaport... You know, we were talking off camera, you can't compete with Silicon Valley or on terms with Silicon Valley does. You shouldn't even try. We're bicoastal, we have an office in Palo Alto we know it well. It's a unique vortex. But certainly, IoT, Blockchain, VR, there really is some clear innovation going on here so, if you can focus on that, you can actually really blossom an ecosystem and that's really what you're doing. >> Oh, absolutely. And, again, PTC has been headquartered here for over 25 years, they're a leader in industrial innovation. They're a company that believes in giving back. We have curated and nurtured through partnerships with Harvard Business School, with MIT Innovation Lab, etc. We have cultivated some of the greatest startups of our time right now, who are creating groundbreaking technology in IoT, in AR, that is changing the world. We're even actually doing work right now in our backyard with Boston Children's Hospital, for example. Doing incredible work with our Vuforia product in AR that's helping actually find a cure for Alzheimer's. So, again, the possibilities are endless, and the innovation is limitless. >> Well, you're the hot company right now, obviously growing very rapidly, you're kind of like the Comeback Kid. You're clearly punching above your weight. The Scott Kirsner article in the Globe was unbelieveable. >> (Devin) Thank you I know we're very... Shout out to Scott. >> And so, you got to be thrilled with that. But, what's interesting to me, Dev, is you're not... You could ride that wave, and just pump up PTC but you're doing things that will allow you to sustain this as a community member, paying it forward, you know, it's kind of a cliche, but that's what I see. Thoughts? >> A hundred percent. And, again, the way that we sort of frame LiveWorx is I want you to think of PTC as the presenting sponsor. They are an investor in the vision that this team has to carry forward the community and the movement all around industrial innovation. And again, we feel that Boston being sort of our headquarters in our backyard, it's important that we're giving back and again, furthering that opportunity to further solidify our right as a rightful heir of IoT and AR, as a city, as a community and as the state of Massachusetts. >> Dev, wondering if you could give our audience that didn't come to this event a quick flavor of what's going on, flavoring and I loved you had the Boston food trucks all right outside. They're a little warm. My friends from the west coast are like, "This isn't warm." But for Boston, it hit summer. But, give us a quick tour around what people missed. >> Yeah, so we're all about an immersive experience at LiveWorx. Again, you're going to have sort of a checklist of what you absolutely need to have at an event to sustain someone's expectations. So, the content, the networking, the value. But again, we like to take it a step further and things that I call delight moments. So, for example, this year in Extropolis, and Extropolis, for those of you at home, that is our sort of expectation shattering, ground-breaking, playground for adults in technology. So, every corner, every ounce, every inch of this show floor has something to engage, ignite the 5 senses and tell our story. And one example specifically that I love to highlight this year is I've actually created the vision with a whole slew of individuals from PTC and partners and whatnot. Something we call the X-factory. Manufacturing is one of the biggest industries in business in the world. Mostly every company at an enterprise level has some sort of manufacturing component to it. And what we wanted to do this year is create the factory of the future. Meaning, working with the leaders like McKinsey, and again HeroTech and global brands in Germany who are defining manufacturing and who founded manufacturing in our history, we have partnered with them to say, "What does that factory of the future look like? What are companies going to be doing five, ten, fifteen years from now and what can we expect?" You're getting that first at LiveWorx, which is awesome, and the whole process is "Let's not have a standard kiosk. Let's not do a laptop with a video. Let's actually build out a 20,000 square foot industrial factory with multiple stations from digital engineering to service to again, AR induced digital twins and everything else in between. And let's actually have every single attendee create, design and manufacture a smart connected product. We're working with our partner, Bell and Howell, from a shipping, service and supply chain perspective, and again, we are blowing the roof off this show on that one activation, and there's over a hundred in total throughout this entire show this week. So, that's a little bit of a flavor of LiveWorx. And beyond that, we do things, everything from a puppy daycare hour to sort of do a high tech low touch feel. We do incredible food presentations and we're going to be ending with a big bang tomorrow with our closing party called the Mix-It Six, which is one of my favorite programs the entire week. And that is actually a superhero themed event where we're actually having a guest host and a personal friend, Paul Rudd, who was the Ant Man for Marvel, he'll be hosting our event. And the whole notion around superheroes is that we tell everyone this week "Unleash your inner superhero". Take advantage of the technology that is on display, and realize how it can enable and empower you to now have superhuman powers. So, everything from AR giving you the power to see the invisible, to IoT helping you get the power to predict the future. Everything is possible and everything is creative at LiveWorx. >> Well, it's obviously working. And so, I'm sure the execs are seeing this going, "Great. Good Job. Way to go. We've got some momentum. Let's double down." But, you back up two years ago, how did you sell this to the folks? Cause we see a lot of guys like, "Alright, how many leads we going to get out. How much revenue we going to drive" How'd you get through that knothole? >> So, let's put it in this perspective. There's a lot of intrinsic and intangible ways to measure the success of a show, and the value and the impact brought to a company. One thing I would actually say, I've worked in the tech industry for over six years now, I've been in the events business for over a decade, I've worked for some of the most incredible and impressive, and media-driven startups in the world right now. PTC, though, is a very interesting ecosystem. Their executives actually embrace the notion of what I presented first and foremost, about again, industry inclusiveness as we call that term. And for us, we have a vision at PTC to be disruptive, to be ground-breaking. If we do not embrace that ourselves, as our culture and our business model, how do we hope someone else to believe in the product, and the vision and the mission that we set forth in the marketplace. >> And from that, you got a response of, "Yeah, let's do it." >> So, again, am I going to be a hundred percent honest and transparent? Was everyone embracing that a hundred percent? No. But again, I think the proof is in the pudding and I think again it's a leap of faith in saying, "Listen, take a chance. Be disruptive, and see what the product of our fruits of our labor could be." And again, here you have it three years later, triple the size of the audience, tripling the size of the success, seeing multiple customers, multiple partners multiple industry leaders now attaching themselves to this brand. So for us, LiveWorx is nothing greater than a record breaking success this year, and I'm so excited for the rest of you at home to experience on the live stream, or again check out 2019 June 10-13. >> June 10, right here. Right? >> (Devin) Right here again. >> Dev, first of all thanks so much for having The Cube here and making us a part of this awesome event and look forward to working with you in the future. Congratulations on all your success. >> Thank you so much. >> You're very welcome. By the way, check out thecube.net that's where all the videos here will be. Check out siliconangle.com all the editorial coverage. Wikibond.com is where the research is. We're a wrap here from LiveWorx day one. Dave Vellante, for Stu Miniman. Thanks so much for watching, we'll see you next time.

>>long from Las Vegas. It's the Q covering a ws re invent 2019. Brought to you by Amazon Web service is and in Came along with its ecosystem partners. >>Hey, welcome back to the Cube. Lisa Martin at AWS Reinvent in Vegas. Very busy. Sands Expo Center. Pleased to be joined by my co host this afternoon. Justin Warren, founder and chief analyst at Pivot nine. Justin, we're hosting together again. We are. >>It's great to be >>here. It's great to have you that. So. Justin Meyer, please welcome a couple of our cue ball. Um, back to the program. A couple guys from nut up. We have Anthony Lie, the S B, P and G m of the Cloud business unit. Welcome back at the >>very much great to be here >>and color coordinating with Anthony's Jandi Stephenson, Chief Technology officer and GPS Cloud. Welcome back. >>Thank you. Thank you >>very shortly. Dress, guys and very >>thank you. Thank you. It's, uh, the good news Is that their suits anymore. So we're not going to have to wear ties >>comfortable guys net up a w s this event even bigger than last year, which I can't even believe that 65,000 or so thugs. But, Anthony, let's start with you. Talk to us about what's new with the net up AWS partnership a little bit about the evolution of it. >>Yeah. I mean, you know, we started on AWS. Oh, my gosh. Must be almost five or six years ago now and we made a conscious effort to port are operating system to AWS, which was no small task on dhe. It's taken us a few years, but we're really starting to hit our stride Now. We've been very successful, were on boarding customers on an ever increasing rate. We've added more. Service is on. We just continue to love the cloud as a platform for development. We can go so fast, and we can do things in in an environment like aws that, frankly, you just couldn't do on premise, you know, they're they're complexity and EJ ineighty of on premise was always a challenge. The cloud for us is an amazing platform where we can go very, very fast >>and from a customer demand standpoint. Don't talk to me about that, Chief technologist. One of the thing interesting things that that Andy Jassy shared yesterday was that surprised me. 97% of I t spend is still on from So we know that regardless of the M word, multi cloud work customers are living in that multi cloud world. Whether it's by strategy, a lot of it's not. A lot of it's inherited right, but they have to have that choice, right? It's gonna depend on the data, the workload, etcetera. What can you tell us about when you're talking with customers? What what? How are they driving NetApp evolution of its partnership with public provider AWS? >>So actually, I don't know if it's the desired state to be running in a hybrid, mostly cloud fashion, but it's it's It's driven by strategy, and it's usually driven by specific workloads and on the finding the best home for your application or for your workers at any given time. Because it's it's ultimately unrealistic for on premise customers to try to compete with like a machine and keep learning algorithms and the rate of development and rate off basically evolution in the cloud. So you always have to be there to be able to stay competitive, so it's becoming a part of the strategy even though it was probably asked that developers that drove a lot off cloud adoption to begin with. Maybe, maybe not. Not in favor of the c i o r. You have, like a lot of Cloud Cloud sprawling, but there's no longer sprawling it. It's part of the strategy before every company in my way >>heard from any Jesse in the keynote yesterday about the transformation being an important thing. And he also highlighted a lot of enterprise. Nedda has a long history with enterprise, Yes, very solid reputation with enterprise. So it feels to me like this This is an enterprise show. Now that the enterprise has really arrived at with the cloud, what are you seeing from the customers that you've already had for a long time? No, no, no, I'm familiar with it. Trust Net up. We're now exploring the Clouded and doing more than just dipping their toe in the water. What are they actually doing with the cloud and and we'll get up together, you know, >>we see and no one ever growing list of workload. I think when people make decisions in the cloud, they're not making those traditional horizontal decisions anymore. They're making workload by workload by workload decisions and Internet EPPS history and I think, uh, performance on premises, given customers peace of mind now in the cloud, they sort of know that what's been highly reliable, highly scaleable for them on premise, they can now have that same confidence in the cloud. So way started. Like just like Amazon. We started off seeing secondary workloads like D r Back Up Dev ops, but now is seeing big primaries go A s, a p big database workloads, e commerce. Ah, lot of HBC high forming compute. We're doing very well in oil and gas in the pharmaceutical industries where file has been really lacking on the public cloud. I think we leaned in as a company years ago and put put, put a concerted effort to make it there. And I think now the workloads a confident that were there and we can give them the throughput. We give them the performance on the protocols and now we're seeing big, big workloads come over to the public clouds. >>And he did make a big deal about transformation being important. And a lot of that was around the operational model. Let's let's just the pure technology. But what about the operating model? How are you seeing Enterprises Transformer? There's a lot of traditionally just taken a workload, do a bit of lift and shift and put it to the cloud. Where are they now transforming the way they actually operate? Things because of >>cloud? Absolutely. I mean, they have to They have to adopt the new technologies and new ways of doing business. So I mean, I think they are actually celebrating that to answer point. I think this is not a partnership and we're partnering with. We have a very unique story. We're partnering with all of them and have really deep engineering relationship with all of them. And they are now able to go after enterprise type workloads that they haven't been gone. I've been able to go after before, so that's why it's such a strategic strategic relationship that we have with all of them. That sort of brings in in the freedom of choice. You can basically go everywhere anywhere. That, in my opinion, is that true hyper cloud story lot has always been really difficult. But with the data management capabilities of not top, it's really easy to move my greater replicate across on premise toe are hyper scaler off choice. >>I mean, I think you know, if you're in enterprise right now, you know you're a CEO. You're probably scared to death of, like, being uber, you know exactly on. Uh, you know, if you're you know, So speed has now become what we say. The new scale they used to be scaled is your advantage. And now, if you're not fast, you could be killed any day by some of these startups who just build a mobile app. And all of a sudden they've gotten between you and the customer and you've lost. And I think CEOs are now. How fast are we going? How many application developers do we have? And did a scientist do we have? And because of that, that they're seeing Amazon as a platform for speed on. So that's just that paranoia. I think digital transformation is driving everybody to the cloud. >>You're right. If we look at transformation if a business and Andy Jassy and John for your talked about this and that exclusive interview that they did the other day. And Andy, if you're and a legacy enterprise and you're looking at your existing market share segment exactly, and you're not thinking there's somebody else. What assisting on there on the side mirror? Objects in mirror are closer. Not getting ready for that. You're on the wrong. You're going to be on the wrong side of that equation. But if we look at cloud, it has had an impact on traditional story one of naps. Taglines is data driven. If we look at transformation and if we'll even look at the translation of cloud in and of itself, data is at the heart of everything. Yes, and they talk to us about net APS transformation as cloud is something that you're enabling on prime hybrid multi cloud as you talked about. But how is your advantage allowing customers to not only be data driven, but to find value in that data that gives them that differentiation that they need for the guy or a girl that's right behind them. I already did take over. >>Well, I think if you're you know, if you're an enterprise, you know, the one asset you have is data. You have history now >>a liability Now with an asset. >>Can they can they do anything with it. Do they know where it is? Do they know how to use it where it should be, you know, Is it secured? Is it protected all of those things? It's very hard for enterprise to answer those questions. What one end up, I think it's done incredibly well, is by leaning in as much as we did onto AWS way. Give our customers the absolute choice to leave our on premise business and a lot of people, I think years ago thought we were crazy. But because now we've expanded our footprint to allow customers to run anywhere without any fear of lock in, people will start to see us now not as a storage vendor but as a strategic partner, and that that that strategic partnership is really has really come about because of our willingness to let people move the data and manage the data wherever they needed to be. On that something our customers have said, you know, used to be a storage vendor on along with the other storage vendors and now all of a sudden that we're having conversations with you about strategy where the data should be, you know who's using it is. It's secured all of those kinds of conversations we're having with customers. >>You mentioned moving data, and that was something that again came up in the keynote yesterday. And he mentioned that Hey, maybe instead of taking the data to the computer, we should bring the computer's data. That's something that Ned Abbas has long actually talked about. I remember when you used to mention data fabric was something about We want to take your data and then make it available to where the computer is. I'd like you to talk it through that, particularly in light of like a I and ML, which is on the tip of everybody's tongue. It's It's a bit of I think, it's possibly reaching the peak of the hype cycle at the moment s o what our customers actually doing with their data to actually analyze it? Are they actually seeing real value from machine learning? And I are We still isn't just kicking the tires on that. >>I mean, the biggest problem with deep learning and machine learning is having our accumulating enough on being able to have the data or lessening that gravity by being able to move it then you can take advantage off states maker in AWS, the big Cleary and Google, whatever fits your needs. And then, if you want to store the results back on premise, that's what we enable. With it out of harbor having that free flowing work clothes migration has to count for data. It's not enough to just move your application that that that's the key for machine learning and thought the lakes and others, >>absolutely in terms of speed. Anthony mentioned that that's the new scale. How is flash changing the game >>with perspective, you know, flashes a media type, but it's just, you know, the prices have come down now that you know the price performance couple flashes an obvious thing. Um, and a lot of people are, I think now, making on premise decisions to get rid of spinning disc and replaced with Flash because the R. O. I is so good. Tco the meantime between failures, that's that's so many advantages that percent workloads. It's a better decision, of course. You know, AWS provides a whole bunch of media Onda again. It's just you like a kid in a candy store, you know, as a developer, you look at Amazon. You're like, Oh, my God. Back in the day, we had to make, like, an Oracle decision and everything was Oracle. And now you can just move things around and you can take advantage of all sorts of different utilities. And now you piece together an application very differently. And so you're able to sort of really think I think Dion sees point. People are telling us they have to have a date, a strategy, and then, based on the data strategy, they will then leverage the right storage with the right protocols. They'll then bring that to compute whatever compute is necessary. I think data science is, you know, a little fashion, you know, conscious. Right now, you know, everybody wants to say how many did a scientist they have on their teams? They're looking for needles in haystacks. Someone, they're finding them. Some of them are but not doing it, I think it is. Makes companies very, very nervous. So they're going the results, gonna trying as hard as they can to leverage that technology. >>And you'll see where is that data strategy conversation happening if we think about the four essentials that Andy Johnson talked about yesterday for transformation in one of the first things he said was, it has to be topped at senior level decision. Then it's going to be aggressively pushed down through the organization. Are you seeing this data strategy at the CEO level yet? >>Yeah, we are. But I'm also seeing it much lower. I mean, with the data engineers with the developers, because it's asked, is it is extremely important to be developing on top off production data, specifically if you're doing machine and deep learning. So I think it's both. I think the decision authority has actually moved lower in the company where the developers are the side reliability engineers are actually choosing more technology to use. That fits the product that they are actually creating off course. The strategy happens at the tall, but the influencer and the decision makers, in my opinion, has been moving lower and within the organization. So I'm basically contradicting what yes is a. But to me that is also important. The days off a C t o r C E o. Forcing a specific platform or strategy on to developers. Those days are hopefully gone. >>I think if you're a CEO and you know of any company in any industry you have to be a tech company, you know, it used to be a tech industry, and now every company in the world is now tech. Everyone's building APS. Everyone's using data. Everybody's, you know, trying to figure out machine learning. And so I think what's happening is CEOs are are increasingly becoming technically literate. They have to Exactly. They're dead if they're not. I mean, you know whether your insurance company, your primary platform, is now digital if you're a medical company or primary platform additional. So I think that's a great stat. I saw that about two and 1/2 years ago. The number of software engineering jobs in non tech surpassed the number of jobs in tech, so we used to have our little industry and all the software engineers came to work for tech companies. Now there are more jobs outside the tech segment for engineers, and there are in the text >>well, and you brought up uber a minute ago and I think of a couple of companies examples in my last question for you is real. Rapid is about industries. You look at uber for example, what the fact that the taxi cab companies were transitional. And we're really eager to, you know, AP, if I their organizations, and meet the consumer demand. And then you look at Airbnb and how that's revolutionized hospitality or pellet on how it's revolutionized. Fitness Last question, Jonesy, Let's go for you. Looking at all of the transformation that cloud has enabled and can enable what industry you mentioned when the gas. But is there any industry that you see right now that is just at the tipping point to be ableto blow the door wide open if they transform successfully? >>Well, I mean way are working with a lot off pharma companies and genome sequencing companies that have not actually working with sensitive data on if those companies, I mean, these are people's medical histories and everything, so we're seeing them moving now in close into the cloud so those companies can move to the cloud. Anybody can move to the cloud. You mean these sort of compliancy scaremongering? You cannot move to the cloud because of P. C. I or hip power. Those days are over because aws, Microsoft and Google, that's the first thing they do they have? Ah, stricter compliancy than most on premise Homemade tartar sentence. So I see. I see that industry really moving into the cloud. Now >>who knows what a ws re invent 2020 will look like Gentlemen I wish we had more time, but thank you. Both Young and Anthony were talking with Justin and me today sharing what's new with netapp. What? You guys are enabling customers. D'oh! In multiple. Same old way. We appreciate your time where my car is. Justin Warren, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube from AWS or reinvent 19 from Vegas. Thanks for watching.

>> Everyone, welcome to this special CUBE conversation. We are here in the Palo Alto studios of theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, your host here with Rehan Jalil, former president and CEO of Elastica, here to talk about the People First network and his approach and experiences and his entrepreneurial journey. Rehan thanks for joining us. >> Thank you so much. Thanks for inviting. >> So we were talking before we came on. You have a great entrepreneurial journey. It's a great podcast up on the Mayfield.com website. Really a good story about what you've done. But you had a lot of different kind of experiences through your progression journey in entrepreneurship. You had some failures and some successes. And certainly now with cloud security hot, I'm sure you're probably go into another one. But what it's like right now for you? You just left Semantic. You're kind of out on your own. Are you clipping coupons? Going to go to the beach and hang out? Are you working on a new startup? What's happening? >> I think there's a lot to do. Frankly for me it's very important to actually understand some new problems that needs to be solved. Especially there's so much changing with AI and all the intrusions are you're seeing and breaches that are going on. There are new problems to solve and that's where my head is. I'm not going to take too much of a break. I'm going to get going. >> Yeah you seem to get it going. And that's, most entrepreneurs do that. Let's talk about some of the experience you have. And one of the things we were talking about, before I got my cameras out, back in the old days when before internet, broadband wireless was hot, you get a startup around Wimax, which was early days of broadband wireless. And then you had some failures that successes but didn't work out. Then you had another wireless startup that was successful that became part of that 4G movement. This is an example of being correct in the thesis but you picked the wrong door to go through. Talk about that journey because I think that time in history, this was around 2001, 2002, 2003 timeframe. This was the internet was growing. Wireless, we didn't have the phones we have now. Obviously it's smartphone in 2007 years later. This was pre-mobile boom. This was the beginning of the shift to broadband, true broadband. Now we see it everywhere: LTE, 5G's around the corner. This was a pivotal moment, but for you, you were as an entrepreneur, you had the right decision, broadband wireless, but it was shifting. Feels like cloud today but I want to get in touch here. What did you learn? >> I think they were two very different companies. The mission of the first company which I joined as an employee, the first company, which was to take the high speed internet to the masses. In US and some developed world, they were DSL and cable kind of first coming up, but that infrastructure did not exist in the rest of the world, and the mission was that if we could take same level of high speed connectivity and enable it for the rest of the world, it'd be really cool. And this is back in the day. So thesis was right and hence I joined that company. And it was a lot of fun. I learned a lot. But I think one thing you have to realize, even in those times, to do such a massive project and to go against some massive incumbents which exist in those ecosystems, the differentiation has to be extremely high. And to create differentiation on the radio side of things is just very difficult. And I think so, and of course at that time, the economy took a bad turn and that company didn't have some significant big outcome. From that learning I evolved a thesis that this technology needs to go mobile and this is again pre-iPhone times. It was Blackberry times. So if you were to go talk to investor and say look the world is going to look like when we will have internet in our pocket, the people would smile at you. It's like what are you talking about? So even raising money for that was not easy and that was my first company that I started myself called WiChorus. And these there was what if you could have DSL-type connectivity and literally all internet's power in your pocket. But the learnings from that first company were that if you go try to do that in straight in the wireless side of things in a telco environment, the competition is going to be significantly high. >> The scale, the presence, the market power they have. >> And the purchasing side. Most important is the purchasing cycles. People take time. Even if you come up with something really compelling, by the time it's going to be getting deployed, somebody will catch up to you. >> I mean just think about the time. This is a time for the folks watching, if you're younger or even older like my age, think about it. To actually have a phone in the car and surfing the internet didn't exist. I mean you could barely get email just through a lower latency and a lower bandwidth internet tower. They didn't have the broadband. And so today we surf, watch movies in the car. This was pre-broadband. So I remember a time when we were testing one router, it's like look it we're getting a ping back while we're driving down 101. That was like a miracle. Now it's standard. This is when big shifts happen and a lot of people are comparing that kind of environment to what we're seeing with cloud computing now. You're seeing Amazon Web Services, 26, 27 billion dollar run rate from just 47% a year. Google with great technology and now entering in. Microsoft pivoting to cloud. Those are big players and startups are now trying to figure out what you learned and how to not get in the way but also draft off the momentum. What's your view of this and what advice do you have for entrepreneurs that are out there because this is the number one question that I hear and I talk about entrepreneurs, either behind closed doors or on theCUBE. >> I think it's a blessing to have actually some infrastructure like that, but if you don't do it right it could be a curse. What I mean by that is that you have to leverage something that is available to you and not trying to kind of reinvent, do something slightly better. So I think on the infrastructure side, you have to be very thoughtful on where you could potentially play. And we're frankly some of the big players like AWS or Microsoft and perhaps Google is going to be basically wanting to actually play themselves in that area. However having said that, but the ecosystem and the layer of services that is made available, it's actually a big, big blessing for startups because all the value creation is kind of moving up the chain. And if you leverage that, then the cost of building startups and cost of doing new things is kind of gone down. So we did something very similar with Elastica, which was all about security for the cloud from the cloud. And if we didn't have that infrastructure and the layer available the amount of money that would have required would have been significantly higher. >> So the cloud gets you scaled up, leveled up quicker. Faster to go to market, more agile and dynamic, and then you could wrap IP around those old tasks of provisioning servers. >> There's plenty of intellectual property that first you can put on top of it but in a verticalized fashion. At least for Elastica it was very much kind of a vertical solution of security for the cloud in SaaS applications itself instead of trying to redo your own servers and server stack and our mission. I mean things that are available, just make use of it. >> So you guys were successful with the cloud and you sold that company to Symantec. What year was that? >> Actually it was 2015. We sold it to Bluecoat. And the Bluecoat got acquired by Symantec but then Bluecoat management took over Symantec and that was hurried. So we had like two acquisitions back to back. >> That's nice. It's a good experience. So I want to, before we move on to some of the things that are more personal, I want to get your take on an entrepreneurial dynamic that a lot of successful entrepreneurs take and I want to get your reaction to. Most entrepreneurs are very optimistic. They see the opportunity recognition. They go for it. They're persistent. But they're also in discovery mode to validate their thesis and always kind of self-aware, but there's always the fatal flaw out there that potentially could be there. We talked about broadband wireless, directionally correct, good concept, its fatal flaw was the incumbents. How do you in essence debug a startup venture, venture architecture or venture plan because if there's a fatal flaw in there it's like a bug in software. How as an entrepreneur do you debug that? I mean in your journey as you've had successes and you learned from some of the things that were teachable moments for you, is there a debugging formula? How would you react to that? How would you explain to entrepreneurs? Because that's what they always are naturally doing. Where's the fatal flaw? Where's the fatal flaw? >> And it's I think extremely important. Firstly, the intellectual honesty in setting your own direction is very important. You certainly have to have the aspiration to go do something and have that initiative to go do it, but at the same time setting direction is the most important thing or keep tuning the direction over time is actually extremely important. And then there is no one answer. The key thing is that if you're going to be building something, you have to see if there's going to be a big market for it. That's the first thing. And then when you're going to get there, how the adoption is going to be there. Would you have advantage in adoption as compared to incumbents if they get there? So I think you have to have a thesis because you just can't always project the right way, especially in the enterprise side of things. And if you can actually crack that code, and then if when you do offer this to the market, is it going to be easy to adopt? Easy to accept by the customers? And would it have some kind of an effect of quick movement? I think you have to have all those right. And some trend, if it kind of gives you support. Like when we built Elastica, there was thesis the cloud is going to take over. The SaaS is going to happen. >> That was a tailwind for you. >> So it was a tailwind. So it happened interestingly at the times when we had the product. Same actually happened for WiChorus interestingly, with a thesis that the need of very high speed internet to a mobile device, this is pre-iPhone times, would happen and luckily iPhone came on in around 2007 timeframe and we had the product which telco's would have needed and the iPhone came along. And we ended up building one of the first 4G networks along with ClearY in southern California. So I think all these things kind of have to line up. The market timing, your strategic advantage, your acceptance, all these stuff. >> The self awareness is a great point. Also having versatility and having the skills to flex because to get all those things right you're kind of juggling. And that persistence. Okay I got to ask you about People First. What does People First mean to you? >> At the end I think frankly that is the core, core of startups. And we've been kind of lucky within Elastica. Our main reason for success has been that the team that we ended up having and building over time, they not only had actually very good, diverse skill set because Elastica required very diverse skill set from networking to cloud to AI to all those. But the chemistry between the team was also quite amazing. So I think if you understand that not only the people and the company and the dynamics within them is going to be, which is going to be required, then you start paying attention to the culture that goes along with it. So the culture of executing as well as doing it with kindness and humility along the way. >> Sharing your experience, the journey together, co-creating, kind of creating that superglue in the culture. That's super important. What have you learned over your journey around the where it's worked, where it hasn't cause a lot of people are trying to figure out that people equation, and it's people they really if they sincerely believe they want to do it then but sometimes people don't know the playbook. Is there a playbook or people just go by their gut? What's your advice on in terms of hey I really want to get my people equation right. I want to get that right. We have a mission, you share that mission. What are some of the things that entrepreneurs and companies can do like immediately that's easy to get going? >> I think being is communication. And upfront I continue to start communicating not just in words, but in the things that you do yourself. Because it's not words don't count. How you actually deal with people and how you should treat them and how you actually collaborate additionally really matters. And that actually is the driving force of actually starting a culture I would say in place. And then if you observe anything that aren't working out, communication is going to be the key. You openly communicate and do it in a way that it is not a hostile environment. >> I love your history. I love your background. My personal family as a family of immigrants has come to the United States. You have a very immigrant story. Andy Grove was an immigrant, founder of Intel. I mean Silicon Valley is born, entrepreneurship is indiscriminate. Entrepreneurs are who they are but you have an interesting story where you came from, how you came to Silicon Valley. Tell that story. >> So I was born in Pakistan. My parents were born in India so they migrated to Pakistan which just happens to be that I came here for studies. Interestingly I didn't know much about Silicon Valley to be honest and I happened to have a job in Sun Microsystems that happened to be in Silicon Valley, but when I came here it was kind of a blessing. This is exactly where I needed to be because even when I was going to grad school I had the aspiration to actually go do something on my own but I didn't know how. And when you come here to Silicon Valley, the people around you and the friendships that you create here and the relations that you build here and what you learn from the other people is actually quite amazing. So I feel very blessed. >> And it really is a special place and you have to kind of understand that vibe and culture. I want to ask you a personal question. A lot of entrepreneurs think they can go to business school and get an entrepreneurship degree, and some do, but I always have that debate. You're kind of born with this kind of my philosophy. Some people might debate that. It's always a classic debate: are you born with it or can you learn it or both. Some people know their entrepreneurship early on. Some figure out like me when I'm in my 30's. That's when I kind of figured it out that I have that entrepreneurial talent looking back at some of the things I did. When did you find out that you knew that you were entrepreneurial and wanted to build stuff on your own and this is who I am as a person. What was that moment like? >> I think very early. I didn't have any doubt. This was undergrad times back in my undergrad school in Pakistan. I think I just knew that I'll be doing something on my own and that's exactly what I wanted to do so how I would do it, what time it was going to be, I didn't know any of that. But I had some belief in my mind that I'm going to basically build some things and build business around it. So it was quite early. >> You were lucky, got some time. And when you came to Silicon Valley, what were some of the things you did? Was it like a oh my God this is an amazing place or did you have to do some networking? What were some of the things that you did when you first came in to really kind of get in to that groove swing, entrepreneurial groove swing? >> This is one of those times when Sun was, is an amazing place. I ended up at Sun Microsystems and the people there were unbelievably talented. They have all kind of talented people there. >> Very entrepreneurial. Two coming out of Stanford, Scott McNeely, all the early DNA was very entrepreneurial. >> Exactly. So I think that was again a place where you could learn a lot not just in technology but actually how to solve problems, how to understand customer problems that you could solve and build new technology on top of it. And I didn't stay there that long. Within a couple of years, I decided that I need to go basically join a small company where I could do more things beyond just designing one aspect. I was building microprocessor designs. Instead of just doing that I could do other roles also. So I joined the broadband wireless company after that opportunity. >> As an entrepreneur, one of the big decisions is who are you going to marry in terms of the VC or partner, financial partner. It truly is taking on a new partnership and that's a big struggle and I think we've seen the programmer culture certainly amplified. It's just recently passed decade where everyone wants to go for the big valuations and like wow look it, I only sold 15% of my company and raised ten million or a big number, look how great it is. But then you realize that when they come to board meetings you got them a good valuation but they may not be receptive on the other side. So there's a dynamic in fundraising early on, not just market selection as a venture but partner selection. Talk about how important that is, how you handled it, and advice for people thinking about selection of a financial partner. >> In technology companies where you have to invest a bunch in R&D early on, you do need money. It's just the way it works. But money is not everything because right now at least, today, money is kind of commodity. You can actually raise from many, many different sources, many different VC's. But one thing I've learned within the startups is that any and all startups will have good times and bad times, will have doubt in a strategy and will have conviction. And when those times are not so good, you need people who you can just go talk frankly without having to worry about it and without getting judged along the way. >> Trust. >> Trust is the key. So I think you pick people essentially based on how much you actually trust them, especially very, very early stage startups. And then as you go along, perhaps things change over time because over time if the company's scaling you may need a lot more money. But I think again people first. You want to partner people you can actually trust. >> In that hard conversation sometimes, you want to be self aware and that's always step one but two, vulnerability and then partnering with a financial partner that's going to sit on the same side of the table at the right times and maybe on the other side to be a counterbalance at the right times. And also when you need more money they got to help you sell the next round too. There's a lot of things that they have do to, and the dynamic is critical. And you've had success with that. >> So far it's been a success. >> Well what's the big thing happening right now in your mind, just to kind of take it forward now as we look forward. You see a lot of cloud computing. You got a great experience with cloud. You've been successful. Cloud security is really hot. What do you see as opportunities in the cloud space now that you got your entrepreneurial 20 mile stare out, they're looking for opportunities. I'm sure you probably mean more security space but in general as an entrepreneur, what do you see as things that people can go after markets? >> In general I sit on the enterprise side of things. Anything that simplifies work and automates it, whether it's using AI and whether they're using other technologies, software technologies, I think that space is going to grow more because the horizontal layers where you have big data platforms and you have infrastructure providers, I think they are doing a great job in integrating the system, but now you're going to see a lot more verticalized solutions based on machine learning and AI and automation. I think we're going to see a lot more of that. There's plenty of opportunities. >> It's super early. Do you agree with that? Great, well thanks for coming in the CUBE conversation. I appreciate this part of the Mayfield People First conversations. I'm John from theCUBE. We are here with Rehan Jalil, former president and CEO of Elastica. Successful serial entrepreneur about to embark on his next adventure. Good luck and I'm looking forward to catching up. >> You know, thank you so much for inviting me. >> Thanks for watching. This is the CUBE conversation People First network. I'm John Furrier.