>> Announcer: From the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE. Covering Cloud-Now's Seventh Annual Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. (upbeat music) >> Hi, Lisa Martin with theCUBE, on the ground, at Facebook headquarters. We're here for the seventh annual Cloud-Now Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. Excited to welcome, from the AtScale team, to theCUBE for the first time, Sarah Gerwck co-founder and chief architect and award winner. Sarah it's so great to have you on the program. >> Thanks so much, it's great to be here. >> So I mention you join a number of your peers at AtScale who have been on theCUBE, so we're glad to have you on. So co-founder of a tech company, we're here celebrating women who have not only founded companies, technical entrepreneurs, venture bad companies, really hard things to achieve. Give us a little bit of the backstory about the co-founding opportunity that you and your co-founders had about what, 5 or so years ago at AtScale. >> Yeah so a number of the founding team came out of Yahoo where in the analytics group, we were seeing that the scale of data that companies were operating with was changing. And the operational environment was changing with both public and private clouds. And even at Yahoo as a technology company, we found we were struggling both internally to develop the tools that we needed and also to find tools on the market that served the needs of our business users, and our executives, and our accounts and sales people. So we realized that this was just a sort of pivotal moment in the change of the way business was being done in the Valley. That there was this great opportunity to really help companies connect to their data wherever that data might be and whatever types of data they might have. So about 5 years so ago from your perspective, you are a STEM kid. You've got background in what is it, math and physics. >> That's right. >> So you knew from the time you were a kid, I love this, this is what I want to do. What were some of the things the inspired you as being... And many industries are challenging, but tech is as well. That inspired you to not only continue doing what you love, but to actually step out of, maybe you'd say a comfort zone of a large company like a Yahoo with your co-founders and start something brand new? >> Sure, I think it's the... The key thing to me is you have to sort of just believe in yourself and be your own champion because really everybody out there who accomplishes these things takes these steps and says this is going to be my moment, this is going to be my thing. And I think whether you're a woman, or a minority, or a man, or anybody, you just have to be confident in yourself. Look for the things that you really enjoy. For me that was math and science and technology. And just sort of find, here's my niche, here's something I can be really good at. And become an expert in that area. And that's sort of something you walk into over time, and sort of develop that confidence to sort of strike out and do some amazing things in your life. >> How do you find that for those next generation, or even those that are in tech now, to go I don't feel confident enough, or they might feel some pressure. What's your recommendation on lending themselves with a mentor, whether it be male, female whatever to help them just kind of take stock of what's really important to them? >> Yeah, I think finding people who have been through it and talking to them, whether it could be a boss or a coworker whose done interesting things in their lives, or an old teacher, or a present teacher, I think finding somebody who can sort of give you that story of like here's how I felt because you have to have confidence in yourself but really nobody feels confident all the time. Everybody gets anxious or fearful before doing something new. That's part of it and sort of learning to look back and say well, I've been successful in the past, and I've overcome these obstacles and I'm ready for another one. >> I always think something that's so interesting is the concept of imposter syndrome. And how many people suffer from it, and I didn't even know it existed until a few years ago. And it level set, Okay, I'm not the only one. And so I think that's something that some people are kind of born with that like regardless, you love math and physics and you're going to keep going. But for those, I think even sometimes acknowledging, oh, this is something that a lot of people that have confidence now didn't have back in the day. I can overcome this as well. >> Right, I think everybody has a little bit of imposter syndrome at times. I just think that the world can seem like such a big and challenging place, but really it's all made of people and they all have the same sort of interests and desires. Not necessarily all the same skills, but deep down we're all people. >> Exactly, so tonight though, in the last minute or so, you have the opportunity to present in front of one of the most influential females of our time in technology, Sheryl Sandberg. Can you think back to yourself in college, and if you'd known this opportunity was going to happen, would have just said, yeah, that's about right? >> I would've been a surprise. I think with work and sort of following your passion, I think anything's possible. >> I love that. Well, Sarah, congratulations on the award and for all of your success at AtScale. We congratulate you, and we thank you for stopping by theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Have a great night as well. >> Thanks. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I am Lisa Martin on the ground at Facebook headquarters. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

[Narrator] From the heart of Silicon Valley, it's the Cube. Covering Cloud Now seventh annual Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. (techno music) >> Hi, Lisa Martin on the ground with the Cube at Facebook headquarters at the seventh annual Cloud Now Top Women in Cloud Innovation Awards. We are here for our third time with the founder of Cloud Now, Jocelyn Degance Graham. Jocelyn, it is great to have you back. Great to be back here for your seventh annual Cloud Now. >> We are just so delighted to be here with you Lisa and the Cube and all of the support and wonderful help that you've given us through the years for this event. >> So you have a lot of firsts that I wanted to cover and I know we've just got a few minutes of your time. Seventh annual, as I mentioned. >> Jocelyn: That's right. >> Your Cloud Now community now boasts over 1500 members. There's over 300 attendees here tonight. >> Jocelyn: That's right. >> And tell us what was really unique about how easy it was to attract this audience. >> Well this, we've never had such a great response for this event Lisa. And some of that could just be the timing. It is finally an idea who's time has come, right? And so there just seems to be such a groundswell of understanding the importance of inclusion and diversity. And beyond that actually creating belonging, right? So more and more, I feel like there's such an actual enthusiasm that we hadn't seen before. So this year, we didn't actually publish tickets or let people know that tickets were available. Everything was essentially sold through word of mouth. And so, we never even published any tickets. And we sold out of the event. And that was definitely a first for us. >> Another first is being here. >> Yeah. >> Not only being here at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park California, but also having Sheryl Sandberg as one of the keynote speakers this evening. >> It is such an honor. You know she is one of the women who has just been so important in terms of the Seminole movement of women in tech. Like many women, I read her book, Lean In, years ago. And the fact that she's here with us tonight at the event, after having inspired an entire movement, is really significant and we're just thrilled. >> Another thing that's really interesting and a unique first for Cloud Now this year is you're recognizing 10 female tech entrepreneurs who are technical founders. >> Jocelyn: Technical founder, venture backed. >> Of venture backed businesses. >> Jocelyn: That's absolutely right. >> Tell us about how you've been able to achieve that because their backgrounds are diverse and the technologies that they're designing and driving are really incredible. >> This is one of the most, I think, exciting firsts about the event this year is in past events, we were recognizing women that had made major contributions in a technical field. And we were recognizing women regardless of the level or role or responsibility in the organization. Now we had largely done that because there were so few female founders of venture funded startups. This year was an absolute breakthrough year for many different reasons. There are organizations now like Allraise.org that are supported by women VC's. And there just seems to be an entire groundswell of female founders and we were able to, this year for the first time, align the criteria around female technical founders. And I'm really hoping that moving forward we'll be able to continue with that as more and more women realize that they should be starting businesses and they can get venture backing. >> And we're excited to talk to those winners tonight and ask how did you go about doing that? What were your inspirations and how do you kind of combat those fears and just the history of the challenge of getting funding there? Another thing that I noticed on the Cloud Now website is one of your taglines is together we can make a difference. In, you know, just the last minute or so give me some examples of how you're helping to make a difference that really resonate with you and that give you inspiration for your 2019 goals. >> That's such a great question. So for me, really one of the most heartening things about the organization is that the work we're doing together and through our scholarship program. So we're identifying the next generation of both female and minority leaders in tech and we're investing in them through our stem scholarship fund. This year, we have funders. Our funders include Google, Intel and Facebook. And we're really hoping to be able to expand that scope next year, Lisa, to increase the number of students we're helping. This year we're also, in addition to women, we are helping minority students as well. And for next year, we're wanting to expand those categories even further and being able to support people with disabilities. So we're really hoping that to create this kind of very strong fabric of the community coming together and really giving each other support. >> Jocelyn, thank you so much for having the Cube back for the third year in a row and congratulations on the groundswell that you're capitalizing on and that you're helping to create. We congratulate you and we appreciate your time. >> Lisa, it's always a pleasure. I love speaking with you. Thanks so much for coming. >> Likewise, we want to thank you for watching the Cube. Lisa Martin on the ground at Facebook headquarters at the Cloud Now Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. Thanks for watching. (techno music)