>> Narrator: From theCube studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is theCube Conversation. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCube. We're still on our Palo Alto studios, we're still getting through COVID and we're still doing all of our remotes, all of our interviews via remote and I'm really excited to have a guest we had around a long time ago. I looked it up is 2016, April 2016. She's Coco Brown, the founder and CEO of the Athena Alliance. Coco, it's great to see you. >> It's great to see you as well. We actually formally started in April of 2016. >> I know, I saw, I noticed that on LinkedIn. So we were at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference in Phoenix, I remembers was a really cool conference, met a ton of people, a lot of them have turned out that are on your board. So yeah, and you formally on LinkedIn, it says you started in May. So that was right at the very, very beginning. >> Yeah, that's right. >> So for people that aren't familiar with the at the Athena Alliance give them the quick overview. >> Okay. Well, it's a little different that it was four years ago. So Athena first and foremost is a digital platform. So you literally log in to Athena. And we're a combination of community access to opportunity and learning. And so you can kind of envision it a little bit like a walled garden around the LinkedIn, meets Khan Academy for senior executives, meets Hollywood agency for women trying to get into the boardroom and senior level roles in the c-suite as advisors, et cetera. And then the way that we operate is you can have a self-service experience of Athena, you can have a concierge experience with Athena with real humans in the loop making key connections for you and you can add accelerators where we build brand packages and BIOS and give you executive coaching. So... >> Wow. >> Kind of a... >> You've built out your services portfolio over the last several years. But still the focus >> yes, we have. is boards, right? Still the focus is getting women on public boards, or is that no longer still the focus? >> No, that's a big piece of it for sure. I mean, one of the things that we discovered, that was the very first mission of Athena, was to bring more women into the boardroom. And as we were doing that we discovered that once you get into a senior realm of leadership in general, there's more things that you want to do than just get into the boardroom. Some of it may be wanting to be an investor or an LP in a fund or become a CEO, or certainly join outside boards but also be relevant to your own inside board. And so we started to look at Athena as a more holistic experience for senior leaders who are attempting to make sure that they are the best they can be in this very senior realm of overarching stewardship of business. >> Awesome. and have you seen, so obviously your your focus shifted 'cause you needed to add more services based on the demand from the customers. But have you seen the receptiveness to women board members change over the last four years? How have you seen kind of the marketplace change? >> Yeah, it's changed a lot, I would say. First of all I think laws like the California law and Goldman Sachs coming out saying they won't take companies public unless they have diverse board data. The statements by big entities that people are paying attention to made the boardroom dynamics a conversation around the dinner table in general. So it became more of a common conversation and common interest as opposed to just the interest of a few people who are trying to get in there. And so that's created a lot of momentum as well as sort of thoughtfulness from leaders and from employees and from larger stakeholders to say the diversity at the top business has to mimic the demographics of society as a whole. And that's become a little bit more accepted as opposed to grudgingly sort of taken in. >> Right. So one of the big problems always it's like the VC problem, right? Is the whole matchmaking problem. How do you, how do qualified people find qualified opportunities? And I wonder if you can speak a little bit as to how that process has evolved, how are you really helping because there's always people that are looking for quality candidates, and there's great quality candidates out there that just don't know where to go. How are you helping bridge kind of that kind of basic matchmaking function? >> Yeah. I mean, there's a couple of different ways to go about it. One is certainly to understand and have real connections into the parts of the leadership ecosystem that influences or makes the decision as to who sits around that table. So that would be communities of CEOs, it's communities of existing board directors, it's venture capital firms, its private equity firms, and as you get really entrenched in those organizations and those ecosystems, you become part of that ecosystem and you become what they turn to to say, "Hey, do you know somebody?" Because it still is a "who do yo know" approach at the senior most levels. So that's one way. The other mechanism is really for individuals who are looking for board seats who want to be on boards to actually be thinking about how they proactively navigate their way to the kinds of boards that they would fit to. I like in a very much to the way our children go after the schools that they might want to when it's time for university. You'll figure out who your safeties, your matches, your reaches are, and figure out how you're going to take six degrees of separation and turn them into one through connections. So those are that's another way to go about it. >> You know, it's interesting, I talked to Beth Stewart from True Star, they also help place women on boards. And one of the issues is just the turnover. And I asked that just straight up, are there formal mechanisms to make sure that people who've been doing business from way before there were things like email and the internet eventually get swapped out. And she said, that's actually a big part of the problem is there isn't really a formal way to keep things fresh and to kind of rotate the incumbents out to enable somebody who's new and maybe has a different point of view to come in. So I'm curious when someone is targeting their A-list and B-list and C-lists, how do they factor in kind of the age of the board composition of the existing board, to really look for where there's these opportunities where a spot opens up, 'cause if there's not a spot open up clearly, there's really not much opportunity there. >> Yeah, I mean, you have to look at the whole ecosystem, right? I mean, there's anything from let's say series A, venture backed private companies all the way up to the mega cap companies, right? And there's this continuum. And it's not, there's not one universal answer to what you're talking about. So for example, if you're talking about smaller private companies, you're competing against, not somebody giving up their seat, but whether or not the company feels real motivation to fill that particular independent director seat. So the biggest competition is often that that seat goes unfilled. When you're talking about public companies, the biggest competition is really the fact that as my friend Adam Epstein of the small cap Institute will tell you, that 80% of public companies are actually small cap companies. And they don't have the same kinds of pressures that large caps do to have turnover. But yeah, it takes a big piece of the challenge is really boards having the disposition collectively to see the board as a competitive advantage for the business as a very necessary and productive piece of the business and when they see that then they take more proactive measures to make sure they have a evolving and strong board that does turnover as it needs to. >> Right. So I'm curious when you're talking to the high power women, right, who are in operational roles probably most of the time, how do you help coach them, how should they be thinking, what do they have to do different when they want to kind of add board seats to their portfolio? Very different kind of a role than an operational role, very different kind of concerns and day to day tasks. So, and clearly, you've added a whole bunch of extra things to your portfolio. So how do you help people, what do you tell women who say, "Okay, I've been successful, "I'm like successful executive, "but now I want to do this other thing, "I want to take this next step in my career"? What usually the gaps and what are the things that they need to do to prepare for that? >> Well, I'm going to circle in then land a little bit. Autodesk was actually a really great partner to us back when you and I first met. They had a couple of women at the top of the organization that were part of Athena, specifically because they wanted to join boards. They are on boards now, Lisa Campbell, Amy Bunszel, Debbie Clifford. And what they told us is they were experiencing everything that we were offering in terms of developing them, helping them to position themselves, understand themselves, navigate their way, was that they simply became better leaders as a result of focusing on themselves as that next level up, irrespective of the fact that it took them two to three years to land that seat. They became stronger in their executive role in general and better able to communicate and engage with their own boards. So I think, now I'm landing, the thing that I would say about that is don't wait until you're thinking oh, I want to join a board, to do the work to get yourself into that ecosystem, into that atmosphere and into that mindset, because the sooner you do that as an executive, the better you will be in that atmosphere, the more prepared you will be. And you also have to recognize that it will take time. >> Right. And the how has COVID impacted it, I mean, on one hand, meeting somebody for coffee and having a face to face is a really important part of getting to know someone and a big part of I'm sure, what was the recruitment process, and do you know someone, yeah, let's go meet for a cup of coffee or dinner or whatever. Can't do that anymore, but we can all meet this way, we can all get on virtually and so in some ways, it's probably an enabler, which before you could grab an hour or you didn't have to fly cross-country or somebody didn't have to fly cross-country. So I'm kind of curious in this new reality, which is going to continue for some time. How has that impacted kind of people's ability to discover and get to know and build trust for these very very senior positions. >> HBR just came out with a really great article about the virtual board meeting. I don't know if you saw it but I can send you a link. I think that what I'm learning from board directors in general and leaders in general is that yes, there's things that make it difficult to engage remotely, but there's also a lot of benefit to being able to get comfortable with the virtual world. So it's certainly, particularly with COVID, with racial equity issues, with the uncertain economy, boards are having to meet more often and they're having, some are having weekly stand ups and those are facilitated by getting more and more comfortable with being virtual. And I think they're realizing that you don't have to press flesh, as they say, to actually build intimacy and real connection. And that's been a hold up, but I think as the top leadership gets to understand that and feel that for themselves, it becomes easier for them to adopt it throughout the organization that the virtual world is one we can really embrace, not just for a period of time. >> It's funny we had John Chambers on early on in this whole process, really talking about leadership and leading through transition. And he used the example, I think had been that day or maybe a couple days off from our interview where they had a board meeting, I think they were talking about some hamburger restaurant, and so they just delivered hamburgers to everybody's office and they had the board meeting. But that's really progressive for a board to actually be doing weekly stand ups. That really shows a pretty transformative way to manage the business and kind of what we think is the stodgy old traditional get together now and then, fly and then get some minutes and fly out, that's super progressive. >> Yeah. I mean, I was on three different board meetings this week with a company I'm on the board of in Minnesota. And we haven't seen each other in person in, I guess since January. (woman laughs) >> So final tips for women that want to make this this move, who, they've got some breathing space, they're not homeschooling the kids all day while they're trying to get their job done and trying to save their own business, but have some cycles and the capabilities. What do you tell them, where should they begin, how should they start thinking about, kind of taking on this additional responsibility and really professional growth in their life? >> Well, I mean, I think something very important for all of us to think about with regard to board service and in general as we get into a very senior level point in our careers at a managing and impact portfolio. People get into a senior point and they don't just want to be an executive for one company, they want to have a variety of ways that they're delivering impact, whether it's as an investor or as a board member or as other things as well as being an operator. And I think the misnomer is that people believe that you have to add them up and they, one plus one plus one equals three, and it's just not true. The truth is that when you add a board seat, when you add that other thing that you're doing it makes you better as a leader in general. Every board meeting I have with [Indistinct] gives me more than I bring back to Athena as an example. And so I think we tend to think of not being able to take on one more thing and I say that we all have a little more space than we think we have to take on the things we want to do. >> Right? That's a good message to me. It is often said if you want to get something done, give it to the busiest person in the room. It's more likely to get it done 'cause you got to be efficient and you just have that kind of get it done attitude. >> That's right. >> All right, Coco. Well, thank you for sharing your thoughts. >> Congratulations, so I guess it's your four year anniversary, five year anniversary [Indistinct] about right? >> Yes, four. >> That's terrific. And we look forward to continuing to watch the growth and hopefully checking in face to face at some point in the not too distant future. >> I would like that. >> All right. Thanks a lot Coco. >> Great talking to you. >> Already. >> She's Coco, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCube. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> from Santa Clara, California It's the Cube covering techno ovation World Pitch Summit 2019 Brought to you by Silicon Angle Media Now here's Sonia to Gari >> Hi and welcome to the Cube. I'm your host, Sonia to Gari. And we're here at Oracle's Agnew's campus in Santa Clara, California covering techno vacations World Pitch Summit 2019. Ah, pitch competition in which girls from around the world developed mobile lapse in order to create positive change in the world with us. Today we have Team Coco from Kazakhstan. Welcome. The members are, um Dilma as camel Over and Mallika Bree by Ava Uh, Donna Ulanova and Lube of do Chen Kuo Welcome. And congratulations on being finalists. Thank you. So your app is called tech Go. Can you tell us more about it? >> Yes. Uh so so techo in three d mobile application, which has a minute reality and as connected to the hardware which has dedicated for the behavioral change of people for so that they can become more conscious and like a friendly. >> And can you tell us more about how it works? Yes, >> of course there is. Luba, who can explain this? Okay. S >> o r application is about an astronaut who needs to save the planet. S O Firstly is there is a game in which a person needs to save your hair. Virtual airs by selling some ecological problems in it so that he or she wrote, be educated to both real life scenarios. And I also have a step counter which tracks your carbon footprint and encourages people to trust Morgan Friend the transportation options And that's a rare make really impact is that we connect our application with a special trash boxes in our city. All those locations are shown on the map, and coming to this place is user received trash box. And since Rosa Garbage and then because he has restaurants carriage here, she will get some points and your impact will be realized in the eventuality. Yeah, >> So what impact in society do you hope that this app will help change >> Rapids three t mobile application and it's a game. That is why Gamification and theater magic reality, which is a r which is inside this game a cz more visually in psychological attractive to people and those challenges that we provide a game are intensified so that most of the people. When they accomplish their goals, they might get, like, have a certain profit out of it so that they can become worker friendly and gain benefits. This is how we want to make sure that people might gain my changed a behavior for the sake of ecology. >> That's awesome. So you're using essentially a game incentivize people to make better choices in their everyday lives. That's great. And so how >> did you >> come up with this idea? >> So look, I will explain >> this. Actually, there were before some eco trash boxes in our school because like the thing off, ecological problems and recycling is one of the most talked about topics in Kazakhstan nowadays. And like in our school, the students try. Thio make this echo charge boxes, but they were always empty because students wasn't incent ified to recycle the garbage. And we tested our up in our school and we already launched it in our school and this ups incentivize our students. And now this I could trash boxes with our hard way always full. So >> that's awesome. See, you already found some success with your app. Thank you. Do you think that that this is a problem in the bigger community. >> Oh, maybe Donna Comptel. >> So we're saying that we started locally, but we got to go globally within that, uh, a pollution, like a pollution global problem and we trying to solve all over the world. So in our game, we have the whole world that you become an astronaut. So you should be aware for hold the problem that was happening in the earth. So we are trying to engage and educate people to be more global on to be more responsible for our final for our home. >> It sounds like everyone in the world should download that app. Yes, I do hope Thio uh, expand if you get the funding. >> Yes, um, we plan to expand not only in our country, Kazakhstan on only locally, but also globally. And we would like to create the eco friendly community across Central Asia since we want to make sure that consciousness is global in our area. >> And what struggles have you faced trying to create this app? >> Um, probably there were some struggles and off course in the realization and, uh, the realization of technical part of this project and creating a business model, since we are not very experienced in this kind of things. But since we have participated in techno vacation and we were immersed in this protest and were modified Thio motivated. Yeah, and we're motivated to learn all this things and acquire those skills. And this is why we became more experienced in this stuff. So right now, uh, those struggles that we face before not longer problem for us. So yeah, this what we faced? >> So techno vacation has definitely helped. Do you improve your app and yes, right houses. Tech innovation Helped you? >> Yeah, Um, probably someone else wants to ask you this question. >> How is SECNAV ation help? You were What skills have you learned from this journey? For >> example, one of the most important skills, I guess iss a teamwork. Like after we started to work on the one project, we started to listen each other excavation actually helped us too. Um, I understand the opinions off other people and like to understand the problems in our society. We start to dream bigger to think bigger, wider kind of that >> That's amazing. And also take Novation helping us >> to explore new companies to be more like open a person to come to The company's asked about the help on not like B just like see the problems and trying to solve trying to find a solution and be the people of the world and be responsible for our planet for what's happening in our local community on be aware of everything. >> And, um So I heard you guys had an amazing week. Um, you you went to whoever You went some other places. So can you tell us more about your week >> you want? So we went to amazing places in a Silicon Valley in a San Francisco San Jose and we so, like it'd, for example, Golden Gate Bridge. And also the Alcatraz so were so impressed by their architecture by the people by the nature on DDE. We just expected a lot of Onda. We just got this old expectations come to the reality on dhe. We hope that that kind of dream will come true in our future, and we gonna to work in a one of the big companies that were located here. I know all the universities. So >> how is it like going to the different tech companies and seeing it in real life. >> So we >> visited Uber Company and Google Ventures, and both we I have seen people who work is there, and we're really impressive on. And we really like it. It? Yeah. And, uh, I think so. Before, like in my childhood, I dreaming to be to be in Silicon Valley, to goes there and, like, meet people who are work already working you And now, like my dream came through. >> That's awesome. And you get to see California And you you might be able to win today. So thank you so much for being on. I wish you all the best. And I hope you haven't amazing pitch tonight. Thank you. This has been Team Coco from Kazakhstan. I'm your host, Sonia to Garey. This is the Cube. Stay tuned for more

>> From Phoenix, Arizona, theCUBE. At Catalyst Conference, here's your host Jeff Frick. (soft music) >> Hey Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Phoenix, Arizona at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. About 400 people. The fourth year of the conference. Really getting together, talking about women in tech issues. Something in the water, here in Phoenix. We were here two years ago at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women and Computing, also just down the road. So we're happy to be here and really get a feel. And bring to you some of the leaders here, that are making things happen. We're really excited by our next guest, Coco Brown, the founder and CEO of the Alena Alliance, or Athena Alliance, excuse me, welcome. >> Thank you. >> So the Athena Alliance, what's it all about? >> Well so the Athena Alliance is an organization of executive women who've achieved great success in their careers. And they have vision collectively of women operating at their highest level of impact. And within the context of a business leadership realm, that highest level really is the boardroom. And so our mission is to help women obtain board seats and be successful in the role. >> So there's a lot of conversations about board. It seems to be kind of the new hot button topic about inequality. There's certainly ton of conversations about inequality and pay highlighted recently by the women's national soccer team, which got a lot of buzz. And I think everyone knows that conversation that's been going on for a while. But the boardroom conversation is kind of new. It's kind of bubbling up. Or at least that's my sense of it, that barely have cracked the surface in terms of historical numbers in getting women representation on boards. >> Yeah. >> Why does that continue to be a problem? Is it a pipeline issue? Is it a match making issue? Is it a networking issue? Is it just, I just don't know? What is the issue? >> It's not a pipeline issue. And so what's happened in this discussion is there were some, sort of, pretty notable examples of situations where women raised their hands and said, hey where are the women on these boards. And the response was, well where are the women? Which kind of created this energy around the topic a lot more strongly more recently. Which is to say, there are a lot of qualified women out there who would be great board directors. And yet the positions of board director are gate kept by largely men. This is just the circumstance. Men are the ones who back companies. They're their VCs, they're the founders, they're the CEOs. And within their networks, they don't have a lot of women. Executive women. Likewise, executive women tend to seek each other out too. So we're not in each other's realms. So a lot of the conversation has been around raising awareness to the issue. There's been great tracking of exactly where is the issue. And how are we making progress. And then there's been a lot of great organizations that have been helping women get ready for board positions, training them. And thirdly, there's a lot of great organizations out there who are, essentially, identifying qualified women, and cataloging them, putting them in data bases and saying, hey no excuses, here they are. But the key missing element and my feeling as to why the problem continues to persist, part of it is just time. It's just going to take time. But part of it is also, really networking, what you said. It is about networking. It is that the women who want these positions and who are qualified for these positions need to know the men who are looking for board directors. And when you actually connect, make those two connections happen, you get incredible success. And we're seeing it already. >> Or as the age old advice, it's not who you know, but who knows you. >> Yes! >> It used to always be the other way around. But it's really who knows you. And we live in such a time of personal branding and external communication via LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, medium, however you choose to externalize your professional position. And it kind of gets intermingled with your personal position. There really is not much excuse, at least, to make the attempt, to get yourself out there. >> Exactly, it's why. So there's 16 of the speakers here at this conference, are Athena Alliance women. And part of the reason we're here, we're here because this is such a noble and important and fantastic event for us to participate in. The other reason we're here is because this is apart of our way of getting known too, right. Of becoming more visible. Of making our brand, personal brand known. So this is one of those key things about who knows you that we should and need to be doing. >> So how many Athena foundation women are in executive boards now? >> So Athena Alliance is relatively new. So we're just getting started. About 50% of, 47% of the women associated with Athena Alliance are already on boards. >> That's pretty good, 47%. >> Yes, largely those are non-profit boards. >> Okay. >> They also are on a fair number of advisory boards. And they're now looking for the private boards and corporate boards and they're looking for public boards as well. >> And do you see that as kind of a logical stepping stone between an advisory board, a non-profit board, potentially a private company board, a VC company and then to a larger public entity. Is that kind of? >> Yeah I see it two ways. On the one hand, it's stepping stones and on the other, we have a variety of careers. So let's take me for example. I ran and was an owner of a privately held company. We reached about 50 million dollars in revenue before I sold my ownership, moved on. I'm qualified for a certain kind of a board. I'm qualified for a private board of a certain type of growth, sort of trajectory or stage. Others like Yvonne, who you spoke with, she's qualified for public boards of a different size. So some of it is what we're qualified for and what we can really contribute to and some of it is stepping stones. So for example, advisory boards are a great stepping stone. You get absolutely zero board credit for being on an advisory board, 'cause it doesn't have fiduciary responsibilities. >> No fiduciary responsibility. >> Right. But it's incredible network experience. It's a great way to get to know CEOs, to get to know VCs, to make yourself known as a candidate for other aspects of that company. >> Where do you see the natural networking opportunities? 'Cause clearly there's networks that exist around where you went to school. There's networks around, increasingly alumni groups, within companies, especially a big company like an Intel or an HP, where you got these huge alumni groups, 'cause they've been around for so long. Where are some of the other natural alumni groups that then cross over that are going to allow rubbing of shoulders with the old school guy board members with some of these women that are trying to break through? >> Yeah it's interesting. I think that is a really good opportunity space because I do see that mostly, the networking pods, if you will, are within school alumni groups, or corporate alumni groups, or organizations that women belong to. But that are largely then just women organizations. Or maybe some industry organizations. And industry boards are a great way to make that connection point. But I don't think that women do have opportunities of overlap with men in those organizations and those networking communities. So the way it has to happen is, I think we have to make it happen. So it's almost like, creating mixers. We need some mixers, right? Male VCs mixed with Athena Alliance women. Let's get together. We actually have an event coming up like that. Where you can have some men and women in the same room. They get to get a sense of each other. Those you do start seeing more of that going on and it's kind of essential. >> 'Cause you really need that right? I mean, they are networks. And everything going on today is all about networks, whether it's IOT or social media or whatever. It's networks and they're all naturally bound by something but how do you get that overlap from one network to the other when there's not enough overlap to really make the activity that you're seeking. Of course, there's always CUBE alumni, which is a terrific network. So we'll use that as a founding point. >> Absolutely. Well and Dan Scholnick, who is a general partner with Trinity, he's on a number of boards. He's speaking at an event for the Athena Alliance on a panel coming up. And he's got board openings in the variety of boards that he's on. Those are the kinds of connections. Make opportunities for Dan to be in the same room as a number of these great women. I think we just have to create it. >> It's interesting, interesting. 'Cause it is all about the connection, right. You got to know people and you got to put the word out. Nobody ever got a board seat sending out a resume. I don't know. How many come from executive head hunters? I never got a job from executive head hunters. It's really more about who you know. >> And executive recruiters only actually fill about one to two percent of board seats. It's only the top companies with the deepest pockets or the greatest pressure that can do that. >> Okay so what are your priorities for the next six months, nine months, what are your top things your guys are working on at the Alliance? >> So we're relatively new, so big, big priority for us is funding. We're also scaling. So scaling is one of the important things. In other words, scaling our relationships with those VCs, with CEOs, and starting to create great linkages through these networking events. >> All right, well Coco, thank you for taking a few minutes. >> Thank you. >> Absolutely and good luck with the Alliance. It sounds like you guys are on your way. We see increasingly, we did a show at SAP in conjunction with MAKERS and they got a great movie about some of the women who just broke down barriers in advertising, fashion, finance, tech, et cetera. Meg Whitman, among many women highlighted there. And it's tough to break down that door. When the first one gets through, hopefully they leave a little space for somebody else to scooch in behind them. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Absolutely. All right, Jeff Frick here with Coco Brown. We are the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference, Phoenix, Arizona. You're watching theCUBE. See you next time. (soft music)

(chill electronic music) >> Hello everyone, welcome to theCUBE's presentation of the AWS Startups Showcase, AI and machine learning, the top startups building generative AI on AWS. This is the season three, episode one of the ongoing series covering the exciting startups from the AWS ecosystem, talk about AI and machine learning. Can't believe it's three years and season one. I'm your host, John Furrier. Got a great guest today, we're joined by Joseph Nelson, the co-founder and CEO of Roboflow, doing some cutting edge stuff around computer vision and really at the front end of this massive wave coming around, large language models, computer vision. The next gen AI is here, and it's just getting started. We haven't even scratched a service. Thanks for joining us today. >> Thanks for having me. >> So you got to love the large language model, foundation models, really educating the mainstream world. ChatGPT has got everyone in the frenzy. This is educating the world around this next gen AI capabilities, enterprise, image and video data, all a big part of it. I mean the edge of the network, Mobile World Conference is happening right now, this month, and it's just ending up, it's just continue to explode. Video is huge. So take us through the company, do a quick explanation of what you guys are doing, when you were founded. Talk about what the company's mission is, and what's your North Star, why do you exist? >> Yeah, Roboflow exists to really kind of make the world programmable. I like to say make the world be read and write access. And our North Star is enabling developers, predominantly, to build that future. If you look around, anything that you see will have software related to it, and can kind of be turned into software. The limiting reactant though, is how to enable computers and machines to understand things as well as people can. And in a lot of ways, computer vision is that missing element that enables anything that you see to become software. So in the virtue of, if software is eating the world, computer vision kind of makes the aperture infinitely wide. It's something that I kind of like, the way I like to frame it. And the capabilities are there, the open source models are there, the amount of data is there, the computer capabilities are only improving annually, but there's a pretty big dearth of tooling, and an early but promising sign of the explosion of use cases, models, and data sets that companies, developers, hobbyists alike will need to bring these capabilities to bear. So Roboflow is in the game of building the community around that capability, building the use cases that allow developers and enterprises to use computer vision, and providing the tooling for companies and developers to be able to add computer vision, create better data sets, and deploy to production, quickly, easily, safely, invaluably. >> You know, Joseph, the word in production is actually real now. You're seeing a lot more people doing in production activities. That's a real hot one and usually it's slower, but it's gone faster, and I think that's going to be more the same. And I think the parallel between what we're seeing on the large language models coming into computer vision, and as you mentioned, video's data, right? I mean we're doing video right now, we're transcribing it into a transcript, linking up to your linguistics, times and the timestamp, I mean everything's data and that really kind of feeds. So this connection between what we're seeing, the large language and computer vision are coming together kind of cousins, brothers. I mean, how would you compare, how would you explain to someone, because everyone's like on this wave of watching people bang out their homework assignments, and you know, write some hacks on code with some of the open AI technologies, there is a corollary directly related to to the vision side. Can you explain? >> Yeah, the rise of large language models are showing what's possible, especially with text, and I think increasingly will get multimodal as the images and video become ingested. Though there's kind of this still core missing element of basically like understanding. So the rise of large language models kind of create this new area of generative AI, and generative AI in the context of computer vision is a lot of, you know, creating video and image assets and content. There's also this whole surface area to understanding what's already created. Basically digitizing physical, real world things. I mean the Metaverse can't be built if we don't know how to mirror or create or identify the objects that we want to interact with in our everyday lives. And where computer vision comes to play in, especially what we've seen at Roboflow is, you know, a little over a hundred thousand developers now have built with our tools. That's to the tune of a hundred million labeled open source images, over 10,000 pre-trained models. And they've kind of showcased to us all of the ways that computer vision is impacting and bringing the world to life. And these are things that, you know, even before large language models and generative AI, you had pretty impressive capabilities, and when you add the two together, it actually unlocks these kind of new capabilities. So for example, you know, one of our users actually powers the broadcast feeds at Wimbledon. So here we're talking about video, we're streaming, we're doing things live, we've got folks that are cropping and making sure we look good, and audio/visual all plugged in correctly. When you broadcast Wimbledon, you'll notice that the camera controllers need to do things like track the ball, which is moving at extremely high speeds and zoom crop, pan tilt, as well as determine if the ball bounced in or out. The very controversial but critical key to a lot of tennis matches. And a lot of that has been historically done with the trained, but fallible human eye and computer vision is, you know, well suited for this task to say, how do we track, pan, tilt, zoom, and see, track the tennis ball in real time, run at 30 plus frames per second, and do it all on the edge. And those are capabilities that, you know, were kind of like science fiction, maybe even a decade ago, and certainly five years ago. Now the interesting thing, is that with the advent of of generative AI, you can start to do things like create your own training data sets, or kind of create logic around once you have this visual input. And teams at Tesla have actually been speaking about, of course the autopilot team's focused on doing vision tasks, but they've combined large language models to add reasoning and logic. So given that you see, let's say the tennis ball, what do you want to do? And being able to combine the capabilities of what LLM's represent, which is really a lot of basically, core human reasoning and logic, with computer vision for the inputs of what's possible, creates these new capabilities, let alone multimodality, which I'm sure we'll talk more about. >> Yeah, and it's really, I mean it's almost intoxicating. It's amazing that this is so capable because the cloud scales here, you got the edge developing, you can decouple compute power, and let Moore's law and all the new silicone and the processors and the GPUs do their thing, and you got open source booming. You're kind of getting at this next segment I wanted to get into, which is the, how people should be thinking about these advances of the computer vision. So this is now a next wave, it's here. I mean I'd love to have that for baseball because I'm always like, "Oh, it should have been a strike." I'm sure that's going to be coming soon, but what is the computer vision capable of doing today? I guess that's my first question. You hit some of it, unpack that a little bit. What does general AI mean in computer vision? What's the new thing? Because there are old technology's been around, proprietary, bolted onto hardware, but hardware advances at a different pace, but now you got new capabilities, generative AI for vision, what does that mean? >> Yeah, so computer vision, you know, at its core is basically enabling machines, computers, to understand, process, and act on visual data as effective or more effective than people can. Traditionally this has been, you know, task types like classification, which you know, identifying if a given image belongs in a certain category of goods on maybe a retail site, is the shoes or is it clothing? Or object detection, which is, you know, creating bounding boxes, which allows you to do things like count how many things are present, or maybe measure the speed of something, or trigger an alert when something becomes visible in frame that wasn't previously visible in frame, or instant segmentation where you're creating pixel wise segmentations for both instance and semantic segmentation, where you often see these kind of beautiful visuals of the polygon surrounding objects that you see. Then you have key point detection, which is where you see, you know, athletes, and each of their joints are kind of outlined is another more traditional type problem in signal processing and computer vision. With generative AI, you kind of get a whole new class of problem types that are opened up. So in a lot of ways I think about generative AI in computer vision as some of the, you know, problems that you aimed to tackle, might still be better suited for one of the previous task types we were discussing. Some of those problem types may be better suited for using a generative technique, and some are problem types that just previously wouldn't have been possible absent generative AI. And so if you make that kind of Venn diagram in your head, you can think about, okay, you know, visual question answering is a task type where if I give you an image and I say, you know, "How many people are in this image?" We could either build an object detection model that might count all those people, or maybe a visual question answering system would sufficiently answer this type of problem. Let alone generative AI being able to create new training data for old systems. And that's something that we've seen be an increasingly prominent use case for our users, as much as things that we advise our customers and the community writ large to take advantage of. So ultimately those are kind of the traditional task types. I can give you some insight, maybe, into how I think about what's possible today, or five years or ten years as you sort go back. >> Yes, definitely. Let's get into that vision. >> So I kind of think about the types of use cases in terms of what's possible. If you just imagine a very simple bell curve, your normal distribution, for the longest time, the types of things that are in the center of that bell curve are identifying objects that are very common or common objects in context. Microsoft published the COCO Dataset in 2014 of common objects and contexts, of hundreds of thousands of images of chairs, forks, food, person, these sorts of things. And you know, the challenge of the day had always been, how do you identify just those 80 objects? So if we think about the bell curve, that'd be maybe the like dead center of the curve, where there's a lot of those objects present, and it's a very common thing that needs to be identified. But it's a very, very, very small sliver of the distribution. Now if you go out to the way long tail, let's go like deep into the tail of this imagined visual normal distribution, you're going to have a problem like one of our customers, Rivian, in tandem with AWS, is tackling, to do visual quality assurance and manufacturing in production processes. Now only Rivian knows what a Rivian is supposed to look like. Only they know the imagery of what their goods that are going to be produced are. And then between those long tails of proprietary data of highly specific things that need to be understood, in the center of the curve, you have a whole kind of messy middle, type of problems I like to say. The way I think about computer vision advancing, is it's basically you have larger and larger and more capable models that eat from the center out, right? So if you have a model that, you know, understands the 80 classes in COCO, well, pretty soon you have advances like Clip, which was trained on 400 million image text pairs, and has a greater understanding of a wider array of objects than just 80 classes in context. And over time you'll get more and more of these larger models that kind of eat outwards from that center of the distribution. And so the question becomes for companies, when can you rely on maybe a model that just already exists? How do you use your data to get what may be capable off the shelf, so to speak, into something that is usable for you? Or, if you're in those long tails and you have proprietary data, how do you take advantage of the greatest asset you have, which is observed visual information that you want to put to work for your customers, and you're kind of living in the long tails, and you need to adapt state of the art for your capabilities. So my mental model for like how computer vision advances is you have that bell curve, and you have increasingly powerful models that eat outward. And multimodality has a role to play in that, larger models have a role to play in that, more compute, more data generally has a role to play in that. But it will be a messy and I think long condition. >> Well, the thing I want to get, first of all, it's great, great mental model, I appreciate that, 'cause I think that makes a lot of sense. The question is, it seems now more than ever, with the scale and compute that's available, that not only can you eat out to the middle in your example, but there's other models you can integrate with. In the past there was siloed, static, almost bespoke. Now you're looking at larger models eating into the bell curve, as you said, but also integrating in with other stuff. So this seems to be part of that interaction. How does, first of all, is that really happening? Is that true? And then two, what does that mean for companies who want to take advantage of this? Because the old model was operational, you know? I have my cameras, they're watching stuff, whatever, and like now you're in this more of a, distributed computing, computer science mindset, not, you know, put the camera on the wall kind of- I'm oversimplifying, but you know what I'm saying. What's your take on that? >> Well, to the first point of, how are these advances happening? What I was kind of describing was, you know, almost uni-dimensional in that you have like, you're only thinking about vision, but the rise of generative techniques and multi-modality, like Clip is a multi-modal model, it has 400 million image text pairs. That will advance the generalizability at a faster rate than just treating everything as only vision. And that's kind of where LLMs and vision will intersect in a really nice and powerful way. Now in terms of like companies, how should they be thinking about taking advantage of these trends? The biggest thing that, and I think it's different, obviously, on the size of business, if you're an enterprise versus a startup. The biggest thing that I think if you're an enterprise, and you have an established scaled business model that is working for your customers, the question becomes, how do you take advantage of that established data moat, potentially, resource moats, and certainly, of course, establish a way of providing value to an end user. So for example, one of our customers, Walmart, has the advantage of one of the largest inventory and stock of any company in the world. And they also of course have substantial visual data, both from like their online catalogs, or understanding what's in stock or out of stock, or understanding, you know, the quality of things that they're going from the start of their supply chain to making it inside stores, for delivery of fulfillments. All these are are visual challenges. Now they already have a substantial trove of useful imagery to understand and teach and train large models to understand each of the individual SKUs and products that are in their stores. And so if I'm a Walmart, what I'm thinking is, how do I make sure that my petabytes of visual information is utilized in a way where I capture the proprietary benefit of the models that I can train to do tasks like, what item was this? Or maybe I'm going to create AmazonGo-like technology, or maybe I'm going to build like delivery robots, or I want to automatically know what's in and out of stock from visual input fees that I have across my in-store traffic. And that becomes the question and flavor of the day for enterprises. I've got this large amount of data, I've got an established way that I can provide more value to my own customers. How do I ensure I take advantage of the data advantage I'm already sitting on? If you're a startup, I think it's a pretty different question, and I'm happy to talk about. >> Yeah, what's startup angle on this? Because you know, they're going to want to take advantage. It's like cloud startups, cloud native startups, they were born in the cloud, they never had an IT department. So if you're a startup, is there a similar role here? And if I'm a computer vision startup, what's that mean? So can you share your your take on that, because there'll be a lot of people starting up from this. >> So the startup on the opposite advantage and disadvantage, right? Like a startup doesn't have an proven way of delivering repeatable value in the same way that a scaled enterprise does. But it does have the nimbleness to identify and take advantage of techniques that you can start from a blank slate. And I think the thing that startups need to be wary of in the generative AI enlarged language model, in multimodal world, is building what I like to call, kind of like sandcastles. A sandcastle is maybe a business model or a capability that's built on top of an assumption that is going to be pretty quickly wiped away by improving underlying model technology. So almost like if you imagine like the ocean, the waves are coming in, and they're going to wipe away your progress. You don't want to be in the position of building sandcastle business where, you don't want to bet on the fact that models aren't going to get good enough to solve the task type that you might be solving. In other words, don't take a screenshot of what's capable today. Assume that what's capable today is only going to continue to become possible. And so for a startup, what you can do, that like enterprises are quite comparatively less good at, is embedding these capabilities deeply within your products and delivering maybe a vertical based experience, where AI kind of exists in the background. >> Yeah. >> And we might not think of companies as, you know, even AI companies, it's just so embedded in the experience they provide, but that's like the vertical application example of taking AI and making it be immediately usable. Or, of course there's tons of picks and shovels businesses to be built like Roboflow, where you're enabling these enterprises to take advantage of something that they have, whether that's their data sets, their computes, or their intellect. >> Okay, so if I hear that right, by the way, I love, that's horizontally scalable, that's the large language models, go up and build them the apps, hence your developer focus. I'm sure that's probably the reason that the tsunami of developer's action. So you're saying picks and shovels tools, don't try to replicate the platform of what could be the platform. Oh, go to a VC, I'm going to build a platform. No, no, no, no, those are going to get wiped away by the large language models. Is there one large language model that will rule the world, or do you see many coming? >> Yeah, so to be clear, I think there will be useful platforms. I just think a lot of people think that they're building, let's say, you know, if we put this in the cloud context, you're building a specific type of EC2 instance. Well, it turns out that Amazon can offer that type of EC2 instance, and immediately distribute it to all of their customers. So you don't want to be in the position of just providing something that actually ends up looking like a feature, which in the context of AI, might be like a small incremental improvement on the model. If that's all you're doing, you're a sandcastle business. Now there's a lot of platform businesses that need to be built that enable businesses to get to value and do things like, how do I monitor my models? How do I create better models with my given data sets? How do I ensure that my models are doing what I want them to do? How do I find the right models to use? There's all these sorts of platform wide problems that certainly exist for businesses. I just think a lot of startups that I'm seeing right now are making the mistake of assuming the advances we're seeing are not going to accelerate or even get better. >> So if I'm a customer, if I'm a company, say I'm a startup or an enterprise, either one, same question. And I want to stand up, and I have developers working on stuff, I want to start standing up an environment to start doing stuff. Is that a service provider? Is that a managed service? Is that you guys? So how do you guys fit into your customers leaning in? Is it just for developers? Are you targeting with a specific like managed service? What's the product consumption? How do you talk to customers when they come to you? >> The thing that we do is enable, we give developers superpowers to build automated inventory tracking, self-checkout systems, identify if this image is malignant cancer or benign cancer, ensure that these products that I've produced are correct. Make sure that that the defect that might exist on this electric vehicle makes its way back for review. All these sorts of problems are immediately able to be solved and tackled. In terms of the managed services element, we have solutions as integrators that will often build on top of our tools, or we'll have companies that look to us for guidance, but ultimately the company is in control of developing and building and creating these capabilities in house. I really think the distinction is maybe less around managed service and tool, and more around ownership in the era of AI. So for example, if I'm using a managed service, in that managed service, part of their benefit is that they are learning across their customer sets, then it's a very different relationship than using a managed service where I'm developing some amount of proprietary advantages for my data sets. And I think that's a really important thing that companies are becoming attuned to, just the value of the data that they have. And so that's what we do. We tell companies that you have this proprietary, immense treasure trove of data, use that to your advantage, and think about us more like a set of tools that enable you to get value from that capability. You know, the HashiCorp's and GitLab's of the world have proven like what these businesses look like at scale. >> And you're targeting developers. When you go into a company, do you target developers with freemium, is there a paid service? Talk about the business model real quick. >> Sure, yeah. The tools are free to use and get started. When someone signs up for Roboflow, they may elect to make their work open source, in which case we're able to provide even more generous usage limits to basically move the computer vision community forward. If you elect to make your data private, you can use our hosted data set managing, data set training, model deployment, annotation tooling up to some limits. And then usually when someone validates that what they're doing gets them value, they purchase a subscription license to be able to scale up those capabilities. So like most developer centric products, it's free to get started, free to prove, free to poke around, develop what you think is possible. And then once you're getting to value, then we're able to capture the commercial upside in the value that's being provided. >> Love the business model. It's right in line with where the market is. There's kind of no standards bodies these days. The developers are the ones who are deciding kind of what the standards are by their adoption. I think making that easy for developers to get value as the model open sources continuing to grow, you can see more of that. Great perspective Joseph, thanks for sharing that. Put a plug in for the company. What are you guys doing right now? Where are you in your growth? What are you looking for? How should people engage? Give the quick commercial for the company. >> So as I mentioned, Roboflow is I think one of the largest, if not the largest collections of computer vision models and data sets that are open source, available on the web today, and have a private set of tools that over half the Fortune 100 now rely on those tools. So we're at the stage now where we know people want what we're working on, and we're continuing to drive that type of adoption. So companies that are looking to make better models, improve their data sets, train and deploy, often will get a lot of value from our tools, and certainly reach out to talk. I'm sure there's a lot of talented engineers that are tuning in too, we're aggressively hiring. So if you are interested in being a part of making the world programmable, and being at the ground floor of the company that's creating these capabilities to be writ large, we'd love to hear from you. >> Amazing, Joseph, thanks so much for coming on and being part of the AWS Startup Showcase. Man, if I was in my twenties, I'd be knocking on your door, because it's the hottest trend right now, it's super exciting. Generative AI is just the beginning of massive sea change. Congratulations on all your success, and we'll be following you guys. Thanks for spending the time, really appreciate it. >> Thanks for having me. >> Okay, this is season three, episode one of the ongoing series covering the exciting startups from the AWS ecosystem, talking about the hottest things in tech. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (chill electronic music)

>>The transformation of Dell into Dell emc. And now Dell Technologies has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the enterprise technology industry. The company has gone from a Wall Street darling rocket ship PC company to a Midling enterprise player, forced to go private to a debt laden powerhouse that controlled one of the most valuable assets in enterprise tech i e VMware, and now is a hundred billion dollar giant with a low margin business. A strong balance sheet in the broadest hardware portfolio in the industry and financial magic that Dell went through would make anyone's head spin. The last lever of Dell EMC of the Dell EMC deal was detailed in Michael Dell's book Play Nice But Win in a captivating chapter called Harry You and the Bolt from the Blue Michael Dell described how he and his colleagues came up with the final straw of how to finance the deal. >>If you haven't read it, you should. And of course, after years of successfully integrating EMC and becoming VMware's number one distribution channel, all of this culminated in the spin out of VMware from Dell and a massive wealth creation milestone pending, of course the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. So where's that leave Dell and what does the future look like for this technology powerhouse? Hello and welcome to the Cube's exclusive coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. My name is Dave Ante and I'll be hosting the program. Now today in conjunction with the Dell Tech Summit, we're gonna hear from four of Dell's senior executives, Tom Sweet, who's the CFO of Dell Technologies. He's gonna share his views on the company's position and opportunities going forward. He's gonna answer the question, why is Dell a good long-term investment? Then we'll hear from Jeff Boudreau, who's the president of Dell's ISG business. >>That unit is the largest profit driver of Dell. He's gonna talk about the product angle and specifically how Dell is thinking about solving the multi-cloud challenge. And then Sam Groot, who is the senior vice president of marketing, will come on the program and give us the update on Apex, which is Dell's as a service offering, and then the new Edge platform called Project Frontier. Now it's also cyber security Awareness month that we're gonna see if Sam has, you know, anything to say about that. Then finally, for a company that's nearly 40 years old, Dell actually has some pretty forward thinking philosophies when it comes to its culture and workforce. And we're gonna speak with Jen Vera, who's Dell's chief Human Resource Resource Officer about hybrid work and how Dell is thinking about the future of work. However, before we get into all this, I wanna share our independent perspectives on the company and some research that we'll introduce to frame the program. >>Now, as you know, we love data here at the cube and one of our partners, ETR has what we believe is the best spending intentions data for enterprise tech. So here's a graphic that shows ET R'S proprietary net score methodology in the vertical access. That's a measure of spending velocity. And on the X axis, his overlap of pervasiveness in the data sample, this is a cut for just the server, the storage, and the client sectors within the ETR taxonomy. So you can see Dell CSG products, laptops in particular are dominant on both the X and the Y dimensions. CSG is the client solutions group and accounts for nearly 60% of Dell's revenue and about half of its operating income. And then the arrow signifies that dot, that represents Dell's ISG business that we're gonna talk to Jeff Boudro about. That's the infrastructure solutions group. Now, ISG accounts for the bulk of of the remainder of Dell's business, and it is, it's, as I said, it's most profitable from a margin standpoint. >>It comprises the EMC storage business as well as the Dell server business and Dell's networking portfolio. And as a note, we didn't include networking in that cut had we done. So Cisco would've dominated the graphic. And frankly, Dell's networking business isn't industry leading in the same way that PCs, servers and storage are. And as you can see, the data confirms the leadership position Dell has in its client side, its server and its storage sectors. But the nuance is look at that red dotted line at 40% on the vertical axis that represents a highly elevated net score, and every company in the sector is below that line. Now we should mention that we also filtered the data for those companies with more than a hundred mentions in the survey, but the point remains the same. This is a mature business that generally is lower margin storage is the exception, but cloud has put pressure on margins even in that business in addition to the server space. >>The last point on this graphic is we put a box around VMware and it's prominently present on both the X and Y dimensions. VMware participates with purely software defined high margin offerings in this, in these spaces, and it gives you a sense of what might have been had Dell chosen to hold onto that asset or spin it into the company. But let's face it, the alternatives from Michael Dell were just too attractive and it's unlikely that a spin in would've unlocked the value in the way a spinout did, at least not in the near future. So let's take a look at the snapshot of Dell's financials. To give you a sense of where the company stands today, Dell is a company with over a hundred billion in revenue. Last quarter, it did more than 26 billion in revenue and grew at a quite amazing 9% rate for a company that size. >>But because it's a hardware company, primarily its margins are low with operating income, 10% of revenue, and at 21% gross margin with VMware on Dell's income statement before the spin, its gross margins. Were in the low thirties. Now, Dell only spends about 2% of revenue on r and d because because it's so big, it's still a lot of money. And you can see it is cash flow positive. Dell's free cash flow over the trailing 12 month period is 3.7 billion, but that's only 3.5% of trailing 12 month revenue. Dell's Apex, and of course it's hardware maintenance business is recurring revenue and that is only about 5 billion in revenue and it's growing at 8% annually. Now having said that, it's the equivalent of service now's total revenue. Of course, service now is 23% operating margin and 16% free cash flow margin and more than 5 billion in cash on the balance sheet and an 85 billion market cap. >>That's what software will do for you. Now Dell, like most companies, is staring at a challenging macro environment with FX headwinds, inflation, et cetera. You've heard the story and hence it's conservative and contracting revenue guidance. But the balance sheet transformation has been quite amazing. Thanks to VMware's cash flow, Michael Dell and his partners from Silver Lake at all, they put up around $4 billion of their own cash to buy EMC for 67 billion, and of course got VMware in the process. Most of that financing was debt that Dell put on its balance sheet to do the transaction to the tune of 46 billion. It added to the, to the balance sheet debt. Now Dell's debt, the core debt net of its financing operation is now down to 16 billion and it has 7 billion in cash in the balance sheet. So dramatic delta from just a few years ago. So pretty good picture. >>But Dell a hundred billion company is still only valued at 28 billion or around 26 cents on the revenue dollar H HP's revenue multiple is around 60 cents on the revenue dollar. HP Inc. Dell's, you know, laptop and PC competitor is around 45 cents. IBM's revenue multiple is almost two times. By the way, IBM has more than 50 billion in debt thanks to the Red Hat acquisition. And Cisco has a revenue multiple, it's over three x, about 3.3 x currently. So is Dell undervalued? Well, based on these comparisons with its peers, I'd say yes and no. Dell's performance relative to its peers in the market is very strong. It's winning and has an extremely adept go to market machine, but it's lack of software content and it's margin profile leads. One to believe that if it can continue to pull some valuation levers while entering new markets, it can get its valuation well above where it is today. >>So what are some of those levers and what might that look like going forward? Despite the fact that Dell doesn't have a huge software revenue component since spinning out VMware and it doesn't own a cloud, it plays in virtually every part of the hardware market and it can provide infrastructure for pr pretty much any application in any use case and pretty much any industry and pretty much any geography in the world and it can serve those customers. So its size is an advantage. However, the history for hardware heavy companies that try to get bigger has some notable failures, namely hp, which had to split into two businesses, HP Inc. And hp E and ibm, which has had in abysmal decade from a performance standpoint and has had to shrink to grow again and obviously do a massive 34 billion acquisition of Red Hat. So why will Dell do any better than these two? >>Well, it has a fantastic supply chain. It's a founder led company, which makes a cultural difference in our view, and it's actually comfortable with a low margin software, light business model. Most certainly, IBM wasn't comfortable with that and didn't have these characteristics, and HP was kind of just incomprehensible at the end. So Dell in my opinion, is a much better chance of doing well at a hundred billion or over, but we'll see how it navigates through the current headwinds as it's guiding down. Apex is essentially Dell's version of the cloud. Now remember, Dell got started late. HPE is further along from a model standpoint with GreenLake, but Dell has a larger portfolio, so they're gonna try to play on that advantage. But at the end of the day, these as a service offerings are simply ways to bring a utility model to existing customers and generate recurring revenue. >>And that's a good thing because customers will be loyal to an incumbent if it can deliver as a service and reduce risk for for customers. But the real opportunity lies ahead, specifically Dell is embracing the cloud model. It took a while, but they're on board as Matt Baker Dell's senior vice president of corporate strategy likes to say it's not a zero sum game. What it means by that is just because Dell doesn't own its own cloud, it doesn't mean Dell can't build value on top of hyperscale clouds, what we call super cloud. And that's Dell's strategy to take advantage of public cloud CapEx and connect on-prem to the cloud, create a unified experience across clouds and out to the edge that's ambitious and technically it's non-trivial. But listen to Dell's vice chairman and Coco, Jeff Clark, explain this vision, please play the clip. >>You said also technology and business models are tied together and enabler. That's if, if you believe that, then you have to believe that it's a business operating system that they want, They want to leverage whatever they can, and at the end of the day there's, they have to differentiate what they do. Well that, that's >>Exactly right. If I take that and what, what Dave was saying and and I, and I summarize it the following way, if we can take these cloud assets and capabilities, combine them in an orchestrated way to delivery a distributed platform, game over, >>Eh, pretty interesting, right? John Freer called it a business operating system. Essentially, I think of it sometimes as a cloud operating system or cloud operating environment to drive new business value on top of the hyperscale CapEx. Now, is it really game over? As Jeff Clark said, if Dell can do that, I'd say if it had that today, it might be game over for the competition, but this vision will take years to play out. And of course it's gotta be funded and now it's gonna take time. And in this industry it tends to move. Companies tend to move in lockstep. So as often as the case, it's gonna come down to execution and Dell's ability to enter new markets that are ideally, at least from my perspective, higher margin data management, extending data protection into cyber security as an adjacency and of course edge at telco slash 5G opportunities. >>All there for the taking. I mean, look, even if Dell doesn't go after more higher margin software content, it can thrive with a lower margin model just by penetrating new markets and throwing off cash from those markets. But by keeping close to customers and maybe through Tuck in acquisitions, it might be able to find the next nugget beyond today's cloud and on-prem models. And the last thing I'll call out is ecosystem. I say here ecosystem, ecosystem, ecosystem. Because a defining characteristic of a cloud player is ecosystem, and if Apex is Dell's cloud, it has the opportunity to expand that ecosystem dramatically. This is one of the company's biggest opportunities and challenges. At the same time, in my view, it's just scratching the surface on its partner ecosystem. And it's ecosystem today is is both reseller heavy and tech partner heavy. And that's not a bad thing, but in a, but it's starting to evolve more rapidly. >>The snowflake deal is an example of up to stack evolution, but I'd like to see much more out of that snowflake relationship and more relationships like that. Specifically I'd like to see more momentum with data and database. And if we live at a data heavy world, which we do, where the data and the database and data management offerings, you know, coexist and are super important to customers, like to see that inside of Apex, like to see that data play beyond storage, which is really where it is today and it's early days. The point is with Dell's go to market advantage, which which company wouldn't treat Dell like the on-prem hybrid edge super cloud player that I wanna partner with to drive more business. You'd be crazy not to, but Dell has a lot on its plate and we'd like to see some serious acceleration on the ecosystem front. In other words, Dell as both a selling partner and a business enabler with its platform, its programmable infrastructure as a service. And that is a moving target that will rapidly involve. And of course we'll be here watching and reporting. So thanks for watching this preview of Dell Technology Summit 2022. I'm Dave Vte. We hope you enjoy the rest of the program.

(upbeat music) >> From Phoenix, Arizona, the CUBE, at Catalyst Conference. Here's your host, Jeff Frick. >> Hey welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with the CUBE. We're in Phoenix, Arizona at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. There's a lot of catalyst conference, but there's only one Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. It's their fourth year, about 400 people they're going to be back in San Francisco next year. Wanted to come down and see what's going on. And we're really excited with our next guest. Actually part of my prep, I went and watched our last interview and we knocked it out of the park, I have to say. Jennifer Tejada, former President and the CEO of Keynote. Welcome back. >> Thank you, thanks so much for having me. It's great to see you again. >> Absolutely, so just to set the record straight, 'cause there's little bits on the internet, you're no longer the CEO of Keynote. >> I am no longer the CEO of Keynote. Keynote was acquired by a company called Compuware. It was merged with a business within Compuware called Dynatrace. Following that integration last year, I stepped out of the business and have been spending my time making some investments, pursuing the growth arena in Tech, and also spending a lot of time on boards and helping other women establish themselves in the community of boards and the technology industry. >> Okay, so if they weren't ringing off the hook already, now your phones will begin to ring off the hook. >> (laughs) >> You couldn't get a better CEO than Jennifer. >> Oh, thank you. >> But let's jump in. So you've been spending your time too, helping at conferences like this. So you had a session here. >> Yeah, I'm speaking today about operations. >> That's right, coming up. >> My presentation's called "Ops Chops". It's a subject that's very dear to my heart because of the pragmatism of operations, and how underrepresented I think it is at conferences like this. You know, we've seen many inspiring speakers in the last two days, talking about their paths to success, and to leadership, and giving the women in the room a lot of great advice on how to manage everything, from your career development, to work-life balance, to conflict, to challenges, how to really navigate the tech industry. Which, you know if someone could send me the book on that, that would be great. But no-one's really talking about, I think, where the rubber meets the road, which is operations. I believe operations is the bridge between strategy and the execution of great results. And there's a lot of math in operations. In the tech industry right now, we're hearing a lot of storytelling, and narratives about great new companies, new products, and the vision for how we're going to change the world, et cetera. But at the end of the day, if you want to be successful, you have to set goals that are helpfully aspirational, but realistic, and then you've got to nail your delivery. Because if you miss a beat, you don't have a lot of time to make up for that miss. And you've got investors, you've got shareholders, you have employees that expect you to deliver. And so operations I think is a great mix between art and science. The math of really measuring your business, the rigor of measuring your progress, really understanding the underlying financial drivers in your business, and then orienting your culture, and your people around the best possible execution that gives your strategy the most potential to be successful >> Right, and ops kind of gets a bad rap all the time. Everyone's talking about strategy and strategy, and we're all about strategy. At the end of the day, strategy with no execution, it's just a nice PowerPoint slide, right? But it's not like you on this. >> Exactly, exactly. And I think, you know I've been around for a little while. I've seen the market cycles in the technology industry. And we're certainly seeing a connection now. And a lot of businesses that marked themselves and measured themselves on how much money they've raised, or how much money they've spent, are now trying to figure out how to generate cash flow, and how to survive over a longer period of time if the market does soften. So I have a lot of respect for people who know how to generate cash flow, and deliver results, and deliver revenue, and measure their business on the basis of growth. Customers that vote with their dollars, right? >> Right. >> And so, yeah, I think operations, it's the unsung hero. When it comes to business outcomes. And so we're going to spend some time today talking about what I think is the quiet achiever in leadership. >> The other thing that's kind of interesting, cause we've got all these big data shows, right? Big data, cloud, probably two of the biggest topics right now, internet of things, of course being right there. But this kind of nirvana picture that gets painted, where there's going to be all this automation, and I'm just going to throw it in a big Hadoop cluster, and voila, everything happens. >> Boom, I'll have the answer. >> It doesn't really work that way. >> Not yet. I do think that machine learning, and artificial intelligence is progressing rapidly. And I think we're moving away from the automation of process to the automation of getting to the answer. I think analytics without action, though, leaves you kind of empty-handed. >> Right >> Like, so great, I have a lot of information, I have all this big data. I need the small data. I need data in the context of problems that I'm trying to solve. Whether, I'm thinking about it from consumer perspective, or a business perspective. So I see a real convergence between analytics and applications coming. You know, I think LifeLock has a funny commercial where they talk about alerting. And you know, don't just point to the fire. Like help me put the fire out. Help me figure out how the thing caught fire. And I think that's where machine learning and artificial intelligence can be super helpful. I also think that we're a long way away from really being able to leverage the true power of all this data. If you think about digital health, for example, and all the proprietary data stacks, that are being built through your FitBit, or your iPhone. You know, the way we're sensoring our personal health and fitness. But where's all that data going? Is it really contributing to research to solve, you know, health epidemics, right? No, because those stacks are all proprietary. No one wants to share them. >> Right >> So we need to get to a universal language, or a universal technology platform, that enables the researchers of the world to get a hold of that data, and do something super meaningful with it. So I think with progress, you'll also create open-ended questions. >> Absolutely >> And I think it's all positive. But I think we still have a long way to go, to see that big data environment really deliver great results. >> Right. So let's shift gears a little bit to leadership. >> Yeah. >> Another kind of softer topic. Not a big data topic. And when we talked last time, you came from Procter & Gamble When I graduated from undergrad, one of the great training programs was the Macy training program. May Company had one. So there were kind of these established things. IBM was always famous for their kind of training. It's a process where you went into a program, and it was kind of like extended school, just in a business context. You don't see that as much any more. Those programs aren't as plentiful. And so many people with the startup bug, so you see like in Iberia, they jump right in. I think you're mentioning off-air, one of the companies you're involved with, the guy's never had another job. So how do you see that kind of playing out? Kind of the lack of these kind of formal leadership opportunities, and what's that going to look like down the road. As the people who haven't had the benefit of this kind of training, or maybe it wasn't a benefit, get into these more senior positions. >> For sure. Look, leadership development is a topic that is of real interest to me. I was so fortunate and am so grateful for the opportunity that I had at Proctor & Gamble. I spent nearly six years there. And a big chunk of my time was spent in a leadership rotation program. Where you got to participate in a number of different projects and jobs, but you had mentorship, structured training and education, around what it takes to be, not just a good manager, but an effective leader. How you build a culture. How you engender people's commitments and dedication. How you really make the best of the resources that you have. How you manage your management. Whether that's board, or that's a CEO, or that's your shareholders. How you think about those things. And really tactically, what works and what doesn't. And being surrounded by people who are experts in their field. That was a long time ago, Jeff. And I don't see as many companies in the tech industry investing in that kind of leadership. And for kids coming out of college today, they're not rolling into structured leadership training programs. And so if you fast forward 20 years, what does that mean for the boards of the future? What does that mean for the Global 1000, and how those businesses are run? The good news is there's technology, there are plenty of amazing, inspirational founders out there, that have figured out how to build businesses on their own. And there's plenty of people like me, who actually want to mentor and help to build out the skill sets of these founders and these executives. But I do think that like many other areas of training and education which have been democratized in the industry, there's an opportunity to democratize leadership development and leadership training. And so that's something I'm spending a little bit of time on now. >> Good. And one of the great points you talked about. Again, go back and look at the other interview. Just Google Jennifer Tejada the Cube. Was really about as a leader, how you worked with exchanging value with your employees, right? And to quote you, you know, they're doing things that, they're not doing things that they might rather be doing. Spending time with their family on vacation, et cetera. And how you manage that as a leader of the company, to make them happy that they're there working, and to give them a meaningful place to be. And to spend that time that they're not spending on things that they might like more. >> I think culture is so important to the success of a business. You know, there are some investors that think culture is like an afterthought. It's one of those soft topics that they really don't need to care about. But for employees today, culture is everything. If you are going to spend a disproportionate amount of your waking hours with a group of people, it better be on a mission that's meaningful to you. And you'd better be working alongside of people that you think you can learn from, that inspire you, that stretch you to do more than you thought you could do. And so for me, it's about creating a culture of innovation, of performance, of collaboration. A real orientation around goals that everybody in the organization understands. In a way that is meaningful to them, within their role in the business. And that it's fun. Like, I won't do anything if it's not fun. I don't want to work with people who aren't fun. I was really excited. Two of the women who were on my leadership team at Keynote Flew here just to join me today, and support me as I'm giving a talk. But also to go out and have a drink. Because that's what we used to do after a long day at work. >> Right, right. >> And I think you have to be able to create a fire in someone by making sure that they, that they are being stretched. That they're learning and developing in that process. That they're part of something bigger than them. And that they can look back after a week, after a month, after a year in that business with you, and realize that they made an impact. That they made a difference. But that they also gained something from it, too. And I don't think we can ever underestimate the value of recognition, right? Not just money, but are you really recognizing someone for their commitment. For their emotional commitment to the business. For the time that they're spending and for what they've delivered for you, for the business, for your shareholder, for your customers. >> Jennifer, I could go with you all day long. >> (laughs) >> I'm going to get to one more before I let you go. Cause we're out of time, unfortunately. But you're now on some boards. There's a lot of talk. It feels like kind of the last plateau. Not that we've conquered the other ones. Because the last plateau is to get more women on boards. And we hear it's a matching problem, it's not so much of a pipeline problem. From your perspective, what can you advise? How can you help either people looking for qualified women, such as yourself, to be on boards. For qualified women who want to get on boards, to find them? >> That's a great question. I am very fortunate that there are people within my network that have spent time working with me, and can identify pieces of my experience that they think could be useful within their investment portfolio or within their companies. I'm part of a board called Puppet. It's an infrastructure software company based out of Portland. Super talented founder and team. Fast growing business in a really important space, software automation. Great board. I mean, I joined that board because every single person on the board, to a fault, is an amazing, accomplished executive, in and of themselves. Whether they're an investor, or a career CFO, or a career sales leader from the big technology side of the industry. So for me, it's such a great opportunity to collaborate with those people, and also take my experience, and lend what I know, and the pattern recognition that I have from running businesses, to loop the founder into his team. But I tell you, I wish that, and I hope that, the market starts to really think about diversity at the board level from a longer-term perspective. It's not just about how you find the women now. And by the way, there aren't that many female CEOs. But those of us who have sort of ticked that box and had that experience, we are available. And there are places where it's easy to find us. The Boardlist, for instance, is one of them. The Athena Alliance. Coco, the founder of that business is here. Women in Tech. I mean, it's out there. It's not that hard to find us. The challenge, I think, is the depth, the bench strength. Like who are the next female leaders that are coming up? That have functional expertise. You may need someone who's a marketing expert. You may need someone who's a product expert. You may need somebody who functionally knows consumer software, right? And it's really being willing, as a recruiter, as a recruiting executive, as a board member on the governance and nomination committee to say to your recruiters, to say to your investors, we want women on the short list. Or we want diversity on the short list. Like gender diversity, age diversity, racial diversity. A diverse board makes better decisions, full stop. Delivers better results. And I think we have to be demanding about that effort. We have to, the recruiting industry needs to hear that over and over again. And then on the flip side, we've got to develop these women. Help them build the skills. I mean, when I talk to women who want to be on boards, I say tell everybody, you want to be on a board. Be specific about the help that you need, right? Find the people that are connected in that network. Because once you're on one board, you meet board members there, they're on other boards. It does snowball. And in fact then you have to really choose the board wisely. Because it's not a two year commitment. You're in it for the long haul. So when you make that decision to choose a board, make sure it's a business that you have a real affinity to. That these are people that you want to spend time with over several years, right? And that you're willing to see that business through thick and thin. You don't get to leave the board if things go badly. That's when they need you the most. >> Right. >> So my hope is that we become much more open minded and demanding about diversity at the board level. And equally that we invest in developing women, men, people of different ages and bringing them to the board level. You don't have to be a CEO to be an effective board member, either. If you have functional, visional, regional expertise, that is a fit to that business, then you're going to be a very effective board member. >> All right, Jennifer, we have to let you go unfortunately. Thank you so much for stopping by and sharing your insight. No longer keynote, so now we can just use all our tags. Great Cube alumni, and tech athlete. So again, thanks for stopping by. >> Awesome, thank you so much for having me. >> Absolutely. Jennifer Tejada, I'm Jeff Frick. We are in Phoenix, Arizona at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Thanks for watching, we'll be right back. (upbeat music)