>> From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is theCUBE conversation. >> Hello everyone, David Vellante here and welcome to the special CUBE conversation with a colleague and friend of mine, Randy Seidl is a accomplished CEO, he's an executive, sales pro, and he's a founder of the Sales Community, this newly formed social network, Randy, good to see you again, welcome. >> Hey, great to see you, it's been a lot of great years, great relationship with you and congratulations with all your success with SiliconANGLE and theCUBE. I was remembering back, I think it's been probably since 1985, so 35 years ago when we were both Cub Scouts, I was at EMC, and you were at IDC. >> Yeah, I mean, first of all, I love where you are, your man-cave there, we heard you held a great little networking event that you do periodically with some of our joint colleagues. And yeah, wow, we were both in our twenties, I was a young pop and Dicky Eagan, and Jack and Mike, and they would have me talk to you guys, you know, sort of brief you on the market, what little I knew now looking back. But wow, Randy, I mean. >> We knew! >> Right, I mean, and then just the whole thing just took off, but we had a good instinct, that storage was going to matter, everything back then was mainframe and IBM was the king of the world, and then you guys just crushed it. Wow, what a run, amazing. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> So tell me about Sales Community. What are you trying to accomplish with this new social network? >> Well, it was kind of really my COVID moment. I was talking to Peter Bell I know, you know well as well, and it was right in the beginning of COVID we were kind of comparing notes and long story short, he said, hey Randy, you do all this work with these technology companies, and channel partners, and use your customers, CIO, CTO, CSOs, but you're really not doing much for those that you know the best, which are really technology sales professionals, CROs, STRs kind of up and down the food chain. And that really got me thinking, then he introduced me to one of his companies that sells to CROs and I was going through with them and they were kind of calling me on the carpet saying, okay, do I really know these people? I'm like, oh my gosh! They basically just said, I'm a dope, I haven't really done anything here. So, one thing led to another and ended up developing a Sales Community, a big thing and big help for me was talking to probably 150 or so during the course of the summer, CROs, VPs of sales, Reps STRs to really kind of help get some feedback from them in terms of I caught now they call product-market fit, but kind of what they think it's missing, what's needed, what are their teams need, what do they want? So, it's kind of all a perfect storm, which to be honest without COVID probably wouldn't have created Sales Community. >> Well, I joined and it was a great onboarding experience and love participating with colleagues. I mean, sales is hard, I mean, you've got your ups and your downs and you just got to keep pressing on, but who's participating in Sales Community. >> We're targeting STRs on up to CROs and the kind of the tagline is learn more so you can sell more. We have a lot of great different kind of content areas and we're going to kind of bob and weave based on the feedback that we get, but we've got some great virtual events and interviews. We have an executive coach, Tony Jerry, who's doing nine sessions on designing your life. We did a recording, a live session last week on personal goal setting. We did one yesterday, it was a live session that'll be posted shortly on strategic health. Next one's on branding, so that's not necessarily specific to tech sales, but kind of adding value. We also have Dave Knorr, another executive coach doing a weekly interview series that we're calling tech sales insights with some of the leading CROs, CEOs, Jim Sullivan, who I know you know well, he's going to be the first one, it's going to be next Wednesday, he runs a NWN and he's done a lot of great things and a lot of other great leaders from there. Also still on the interview virtual events side, Michael Cotoia from Tech Target he's going to do a CMO insights series. His Tech Target International editors are also going to do regional ones. So CIO interviews from AMEA, Asia Pac, Latin America, Australia, also on the CSO side, we have somebody focused on doing a CSO interviews, Paul Salamanca of channel interviews, I think this channel, by and large gets missed a lot. CEO's and then Steve Duplessie, I know you know well as well is going to do and focus on CIO, sub-CIO insights, but basically creating virtual events and interview series that are really targeted at people that we sell to. So that covers the kind of virtual event and interview side. And I maybe more quickly go through some of the other key segments. So another one is a content library. There's the guy who's a STR at ServiceNow went through, send me note the other day that said, hey, I found out you have some great feedback on prospecting cold calling, I shared it with my team helped me a lot. So a lot of good things in terms of content library, also opportunity to network. So you could be say selling to Fidelity, you could send a note to the community and members and say anybody else trying to sell the Fidelity, let's network, let's compare notes, also great opportunities for channel partners. So channel partner could raise their hand and say, hey, I know Fidelity, let me help with you. A lot of sharing of best practices. And also just in terms of communication, slack channels, and then opportunities to create round tables. So you might have CROs from startups that want to have maybe six to 10 of them get together. So they can kind of commiserate, ask questions, you could have CROs, companies that are maybe transforming going from on-prem to kind of SAS model. So a lot of different great things, ultimately really to serve the folks in the tech Sales Community. >> Yeah, it sounds like, I mean, first of all tons of content, the other thing I like about it is we all read books on sales, some of them are so like gimmicky, some of them are inspirational. Some of them have really great suggestions. Some of them can be life changing, but what's always been missing in my opinion, is this notion of a network, a social network, if you will, where people can help each other, you just gave a ton of good examples. So you're really trying to differentiate from a lot of the things that have worked over the years, but have really sort of one way communication, some sales guru either training or you're reading his or her book. >> Yes, and we're also fortunate on the content side, we have some of the best kind of consulting sales methodology companies that love what we're doing. So they're likewise providing a lot of content and as you said, it's crazy. You think of any other industry, restaurant, hotel, lawyers, landscape, they have these big, kind of user groups, even technology companies user groups within the larger field of technology sales enterprise B2B sales, there's really nothing that looks like this that exists. So far the feedback's been great. >> Well, so just to what you're describing, I mean, I've known you for a long, long time, and one of the principles of great salespeople is, you help others, right? You make as many friends as you can, and you're the master of that. But essentially you're bringing a lot of the things that have worked, a lot of the principles that have worked in your career to this community. Maybe talk about that a little bit. >> Yeah, I mean, especially I think some of the younger sales folks, it's not kind of off the cuff as we know, but it's really kind of training, being disciplined, being prepared, what are you going to do, how are you going to do it in this COVID moment? You know, I'm seeing lots of friends where the companies that have great relationships, they can do really well and kind of lean in a lot. If you're kind of cold calling and this environment, and it's tough, so kind of, how can you be best prepared, how can you do the best homework? How can you have the kind of right agenda, when you're going to do the sales calls? And then it's not really as much follow up, but really follow through in terms of what you do afterwards. So kind of what is the training? What can you do, how can you do it? And, you know, it's crazy, a lot of companies spend lots of money on training, but if you think about it they're really tied in specifically to tech sales, hopefully this will be great. Plus being able to just kind of throw out questions here and there works out well as well. >> Well that's what I'm looking forward to, say, hey, I got some challenges, how do others deal with this? You know, one of the things that is, I think, paramount to being a great salesperson is the attitude you hear it all the time. How do you stay pumped up? (laughing) Like I said before, we've all been through ups and downs, and what do you tell people there? >> In terms of staying pumped up, interestingly enough, the session we did yesterday on strategic health, probably plays a key role. So yeah, there's the work aspects and how are you going to focus and wake up and get fired up. But ultimately, I think you really got to take several steps back and saying are you taking care of yourself? Are you sleeping, are you eating and drinking correctly? Are you drinking enough water, are you exercising? So, in this moment, I think that's probably something that gets missed a lot in terms of getting fired up. And then ultimately just being excited about kind of what you're doing, how are you doing it, taking care of the customers and serving those around you. And you had mentioned in terms of giving it back, but a lot of us that have been around, love the idea of kind of paying it forward, helping out others and seeing a lot of the great younger folks really rise up and become stars. >> I think that's one of the most exciting things is somebody has been around for awhile. Like (laughing) we all get cold calls and say, hey, how you doing today? You know, (laughing) you really had that dead air, and you actually want to reach out and help these individuals. A lot of times they'll call you, they have no idea what you do, well I've read your website, and I think we'd be a great fit for, you know, something that would not be a great fit. So, there's a level of preparation we always talk about in sales, you got to be prepared, but there's also sometimes... I was talking to a sales pro the other day, you know, sometimes you can over prepare he said, I've been on sales calls, I prepare for hours and hours and hours, and then they get there, and it was just a lot of wasted hours. I probably could have done it in 15 minutes. I mean, so there's a really a balance there. And it comes with experience, I guess. >> Yeah, I mean, I don't know how anybody could prepare hours and hours, so that's a whole different subject to think. >> Well, he said, my technique now is just 15 minutes before the call I'll jump on and just, you know, cram as much as I can. And it actually, it worked for him. So, different approaches, right? >> Yeah, absolutely. The other thing I'd like to mention is the advisory board I'm fortunate to have a work with, and be friends with several of the best in industry like you. So if anybody goes to the website, you can click on an advisory board and there's a 200 plus and haven't count them exactly. But you know, some of the best in technology, we've got them sorted on the sales side and the channel side, the consulting side, the coaching side, analyst side, but, really just such a tremendous each head of talent that can really help us continue to go and grow and pivot and you're making sure that we are serving our Sales Community and making sure everybody's learning more so they can sell more. And then I guess I should add onto that also, earning more and making more money. >> So I got to ask you where you land on this. I mean, you're a sports fan, I am too and for a while there once the "Moneyball" came out, you saw Billy Bean and it was this sort of formulaic approach. The guy, you know, we would joke the team with the best nerds would win. But it seems like there's an equilibrium. It used to be all gut feel and experience, and then it became the data nerds. And it seems like in our industry, it's following a similar pattern, the marketing ops, Martech, becoming very, very data driven. But it feels to me, Randy, especially in these COVID times that there really is this equilibrium, this balance between experience, and tribal knowledge, gut feel, network, which is something you're building and the data. How do you see that role, that CRO role, that sales role evolving, especially in the context of what I just talked about with the data nerds? (laughing) >> Yeah, absolutely, I think I heard two points there since you brought up Billy Bean, I forgot the guy's name, but in the movie is kind of nerd. I've got Jesse and Tucker who have been tremendously helpful for us putting together a Sales Community. But to answer the question on the CMOs side, the CMOs out there frankly not going to like this answer, but I think more and more, you see CMOs and CROs kind of separated and it's kind of different agendas, my belief is that eventually the CMO function or marketing is really going to come under sales and sales are really going to take a much more active role in driving and leveraging that marketing function in terms of what's the best bang for the buck, what are they doing, how are they doing it? And I've got a lot of friends, I won't name names, but they're not on the sales side and they're doing what they can, but they just see what I'd call it kind of wasted money or inefficiencies on the marketing side. So, if I maybe I spin that a different way, I think given kind of analytics and those companies that do have best practices, and I write things on the marketing side, you know, they're going to continue to go and grow, you know, on cert with the right sales team. So I think that you bring up a great point and that area is going to continue to evolve a lot. >> Does that principle apply to product marketing? In other words do you feel like product marketing should be more aligned with engineering or sales and maybe sales and finance, where do you land on that? >> Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of old school, so I go back to Dick and Jack and Roger and Mike Rutgers, and you all in terms of, hey, you have those silos, but you get everybody at the table, kind of what we're working well together. It is interesting though in today's world, the PLG, Product-Led Growth models, where a lot of companies now are trying to get in maybe almost like a VMware, maybe BMC did in the early days where you're kind of getting into the low level developers and then kind of things bubble up so that you think Product-Led Growth model, having a lower cost insight sales model, works when I'll say the kind of the product sells itself. But I would argue, that I think some of those PLG led companies really miss out on leveraging the high end enterprise relationships, to kind of turbocharge and supersize and expedite larger sales deals, larger (indistinct). >> Well, and you mentioned earlier a channel you said a lot of times that's overlooked and I couldn't agree more, channel increasingly important. That's where a lot of the relationships live, it gives you scale, it just gives you a lot of leverage, maybe you talk about the importance of channel and how it relates to Sales Community. >> Yeah, I mean, it's interesting they're really unto themselves, there's some things that are channel channel, but if you think about, you know, go to market tech sales, pick the company on average is probably half of the business goes through the channel. And it used to be way back when just kind of fulfillment, but now the best companies really are those that have the right relationships, that are adding value, that can help on the pre sales, that can help on the post sales, that can help kind of cross sale. You know, if I'm a customer, I don't want to deal with whatever five or 10 different vendors if I can have a one stop shop with one bar solution provider, partner, SI, or whatever you want to call them, you know, that certainly makes life a lot easier. And I think a lot of companies almost been kind of a second class citizen, but I think those companies that really bring them into the fold as really partners at the table, whether it be an account planning sessions, whether you're doing sales calls, but kind of leveraging that I call it a variable cost kind of off balance sheet, sales force really is where the future is going to continue to go. >> So you've been a successful individual sales contributor. You've been a CEO, you've run large sales organizations. I mean, you basically ran sales at HP for Donna Telly, and so you've seen it all, and you've been helping startups. When you look at hiring sales people, what are the attributes that you look for? Is it intelligence, is it hard work, is it coach ability? What are some of the things that are most important to you, and do you apply different attributes in different situations? What are your thoughts on that? >> Great question in a little plug, maybe for a recruiting business, top talent recruiting, (laughing) but one of the key things that we do, which I think is different from others in the recruiting side is the relationships. So a lot of people don't dig in, when we're talking to candidates, they say, well, nobody really asked me this before. And I would argue a key differentiator, and this is way before COVID, but especially now with COVID is okay, who do you have relationships with? So I could be talking to a candidate that maybe somebody is hiring, wants to cover financial services in New York. And then I'll say, okay, well, who do you know what City JPB Bay and I'll know more people than they know. And I'll probably say, just so you know, that's weird me up in Boston. I know more than the council you probably know the best. So really trying to unearth, really kind of who has the right relationships and then separate from that in terms of a reference check, being able to reference checks sooner in the process with somebody that know well firsthand, as opposed to second hand. And a lot of times I've seen even some of the larger, more expensive recruiting firms, you're kind of wait until somebody is the final say, when do an offer, then they do a reference check and they do the reference check with somebody that they don't know. And to me, I mean, that's totally useless which quite with LinkedIn today, I could be say if we're looking at you for candidate, maybe a bad example, but I don't know, we probably have a 1000 in common, and from those, we probably have 200 that we both know, well, that I could check. And when you do reference checking, it's not a maybe it's either, hey, the person is a yes, or the person's a no. So trying to do that early in the process, I think is a big differentiator. And then last and probably third piece I'd highlight is, if it's a startup company, you can't get somebody that's just from a big company. If it's a big company role, you can't get somebody that just from a small company, you got to really make sure you kind of peel back the onions and see where they're from. And you could have somebody from a big company, but they were kind of wearing a smaller division. So again, you have to kind of, you can't judge a book by the cover. You got to kind of peel back the onion. >> So Randy, how do people learn more about Sales Community? Where do they go to engage, sign up, et cetera? >> Absolutely, it's salescommunity.com. So it should be pretty straight forward. A lot of great information there. You can go subscribe, and if you like it spread the word and a lot of great content and you can ping me there. And if not I'm randy@salescommunity.com. So love to get any feedback, help out in any way we can. >> Well, I think it's critical that you're putting this network together and you are probably the best networker that I know I've seen you in action at gatherings and you really have been a great inspiration and a friend. So, Randy, thanks so much for doing the Sales Community and coming on theCUBE and sharing your experience with us. >> Great, thanks Dave, appreciate it. >> All right you're very welcome and thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE, and we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering AWS re:Invent 2019. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services and Intel, along with its ecosystem partners. >> Hey welcome back, everyone, it's theCUBE's coverage here live in Las Vegas for re:Invent 2019, this is theCUBE's seventh year covering re:Invent, the event's only been going for eight years, it feels like a decade, so much growth, so much action, I'm John Furrier with my co-host Dave Vellante, here extracting the signal from the noise in the Intel AWS studio of theCUBE, thank you for that sponsorship. Mike Miller is our next guest, he's director of AI devices at AWS, super excited for this segment, because DeepRacer's here, and we got some music, AI is the front and center, great to see you again, thanks for coming on. >> Absolutely, thank you for having me on again, I appreciate it. >> All right, let's just jump right in, the toys. Developers are geeking out over DeepRacer and the toys you guys are putting out there as a fun way to play and learn. >> Absolutely, getting hands-on with these new broadly applicable machine learning technologies. >> Let's jump into DeepRacer, so first of all, give us a quick update on what's happened between last year and this year in the DeepRacer community, there's been a lot of froth, competitiveness, street battles, and then we'll get an update, give us a quick update on the community. >> So we launched DeepRacer last year as a 1/18 scale race car designed to teach reinforcement learning, so this thing drives by itself around the tracks. We've got an online experience where customers can train models, so we launched a DeepRacer league where we plan to visit 22 sites around the world at AWS summits, where developers can come visit us and race a car physically around a track, and we had online contests, so every month we had a new track for developers to be challenged by and race their cars around the track. We've seen tremendous engagement and excitement, a little bit of competition really gets developers' juices going. >> It's been a lot of fun, congratulations, by the way. >> Absolutely, thank you. >> All right, let's get into the new toy, so DeepRacer 2.0, whatever you're calling it, just DeepRacer-- >> DeepRacer Evo. >> Evo, okay. >> New generation, so we've basically provided more opportunities to race for developers, more challenges for them to learn, and more ways for them to win. So we integrated some new sensors on this car, so on top there's a LIDAR, which is a laser range finding device that can detect other cars or obstacles in the rear of the car and to the sides, and in the front of the car we have stereo cameras that we added so that the car can sense depth in front of it, so with those new sensors, developers can now be challenged by integrating depth sensing and object avoidance and head to head racing into their machine learning models. >> So currently it's not an obstacle course, correct, it's a race track, right? >> So we call it a time trial, so it's a single car on the track at a time, how fast can you make a lap, our world record actually is 7.44 seconds, set by a young lady from Tokyo this past year, really exciting. >> And she was holding up the trophy and said this is basically a dream come true. And so, what are they trying to optimize, is it just the speed at the turn, what are they sort of focused on? >> Yeah, it's a little bit of art and a little bit of science, so there's the reinforcement learning model that learns through what's called a reward function, so you give the car rewards for achieving specific objectives, or certain behaviors, and so it's really up to the developer to decide what kind of behaviors do they want to reward the car with, whether it's stay close to the center line, reduce the amount of turns, they can also determine its position on the track and so they can reward it for cutting corners close, speeding up or slowing down, so it's really a little bit of art and science through some experimentation and deciding. >> So we had Intel on yesterday, talking about some of their AI, Naveen Rao, great guy, but they were introducing this concept called GANs, Generative Adversarial Networks, which is kind of like neural network technology, lot of computer science in some of the tech here, this is not kiddie scripting kind of thing, this is like real deal. >> Yeah, so GANs actually formed the basis of the product that we just announced this year called DeepComposer, so DeepComposer is a keyboard and a cloud service designed to work together to teach developers about generative AI, and GANs are the technique that we teach developers. So what's interesting about generative AI is that machine learning moves from a predictions-based technology to something that can actually create new content, so create new music, new stories, new art, but also companies are using generative AI to do more practical things like take a sketch and turn it into a 3D model, or autocorrect colorize black and white photos, Autodesk even has a generative design product, where you can give, an industrial designer can give a product some constraints and it'll generate hundreds of ideas for the design. >> Now this is interesting to me, because I think this takes it to, I call basic machine learning, to really some more advanced practical examples, which is super exciting for people learning AI and machine learning. Can you talk about the composer and how it works, because pretend I'm just a musician, I'm 16 years old, I'm composing music, I got a keyboard, how can I get involved, what would be a path, do I buy a composer device, do I link it to Ableton Live, and these tools that are out there, there's a variety of different techniques, can you take us through the use case? >> Yeah, so really our target customer for this is an aspiring machine learning developer, maybe not necessarily a musician. So any developer, whether they have musical experience or machine learning background, can use the DeepComposer system to learn about the generative AI techniques. So GANs are comprised of these two networks that have to be trained in coordination, and what we do with DeepComposer is we walk users through or walk developers through exactly how to set up that structure, how these two things train, and how is it different from traditional machine learning where you've got a large data set, and you're training a single model to make a prediction. How do these multiple networks actually work against each other, and how do you make sure that they're generating new content that's actually of the right type of quality that you want, and so that's really the essence of the Generative Adversarial Networks and these two networks that work against each other. >> So a young musician who happens to like machine learning. >> So if I give this to my kid, he'll get hooked on machine learning? That's good for the college apps. >> Plug in his Looper and set two systems working together or against each other. >> When we start getting to visualization, that's going to be very interesting when you start getting the data at the fundamental level, now this is early days. Some would say day zero, because this is really early. How do you explain that to developers, and people you're trying to get attention to, because this is certainly exciting stuff, it's fun, playful, but it's got some nerd action in it, it's got some tech, what are some of the conversations you're having with folks when they say "Hey, how do I get involved, why should I get involved," and what's really going to be the impact, what's the result of all this? >> Yeah, well it's fascinating because through Amazon's 20 years of artificial intelligence investments, we've learned a lot, and we've got thousands of engineers working on artificial intelligence and machine learning, and what we want to do is try to take a lot of that knowledge and the experiences that those folks have learned through these years, and figure out how we can bring them to developers of all skill levels, so developers who don't know machine learning, through developers who might be data scientists and have some experience, we want to build tools that are engaging and tactile and actually tangible for them to learn and see the results of what machine learning can do, so in the DeepComposer case it's how do these generative networks actually create net new content, in this case music. For DeepRacer, how does reinforcement learning actually translate from a simulated environment to the real world, and how might that be applicable for, let's say, robotics applications? So it's really about reducing the learning curve and making it easy for developers to get started. >> But there is a bridge to real world applications in all this, it's a machine learning linchpin. >> Absolutely, and you can just look at all of the innovations that are being done from Amazon and from our customers, whether they're based on improving product recommendations, forecasting, streamlining supply chains, generating training data, all of these things are really practical applications. >> So what's happening at the device, and what's happening in the cloud, can you help us understand that? >> Sure, so in DeepComposer, the device is really just a way to input a signal, and in this case it's a MIDI signal, so MIDI is a digital audio format that allows machines to kind of understand music. So the keyboard allows you to input MIDI into the generative network, and then in the cloud, we've got the generative network takes that input, processes it, and then generates four-part accompaniments for the input that you provide, so say you play a little melody on the keyboard, we're going to generate a drum track, a guitar track, a keyboard track, maybe a synthesizer track, and let you play those back to hear how your input inspired the generation of this music. >> So GANs is a big deal with this. >> Absolutely, it forms the basis of the first technique that we're teaching using DeepComposer. >> All right, so I got to ask you the question that's on everyone's mind, including mine, what are some of the wackiest and/or coolest things you've seen this year with DeepComposer and DeepRacer because I can imagine developers' creativity straying off the reservation a little bit, any cool and wacky things you've seen? >> Well we've got some great stories of competitors in the DeepRacer league, so we've got father-son teams that come in and race at the New York summit, a 10 year old learning how to code with his dad. We had one competitor in the US was at our Santa Clara summit, tried again at our Atlanta summit, and then at the Chicago summit finally won a position to come back to re:Invent and race. Last year, we did the race here at re:Invent, and the winning time, the lap time, a single lap was 51 seconds, the current world record is 7.44 seconds and it's been just insane how these developers have been able to really optimize and generate models that drive this thing at incredible speeds around the track. >> I'm sure you've seen the movie Ford v Ferrari yet. You got to see that movie, because this DeepRacer, you're going to have to need a stadium soon, with eSports booming, this has got its own legs for its own business. >> Well we've got six tracks set up down at the MGM Grand Arena, so we've already got the arena set up, and that's where we're doing all the knock-out rounds and competitors. >> And you mentioned father-son, you remember when we were kids, Cub Scouts, I think it was, or Boy Scouts, whatever it was, you had the pinewood derby, right, you'd make a car and file down the nails that you use for the axles and, taking it to a whole new level here. >> It's a modern-day version. >> All right, Mike, thanks for coming on, appreciate it, let's keep in touch. If you can get us some of that B-roll for any video, I'd love to get some B-roll of some DeepRacer photos, send 'em our way, super excited, love what you're doing, I think this is a great way to make it fun, instructive, and certainly very relevant. >> Absolutely, that's what we're after. Thank you for having me. >> All right, theCUBE's coverage here, here in Las Vegas for our seventh, Amazon's eighth re:Invent, we're documenting history as the ecosystem evolves, as the industry wave is coming, IoT edge, lot of cool things happening, we're bringing it to you, we're back with more coverage after this short break. (techno music)