>>Hello, and welcome to the cubes. Special showcase with unstoppable domains. I'm John furrier, your host of the cube here in Palo Alto, California and Matt Gould, who is the founder and CEO of unstoppable domains. Matt, great to come on. Congratulations on the success of your company on stumbled domains. Thanks for kicking off this showcase. >>Thank you. Happy to be here. So >>Love, first of all, love the story you got going on here. Love the approach, very innovative, but you're also on the big web three wave, which we know where that leads into. Metaverse unlimited new ways. People are consuming information, content applications are being built differently. This is a major wave and it's happening. Some people are trying to squint through the hype versus reality, but you don't have to be a rocket science to realize that it's a cultural shift and a technical shift going on with web three. So this is kind of the what's happening in the market. So give us your take. What's your reaction? You're in the middle of it. You're on this wave. >>Yeah. Well, I would say it's a torrent of change and the get unleashed just over a decade ago with Bitcoin coming out and giving people the ability to have a digital items that they could actually own themselves online. And this is a new thing. And people coming, especially from my generation of millennials, they spend their time online in these digital spaces and they've wanted to be able to own these items. Do you see it from, you know, gaming and Fortnite and skins and Warcraft and all these other places, but this is really being enabled by this new crypto technology to just extend a whole lot more, uh, applications for money, which everyone's familiar with, uh, to, uh, NFT projects, uh, like boarding school. >>You know, I was listening to your podcast. You guys got a great pot. I think you're on a 117 episodes now and growing, you guys do a deep dive. So people watching check out the unstoppable podcast, but in the last podcast, man, you mentioned, you know, some of the older generations like me, I grew up with IP addresses and before the web, they called it information super highway. It wasn't even called the web yet. Um, but IP was, was generated by the United States department of commerce and R and D that became the internet. The internet became the web back then it was just get some webpages up and find what you're looking for. Right. Very analog compared to what's. Now, today, now you mentioned gaming, you mentioned, uh, how people are changing. Can you talk about your view of this cultural shift? And we've been talking about in the queue for many, many years now, but it's actually happening now where the expectation of the audience and the users and the people consuming and communicating and bonding and groups, whether it's gaming or communities are expecting new behaviors, new applications, and it's a forcing function. >>This shift is having now, what's your reaction to that? What's your explanation? >>Yeah, well, I think, uh, it just goes back to the shift of peoples, where are they spending their time? And if you look today, most people spend 50% plus of their time in front of a screen. And that's just a tremendous amount of effort. But if you look at how much, how much of assets are digital, it's like less than 1% of their portfolio would be some sort of digital asset, uh, compared to, you know, literally 50% of every day sitting in front of a screen and simultaneously what's happening is these new technologies are emerging around, uh, cryptocurrencies, blockchain systems, uh, ways for you to track the digital ownership of things, and then kind of bring that into, uh, your different applications. So one of the big things that's happening with web three is this concept of data portability, meaning that I can own something on one application. >>And I could potentially take that with me to several other applications across the internet. And so this is like the emerging digital property rights that are happening right now. As we transitioned from a model in web to where you're on a hosted service, like Facebook, it's a walled garden, they own and control everything. You are the product, you know, they're mining you for data and they're just selling ads, right? So to assist them where it's much more open, you can go into these worlds and experiences. You can take things with you, uh, and you can, you can leave with them. And most people are doing this with cryptocurrency. Maybe you earn an in-game currency, you can leave and take that to a different game and you can spend it somewhere else. Uh, so the user is now enabled to bring their data to the party. Whereas before now you couldn't really do that. And that data includes their money or that includes their digital items. And so I think that's the big shift that we're seeing and that changes a lot and how applications, uh, serve up to user. So it's going to change their user experiences. For instance, >>The flip, the script has flipped and you're right on. I agree with you. I think you guys are smart to see it. And I think everyone who's on this wave will see it. Let's get into that because this is happening. People are saying I'm done with being mined and being manipulated by the big Facebooks and the LinkedIns of the world who were using the user. Now, the contract was a free product and you gave it your data, but then it got too far. Now people want to be in charge of their data. They want to broker their data. They want to collect their digital exhaust, maybe collect some things in a game, or maybe do some commerce in an application or a marketplace. So these are the new use cases. How does the digital identity architecture work with unstoppable? How are you guys enabling that? Could you take us through the vision of where you guys came on this because it's unique in an NFT and kind of the domain name concept coming together? Can you explain? >>Yeah. So, uh, we think we approach the problem for if we're going to rebuild the way that people interact online, uh, what are kind of the first primitives that they're going to need in order to make that possible? And we thought that one of the things that you have on every network, like when you log on Twitter, you have a Twitter handle. When you log on, uh, you know, Instagram, you have an Instagram handle, it's your name, right? You have that name that's that's on those applications. And right now what happens is if users get kicked off the platform, they lose a hundred percent of their followers, right? And theirs. And they also, in some cases, they can't even directly contact their followers on some of these platforms. There's no way for them to retain this social network. So you have all these influencers who are, today's small businesses who build up these large, you know, profitable, small businesses online, uh, you know, being key opinion leaders to their demographic. >>Uh, and then they could be D platform, or they're unable to take this data and move to another platform. If that platform raised their fees, you've seen several platforms, increase their take rates. You have 10, 20, 30, 40%, and they're getting locked in and they're getting squeezed. Right. Uh, so we just said, you know what, the first thing you're going to want to own that this is going to be your piece of digital property. It's going to be your name across these applications. And if you look at every computer network in the history of computing networks, the end up with a naming system, and when we've looked back at DDA desk, which came out in the nineties, uh, it was just a way for people to find these webpages much easier, you know, instead of mapping these IP addresses. Uh, and then we said to ourselves, you know, uh, what's going to happen in the future is just like everyone has an email address that they use in their web two world in order to, uh, identify themselves as they log into all these applications. >>They're going to have an NFT domain in the web three world in order to authenticate and, and, uh, bring their data with them across these applications. So we saw a direct correlation there between DNS and what we're doing with NFT domain name systems. Um, and the bigger breakthrough here is at NMT domain systems or these NFT assets that live on a blockchain. They are owned by users to build on these open systems so that multiple applications could read data off of them. And that makes them portable. So we were looking for an infrastructure play like a picks and shovels play for the emerging web three metaverse. Uh, and we thought that names were just something that if we wanted a future to happen, where all 3.5 billion people, you know, with cell phones are sending crypto and digital assets back and forth, they're gonna need to have a name to make this a lot easier instead of, you know, these long IP addresses or a hex addresses in the case of Porto. >>So people have multiple wallets too. It's not like there's all kinds of wallet, variations, name, verification, you see link trees everywhere. You know, that's essentially just an app and it doesn't really do anything. I mean, so you're seeing people kind of trying to figure it out. I mean, you've got to get up, Angela got a LinkedIn handle. I mean, what do you do with it? >>Yeah. And, and then specific to crypto, there was a very hair on fire use case for people who buy their first Bitcoin. And for those in the audience who haven't done this yet, when you go in and you go into an app, you buy your first Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever cryptocurrency. And then the first time you try to send it, there's this, there's this field where you want to send it. And it's this very long text address. And it looks like an IP address from the 1980s, right? And it's, it's like a bank number and no one's going to use that to send money back and forth to each other. And so just like domain names and the DNS system replace IP addresses in Ft domains, uh, on blockchain systems, replace hex addresses for sending and receiving, you know, cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever. And that's its first use case is it really plugs in there. So when you want to send money to someone, you can just, instead of sending money to a large hex address that you have to copy and paste, you can have an error or you can send it to the wrong place. It's pretty scary. You could send it to John furrier dot, uh, NFT. And uh, so we thought that you're just not going to get global adoption without better UX, same thing. It worked with the.com domains. And this is the same thing for the coin and other >>Crypto. It's interesting to look at the web two or trend one to two web one went to two. It was all about user ease of use, right? And making things simpler. Clutter, you have more pages. You can't find things that was search that was Google since then. Has there actually been an advancement? Facebook certainly is not an advancement. They're hoarding all the data. So I think we're broken between that step of, you know, a free search to all the resources in the world, to which, by the way, they're mining a lot of data too, with the toolbar and Chrome. But now where's that web three crossover. So take us through your vision on digital identity on web to Google searching, Facebook's broken democracy is broken users. Aren't in charge to web three. >>Got it. Well, we can start at web one. So the way that I think about it is if you go to web one, it was very simple, just text web pages. So it was just a way for someone to like put up a billboard and here's a piece of information and here's some things that you could read about it. Right. Uh, and then what happened with web two was you started having applications being built that had backend infrastructure to provide services. So if you think about web two, these are all, you know, these are websites or web portals that have services attached to them, whether that's a social network service or search engine or whatever. And then as we moved to web three, the new thing that's happening here is the user is coming on to that experience. And they're able to connect in their wallet or their web three identity, uh, to that app and they can bring their data to the party. >>So it's kind of like web one, you just have a static web page whip, two, you have a static web page with a service, like a server back here. And then with three, the user can come in and bring their database with them, uh, in order to have much better app experiences. So how does that change things? Well, for one, that means that the, you want data to be portable across apps. So we've touched on gaming earlier and maybe if I have an end game item for one, a game that I'm playing for a certain company, I can take it across two or three different games. Uh, it also impacts money. Money is just digital information. So now I can connect to a bunch of different apps and I can just use cryptocurrency to make those payments across those things instead of having to use a credit card. >>Uh, but then another thing that happens is I can bring in from, you know, an unlimited amount of additional information about myself. When I plug in my wallet, uh, as an example, when I plug in to Google search, for instance, they could take a look at my wallet that I've connected and they could pull information about me that I enabled that I share with them. And this means that I'm going to get a much more personalized experience on these websites. And I'm also going to have much more control over my data. There's a lot of people out there right now who are worried about data privacy, especially in places like Europe. And one of the ways to solve that is simply to not store the data and instead have the user bring it with them. >>I always thought about this and I always debated it with David laundry. My cohost does top down governance, privacy laws outweigh the organic bottoms up innovation. So what you're getting at here is, Hey, if you can actually have that solved before it even starts, it was almost as if those services were built for the problem of web two. Yes, not three. Write your reaction to that. >>I think that is, uh, right on the money. And, uh, if you look at it as a security, like if I put my security researcher hat on, I think the biggest problem we have with security and privacy on the web today is that we have these large organizations that are collecting so much data on us and they just become these honeypots. And there have been huge, uh, breaches like Equifax, you know, a few years back is a big one and just all your credit card data got leaked, right? And all your, uh, credit information got leaked. And we just have this model where these big companies silo your data. They create a giant database, which is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, if not, billions, to be attacked. And then someone eventually is going to hack that in order to pull that information. Well, if instead, and you can look at this at web three. >>So for those of the audience who have used the web three application, one of these depths, um, you know, trade cryptocurrencies or something, you'll know that when you go there, you actually connect to your wall. So when you're working with these web, you connect, you, you know, you bring your information with you and you connect it. That means that the app has none of that storage, right? So these apps that people are using for crypto trading cryptocurrency on depths or whatever, they have no stored information. So if someone hacks one of these DFI exchanges, for instance, uh, there's nothing to steal. And that's because the only time the information is being accessed is when the users actively using the site. And so as someone who cares about security and privacy, I go, wow, that's a much better data model. And that give so much more control of user because the user just permissions access to the data only during the time period in which they're interacting with the application. Um, and so I think you're right. And like, we are very excited to be building these tools, right? Because I see, like, if you look at Europe, they basically pass GDPR. And then all the companies are going, we can't comply with that and they keep postponing it or like changing a little bit and trying to make it easier to comply with. But honestly we just need to switch the data models. So the companies aren't even taking the data and then they're gonna be in a much better spot. >>The GDPR is again, a nightmare. I think it's the wrong approach. Oh, I said it was screwed up because most companies don't even know where stuff is stored. Nevermind how they delete someone's entering a database. They don't even know what they're collecting. Some at some level it becomes so complicated. So right on the money are good. Good call out there. Question for you. Is this then? Okay. So do you decouple the wallet from the ID or are they together? Uh, and is it going to be a universal wallet? Do you guys see yourselves as universal domains? Take me through the thinking around how you're looking at the wallet and the actual identity of the user, which obviously is super important on the identity side while it, is that just universal or is that going to be coming together? >>Well, I think so. The way that we kind of think about it is that wallets are where people have their financial interactions online. Right. And then identity is much more about, it's kind of like being your passport. So it's like your driver's license for the internet. So these are two kind of separate products we see longer term, uh, and they actually work together. So, you know, like if you have a domain name, it actually is easier to make deposits into your wallet because it's easier to remember to send money to, you know, method, rules dot crypto. And that way it's easier for me to receive payments or whatever. And then inside my wallet, I'm going to be doing defy trades or whatever. And doesn't really have an interaction with names necessarily in order to do those transactions. But then if I want to, uh, you know, sign into a website or something, I could connect that with my NFT domain. >>And I do think that these two things are kind of separate. I think there's, we're gonna still early. So figuring out exactly how the industry is gonna shake out over like a five to 10 year time horizon. And it may be a little bit more difficult and we could see some other emerging, uh, what you would consider like cornerstones of the crypto ecosystem. But I do think identity and reputation is one of those. Uh, and I also think that your financial applications of defy are going to be another. So those are the two areas where I see it. Um, and just to, you know, a note on this, when you have a wallet, it usually has multiple cryptocurrency address. So you're going to have like 50 cryptocurrency addresses in a wallet. Uh, you're going to want to have one domain name that links back to all those, because you're just not going to remember those 50 different addresses. So that's how I think that they collaborate. And we collaborate with several large wallets as well, uh, like blockchain.com, uh, and you know, another 30 plus of these, uh, to make it easier for sending out and receiving cryptocurrency. >>So the wallet, basically as a D app, the way you look at it, you integrate whatever you want, just integrate in. How do I log into decentralized applications with my NFT domain name? Because this becomes okay, I got to love the idea, love my identity. I'm in my own NFT. I mean, hell, this video is going to be an NFT. Soon. We get on board with the program here. Uh, but I do, I log into my app, I'm going to have a D app and I got my domain name. Do I have to submit, is there benchmarking, is there approval process? Is there API APIs and a SDK kind of thinking around it? How do you thinking about dealing with the apps? >>Yeah, so all of the above and what we're trying to, what we're trying to do here is build like an SSO solution. Uh, but that it's consumer based. So, uh, what we've done is adapted some SSL protocols that other people have used the standard ones, uh, in order to connect that back to an NFT domain in this case. And that way you keep the best of both worlds. So you can use these authorization protocols for data permissioning that are standard web to API APIs. Uh, but then the permissioning system is actually based on the user controlled in FTE. So they're assigning that with their private public key pair order to make those updates. Um, so that, that allows you to connect into both of these systems. Uh, we think that that's how technology typically impacts the world is it's not like you have something that just replaces something overnight. >>You have an integration of these technologies over time. Uh, and we really see these three components in MTU domains integrating nicely into regular apps. So as an example in the future, when you log in right now, you see Google or Facebook, or you can type in an email address, you can see not ensemble domains or NFT, uh, authorization, and you can SSO in with that, to that website. When you go to a website like an e-commerce website, you could share information about yourself because you've connected your wallet now. So you could say, yes, I am a unique individual. I do live in New York, uh, and I just bought a new house. Right. And then when you permission all that information about yourself to that application, you can serve up a new user experience for you. Um, and we think it's going to be very interesting for doing rewards and discounts, um, online for e-commerce specifically, uh, in the future, because that opens up a whole new market because they can ask you questions about yourself and you can deliver that information. >>Yeah. I really think that the gaming market has totally nailed the future use case, which is in game currency in game to engagement in game data. And now bringing that, so kind of a horizontally scalable, like surface areas is huge, right? So, you know, I think you're, that's huge success on the concept. The question I have to ask you is, um, you getting any pushback from ICANN, the international corporates have name and numbers. They got dot everything now.club, cause the clubhouse, they got dot, you know, party.live. I mean, so the real domain name people are over here, web too. You guys are coming out with the web three where's that connect for people who are not following along the web three trend. How do they, how do you rationalize the, the domain angle here? >>Yeah, well, uh, so I would say that NFTE domains or what domains on DNS were always meant to be 30 plus years ago and they just didn't have blockchain systems back in the nineties when they were building these things. So there's no way to make them for individuals. So what happened was for DNS, it actually ended up being the business. So if you look at DNS names, there's about 350 million registrations. They're basically all small business. And it's like, you know, 20 to 50 million small businesses, uh, who, uh, own the majority of these, uh, these.com or these regular DNS domain names. And that's their focus NFTE domains because all of a sudden you have the, uh, the Walton, if you have them in your wallet and your crypto wallet, they're actually for individuals. So that market, instead of being for small businesses is actually end-users. So, and instead of being for, you know, 20 to 50 million small businesses, we're talking about being useful for three to 4 billion people who have an internet connection. >>Uh, and so we actually think that the market size we're in a few domains and somewhere 50 to 100 X, the market size for traditional domain names. And then the use cases are going to be much more for, uh, individuals on a day-to-day basis. So it's like people are gonna want you on to use them for receiving cryptocurrency versus receiving dollars or payments or USCC point where they're going to want to use them as identifiers on social networks, where they're going to want to use them for SSO. Uh, and they're not gonna want to use them as much for things like websites, which is what web is. And if I'm being perfectly honest, if I'm looking out 10 years from now, I think that these traditional domain name systems are gonna want to work with and adopt this new NFC technology. Cause they're going to want to have these features for the domain next. So like in short, I think NMT domain names or domain names with superpowers, this is the next generation of, uh, naming systems and naming systems were always meant to be identity networks. >>Yeah. They hit a car, they hit a glass ceiling. I mean, they just can't, they're not built for that. Right. So I mean, and, and having people, having their own names is essentially what decentralization is all about. Cause what does a company, it's a collection of humans that aren't working in one place they're decentralized. So, and then you decentralize the identity and everything's can been changed so completely love it. I think you guys are onto something really huge here. Um, you pretty much laid out what's next for web three, but you guys are in this state of, of growth. You've seen people signing up for names. That's great. What are the, what are the, um, best practices? What are the steps are people taking? What's the common, uh, use case for folks we're putting this to work right now for you guys? Why do you see what's the progression? >>Yeah. So the, the thing that we want to solve for people most immediately is, uh, we want to make it easier for sending and receiving crypto payments. And I, and I know that sounds like a niche market, but there's over 200 million people right now who have some form of cryptocurrency, right? And 99.9% of them are still sending crypto using these really long hex addresses. And that market is growing at 60 to a hundred percent year over year. So, uh, first we need to get crypto into everybody's pocket and that's going to happen over the next three to five years. Let's call it if it doubles every year for the next five years, we'll be there. Uh, and then we want to make it easier for all those people to sit encrypted back and forth. And I, and I will admit I'm a big fan of these stable coins and these like, you know, I would say utility focused, uh, tokens that are coming out just to make it easier for, you know, transferring money from here to Turkey and back or whatever. >>Uh, and that's the really the first step freight FTE domain names. But what happens is when you have an NFTE domain and that's what you're using to receive payments, um, and then you realize, oh, I can also use this to log into my favorite apps. It starts building that identity piece. And so we're also building products and services to make it more like your identity. And we think that it's going to build up over time. So instead of like doing an identity network, top-down where you're like a government or a corporation say, oh, you have to have ID. Here's your password. You have to have it. We're going to do a bottoms up. We're going to give everyone on the planet, NFTE domain name, it's going to give them to the utility to make it easier to send, receive cryptocurrency. They're going to say, Hey, do you want to verify your Twitter profile? Yes. Okay, great. You test that back. Hey, you want to verify your Reddit? Yes. Instagram. Yes. Tik TOK. Yes. You want to verify your driver's license? Okay. Yeah, we can attach that back. Uh, and then what happens is you end up building up organically, uh, digital identifiers for people using these blockchain, uh, naming systems. And once they have that, they're gonna just, they're going to be able to share that information. Uh, and that's gonna lead to better experiences online for, uh, both commerce, but also just better user experiences. >>You know, every company when they web came along, first of all, everyone, poo-pooed the web ones. That was terrible, bad idea. Oh. And so unreliable. So slow, hard to find things. Web two, everyone bought a domain name for their company, but then as they added webpages, these permalinks became so long. The web page address fully qualified, you know, permalink string, they bought keywords. And then that's another layer on top. So you started to see that evolution in the web. Now it's kind of hit a ceiling here. Everyone gets their NFT. They, they started doing more things. Then it becomes much more of a use case where it's more usable, not just for one thing. Um, so we saw that movie before, so it's like a permalink permanent. Yeah. >>Yes. I mean, if we're lucky, it will be a decentralized bottoms up global identity, uh, that appreciates user privacy and allows people to opt in. And that's what we want to build. >>And the gas prices thing that's always coming. That's always an objection here that, I mean, blockchain is perfect for this because it's immutable, it's written on the chain. All good, totally secure. What about the efficiency? How do you see that evolving real quick? >>Well, so a couple of comments on efficiency. Uh, first of all, we picked domains as a first product to market because, you know, as you need to take a look and see if the technology is capable of handling what you're trying to do, uh, and for domain names, you're not updating that every day. Right? So like, if you look at traditional domain names, you only update it a couple of times per year. So, so the usage for that to set this up and configure it, you know, most people set up and configure it and then it'll have a few changes for years. First of all, the overall it's not like a game problem. Right, right, right. So, so that, that part's good. We picked a good place to start for going to market. And then the second piece is like, you're really just asking our computer, system's going to get more efficient over time. >>And if you know, the history of that has always been yes. Uh, and you know, I remember the nineties, I had a modem and it was, you know, whatever, 14 kilobits and then it was 28 and then 56, then 100. And now I have a hundred megabits up and down. Uh, and I look at blockchain systems and I don't know if anyone has a law for this yet, but throughput of blockchains is going up over time. And you know, there's, there's going to be continued improvements over this over the next decade. We need them. We're going to use all of it. Uh, and you just need to make sure you're planning a business makes sense for the current environment. Just as an example, if you had tried to launch Netflix for online streaming in 1990, you would have had a bad time because no one had bandwidth. So yeah. Some applications are going to wait to be a little bit later on in the cycle, but I actually think identity is perfectly fine to go ahead and get off the ground now. >>Yeah. The motivated parties for innovations here, I mean, a point cast failed miserably that was like the, they try to stream video over T1 lines, but back in the days, nothing. So again, we've seen those speeds double, triple on homes right now, Matt. Congratulations. Great stuff. Final tick, tock moment here. How would you summarize short in a short clip? The difference between digital identity in web two and web three, >>Uh, in, in web too, you don't get to own your own online presidents and in web three, you do get to own it. So I think if you were gonna simplify it really web three is about ownership and we're excited to give everyone on the planet a chance to own their name and choose when and where and how they want to share information about themselves. >>So now users are in charge. >>Exactly. >>They're not the product anymore. Going to be the product might as well monetize the product. And that's the data. Um, real quick thoughts just to close out the role of data in all this, your view. >>We haven't enabled users to own their data online since the beginning of the internet. And we're now starting to do that. It's going to have profound changes for how every application on the planet interacts with >>Awesome stuff, man, I take a minute to give a plug for the company. How many employees you got? What do you guys looking for for hiring, um, fundraising, give a quick, a quick commercial for what's going on, on unstoppable domains. Yeah. >>So if you haven't already check us out@ensembledomains.com, we're also on Twitter at unstoppable web, and we have a wonderful podcast as well that you should check out if you haven't already. And, uh, we are just crossed a hundred people. We've, we're growing, you know, three to five, a hundred percent year over year. Uh, we're basically hiring every position across the company right now. So if you're interested in getting into web three, even if you're coming from a traditional web two background, please reach out. Uh, we love teaching people about this new world and how you can be a part of it. >>And you're a virtual company. Do you have a little headquarters or is it all virtual? What's the situation there? >>Yeah, I actually just assumed we were a hundred percent remote and asynchronous and we're currently in five countries across the planet. Uh, mostly concentrated in the U S and EU areas, >>Rumor to maybe you can confirm or admit or deny this rumor. I heard a rumor that you have mandatory vacation policy. >>Uh, this is true. Uh, and that's because we are a team of people who like to get things done. And, but we also know that recovery is an important part of any organizations. So if you push too hard, uh, we want to remind people we're on a marathon, right? This is not a sprint. Uh, and so we want people to be with us term. Uh, we do think that this is a ten-year move. And so yeah. Do force people. We'll unplug you at the end of the year, if you have >>To ask me, so what's the consequence of, I don't think vacation. >>Yeah. We literally unplug it. You won't be able to get it. You won't be able to get into slack. Right. And that's a, that's how we regulate. >>Well, when people start having their avatars be their bot and you don't even know what you're unplugging at some point, that's where you guys come in with the NFD saying that that's not the real person. It's not the real human And FTS. Great innovation, great use case, Matt. Congratulations. Thanks for coming on and sharing the story to kick off this showcase with the cube. Thanks for sharing all that great insight. Appreciate it. >>John had a wonderful time. All right. Just the >>Cube unstoppable domains showcasing. We got great 10 great pieces of content we're dropping all today. Check them out. 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(upbeat music) >> From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of Postgres Vision 2021 brought to you by EDB. >> Well, hi everybody John Walls here on theCUBE and we're now welcoming Jeremy Wilmot who is the chief product officer at ACI Worldwide part of the Postgres movement, you might say or certainly benefiting from the great value that Postgres is providing a number of enterprises across the globe. Jeremy good to see you today and first off, congratulations you are the first guest I've talked to maybe in a year and a half in their office. So good for you. >> Thanks (chuckles) John that's very kind of you John and great to see you and thanks for having me here. Yeah, it's great to be in the office, it really is. I'm here in Miami in South Florida and getting some sort of normalcy back is great for all of us and I'm certainly enjoying it. So thank you before (indistinct) has been. >> I'm sure you are, yeah, congratulations on that front. First off, let's talk about ACI Worldwide for the folks in our audience who aren't familiar with the payments, your role in terms of that payment ecosystem. Tell us a little bit about ACI Worldwide. >> Sure, well, primarily we're a software company. That's ACI, we started 1975 in Omaha, Nebraska built the first debit card system and ATM system for first National Bank of Omaha and over the last 45 years, we've globalized ourselves, we have, we are delivering mission-critical real-time payment systems across the world to banks to merchants to billers, we help them meet the payment needs of their consumers and their corporates. So we process, manage digital payments, we power omni-commerce and e-commerce payments, we present and process bill payments, we manage fraud, we manage the risk all within that and as I said on a global basis 13 of the G20 countries with a leading DDA account or current account payment processing software in those countries and have been for many years. >> So, as the CPO then quite obviously in the financial space your plate is quite full these days in terms of providing for your client base. How would you characterize maybe the evolution in terms of product development that you've been through in the financial world here over the past say, three to five years, where were you back then to where you are now and what role has Postgres played in that journey? >> Sure, yeah. So, specific to the Postgres part of the ecosystem, previously five-plus years ago our previous database solution was complex, it was expensive, it was hard to change and maintain and we leveraged multiple pieces of software from multiple vendors as a result of that. So at that time we looked for an alternative that was simpler and better and we went through a very comprehensive due diligence process, we explored both open source and license models of database to support our solution and when we looked at all of the options we determined that 2ndQuadrant Postgres was the one that provided the most comprehensive solution we were looking for. It had the right mix of capabilities and performance at the right total cost of ownership that we were looking for. And in the payments world as you can imagine, you've got to to be 24/7 365. And we also required a lower cost of ownership than we had before. But we also wanted a greater flexibility and time to market that we could pass on to our customers. And then the last thing I'd say that we were looking for was a multi-deployment capability. And what I mean by that is that we would be able to use this new platform, Postgres platform in our own data centers in our own private cloud, but we could also deploy it in the public cloud, whether we would run it or whether our customers would run it. We wanted that ability to mix and match between these different deployment options. >> So you've talked about a lot of key elements here attributes in terms of availability, accessibility reliability, security obviously. Walk us through those in terms of why you think 2ndQuadrant was addressing your needs in those particular areas or any others for that matter but what it was that checked the box specifically about what Postgres was offering you as opposed to what these other possible solutions and services were that you were looking at. >> Yeah, I think, we're very focused on being able to identify what our customers need and when they're offering services to consumers and to their corporates what is it that they require that's going to enable them to win and compete. And payments industry has a lot of cost pressures within it. It has regulation, it has consumer convenience and the whole movement of digitalization that puts a lot of downward pressure on the cost space. And those who are going to win in the payment space need to be able to address that. So, that is relevant for our banks, for our merchants, for the billers. They all come under very similar regulatory pressure and market pressure and as a result, the ability to reduce dramatically in a very significant way, the total cost of ownership upon which the payment software was going to be operating that was one of the key elements that was very important to us as we made that decision. The second one I think was to enable us to be able to do what we are good at and what our customers expect us to do. And that in turn enables them to focus on their core competencies. We're a software company, we own our own IP we manage our own software for the needs of the 24/7 365 payment requirements and therefore the merchant or the biller or the bank can really focus in on the digital experience for their customers, focusing on their core competencies and what they need to do to win. That was a second key factor for us. I think the third one for us was as well speed to market. Speed to market for ourselves and being competitive to the alternative to ACI, but also more importantly a speed to market for our customers. And there are, the payment world is highly regulated requires significant certification in order to launch new services that's often the long pole in the tent. So we want to be able to get to that point as quickly as possible. And being able to have a public cloud deployment open systems capabilities that would really allow us to pass on that speed to market to those customers. So for example, an acquirer, a payment acquirer moving into a new geographical country they want to compete in they can (indistinct) on their competitors by launching minimum viable products in six to nine months that is five years ago, that could have been a 24 to 30 months endeavor for them to take on. So I, those were important considerations for us as we were choosing a longterm partner for the Postgres world and the public cloud world. >> Obviously, so you've talked a lot about your relationship with your clients and I know you have a really keen awareness of the need to ensure that trust, to ensure that reliability to ensure the collaboration. How about your relationship on the other side with EDB and in terms of all those elements so how has that evolved over a period of time and what kind of service and what kind of value do you think are you deriving from that relationship now? >> So with EDB, first of all, our journey started with 2ndQuadrant and now EDB. And we were specifically looking at the, one area was at the Bi-Directional Replication BDR that we were wanting to support with our solutions particularly in the public cloud. And that was going to enable us to replace multiple pieces of software from multiple vendors. And so we were to create that solution that was right for ACI, it was right for our customers from a functionality and agility and a cost perspective. So technologically with the non-functional requirements and the reliability, availability, serviceability aspects that we were looking for that was in partnership with 2ndQuadrant and EDB, that was a key element. I think the second piece of it is we worked really well with 2ndQuadrant EDB in terms of partnering to meet the needs of the market. It's great to have the right technology in place but then you need your partners really to be able to work with you tactically real-time in order to win in the market and make it work. And I found that they'd been a great partner for us to be able to do that and to be able to react quickly, do the right thing and really enable us to be a great partner to our customers as we deliver real-time payments, as we deliver the acquiring capabilities, as we deliver a modernization for the big banks that we work with as well. >> Now, before I let you go, I'm going to give you a two-part question here. That's always one way to squeeze a little more info (laughing) to the guest. First off advice. You've been through this transformation obviously you're very happy with all that has transpired, so your advice to others who are considering this journey. And then secondly, what can they and you do you think expect in terms of future challenges, opportunities how we might want to frame that with Postgres? Like, where are we going from here, basically? So, two parts, advice and then where do you think this is headed? >> So advice, I certainly learnings from us versus advice is number one, be very thorough in the due diligence that you do and be very clear on what you want and what are your goals that you're looking for. So from an AGI perspective, we were clear that total cost of ownership in terms of the stack that we were going to be providing to our customers. That was very important, number one number two, nonfunctional requirements. So I've talked about the mission criticality of payments 24/7 365. That was a key second piece. And then the third one, ease of deployment. I talked about that, multi-cloud deployment that we were looking for. So we were clear what we wanted and we we took our time from a due diligence point of view. It's a multi-year decision being made so it's not something specifically I think we want to rush into. In terms of looking forward and where do we go from here? Performance is critical so further up performance enhancements, ability for rapid failover availability, near 100% availability that we're looking for five-nines and above, working together with Postgres in order to make those failovers more seamless because they will happen, particularly in the real-time payments world, where we're now seeing billions of transactions happening in a week and soon that will be in a day, they will need to be able to deal with. And for all of this to happen in a public cloud environment, we, I think all understand a lot of the benefits of public cloud and we need to be able to provide this failover availability capability in the public cloud but also in a hybrid cloud environments we're in a multi-cloud environment, so we need to keep working that and make that happen that will make Postgres a payment-grade infrastructure that could power the world's real-time payments and we would love to be able to do that into the future. >> Well, Jeremy thanks for the insights, we appreciate that and once again, congratulations on getting back in that office. I know it's probably a pretty welcomed addition to your regimen now. >> Yeah, John, thank you very much and thanks to everyone who's dialed in for this and John I look forward to welcoming you in the office soon. >> Very good sir, I look forward to that as well. I'll take you up on that in Miami for sure. John Walls here on theCUBE talking with Jeremy Wilmot is the chief product officer at ACI Worldwide. part of our Postgres Vision 2021 coverage. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of Postgres Vision 2021 brought to you by EDB. >> Well, hi everybody John Walls here on theCUBE and we're now welcoming Jeremy Wilmot who is the chief product officer at ACI Worldwide part of the Postgres movement, you might say or certainly benefiting from the great value that Postgres is providing a number of enterprises across the globe. Jeremy good to see you today and first off, congratulations you are the first guest I've talked to maybe in a year and a half in their office. So good for you. >> Thanks (chuckles) John that's very kind of you John and great to see you and thanks for having me here. Yeah, it's great to be in the office, it really is. I'm here in Miami in South Florida and getting some sort of normalcy back is great for all of us and I'm certainly enjoying it. So thank you before (indistinct) has been. >> I'm sure you are, yeah, congratulations on that front. First off, let's talk about ACI Worldwide for the folks in our audience who aren't familiar with the payments, your role in terms of that payment ecosystem. Tell us a little bit about ACI Worldwide. >> Sure, well, primarily we're a software company. That's ACI, we started 1975 in Omaha, Nebraska built the first debit card system and ATM system for first National Bank of Omaha and over the last 45 years, we've globalized ourselves, we have, we are delivering mission-critical real-time payment systems across the world to banks to merchants to billers, we help them meet the payment needs of their consumers and their corporates. So we process, manage digital payments, we power omni-commerce and e-commerce payments, we present and process bill payments, we manage fraud, we manage the risk all within that and as I said on a global basis 13 of the G20 countries with a leading DDA account or current account payment processing software in those countries and have been for many years. >> So, as the CPO then quite obviously in the financial space your plate is quite full these days in terms of providing for your client base. How would you characterize maybe the evolution in terms of product development that you've been through in the financial world here over the past say, three to five years, where were you back then to where you are now and what role has Postgres played in that journey? >> Sure, yeah. So, specific to the Postgres part of the ecosystem, previously five-plus years ago our previous database solution was complex, it was expensive, it was hard to change and maintain and we leveraged multiple pieces of software from multiple vendors as a result of that. So at that time we looked for an alternative that was simpler and better and we went through a very comprehensive due diligence process, we explored both open source and license models of database to support our solution and when we looked at all of the options we determined that 2ndQuadrant Postgres was the one that provided the most comprehensive solution we were looking for. It had the right mix of capabilities and performance at the right total cost of ownership that we were looking for. And in the payments world as you can imagine, you've got to to be 24/7 365. And we also required a lower cost of ownership than we had before. But we also wanted a greater flexibility and time to market that we could pass on to our customers. And then the last thing I'd say that we were looking for was a multi-deployment capability. And what I mean by that is that we would be able to use this new platform, Postgres platform in our own data centers in our own private cloud, but we could also deploy it in the public cloud, whether we would run it or whether our customers would run it. We wanted that ability to mix and match between these different deployment options. >> So you've talked about a lot of key elements here attributes in terms of availability, accessibility reliability, security obviously. Walk us through those in terms of why you think 2ndQuadrant was addressing your needs in those particular areas or any others for that matter but what it was that checked the box specifically about what Postgres was offering you as opposed to what these other possible solutions and services were that you were looking at. >> Yeah, I think, we're very focused on being able to identify what our customers need and when they're offering services to consumers and to their corporates what is it that they require that's going to enable them to win and compete. And payments industry has a lot of cost pressures within it. It has regulation, it has consumer convenience and the whole movement of digitalization that puts a lot of downward pressure on the cost space. And those who are going to win in the payment space need to be able to address that. So, that is relevant for our banks, for our merchants, for the billers. They all come under very similar regulatory pressure and market pressure and as a result, the ability to reduce dramatically in a very significant way, the total cost of ownership upon which the payment software was going to be operating that was one of the key elements that was very important to us as we made that decision. The second one I think was to enable us to be able to do what we are good at and what our customers expect us to do. And that in turn enables them to focus on their core competencies. We're a software company, we own our own IP we manage our own software for the needs of the 24/7 365 payment requirements and therefore the merchant or the biller or the bank can really focus in on the digital experience for their customers, focusing on their core competencies and what they need to do to win. That was a second key factor for us. I think the third one for us was as well speed to market. Speed to market for ourselves and being competitive to the alternative to ACI, but also more importantly a speed to market for our customers. And there are, the payment world is highly regulated requires significant certification in order to launch new services that's often the long pole in the tent. So we want to be able to get to that point as quickly as possible. And being able to have a public cloud deployment open systems capabilities that would really allow us to pass on that speed to market to those customers. So for example, an acquirer, a payment acquirer moving into a new geographical country they want to compete in they can (indistinct) on their competitors by launching minimum viable products in six to nine months that is five years ago, that could have been a 24 to 30 months endeavor for them to take on. So I, those were important considerations for us as we were choosing a longterm partner for the Postgres world and the public cloud world. >> Obviously, so you've talked a lot about your relationship with your clients and I know you have a really keen awareness of the need to ensure that trust, to ensure that reliability to ensure the collaboration. How about your relationship on the other side with EDB and in terms of all those elements so how has that evolved over a period of time and what kind of service and what kind of value do you think are you deriving from that relationship now? >> So with EDB, first of all, our journey started with 2ndQuadrant and now EDB. And we were specifically looking at the, one area was at the Bi-Directional Replication BDR that we were wanting to support with our solutions particularly in the public cloud. And that was going to enable us to replace multiple pieces of software from multiple vendors. And so we were to create that solution that was right for ACI, it was right for our customers from a functionality and agility and a cost perspective. So technologically with the non-functional requirements and the reliability, availability, serviceability aspects that we were looking for that was in partnership with 2ndQuadrant and EDB, that was a key element. I think the second piece of it is we worked really well with 2ndQuadrant EDB in terms of partnering to meet the needs of the market. It's great to have the right technology in place but then you need your partners really to be able to work with you tactically real-time in order to win in the market and make it work. And I found that they'd been a great partner for us to be able to do that and to be able to react quickly, do the right thing and really enable us to be a great partner to our customers as we deliver real-time payments, as we deliver the acquiring capabilities, as we deliver a modernization for the big banks that we work with as well. >> Now, before I let you go, I'm going to give you a two-part question here. That's always one way to squeeze a little more info (laughing) to the guest. First off advice. You've been through this transformation obviously you're very happy with all that has transpired, so your advice to others who are considering this journey. And then secondly, what can they and you do you think expect in terms of future challenges, opportunities how we might want to frame that with Postgres? Like, where are we going from here, basically? So, two parts, advice and then where do you think this is headed? >> So advice, I certainly learnings from us versus advice is number one, be very thorough in the due diligence that you do and be very clear on what you want and what are your goals that you're looking for. So from an AGI perspective, we were clear that total cost of ownership in terms of the stack that we were going to be providing to our customers. That was very important, number one number two, nonfunctional requirements. So I've talked about the mission criticality of payments 24/7 365. That was a key second piece. And then the third one, ease of deployment. I talked about that, multi-cloud deployment that we were looking for. So we were clear what we wanted and we we took our time from a due diligence point of view. It's a multi-year decision being made so it's not something specifically I think we want to rush into. In terms of looking forward and where do we go from here? Performance is critical so further up performance enhancements, ability for rapid failover availability, near 100% availability that we're looking for five-nines and above, working together with Postgres in order to make those failovers more seamless because they will happen, particularly in the real-time payments world, where we're now seeing billions of transactions happening in a week and soon that will be in a day, they will need to be able to deal with. And for all of this to happen in a public cloud environment, we, I think all understand a lot of the benefits of public cloud and we need to be able to provide this failover availability capability in the public cloud but also in a hybrid cloud environments we're in a multi-cloud environment, so we need to keep working that and make that happen that will make Postgres a payment-grade infrastructure that could power the world's real-time payments and we would love to be able to do that into the future. >> Well, Jeremy thanks for the insights, we appreciate that and once again, congratulations on getting back in that office. I know it's probably a pretty welcomed addition to your regimen now. >> Yeah, John, thank you very much and thanks to everyone who's dialed in for this and John I look forward to welcoming you in the office soon. >> Very good sir, I look forward to that as well. I'll take you up on that in Miami for sure. John Walls here on theCUBE talking with Jeremy Wilmot is the chief product officer at ACI Worldwide. part of our Postgres Vision 2021 coverage. (upbeat music)