>> Narrator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE we're in our Palo Alto studio, it's still 2020, we're still gettin' through the COVID crisis and we're still reaching out to our community really to talk to leaders who have lead through difficult times, led through transitions, and really go out to the experts and get some advice from people who have been around the block a few times, and I'm really, really excited to have one of my all time favorite business executives joining us, I haven't talked to him in years and years and almost decades, David Pottruck is joining us, he is formerly the CEO of Schwab, how he kind of made his name, now he's an author, he's teaching at the Wharton School, he's a New York Times best selling author and he's also the chairman of Red Eagle Ventures, David, great to see you. >> Thanks, Jeff, it's good to be with you today. >> Absolutely, so before we get in, just to check in, how are you doing, how are you gettin' through 2020, I can't believe we're already on the backside of this crazy year. >> Well, it's been a pretty challenging year as you know, and we've seen companies learn to operate in a virtual world. Zoom has been one of the huge beneficiaries, but technology companies in general, the whole FAANG group of Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and such, they've all benefited from people getting more virtual, and one of the non profits I'm involved with sends out videos to schools on social and emotional learning and that's seen a big uptick. So, the world is changing, and changing in very substantial ways, and I don't think we'll ever go back to the way it was in total, we will go back to having face to face meetings, of course, but I do think that operating virtually and doing more things remotely, remote business meetings over zoom are going to be a fixed part of the future, >> Right, right. >> At least in my opinion. >> So, the reason I wanted to reach out to you is you've managed through some crazy transitions and some crazy disruptions back in the day and for a lot of the young people that don't remember, there was a time before we did everything online. There was a time where you had a broker and you called him on the phone and you paid a pretty big price based on a percentage of the transactions. You were at Schwab in the late 90s when this new thing called the internet came along, and these new things called internet only businesses to compete with you, I wonder if you can kind of take us back as you started to see some of these new kinds of threats, coming not necessarily from people that you recognize from up and down the street, but people who are coming over horizons that you've never ever seen before. And how did you start to get a feel for hmm, the landscapes a changin'. >> You know it's really funny to look back that there actually was a day when something called the internet didn't exist. And, there was no connectivity, there was no internet. We were, of course, at that time a telephone based brokerage firm, what used to be called discount brokers. We don't use that phrase very much anymore at Schwab, but, we were a telephone based discount broker, and the internet popped up and started becoming commercialized, and some online only brokerage firms popped up. And these firms didn't have call centers, they didn't have branch offices, if you wanted to do a trade you did it over your computer, online, and the pricing was dramatically less. To give you some idea, to buy 100 shares of IBM, Merrill Lynch would have charged you $250, for that one trade, Schwab would have charged you $80 and E-Trade would have charged you $25. So, we were much cheaper than Merrill Lynch, but E-Trade was much cheaper than us. So, we were, at the time, we were worried about is there enough security on the internet, can we do trades. We have a reputation to protect, a brand new company they don't have a reputation to protect, we have customer security, we have a reputation to protect. Well, we started doing online trades, and the way we did it was we gave all of our customers a 20% discount on our normal pricing, so instead of charging 80-something dollars, you paid something like $60. So, it was a nice discount, customers liked it, they were doing online trades, and we're seeing that is just taking off, it's getting huge, and we're getting great press, the analysts love it, Wall Street loves it, we're a public company and it's going great, but of course at the same time I'm getting, a basket full of letters and emails from our customers saying "why can't you do trades for $25 like E-Trade? Why are they able to do an online trade for $25 and you're charging $65? I thought you stood for value, I thought you guys wanted to be the best value for the money." So, I'm in this dilemma where Wall Street doesn't see these letters, they don't get reported, I see them, and there dozens and then hundreds, and then thousands. >> Wow. >> We had millions of customers, so to get a thousand letters or emails in a month that's very possible. And so I go to Chuck with this and I said you know, I think we need to make a change because no great company was built on the back of unhappy customers. >> Right, right. But you know, it's so funny, not funny, I'm sure it was a huge challenge in the moment, but you know, Clayton Christensen's another one of my favorite business leaders and why I like him so much, and rest in peace he passed earlier this year, is his very simple statement in "The Innovator's Dilemma" that smart people making sound business decisions based on their customer feedback will always miss discontinuous change. You were right in the middle of this thing and you had to get discontinuous change and it's funny, you've mentioned quite a bit in some of your other conversations about looking for faint signals, well this was not a faint signal, this was pretty much, sounds like came up and banged you over the head. So, how do you make and convince the rest of the people of the team that this is kind of a short-term pain but it's a long-term gain, really thinking about this long-term relationship with our customers, even though it's going to cost us on a per transaction basis in the short-term. >> Well, I had our financial staff run some models, and show me what would be the impact if we reduced our pricing from 60 something dollars a trade to $29 a trade, and the assumption of more and more trades moving to the internet. We also had a model into that the fact that people trade a little more when prices go down, costs go down cause I don't have the cost of someone answering the telephone, so there were some benefits, and I had to run the math to understand how long would it take us to go through the trough to get to the other side. A big important part of this is modeling the numbers. You don't just make this decision as a public company and just hope for the best >> Jeff: Right. >> You need to model it out, you need to run math and say how long will it take, what do we have to assume, what do we need to do, what costs do we need to cut, how are we going to protect ourselves as best as we can? And we knew that the math said that our profitability will go down 25% when we make this change of internet pricing, and we expected that Wall Street would be so upset, because they didn't see this coming, no analyst saw this coming cause they don't know about complaint letters I'm getting, so, analysts would be upset and the stock would go down 40%, going to your board and telling them you want approval for a 25% reduction in profits and a 40% reduction in your stock price is not what you want to do as a CEO, you don't want to go to your board with that and when they ask you, well how sure are you that we're going to climb out of this, you say it's going to take 18 months, what if it takes three years, you know, I was, I didn't see the choice we had, honestly, in my heart, you don't build a great company with an increasing number of unhappy customers. I didn't think we had a choice, and Clayton Christensen was one of the consultants that I used to help me think all this through because it was really hard to make this change, Jeff, because we were doing so well. >> Right. >> Ostensibly, we were killing it. >> Right, so it's interesting, I wonder if you could contrast it to what's happening say now with COVID, right, it was this, didn't sneak up on anyone, it was a really kind of a light switch moment in mid-March where suddenly everyone has to work from home, all your digital transformation initiatives are now put on fast forward, but we still have this situation where there's a variety of potential outcomes and timing that's really hard to gauge, so when you're thinking about managing through change within perfect information and you almost have kind of will we go back to normal, will we stay where we are or some spectrum in between, how do you help people think about how they should come up with contingency plans and think about managing through a number of options with imperfect information and really kind of no clear line, you said you had an 18 month ROI that the analytics point to, we're not really sure how long this thing is going to go and what it's going to look like when we get to the other side. >> Well, I think there's two issues there, one of them is how we get through this pandemic period. Until we get to, there's three things we need, we need inexpensive testing that is not done by a professional that we can do at home to see if we're safe. That's number one. Number two, we need a treatment that helps us get through this and get to the other side without dying, we need the fatality rate to even drop further. And number three we need a vaccine. So those are the three things that we need, that the world is working on all three of those, and my guess is that in the first half of 2021 we will have all three of those, we'll have all three of those and this will be a thing, basically, a thing of the past. >> Jeff: Right. >> So, but I don't think the world goes back, to exactly the way it was. People have learned they can have very effective meetings without everybody flying to Chicago, or New York, or Las Angeles, they can do it over Zoom, that doesn't mean meetings go away, but I think they're going to go down in numbers and more online things are going to happen. More people are going to be working from home at least part of the week. It's going to be different. >> Yeah. >> Those CEO's who sit in a somewhat of an ivory tower and get numbers fed to them from their financial staff, and they're not out talking to customers directly, people look at that as anecdotal information, I think it's more important than that, I think you need to see the passion behind the voice and the eyeballs of some of your best customers to understand what's going on with them, and a lot of CEO's don't actually do that. >> Right. You've made a really interesting comment in another interview that you did earlier, and you talked about the high gain questions. And one of the challenges of all CEO's is nobody wants to be the one that tells his CEO bad news, whether that be someone on your staff, whether that be some lower level person who's on the front lines and really knows there's some broken things, or whether it's a good customer as you said and kind of a social setting, how you doin', oh we love you, blah blah blah. But as a CEO you really have stressed that that is really some important hard to find, and hard to filter information up to the executive suite, so what were some of the tips and tricks you used to make sure that people either A. weren't afraid to tell you bad news, and B. that you could kind of go out and sniff it out a little bit more creatively than just kind of waiting for it to come through in the weekly reports. >> Well, obviously, you know, I think all kinds of executives get out and they talk to their customers on a regular basis, they're out and they're talking to them, the problem with those kind of discussions are no one wants to be disrespectful, people want to be nice in those meetings by and large, and you ask questions "how are we doing" "oh you guys are doing great", meanwhile the guy who tells you you're doing great is also looking at some newer technology that might replace you. (laughs) So that kind of question doesn't get you very far. So what we used to do, to be quite specific, is that we used to do a monthly luncheon where I had 12 of my mostly top executives but some people a level or two down, 12 Schwab people with 24 customers. And so they were tables of six, two of us, four customers, and we had a theme that we would talk through and the themes were always around things of, if you had to pick out three things we don't do well, what would they be? Give the customer permission to be comfortable being critical. What are the three things that you've heard about our customers, our competitors doing, that are better than us? What are the things that we need to change to make you even more delighted? You need to ask those kinds of high gain questions where there's no polite answer, the customer is permitted and given the opportunity to answer in a truthful and critical fashion. >> That's a great lesson, as you said give them permission and give them the format and the forum to say some of those things so that you get some of that information. Another great leadership principle that you shared many times, I want to dig into a little bit is kind of motivation verses inspiration. And that those are often confused, but very different concepts in the way that you lead people. I wonder if you can dig in a little bit on your philosophy on those two things. >> Sure, you know it's funny, those terms motivation and inspiration are used almost interchangeably as if they're the same thing. And they're not. Motivation is fundamental in business, and it's the exchange of behaviors for rewards. I was a psychology major in college, this was one of the things we learned about the exchange of behaviors for rewards and that's motivation. Inspiration on the other hand, is the effort to make people want to do something for, not for rewards that are tangible, but to be part of something great. We want you to be part of a movement, we want you to be part of something special, something that's going to change the world for the better and trying to get your employees to buy into this notion that we are on a mission and that mission is to make the world a somewhat better place, it doesn't mean we don't make money, of course we make money, but we're also out for more than a financial bottom line, we're out for a bottom line that's great for customers and maybe pretty great for employees as well. >> So it's interesting, cause you've seen 'em right, you've been in finance for ever, it's always about the shareholders, you've talked about the stock price a number of times in terms of a measure, but it seems more purposed led or purpose forward organizations now are more appealing to the younger generation, I think the search for a little bit more meaning in our day to day job and what that company is all about seems to have elevated over the last several years and taken a higher role in what they used to call triple line accounting, is it not only your shareholders who always are at the top of the list and have been traditionally, but your customers, your employee, and more and more your community and even the environment. Have you seen the swing towards, it's not just about shareholder value? >> Well, not on Wall Street. (laughs) I think, Wall Street is about money, and the people who go to work on Wall Street, and the way Wall Street operates, it's measured in dollars and cents and share price and profits and distributions to private equity partners and so forth, it's a numbers game and it is a profit game on Wall Street, we should be honest about that, it is what it is. >> Jeff: Sure. >> And, I have yet to see the Wall Street firm that is talking about triple bottom lines cause that just doesn't happen very much on Wall Street, it doesn't happen from my perspective, it almost doesn't happen at all. But there are other companies where they do talk about a more triple bottom line, and I think as a leader if you want to be that kind of company and you want to be that kind of leader you have to be comfortable talking about that, and not feel embarrassed by it, not feel that oh, that's too airy fairy, that's too goody two shoes. If you really believe that our goal is to have a triple bottom line, profitability, great for employees, and great for customers and the world at large, then as a leader you need to talk about that. You need to be willing to stand up and have those kinds of conversations and let yourself be challenged by perhaps the press, employees, shareholders, who think that that's not a good strategy. I believe that in many cases that's a great strategy because on a long-term basis you don't want every employee in your company, and all of your senior executives to basically be up for sale, that if a bigger job comes in with a bigger compensation, they're out the door. You're looking for loyalty, you're looking for buy in, for participation, for wanting to give every bit of themselves for the mission of the company. And as the CEO, if you want to take that path, you got to be willing to put yourself out there and talk about it and suffer the slings and arrows from those who don't believe that that's the best path for the company. >> Right, right. Well and that's another thing that you've talked about quite often, is really that the company feeds off the passion of the CEO, and the CEO has to have that passion because they're lookin', they're watchin', they're lookin' at your moves, they're lookin' at what you say, they're lookin' at your body language, they're lookin' at everything that you do. And I think within the context of these transitions and these difficult times, you have another great line that you've used a number of times, which is: "You need to have a perception of momentum." I love that line, so everyone needs to think that we're on the right path, we're not there yet, I feel it, he looks like he feels it, he looks like he's confident, so now I'm confident and I'm going to jump in and help be part of this change process. You've seen that time and time. >> Well, momentum is a tricky thing, you can have momentum and not have the perception of momentum. Because if you're doing a turn around, what often happens is in the early stages of the turn around, the numbers start to change but they're small, and you really haven't seen, it's not as steep. The turn around doesn't go steep, the turn around goes and builds slowly. And, what you need to be measuring in the beginning, are kind of the inputs and behaviors rather than the outputs, sales and profits. Those take longer. But you need to build belief, you need to build buy in, because it can take a long time before things start getting better and you don't want your best people to wonder whether this is the right move, should I be looking for another job, so, you have to build the perception of momentum even as you're building the reality of momentum. >> Right, right. So another thing we cover a lot of tech conferences, obviously, Cloud and AI, machine learning are hot things. But, you know, it always goes back to the big three. It's the technology, okay, but it's also people, and more importantly I think that gets left out is process. So, when you're thinking about, you know you're management is, and again, especially through a transition or a difficult time or some unknown and choppy waters, how do you think about those three, prioritizing those three and organizing those three between people, process and technology? >> Okay, well, you know always looking for technology that can be implemented to give you productivity, better customer service, you need to be monitoring what you're competitors are doing, and be looking out, sometimes at the bleeding edge, where you don't need to implement those kinds of changes right away, but you need to know where you want to go down the road, so you have some sense of that. As far as process goes, your processes are both a strength and a weakness because the strength of how well you run your processes today is also how hard they're going to be to change tomorrow. You know, companies are built for predictability, reliability, risk minimization, and all of your processes are built for those things. But those are also the things that are the opposite of big breakthrough changes. So you need to be thinking about, all right, are we strengthening our processes but also, if we have a change coming that's going to require a change of some of those processes, how is that going to get in our way and how are we going to get past that? >> Jeff: Right. >> I've left people for the last because to me that's the heart and soul of a successful executive. One person never gets everything done, it's all about the quality of your team. You've got to be a recruiter, you've got to be always on the look out for new talent that can help your company, and you've got to be thinking about how you're going to recruit that talent. You have to be a magnet for talent. When I sit on boards and I talk to the CEOs, I ask them, what are you doing to be a magnet for talent? What does that mean? What are you doing for great people to want to work for you? For you, and your company, what are you doing, how are you reinvesting in people, how are you putting time and energy in their professional development, in their growth? How are you getting to know them? How are you understanding their ambitions, their hopes and desires for the future? How much time and effort do you spend on that? And that's all part of having people not leave, everyone, in a way you can look at the world and think everyone is for sale. But you want people that are not for sale, that are committed to you and committed to the mission and in today's world where everything seems so fluid, I know my ideas about this probably seem very old and perhaps out of date, but I still believe in them with all my heart, that you want people that are committed to you and what we are accomplishing together. And you have to be reinforcing that with your words, and even more importantly with your actions. >> Yeah, I think it goes back to your inspiration, people are much more motivated by inspiration than just collecting a paycheck or getting a compensation back for what they're doing, which is a great segue to the last topic I wanted to cover with you, and I remember this, we had dinner, I think it was 1996 at the Wharton's Zweig Series, and you were such a phenomenal speaker, and I remember asking you the question and I remember your answer, and I've repeated it ad nauseam for the last 20 years. I said, "David, you're such a great speaker, why, how?" And you were so matter of fact in that you just said "hey, it's an important part of my job, I treat it as a skill, I hired a coach, I practiced like I would do any other skill", and why that's such a powerful story is you clearly are in a position of power, you could clearly have a crazy ego that got in the way of such a matter of fact accomplishment of these tasks and all the PR people I talk to and they hear this story "oh my gosh, we got to get him talking to my executives" because so many people let ego get in the way of what is really an important task for a CEO and a leader which is communication and you recognize that early on and really went after it to make sure that you were very good at this very important task. >> Well, what happened to me, I got lucky, I got lucky. When I got promoted to be the CEO of Schwab, I knew I was going to have to do a lot more public speaking and I already thought I was pretty good at being a public speaker, but I thought I needed to fine tune my messaging, I needed to get it better. So, I looked around and I got some referrals and I hired a guy that I thought was going to be a speech writer for me, that would help craft the message. And, we had our first meeting, and we're talking about an upcoming speech and he says to me things like, "Well, Dave, I want to know more about your life. Tell me how you grew up, tell me what you're proudest moments were, I want to learn about you." And I said to him, "Terry, I'm not looking for a biographer, I want a speech writer, I need a guy that can help me craft my message." And he said, "Well, Dave, that's not how I do things. I need to know who you are, I need to know what your passions are and where they come from so that we can give a message that has more than just words it has meaning, it has your passion built into it, that's what we need to do." And that's what Terry taught me, was that it's not just the words, it's also the passion, energy, and meaning and connection behind the words. And I want to mention one other thing that I think is very important. When people talk about being really good communicators, they often talk about speaking. They don't focus on listening. And listening is a tremendously important skill. So for example, you give a speech, you're the CEO or Senior Executive, you give a speech, do you stay there and do you do a Q+A session? The Q+A session can even be more important than the speech sometimes, because all the employees know that the speech is something that was pre-arranged, it's not on the cuff, it's something that's been thought about and prepared. But the questions and answers are authentic and in the moment. People are clamoring for authentic leadership. That Q+A session, where you're listening for the question and maybe the question behind the question. So you're not just trying to get through them as fast as you can, but you're trying to really answer and listen for the question and the question behind the question. And then answer those from the heart with passion, and that's how you will score the most points with your audience. >> That's great. And then who knows what comes from it, in getting ready for this I came across your blog post talking about Gopi Kallayil a mutual friend at Wharton who reached out to you after that same dinner, and you were happy enough, or you were kind enough to respond and grow a friendship and a relationship that again is lasted for decades. So that's such an important message to listen, as somebody said right, "God gave you two ears and one mouth should try to use them in that ratio." (laughs) Well David, thank you so much for taking some time, again I think these are really trying times in leadership, I think it's really an opportunity for great leaders to shine and those that don't there's really no place to hide. So I really appreciate you sharing your insight and taking a few minutes with us. >> Thanks, Jeff, I hope all the people that follow you and listen to your broadcasts learn something today and come away with some benefit from this time we've spent together. >> Undoubtedly, undoubtedly. Well, thanks again. All right, he's Dave Pottruck, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE, thanks for watching and we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick with theCUBE. We're in our Palo Alto Studios on this kind of continuing leadership series that we've put together. Reaching out to the community for tips and tricks on kind of getting through what is, this kind of ongoing COVID crisis and situation as it continues to go weeks and weeks and weeks. And I'm really excited to have one of my favorite members of our community, is Nick Mehta, the CEO of Gainsight. Had the real pleasure of interviewing him a couple times and had to get him on. So Nick, thanks for taking some time out of your very busy day to join us. >> Jeff, honored to be here, thank you. >> Pleasure, so let's just jump into it. One of the reasons I wanted to get you on, is that Gainsight has been a distributed company from the beginning, and so I think the COVID, suddenly everyone got this work from home order, there was no prep, there was no planning, it's like this light switch digital transformation moment. So love to hear from someone who's been doing it for awhile. What are some of the lessons? How should people think about running a distributed company? >> Yeah, it's really interesting, Jeff, 'cause we are just by happenstance, from the beginning, distributed where we have, our first two offices were St. Louis and Hyderabad, India. So two places you cannot get there through one flight. So, you have to figure out how to collaborate asynchronously and then over time, we have offices in the Bay Area. We have tons of people that work from home. And so we try to tell people we don't have a headquarters. The headquarters is wherever you are, wherever you live and wherever you want to work. And so we've always been super flexible about come in to the office if you want, don't come in, et cetera. So different than some companies in that respect. And because of that, pre-COVID, we always a very heavy video culture, lots of video conferencing. Even if some people were in an office, there's always somebody else dialing in. One benefit we got from that is you never had to miss your kids' stuff or your family things. I would go to my daughter's performance in the middle of the day and know I can just dial into a call on the way there. And so we always had that. But what's amazing is now we're all on a level playing field, there's nobody in our office. And I got to say, this is, in some ways, even better 'cause I feel like when you're the person dialed in, and a lot of people are in a room, you probably had that experience, and it feels like you're kind of not on the same playing field, right? Hard to hear the jokes or the comments and you might not feel like you're totally in crowd, so to speak, right? But now everyone's just at their computer, sitting there in a chair all day doing these Zooms and it does feel like it's equalizing a little bit. And what it's caused us to do is say, hey, what are ways we can all recreate that community from home? So as an example, every 7:45 a.m. every day, we have a Zoom call that's just pure joy and fun. Trivia, pets, kids. The employees' kids announce people's birthdays and the weather. And so these ways we've been able to integrate our home and our work that we never could before, it's really powerful. It's a tough situation overall, and we feel for all the people affected. But even in tough situations, there are silver linings, and we're finding 'em. >> Yeah, it's funny, we just had Darren Murph on the other day. I don't know if you know Darren. He is the head of Remote Work at GitLab, and he-- >> Oh, yeah. >> And he talked about kind of the social norms. And one of the instances that he brought up was, back in the day when you had some people in the office, some people joining via remote, that it is this kind of disharmony because they're very different situations. So one of his suggestions was have everybody join via their laptop, even if they're sitting at their desk, right? So, as you said, you get kind of this level playing field. And the other thing which dovetails off what you just said is he always wanted executives to have a forcing function to work from home for an extended period of time, so they got to understand what it's all about. And it's not only looking through a little laptop or this or that, but it's also the distractions of the kids and the dogs and whatever else is happening around the house. So it is wild how this forcing function has really driven it. And his kind of takeaway is, as we, like say, move from can we get it into cloud to cloud first? And does it work on mobile to mobile first? >> Now it's really-- >> Yeah. >> It's really remote first. And if you-- >> Remote first. >> A remote first attitude about it and kind of turn it on it's head, it's why shouldn't it be remote versus can it be remote? It really changes the conversation and the dynamic of the whole situation. >> I love that. And just, GitLab, by the way, has been a true inspiration 'cause they are the most remote, remote company. And they share so much, I love what you said. As just two examples of reacting to what you said, pre-COVID, we always wanted to keep a level playing field. So we actually moved our all-hands meetings to be instead of being broadcast from one room, and you're kind of seeing this small screen with all these people, we all just were at computers presenting. And so everyone's on a level playing field. So I thought what GitLab said is great. And then the other point, I think post-COVID we have learned is the kids and the dogs aren't distractions, they're part of our life. And so embracing those and saying, hey, I see that kid in the background, bring them onto the screen. Even during work meetings, even customer meetings, you know? And I'm seeing, I'm on a customer meeting and the customer's bringing their kids onto the screen and it's kind of breaking this artificial wall between who we are at home and who we are at work 'cause we're human beings all throughout. At Gainsight, we talk about a human first approach to business and we've never been more human as a world than we are right now. >> Love it, love it. So another, get your thoughts on, is this whole idea of measurement and productivity at home. And it's really, I have to say, disturbing to see some of the new product announcements that are coming out in terms of people basically snoopin' on people. Whether it's trackin' how many hours of Zoom calls they're on, or how often are they in the VPN, or having their camera flip on every so many minutes or something. We had Marten Mickos on, who's now the CEO of HackerOne. He was CEO at MySQL years ago before it went to Sun and he had the great line, he said, it's so easy to fake it at the office, but when you're at home and you're only output is your deliverable, it makes it a lot easier. So I wonder if you can share some of your thoughts in terms of kind of managing output, setting expectations, to get people to get their work done. And then, as you see some of these new tools for people that are just entering this thing, it's just not right (chuckles). >> Yeah, I agree with you and Marten. I'm a huge fan of Marten, as well, I totally agree with both of it. And I think there's an older approach to work, which is more like a factory. It's like you got to see how many widgets you're processing and you got to micromanage and you got to monitoring and inspecting. Look, I don't run a factory, so maybe there are places where that model makes sense. So I'm not going to speak for every leader, but I could say if you're in a world where your job is information, services, software, where the value is the people and their knowledge, managing them that way is a losing battle. I go back to, some folks probably know, this famous TED Talk by Dan Pink on basically what motivates people. And in these knowledge worker jobs, it's autonomy, mastery and purpose. So autonomy, we have the freedom to do what we want. Mastery, we feel like we're getting better at jobs. And purpose, which is I have a why behind what I do. And I think, take that time you spend on your micromanagement and your Zoom, analyzing the Zoom sessions, and spend it on inspiring your team, on the purpose. Spend it on enabling your team in terms of mastery. Spend it on taking away barriers so they have more autonomy. I think you'll get way more out of your team. >> Yeah, I agree. I think it's, as Darren said, again, he's like, well, would you trust your people if you're on the fourth floor and they're on the sixth? So just-- >> Yeah, exactly. >> If you don't trust your people, you got to bigger issue than worrying about how many hours they're on Zoom, which is not the most productive use of time. >> People waste so much time in the office, and getting to the office. And by the way, I'm not saying that it's wrong, it's fine too. But it's not like the office is just unfettered productivity all the time, that's a total myth. >> Yes, so let's shift gears a little bit and talk about events. So, obviously, the CUBE's in the event business. We've had to flip completely 'cause all the events are, well, they're all going digital for sure, and/or postponing it or canceling. So we've had to flip and do all dial-ins and there's a whole lot of stuff about asynchronous. But for you, I think it's interesting because as a distributed company, you had Gainsight Pulse as that moment to bring people together physically. You're in the same boat as everybody else, physical is not an option this year. So how are you approaching Gainsight Pulse, both because it's a switch from what you've done in the past, but you at least had the benefit of being in a distributed world? So you probably have a lot of advantages over people that have never done this before. >> Yeah, that's a really interesting, insightful observation. So just for a context, Pulse is an event we do every year to bring together the customer success community. 'Cause, as you observed, there is value in coming together. And so this is not just for our employees, this is for all the customer success people, and actually increasingly product management people out there, coming together around this common goal of driving success for your customers. And it started in 2013 with 300 people, and last year, we had 5,000 people at our event in San Francisco. We had similar events in London and Sydney. And so it's a big deal. And there's a lot of value to coming together physically. But obviously, that's not possible now, nor is it advisable. And we said, okay, how do we convert this and not lose what's special about Pulse? And leverage, like you said, Jeff, the fact that we're good at distributed stuff in general. And so we created what we call Pulse Everywhere. We didn't want to call it Pulse Virtual or something like that, Pulse Webinar, because we didn't want to set the bar as just like, oh, my virtual event, my webinar. This is something different. And we called it Everywhere, 'cause it's Pulse wherever you are. And we joke, it's in your house, it's in your backyard, it's on the peloton, it's walking the dog. You could be wherever you are and join Pulse this year, May 13th and 14th. And what's amazing is last year we had 5,000 people in person, this year we already have 13,000 people registered as of the end of April. And so we'll probably have more than three times the number of people at Pulse Everywhere. And we're really bringing that physical event concept into the virtual, literally with, instead of a puppy pit, where you're in a physical event, you'll bring puppies often, we have a puppy cam where you can see the puppies. We're not giving up on all of our silly music videos and jokes and we actually ship cameras and high-end equipment to all the speakers' houses. So they're going to have a very nice digital experience, our attendees are. It's not going to be like watching a video conference call. It's going to be like watching a TV show, one much like what you try to do here, right? And so we have this amazing experience for all of our presenters and then for the audience. And we're really trying to say how do we make it so it feels like you're in this really connected community? You just happen to not be able to shake people's hands. So it's coming up in a few weeks. It's a big experiment, but we're excited about it. >> There's so many conversations, and we jumped in right away, when this was all going down, what defines a digital event? And like you, I don't like the word virtual. There's nothing fake or virtual. To me, virtual's second to life. And kind of-- >> Yeah. >> Video game world. And like you, we did, it can't be a webinar, right? And so, if you really kind of get into the attributes of what is a webinar? It's generally a one-way communication for a significant portion of the allocated time and you kind of get your questions in and hopefully they take 'em, right? It's not a truly kind of engaged process. That said, as you said, to have the opportunity to separate creation, distribution and consumption of the content, now opens up all types of opportunity. And that's before you get into the benefits of the democratization, as you said, we're seeing that with a lot of the clients we work with. Their registration numbers are giant. >> Totally. >> Because-- >> You're not traveling to spend money, yeah. >> It'll be curious to see what the conversion is and I don't know we have a lot of data there. But, such a democratizing opportunity. And then, you have people that are trying to force, as Ben Nelson said on, you know Ben from Minerva, right? A car is not a mechanical horse, they're trying to force this new thing into this old paradigm and have people sit for, I saw one today, 24 hours, in front of their laptop. It's like a challenge. And it's like, no, no, no. Have your rally moment, have your fun stuff, have your kind of your one-to-many, but really there's so much opportunity for many-to-many. >> Many-to-many. >> Make all the content out there, yeah. >> We've created this concept in this Pulse Everywhere event called Tribes. And the idea is that when you go to an event, the goal is actually partially content, but a lot of times it's connection. And so in any given big event, there's lots of little communities out there and you want to meet people "like you". Might be people in a similar phase of their career, a similar type of company, in our case, it could be companies in certain industry. And so these Tribes in our kind of Pulse Everywhere experience, let people break out into their own tribes, and then kind of basically chat with each other throughout the event. And so it's not the exact same thing as having a drink with people, but at least a little bit more of that serendipitous conversation. >> Right, no, it's different and I think that's really the message, right? It's different, it's not the same. But there's a lot of stuff you can do that you can't do in the physical way, so quit focusing on what you can't do and embrace what you can. So that's great. And good luck on the event. Again, give the plug for it. >> Yeah, it's May 13th and 14th. If you go to gainsightpulse.com you can sign up, and it's basically anything related to driving better success for your customers, better retention, less churn, and better product experience. It's a great event to learn. >> Awesome, so I want to shift gears one more time and really talk about leadership. That's really kind of the focus of this series that we've been doing. And tough times call for great leadership. And it's really an opportunity for great leaders to show their stuff and let the rest of us learn. You have a really fantastic style. You know I'm a huge fan, we're social media buddies. But you're very personable and you're very, kind of human, I guess, is really the best word, in your communications. You've got ton of frequency, ton of variety. But really, most of it has kind of this human thread. I wonder if you can share kind of your philosophy behind social, 'cause I think a lot of leaders are afraid of it. I think they're afraid that there is reward for saying something stupid is not worth the benefit of saying okay things. And I think also a lot of leaders are afraid of showing some frailty, showing some emotion. Maybe you're a little bit scared, maybe we don't have all the answers. And yet you've really, you're not afraid at all. And I think it's really shines in the leadership activities and behaviors and things you do day in and day out. So how do you think about it? What's your strategy? >> Yeah, it's really interesting you ask, Jeff, because I'm in a group of CEOs that get together on a regular basis, and I'm going to be leading a session on social media for CEOs. And honestly, when I was putting it together, I was like, it's 2020, does that still need to exist? But somehow, there is this barrier. And I'll talk more about it, but I think the barrier isn't just about social media, it's just about how a CEO wants to present herself or himself into the world. And I think, to me, the three things to ask yourself are, first of all, why? Why do you want to be on social media? Why do you want to communicate to the outside? You should have a why. Hopefully you enjoy it, but also you're connecting from a business perspective with your customers. And for us, it's been a huge benefit to really be able to connect with our customers. And then, who are you targeting? So, I actually think an important thing to think about is it's okay to have a micro-audience. I don't have millions of Twitter followers like Lady Gaga, but within the world of SaaS and customer success and retention, I probably have a decent number. And that means I can really connect with my own specific audience. And then, what. So, the what is really interesting 'cause I think there's a lot of non-obvious things about, it's not just about your business. So I can tweet about customer success or retention and I do, but also the, what, about you as an individual, what's happening in your family? What's happening in the broader industry, in my case of SaaS? What's happening in the world of leading through COVID-19? All the questions you've asked, Jeff, are in this lens. And then that gets you to the final which is the, how. And I think the, how, is the most important. It's basically whether you can embrace the idea of being vulnerable. There's a famous TED Talk by Brene Brown. She talks about vulnerability is the greatest superpower for leaders. I think the reason a lot of people have a hard time on social media, is they have a hard time really being vulnerable. And just saying, look, I'm just a human being just like all of you. I'm a privileged human being. I have a lot of things that luckily kind of came my way, but I'm just a human being. I get scared, I get anxious, I get lonely, all those things. Just like all of you, you know. And really being able to take off your armor of, oh, I'm a CEO. And then when you do that, you are more human. And it's like, this goes back to this concept of human first business. There's no work persona and home persona, there's just you. And I think it's surprising when you start doing it, and I started maybe seven, eight, nine years ago, it's like, wow, the world wants more human leaders. They want you to just be yourself, to talk about your challenges. I had the kids, when we got to 13,000 registrations for Pulse Everywhere, they pied me in the face. And the world wants to see CEOs being pied in the face. Probably that one, for sure, that's a guaranteed crowd pleaser. CEOs being pied in the face. But they want to see what you're into outside of work and the pop culture you're into. And they want to see the silly things that you're doing. They want you to be human. And so I think if you're willing to be vulnerable, which takes some bravery, it can really, really pay off for your business, but I think also for you as a person. >> Yeah, yeah. I think it's so insightful. And I think people are afraid of it for the wrong reasons, 'cause it is actually going to help people, it's going to help your own employees, as well, get to know you better. >> Totally, they love it. >> And you touched on another concept that I think is so important that I think a lot of people miss as we go from kind of the old broadcast world to more narrow casting, which is touching your audience and developing your relationship with your audience. So we have a concept here at theCUBE that one is greater than 1% of 100. Why go with the old broadcast model and just spray and you hope you have these really ridiculously low conversion rates to get to that person that you're trying to get to, versus just identifying that person and reaching out directly to those people, and having a direct engagement and a relative conversation within the people that care. And it's not everybody, but, as you said, within the population that cares about it it's meaningful and they get some value out of it. So it's a really kind of different strategy. So-- >> I love that. >> You're always get a lot of stuff out, but you are super prolific. So you got a bunch of projects that are just hitting today. So as we're getting ready to sit down, I see you just have a book came out. So tell us a little bit about the book that just came out. >> Sure, yeah, it's funny. I need to get my physical copy too at my home. I've got so a few, just for context. Five years ago, we released this first book on "Customer Success" which you can kind of see here. It's surprising really, really popular in this world of SaaS and customer success and it ties, Jeff, to what you just said which is, you don't need to be the book that everyone in the world reads, you need to be the book that everyone in your world reads. And so this book turned out to be that. Thousands of company management teams and CEOs in software and SaaS read it. And so, originally when this came out, it was just kind of an introduction to what we call customer success. Basically, how do you retain your customers for the long-term? How do you get them more value? And how do you get them to use more of what they've bought and eventually spend more money with you? And that's a mega-trend that's happening. We decided that we needed an update. So this second book is called "Customer Success Economy." It just came out, literally today. And it's available on Amazon. And it's about the idea that customer success started in tech companies, but it's now gone into many, many industries, like healthcare, manufacturing, services. And it started with a specific team called the customer success management team. But now it's affecting how companies build products, how they sell, how they market. So it's sort of this book is kind of a handbook for management teams on how to apply customer success to your whole business and we call it "Customer Success Economy" 'cause we do think the future of the economy isn't about marketing and selling transactional products, but it's about making sure what your customers are buying is actually delivering value for them, right? That's better for the world, but it's also just necessary 'cause your customers have the power now. You and I have the power to decide how to transport ourselves, whether it's buying a car or rideshare, in the old world when we could leave our house. And we have the power to decide how we're going to stay in a city, whether it's a hotel or Airbnb or whatever. And so customers have the power now, and if you're not driving success, you're not going to be able to keep those customers. And so "Customer Success Economy" is all about that. >> Yeah, and for people that aren't familiar with Gainsight, obviously, there's lots of resources that they can go. They should go to the show in a couple weeks, but also, I think, the interview that we did at PagerDuty, I think you really laid out kind of a great definition of what customer success is. And it's not CRM, it has nothing to do with CRM. CRM is tracking leads and tracking ops. It's not customer success. So, people can also check that. But I want to shift gears again a little bit because one, you also have your blog, MehtaPhysical, that came out. And you just came out again recently with a new post. I don't know when you, you must have a army of helper writers, but you talk about something that is really top of mind right now. And everyone that we get on theCUBE, especially big companies that have the benefit of a balance sheet with a few bucks in it, say we want to help our customers, we want to help our people be safe, obviously, that's first. But we also want to help our customers. But nobody ever really says what exactly does that mean? And it's pretty interesting. You lay out a bunch of things that are happening in the SaaS world, but I jumped on, I think it's number 10 of your list, which is how to think about helping your customers. And you give some real specific kind of guidance and guidelines and definitions, if you will, of how do you help our customers through these tough times. >> Yeah, so I'll summarize for the folks listening. One of the things we observed is, in this terrible tough times right now, your customers are in very different situations. And for simplicity, we thought about three categories. So the companies that we call category one, which are unfortunately, adversely affected by this terrible crisis, but also by the shutdown itself, and that's hotels, restaurants, airlines, and you can put other folks in that example. What do those customers need? Well, they probably need some financial relief. And you have to figure out what you're going to do there and that's a hard decision. And they also just need empathy. It's not easy and the stress level they have is massive. Then you've got, on the other extremes, a small number of your customers might be doing great despite this crisis or maybe even because of it, because they make video conferencing technology or remote work technology, or they make stuff for virtual or telemedicine. And those folks actually are likely to be super busy because they're just trying to keep up with the demand. So what they need from you is time and help. And then you got the people in between. Most companies, right, where there may be a mix of some things going well, some don't. And so what we recommended is think about your strategy, not just inside out, what you want, but outside in, what those clients need. And so as an example, you might think about in that first category, financial relief. The second category, the companies in the middle, they may need, they may not be willing to spend more money, but they may want to do more stuff. So maybe you unlock your product, make it available, so they can use everything in your suite for a while. And maybe in that third category, they're wiling to spend money, but they're just really busy. So maybe you offer services for them or things to help them as they scale. >> Yeah, so before I let you go, I just want to get your reaction to one more great leader. And as you can tell, I love great leaders and studying great leaders. Back when I was in business school we had Dave Pottruck, who at that time was the CEO of Schwab, come and speak and he's a phenomenal speaker and if you ever get a chance to see him speak. And at that point in time, Schwab had to reinvent their business with online trading and basically kill their call-in brokerage for online brokerage, and I think that they had a fixed price of 19.99, whatever it was. This was back in the late 90s. But he was a phenomenal speaker. And we finished and he had a small dinner with a group of people, and we just said, David, you are a phenomenal speaker, why, how, why're you so good? And he goes, you know, it's really pretty simple. As a CEO, I have one job. It's to communicate. And I have three constituencies. I kind of have the street and the market, I have my internal people, and then I have my customers and my ecosystem. And so he said, I, and he's a wrestler, he said, you know I treated it like wrestling. I hired a coach, I practiced my moves, I did it over and over, and I embraced it as a skill and it just showed so brightly. And it's such a contrast to people that get wrapped around the axle with their ego, or whatever. And I think you're such a shiny example of someone who over communicates, arguably, in terms of getting the message out, getting people on board, and letting people know what you're all about, what the priorities are, and where you're going. And it's such a sheer, or such a bright contrast to the people that don't do that that I think is so refreshing. And you do it in a fun and novel and in your own personal way. >> That's awesome to hear that story. He's a inspirational leader, and I've studied him, for sure. But I hadn't heard this specific story, and I totally agree with you. Communication is not something you're born with. Honestly, you might know this, Jeff, or not, as a kid, I was super lonely. I didn't really have any friends and I was one of those kids who just didn't fit in. So I was not the one they would pick to be on stage in front of thousands of people or anything else. But you just do it over and over again and you try to get better and you find, I think a big thing is finding your own voice, your own style. I'm not a super formal style, I try to be very human and authentic. And so finding your style that works for you, I agree, it's completely learnable. >> Yeah, well, Nick, thank you. Thanks for taking a few minutes. I'm sure you're super, super busy getting ready for the show in a couple weeks. But it's always great to catch up and really appreciate you taking some time to share your thoughts and insights with us. >> Thank you, Jeff, it's an honor. >> All right, he's Nick Mehta, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (soft music)

>> From New York City, it's theCUBE, covering Welcome to the New Edge. Brought to you by Pensando Systems. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're on top of Goldman Sachs in downtown Manhattan. It was a really beautiful day a couple of hours ago, but the rain is moving in, but it's appropriate 'cause we're talking about cloud. And we're here for a very special event. It's the Pensando launch, I'll get the pronunciation right, Pensando launch, and it's really about Welcome to the New Edge. And to start off, I mean, I couldn't come up with two better tech executives who've been around the block, seen it all, and they're both here for this launch event which is pretty special. On my left, Antonio Neri, CEO and president of HP. Antonio, great to see you. >> Thanks for having me. >> And John Chambers, of course we know him from his many years at Cisco, but now he's the chairman of Pensando, and of course J2 Ventures, and an author, and John, you're keeping yourself busy. >> I am, tryin' to change the world one more time. >> All right, so let's talk about that changing the world, 'cause you are two very high, powerful people. You run big companies, and you talked about, in your opening remarks, the next wave. You talked about these kind of 10-year waves. And we're starting a new one, which is why you got involved. Why did you see that coming, what do you see in Pensando, and how are we going to address this opportunity? >> Well, when you think about it, every 10 years there's a new leader in the marketplace, and nobody has stayed on top longer than 10 years and has led in the next market transition. We think about mainframes, IBM clearly the leader there, the mini computers, I'm biased toward Wang, but DEC was there. Then the client server and obviously Microsoft and Intel playing a very key role, followed by the internet where Cisco was very, very successful. And then followed, literally by that, by social media and then the cloud and then what I think will be bigger than any of the prior ones, it's about what happens as the cloud moves to the edge. And we may end up having a different term every time, but that really is what we saw today. And how we came together with a common vision as the cloud moves to the edge, what could an ecosystem of partners do, with a foundation, with Pensando at the core of that, to really take advantage from how do you deliver services to our joint customers in a way that no one else can. And have the courage, really, to go challenge Amazon in terms of their market dominance, but provide choice and say it's a multi cloud world. How do you provide that choice and then how do you differentiate it together with each partner? >> Antonio, you guys have been talking about edge for a long, long time. You've been on this for a while. HP's such a great company. Used to be, I think, one of the great validators if anyone could do a deal with HP. It was really a technology validation and a business validation, and I think that still holds true. So you must have, knocking on your door all day long. What did you see in this opportunity with Pensando? >> Well, first of all, John and I see the world from the same lens. We see a world where the enterprise of the future will be essentially cloud enabled and data-driven. And therefore we have to remove these barriers, call it the cloud in one place or the other one. We are going to live what are calling a edge-to-cloud world where, is a cloudless. Where the cloud experience is distributed everywhere. And where action happens is where we live and work right now, right here. We're having a conversation, we're producing data, and we are transmitting this real time. So, the point is, we believe the edge is a new frontier and that's where the vast majority is being created, 75%. of it created the edge. And this is where it starts by having a common vision and ultimately a same DNA, same culture. John and I share the same values for passion for customers, passion for driving a customer-driven innovation, and ultimately change the world like we have done for decades. And I think Hewlett-Packard Enterprise is uniquely positioned to be the edge-to-cloud platform delivered as a service. And together with Pensando and the great technology I bring about from the silicon side and on the softer side, together with our own knowhow and engineering capabilities, we can change the world again. >> And the fun part is, we can almost finish each other's sentences. (all laughing) We have a little bit different accent. The stability to have a common vision, having never really talked about it, and then a view of the common culture. Because strategic partnerships are really hard. And you said it on stage, but I cannot agree with it more. If you're cultures aren't similar, if you don't think how does your partner win first and how do you win second, this is very hard to do. And we can finish each other's sentences. >> And I think there is another point here that John and I truly believe, because it's part of our values. It's to use technology for good. So, one thing is accelerating the business innovation and what our enterprise customers are going through, but then how apply that technology to deliver some good. And we as a company have a clear purpose in life, which is to advance the way people live and work. So, I think as we go through this massive inflection point, both from the business side and the technology side, not only we can create a better world, but also give back somewhat to the communities as well. >> There are massive changes, and it's a sea-change in infrastructure in the way things are done, but you hit on three really key, simple words in your remarks earlier. Trust, engineering-driven, which is HP's culture from the earliest garage days, and customer-centric. So, we hear about data-driven but in engineering, you don't necessarily want to lead with that. Customer-centric you do have to lead and it's pretty interesting at Pensando, you talk to all these customers, and you're just launching the company today, you've been in stealth for over two years. But all these customers have been engaged with you since the very, very beginning. Pretty interesting approach. >> It is, and we do share a common passion on that. Every company says they're customer-driven, but just ask how the CEO spends his or her time. I just asked their customers, do they replace them first on every issue? We share that common value completely. >> Yeah, I spend 50% of my time on the road talking to customers. That's my goal, because I believe the truth is in the cold face. When you talk to customers, you get the truth, what the challenges and opportunities are. And we need to bring that succinct feedback back into our problem management engineering team to try to solve there's a problem. So take advantage of those opportunities by delivering a better experience. It starts with experience first and technology comes second. >> The other piece you talked about is your team, and diversity and really the power of diversity. And, I think it was, the Lincoln cabinet, band of people that didn't get along with each other and had a bunch of different points of view. But because of that, it surfaces issues and it lets you see multi sides. You said you handpicked that team. What are some of the things you thought about when you handpicked your team when you took the reins a couple years ago from the-- >> Well, it starts by, thought leadership and what, how they see the world, ultimately what the strengths are and how we bring those strengths for the power of one. I agree with John, I believe a team comes first, individual comes second. And if you can bring the best of each individual in a concerted way where you create an environment for debate and ultimately for getting alignment and moving forward with execution. That's what that is all about, leadership. So, I handpicked those people because each of them had that unique quality. Whether it's, you know, being very self-centric in the way you deliver the value proposition or very technology-centric, or very services oriented. So, we have picked those people for a reason and it's not easy to manage a very opinionated team. (all laughing) But once you can get them aligned, is actually incredible fun to watch. >> You know, I would make one tweak to what you just asked the question on. I had a chance to watch his team for the first time in our garage startup at my house. And they are very diverse with different opinions, they are very comfortable with disagreeing with each other. But they have a common set of values and a common end goal. I'm not sure the Lincoln cabinet had that. And that's so important to realize, because what we're about to do together and what each of us are trying to do in our own endeavors, it's so important to have a team that has that type of culture and the ability to move for that. >> The other team that mentioned, that kept coming up throughout the day, was the team that you're working with on Pensando. And how this team has been together for, I think you said the new 20, right? 25 plus years, and have built multiple projects, multiple products over many, many years. And now have this cohesion as you keep saying, they can finish their own sentences. You know, a really specific approach to get this group together that you know is not going to be strategy, it's going to be delivery. >> It is going to be the combination, if I may. And it is very unique that a team works together for over 25 years. It's a team that is a family and we are about as diverse as it gets in our backgrounds, our accents, our countries that our families came from. But it's a team that competes purely on getting market transitions right, that is always driven by our customers and what we need to do and build and put 'em always first in everything we do. And then it's fearless. We outline audacious goals at being number one in everything we do, and out of the eight products that we built together, we are number one in all eight. All of 'em with over 50% market share, and there was no number two. And so the ability to execute with that type of precision, customer-driven and the courage to do it and understand what we know and what we don't know. Coming together one more time, I mean it's really exciting, it will be a new definition of 20 somethings in a startup. >> So, getting you the last word Antonio, as you looked at John's chart with those 10-year blocks and the garage has been around Palo Alto for a long time. >> 82 years. >> You guys have seen a lot, 82 years, you've been through a few of these and you're still here and still doing a great job and still winning. So, as you look at that from your current position as CEO, what goes through your head? How are you making sure you're keeping ahead? How are you avoiding the Clayton Christensen Innovator's Dilemma, to make sure you're killing your own business before somebody else kills kind of the old stuff and making sure you're out in front. >> When I became a CEO, in the transition from Meg to me, I established three key priorities for myself. One is our customers and partners. Keep them at the center of everything we do. That's one of our core values. Second is innovation, innovation, innovation. Innovation from a customer-driven approach. And third is the culture of the company. And what a great example here with John, you know, leading an iconic company for decades. And so to me, I have been working very aggressive on the three of those aspects. And I'm very pleased with the progress we have made. But, now is about writing the next chapter of this company. And in order to write that next chapter company, you need to have a strong alignment at the top, all the way down, what I call ropes to the ground. So, fun enough, John is going to be in my event here in a couple of weeks. We'll bring the leadership team, the top 400 leaders, talking about how to disrupt yourself and how you pay for the company into the future. And the future, as I said, is we see an enterprise that's edge-centric, cloud-enabled, and data-driven, delivered as a service. So we are going to be the, as a service company with an edge-to-cloud platform that accelerates business from the data. And the combination of Pensando technologies and engineering capabilities, with our vision and our own intellectual property, we think we can deliver those unique experience for the customers in a more agile, cost-effective way and democratize the cloud, as John say, for the world. So, I'm incredibly excited about doing this. And who thought that John Chambers and Antonio Neri would be here, you know. And the reality is it takes leadership, so I value leadership, I value trust, and this partnership is built on trust. And we both have the same values. >> I appreciate you taking the time. I mean, we're going to talk about the products a little bit later. We've got some of the deeper product people. But, you know, I think the leadership thing is so important and I think it's harder. I think it's hard to be a great leader, it's hard to lead through transitions, and the pace of change is only accelerating, so the challenge is only going to increase. But I think communication and trust is such a big piece. I saw Dave Pottruck speak many, many times and he's very, very good. And I asked him, 'cuz we had a thing at school. I said, "Dave, why are you so good?" And he said, "Very simple. "As a CEO, my job is to communicate. "I have three constituents. "I have my customers, I have the street, "and I have my employees. "And so I treat it as a skill, I practice, I got a coach, "and I treat it like any other skill." And it's so hard and so important to provide that leadership, provide that direction, so everybody can pull the rope in the same direction. Nothing but the best to both of you and thanks for taking a few minutes. >> Thank you. >> It was a lot of fun. >> All right. >> It's a pleasure. >> Thank you. >> He's Antonio, he's John, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE, from the top of Goldman Sachs in Manhattan. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE! Covering AWS Summit 2017. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. We thank you so much for hanging out with us today. We've had an amazing day, Jeff Frick, George Gilbert with me, Lisa Martin. I think guys, first impressions or overall impressions of the day, it started with Werner Vogels very energetic, very passionate keynote. It was almost what can't Amazon do. The amount of services that they're offering, the amount of customer logos validating, presumably, and substantiating all of these services. It was really quite eye opening. >> Yeah. >> I think for me. But also some of the use cases that they've shared were, those that were on main stage, those that were in breakout sessions or here with us, really shows that the culture that they're building, or have built over the last 11 years now at AWS, is really one of experimentation, failure is okay, let's keep moving. Speed, speed, speed and undulate. >> So many, so many great things. I just want to touch on some of the culture, pivot off the cuture. For instance, Andy Jassy and his keynote. And I think the culture is so, so important. But one of the things he talked about is they banned PowerPoint. He said because it wasn't interactive, wasted a lot of time, no one was prepared for a deep dive 'cause they just put the slides together. And they went to this thing he called the six page narrative, which I thought was pretty interesting. And everyone reads the narrative at the beginning of the meeting. So, you know, everyone's busy. >> Before the meeting. >> Yeah. >> Oh. >> But I think at the beginning of the meeting. So everyone's had a common point >> Right. >> 'Cause let's face it, everyone's busy, no one really preps as much as they should before the meeting. So now, they force it with a 20 minute read the narrative. And so everyone is at the same kind of depth of knowledge. I thought that was really powerful. And then, to write the press release and the FAQs- >> That was phenomenal! >> Before you write the line of codes. >> Yes! >> So what are the issues that people are going to raise and what's the really exciting value that you're delivering to the market that you defined in a press release. >> Yeah. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> You know, I think it's great stuff. >> That was as interesting, I thought, as any of the product releases. >> I agree, yeah. >> 'Cause it almost told us how they keep the wheel spinning so fast. >> Right >> Exactly! But that is really culturally different than I think a lot of the companies that we talked to who, when you get to a six dot one dot two press release. >> Yeah. Is it really that interesting? >> Right, right. >> So that was really, really revolutionary. And I think speaks to your point, you know, how have they been able to build this dominance this quickly and not let their competitors gain on what they project as a six or seven year advantage. >> Like he said though, 'cause they don't look at the competitors. They just keep movin', right. And they didn't have the kind of the legacy thing holding them back. You know, Clayton Christensen, innovator's dilemma. They just kept moving forward. But I thought the other really insightful thing that came out of his fireside chat was the conversation around third-party sales when they were still just Amazon. And do they let other people sell on their platform. And he said "You can't fight gravity". So, it goes back, it reminds me of like when Schwab went to $19 trades. Dave Pottruck tells the story of online trading. And they were giving up these expensive commissions but he basically said "If I don't kill my own business, somebody else is going to do it for me. So I better be the one that kills it and at least try to take advantage of that next wave". Really powerful concepts. >> But there's an analog to the "fulfilled by Amazon", which is where the third-parties went. Where they sort of, essentially, took the eBay model and said "We're going to essentially make our fulfillment platform, and commerce platform, stronger because we're going to take all of those other third-parties". And then what they did with Amazon, AWS, was take the whole commerce platform. >> Right. >> And open it up for other people 'cause that made it more powerful for them. And there's still more to come. What they really didn't talk about. They talked a lot about AI, and mostly at the framework and tools levels. And where framework levels would be for, you know, world-class scientists and the tools would be for data scientists. But when they talked about the image recognition, the voice recognition, and text-to-speech, things like that, they were saying then they're leveraging the Amazon data and training those models so that mere mortal developers can do that. What he didn't say, and when we had their product marketing guy here, what he didn't want to say was there's whole lot of other areas where Amazon the commerce company, the retail company, has data that no other cloud has that they can offer. Not to think about really the machine learning as tools again, but as semi-finished applications. >> Right. >> And I think that's going to be pretty profound differentiated versus other clouds. >> Right. And just the basic scale, right. The slide that Werner showed, not only with all the customers and partners of this, but just the breadth of services and the way they keep adding more based on whatever your special function is. I need High I/O, I need ML, I need really cheap cold storage, I need whatever. They can apply the scale to all those kind of sub-segments and offer a breadth at scale that, you know, pretty tough to compete against. >> Absolutely! And they continue to innovate. And Andy's fireside chat, he was really kind of talking about why and how they're able to do that. Being customer focused, not having to look at the competition, is a major advantage. And one of the themes I also heard and felt today was you think back 11 years ago to their genesis, they were very much focused on the start-up community, the developers, really won long ago the hearts and the minds of those developers. Because they were the ones that would try and innovate, and fail, and try again. >> Right. >> But as the code becomes, in I think Werner's words this morning, "the new normal", they've done a very good job of continuing to foster and enable developers within start-ups and those entrepreneurs who want to start SaaS companies. >> Right. >> All the way up to the enterprise. As we see the dynamic and buying software change dramatically, thinking about the Amazon marketplace as a great example, we are now seeing the C-suite being mandated sometimes by the board. You've got to move more applications into the cloud. Well how do I do that? >> Right. >> So it's developers, it's lines of business like the marketing folks, or the sales folks that Shadow IT say "We need to do this. You can help us move fast enough". All the way up to the C-suite and the board. And they've done a great job of expanding the conversation. >> Jeff: Right. >> Expanding the services to really target multiple audiences and meet a lot of pain points. >> You know, there was a press briefing, pre-brief for the announcement of the marketplace expansion yesterday. And what came out really interesting was, you know, when you go to the Amazon marketplace homepage and there's dozens of categories and about, I think it's 35 hundred actual products from third-parties and 12 hundred vendors. And, you know, you can't go to an enterprise, you can't go to JP Morgan and say "here, you know, go to town". But what IBM does with sort of their own rich library of stuff is they have their global business services and their industry solutions development groups. They take the piece parts and put solutions together for their customers. But what Amazon is now in a position to do is they have solution architects working either for them, who are billing out at maybe two- or three-hundred thousand a year, or who are working for VARS who turned into manage service providers who configure these solutions. And so, what looks like a self-service marketplace now can serve, you know, a bank with a hundred billion in assets or a trillion in assets because there's now the IBM equivalent of a system integrator who can put the pieces together. And who can run them for you if you don't want to. >> Right, and have the aggregated data of everybody else runnin' those services. So for best practices and stuff, you're leveraging the whole ecosystem, not a single instance at a single company. And that is so big! >> And that was actually, that was one of the themes of our last guest. From Datadog. Which is, they can watch so much of what's going on. Not just a customer's workload, but maybe they're not doing it now but they will be able to do it in the future, where they can look across workloads and identify best practices in configurations and things like that. >> Right. >> And then you send that back to the customer and they pay for that advice. >> Right. It's just interesting, you know, three years ago the conversation was all about security around public cloud and, you know, we're done with that conversation. Especially since most security breeches are people lose their laptops, right. It's an employee, or a disgruntled employee. But the thing that's interesting to me on this start-up and rent versus own is, again, the answer to every question in a Cube interview. Why do you want to do the undifferentiated heavy lifting of managing infrastructure? Those guys, ThinkLogic, still like 14 people and a couple of dozen developers that are attacking the IOT space. They would never even get an approved vendor status at somebody like Boeing or GE. They would never even get to the procurement issue. But now, as part of this marketplace, you know, they can come in either as a partner, part of a solution, an adjunct, part of an SI, or as a standalone app that you still buy through your approved vendor process with AWS. Why would you go anywhere else? >> Right. That was a great point that you brought up a number of times today. Showing, not only how Amazon is innovating internally and to enable the start-ups to the enterprises from a public cloud perspective, but they're also enabling businesses to be born that would never have gotten off the ground. >> Jeff: Right, right. And, to your point, it's very valid about even becoming an approved vendor for a company the size of ThinkLogics, they would never have been able to do that. So, it's really exciting I think overall, I think we'd all summarize the day as a very positive, very enlightening. I think, for me, I was really excited to hear what was going to be going on for IOT and Hybrid. Heard some interesting things there today, so I think that's just a dot dot dot to be continued. >> Yes. >> I think overall, really strong announcements from them. The passion was there. Culturally, I think they really reap what they sow and I think that was reflected in the conversations that we were able to have today. >> One thing I want to ask you about, George, you're a smart guy. Speed of light's too damn slow. >> So you think so. (laughter) >> The speed of light's too damn slow. >> Right. >> Jeff: Hear it over and over and over again. >> Yes! >> And still, cloud-based, soft underbelly of cloud, you got to be connected. Do you think that the speed of light issues with Edge and shifting resources, co-locating storage compute in the data. You see any really big hurdles that are just really scary? >> Like, following on the "dot dot dot", computing always follows a pendulum. Centralization, decentralization. No side ever goes away, it's just a change in emphasis. And we're going to see some analysis have to move to the edge because for the speed of light, you know, your smart car, you know, it doesn't have time to say "That looks like an old lady who's actually in the crosswalk, you know, I'm going to go back to the cloud and ask whether I should plow through her or, you know, the car next to me". You know, that needs a low-latency analytic. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> But at the same time, and one of our guests was talking about it, if you're looking at the pressure at valve at, you know, a thousand-mile pipeline, you probably don't need to react instantaneously. You send that back to the cloud and it'll look at it over, you know, a period of time and say "This one's looking like it's going to leak". >> Right. Anomalies. >> So, different scenarios. >> Okay. >> And, unfortunately, we are going to have to say "dot dot dot". We talked all day about this! Jeff Frig, thank you so much! George Gilbert, what a fantastic day we've had here at the AWS Summit in San Francisco. We thank you for joining! You can follow all of the replays here on siliconangle.tv. And Jeff, what do we got comin' up next week? We're at several events. NAB next week. >> NAB, Oracal, Modern Customer Experience, and you're doing a red carpet, I guess a green carpet award show. >> A green carpet award show at the Computer History Museum next week. So stay tuned, stick around on siliconangle.tv to find out all the things we're doing. It's going to be a exciting spring. Again, thanks for joining. See you next time. (light, upbeat music)