>>from around the globe. It's the Cube presenting innovation for good, brought to you by on shape. >>Hello, everyone, and welcome to Innovation for Good Program, hosted by the Cuban. Brought to You by on Shape, which is a PTC company. My name is Dave Valentin. I'm coming to you from our studios outside of Boston. I'll be directing the conversations today. It's a very exciting, all live program. We're gonna look at how product innovation has evolved, where it's going and how engineers, entrepreneurs and educators are applying cutting edge, cutting edge product development techniques and technology to change our world. You know, the pandemic is, of course, profoundly impacted society and altered how individuals and organizations they're gonna be thinking about and approaching the coming decade. Leading technologists, engineers, product developers and educators have responded to the new challenges that we're facing from creating lifesaving products to helping students learn from home toe how to apply the latest product development techniques and solve the world's hardest problems. And in this program, you'll hear from some of the world's leading experts and practitioners on how product development and continuous innovation has evolved, how it's being applied toe positive, positively affect society and importantly where it's going in the coming decades. So let's get started with our first session fueling Tech for good. And with me is John Herstek, who is the president of the Suffers, a service division of PTC, which required on shape just over a year ago, where John was the CEO and co founder. And Dana Grayson is here. She is the co founder and general partner at Construct Capital, a new venture capital firm. Folks, welcome to the program. Thanks so much for coming on. Great >>to be here, Dave. >>All right, John. You're very welcome. Dana. Look, John, let's get into it for first. A belated congratulations on the acquisition of Von Shape. That was an awesome seven year journey for your company. Tell our audience a little bit about the story of on shape, but take us back to Day zero. Why did you and your co founders start on shape? Well, >>actually, start before on shaping the You know, David, I've been in this business for almost 40 years. The business of building software tools for product developers and I had been part of some previous products in the industry and companies that had been in their era. Big changes in this market and about, you know, a little Before founding on shape, we started to see the problems product development teams were having with the traditional tools of that era years ago, and we saw the opportunity presented by Cloud Web and Mobile Technology. And we said, Hey, we could use Cloud Web and Mobile to solve the problems of product developers make their Their business is run better. But we have to build an entirely new system, an entirely new company, to do it. And that's what on shapes about. >>Well, so notwithstanding the challenges of co vid and difficulties this year, how is the first year been as, Ah, division of PTC for you guys? How's business? Anything you can share with us? >>Yeah, our first year of PTC has been awesome. It's been, you know, when you get acquired, Dave, you never You know, you have great optimism, but you never know what life will really be like. It's sort of like getting married or something, you know, until you're really doing it, you don't know. And so I'm happy to say that one year into our acquisition, a TPI TC on shape is thriving. It's worked out better than I could have imagined a year ago. Along always, I mean sales are up. In Q four, our new sales rate grew 80% vs Excuse me, our fiscal Q four Q three. In the calendar year, it grew 80% compared to the year before. Our educational uses skyrocketing with around 400% growth, most recently year to year of students and teachers and co vid. And we've launched a major cloud platform using the core of on shape technology called Atlas. So, um, just tons of exciting things going on a TTC. >>That's awesome. But thank you for sharing some of those metrics. And of course, you're very humble individual. You know, people should know a little bit more about you mentioned, you know, we founded solid works, go founded solid, where I actually found it solid works. You had a great exit in the late nineties. But what I really appreciate is, you know, you're an entrepreneur. You've got a passion for the babies that you helped birth. You stayed with the salt systems for a number of years. The company that quiet, solid works well over a decade. And and, of course, you and I have talked about how you participated in the M I t blackjack team. You know, back in the day a Z I say you're very understated, for somebody was so accomplished. So well, >>that's kind of you. But I tend to I tend Thio always keep my eye more on what's ahead. You know what's next then? And you know, I look back Sure to enjoy it and learn from it about what I can put toe work, making new memories, making new successes. >>I love it. Okay, let's bring Dana into the conversation. Hello, Dana. And you Look, you were fairly early investor in on shape when you were with any A. And I think it was like it was a Siri's B. But it was very right close after the A raise. And and you were and still are a big believer in industrial transformation. So take us back. What did you see about on shape back then? That that excited you? >>Thanks. Thanks for that. Yeah. I was lucky to be a early investment in shape. You know, the things that actually attracted me. Don shape were largely around John and, uh, the team. They're really setting out to do something, as John says humbly, something totally new, but really building off of their background was a large part of it. Um, but, you know, I was really intrigued by the design collaboration side of the product. Um, I would say that's frankly what originally attracted me to it. What kept me in the room, you know, in terms of the industrial world was seeing just if you start with collaboration around design what that does to the overall industrial product lifecycle accelerating manufacturing just, you know, modernizing, manufacturing, just starting with design. So I'm really thankful to the on shape guys, because it was one of the first investments I've made that turned me on to the whole sector. And, wow, just such a great pleasure to work with with John and the whole team there. Now see what they're doing inside PTC, >>and you just launched construct capital this year, right in the middle of a pandemic and which is awesome. I love it. And you're focused on early stage investing. Maybe tell us a little bit about construct capital. What? Your investment thesis is and you know, one of the big waves that you're hoping to ride. >>Sure, it construct it is literally lifting out of any what I was doing there, um uh, you're on shape. I went on to invest in companies such as desktop metal and Tulip, to name a couple of them form labs, another one in and around the manufacturing space. But our thesis it construct is broader than just, you know, manufacturing and industrial. It really incorporates all of what we'd call foundational industries that have let yet to be fully tech enabled or digitized. Manufacturing is a big piece of it. Supply chain, logistics, transportation and mobility or not, or other big pieces of it. And together they really drive, you know, half of the GDP in the US and have been very under invested. And frankly, they haven't attracted really great founders like Iran in droves. And I think that's going to change. We're seeing, um, entrepreneurs coming out of the tech world or staggolee into these industries and then bringing them back into the tech world, which is which is something that needs to happen. So John and team were certainly early pioneers and I think, you know, frankly, obviously, that voting with my feet that the next set, a really strong companies are going to come out of this space over the next decade. >>I think there's a huge opportunity to digitize the sort of traditionally non digital organizations. But Dana, you focused. I think it's it's accurate to say you're focused on even Mawr early stage investing now. And I want to understand why you feel it's important to be early. I mean, it's obviously riskier and reward e er, but what do you look for in companies and and founders like John >>Mhm, Um, you know, I think they're different styles of investing all the way up to public market investing. I've always been early stage investors, so I like to work with founders and teams when they're, you know, just starting out. Um, I happened to also think that we were just really early in the whole digital transformation of this world. You know, John and team have been, you know, back from solid works, etcetera around the space for a long time. But again, the downstream impact of what they're doing really changes the whole industry and and so we're pretty early and in digitally transforming that market. Um, so that's another reason why I wanna invest early now, because I do really firmly believe that the next set of strong companies and strong returns for my own investors will be in the spaces. Um, you know, what I look for in Founders are people that really see the world in a different way. And, you know, sometimes some people think of founders or entrepreneurs is being very risk seeking. You know, if you asked John probably and another successful entrepreneurs, they would call themselves sort of risk averse, because by the time they start the company, they really have isolated all the risk out of it and think that they have given their expertise or what they're seeing their just so compelled to go change something, eh? So I look for that type of attitude experience a Z. You can also tell from John. He's fairly humble. So humility and just focus is also really important. Um, that there's a that's a lot of it. Frankly, >>excellent. Thank you. And John, you got such a rich history in the space in one of you could sort of connect the dots over time. I mean, when you look back, what were the major forces that you saw in the market in in the early days? Uh, particularly days of on shape on how is that evolved? And what are you seeing today? Well, I >>think I touched on it earlier. Actually, could I just reflect on what Dana said about risk taking for just a quick one and say, throughout my life, from blackjack to starting solid works on shape, it's about taking calculated risks. Yes, you try to eliminate the risk sa's much as you can, but I always say, I don't mind taking a risk that I'm aware of, and I've calculated through as best I can. I don't like taking risks that I don't know I'm taking. >>That's right. You like to bet on >>sure things as much sure things, or at least where you feel you. You've done the research and you see them and you know they're there and you know, you, you you keep that in mind in the room, and I think that's great. And Dana did so much for us. Dana, I want to thank you again for all that you did it every step of the way from where we started. Thio, Thio You know your journey with us ended formally but continues informally. Now back to you. Um, Dave, I think question about the opportunity and how it's shaped up. Well, I think I touched on it earlier when I said It's about helping product developers. You know, our customers of the people build the future of manufactured goods. Anything you think of that would be manufacturing factory. You know, the chair you're sitting in machine that made your coffee. You know, the computer you're using that trucks that drive by on the street, all the covert product research, the equipment being used to make vaccines. All that stuff is designed by someone, and our job is given the tools to do it better. And I could see the problems that those product developers had that we're slowing them down with using the computing systems of the time. When we built solid works, that was almost 30 years ago. People don't realize that it was in the early >>nineties, and, you know, we did the >>best we could for the early nineties, but what we did, we didn't anticipate the world of today. And so people were having problems with just installing the systems. Dave, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to install these systems. You need a spec up a special windows computer, you know, and make sure you've got all the memory and graphics you need and getting to get that set up. You need to make sure the device drivers air, right, install a big piece of software. Ah, license key. I'm not making this up. They're still around. You may not even know what those are. You know, Dennis laughing because, you know, zero cool people do things like this anymore on but only runs some windows. You want a second user to use it? They need a copy. They need a code. Are they on the same version? It's a nightmare. The teams change. You know? You just say, Well, get everyone on the software. Well, who's everyone? You know? You got a new vendor today? A new customer tomorrow, a new employee. People come on and off the team. The other problem is the data stored in files, thousands of files. This isn't like a spreadsheet or word processor where there's one file to pass around these air thousands of files to make one, even a simple product. People were tearing their hair out. John, what do we do? I've got copies everywhere. I don't know where the latest version is. We tried like, you know, locking people out so that only one person can change it at the time that works against speed. It works against innovation. We saw what was happening with Cloud Web and mobile. So what's happened in the years since is every one of the forces that product developers experience the need for speed, the need for innovation, the need to be more efficient with their people in their capital. Resource is every one of those trends have been amplified since we started on shape by a lot of forces in the world. And covert is amplified all those the need for agility and remote work cove it is amplified all that the same time, The acceptance of cloud. You know, a few years ago, people were like cloud, you know, how is that gonna work now They're saying to me, you know, increasingly, how would you ever even have done this without the cloud? How do you make solid works Work without the cloud? How would that even happen? You know, And once people understand what on shapes about >>and we're the >>Onley full SAS solution software as a service, full SAS solution in our industry. So what's happened in those years? Same problems we saw earlier, but turn up the gain, their bigger problems. And with cloud, we've seen skepticism of years ago turn into acceptance. And now even embracement in the cova driven new normal. >>Yeah. So a lot of friction in the previous environments cloud obviously a huge factor on, I guess. I guess Dana John could see it coming, you know, in the early days of solid works with Salesforce, which is kind of the first major independent SAS player. Well, I guess that was late nineties. So it was post solid works, but pre in shape and their work day was, you know, pre on shape in the mid two thousands. And and but But, you know, the bet was on the SAS model was right for Crick had and and product development, you know, which Maybe the time wasn't a no brainer. Or maybe it was I don't know, but Dana is there. Is there anything that you would invest in today that's not Cloud based? >>Um, that's a great question. I mean, I think we still see things all the time in the manufacturing world that are not cloud based. I think you know, the closer you get to the shop floor in the production environment. Um, e think John and the PTC folks would agree with this, too, but that it's, you know, there's reliability requirements. There's performance requirements. There's still this attitude of, you know, don't touch the printing press. So the cloud is still a little bit scary sometimes. And I think hybrid cloud is a real thing for those or on premise. Solutions, in some cases is still a real thing. What, what were more focused on. And, um, despite whether it's on premise or hybrid or or SAS and Cloud is a frictionless go to market model, um, in the companies we invest in so sass and cloud, or really make that easy to adopt for new users, you know, you sign up, start using a product, um, but whether it's hosted in the cloud, whether it's as you can still distribute buying power. And, um, I would I'm just encouraging customers in the customer world and the more industrial environment to entrust some of their lower level engineers with more budget discretionary spending so they can try more products and unlock innovation. >>Right? The unit economics are so compelling. So let's bring it, you know, toe today's you know, situation. John, you decided to exit about a year ago. You know? What did you see in PTC? Other than the obvious money? What was the strategic fit? >>Yeah, Well, David, I wanna be clear. I didn't exit anything. Really? You >>know, I love you and I don't like that term exit. I >>mean, Dana had exit is a shareholder on and so it's not It's not exit for me. It's just a step in the journey. Um, what we saw in PTC was a partner. First of all, that shared our vision from the top down at PTC. Jim Hempleman, the CEO. He had a great vision for for the impact that SAS can make based on cloud technology. And really is Dana of highlighted so much. It's not just the technology is how you go to market and the whole business being run and how you support and make the customers successful. So Jim shared a vision for the potential. And really, really, um said Hey, come join us and we can do this bigger, Better, faster. We expanded the vision really to include this Atlas platform for hosting other SAS applications. That P D. C. I mean, David Day arrived at PTC. I met the head of the academic program. He came over to me and I said, You know, and and how many people on your team? I thought he'd say 5 40 people on the PTC academic team. It was amazing to me because, you know, we were we were just near about 100 people were required are total company. We didn't even have a dedicated academic team and we had ah, lot of students signing up, you know, thousands and thousands. Well, now we have hundreds of thousands of students were approaching a million users, and that shows you the power of this team that PTC had combined with our product and technology whom you get a big success for us and for the teachers and students to the world. We're giving them great tools. So so many good things were also putting some PTC technology from other parts of PTC back into on shape. One area, a little spoiler, little sneak peek. Working on taking generative design. Dana knows all about generative design. We couldn't acquire that technology were start up, you know, just to too much to do. But PTC owns one of the best in the business. This frustrated technology we're working on putting that into on shaping our customers. Um, will be happy to see it, hopefully in the coming year sometime. >>It's great to see that two way exchange. Now, you both know very well when you start a company, of course, a very exciting time. You know, a lot of baggage, you know, our customers pulling you in a lot of different directions and asking you for specials. You have this kind of clean slate, so to speak in it. I would think in many ways, John, despite you know, your install base, you have a bit of that dynamic occurring today especially, you know, driven by the forced march to digital transformation that cove it caused. So when you sit down with the team PTC and talk strategy, you now have more global resource is you got cohorts selling opportunities. What's the conversation like in terms of where you want to take the division? >>Well, Dave, you actually you sounds like we should have you coming in and talking about strategy because you've got the strategy down. I mean, we're doing everything said global expansion were able to reach across selling. We've got some excellent PTC customers that we can reach reach now and they're finding uses for on shape. I think the plan is to, you know, just go, go, go and grow, grow, grow where we're looking for this year, priorities are expand the product. I mentioned the breath of the product with new things PTC did recently. Another technology that they acquired for on shape. We did an acquisition. It was it was small, wasn't widely announced. It, um, in an area related to interfacing with electrical cad systems. So? So we're doing We're expanding the breath of on shape. We're going Maura. Depth in the areas were already in. We have enormous opportunity. Add more features and functions that's in the product. Go to market. You mentioned it global global presence. That's something we were a little light on a year ago. Now we have a team. Dana may not even know what we have a non shape, dedicated team in Barcelona, based in Barcelona but throughout Europe were doing multiple languages. Um, the academic program just introduced a new product into that space. That's that's even fueling more success and growth there, Um, and of course, continuing to to invest in customer success. And this Atlas platform story I keep mentioning, we're going to soon have We're gonna soon have four other major PTC brands shipping products on our Atlas Saas platform. And so we're really excited about that. That's good for the other PTC products. It's also good for on shape because now there's there's. There's other interesting products that are on shape customers can use take advantage of very easily using, say, a common log in conventions about user experience there used to invest of all their SAS based, so they that makes it easier to begin with. So that's some of the exciting things going on. I think you'll see P. D. C. Um expanding our lead in saas based applications for this sector for our target sectors, not just in in cat and data management. But another area, PTC's Big and his augmented reality with of euphoria, product line leader and industrial uses of a R. That's a whole other story we should do. A whole nother show augmented reality. But these products are amazing. You can You can help factory workers people on, uh, people who are left out of the digital transformation. Sometimes we're standing from machine >>all day. >>They can't be sitting like we are doing Zoom. They could wear a R headset in our tools. Let them create great content. This is an area Dana is invested in in other companies, but what I wanted to note is the new releases of our authoring software. For this, our content getting released this month, used through the Atlas platform, the SAS components of on shape for things like revision management and collaboration on duh workflow activity. All that those are tools that we're able to share leverage. We get a lot of synergy. It's just really good. It's really fun to We'll have a good time, >>that's awesome. And then we're gonna be talking to John MacLean later about Atlas and do a little deeper dive on that. And, Dana, what is your involvement today with with on shape? But you're looking for you know, which of their customers air actually adopting, and they're gonna disrupt their industries. You get good pipeline from that. How do you collaborate today? >>That sounds like a great idea. Um, a Z John will tell you I'm constantly just ask him for advice and impressions of other entrepreneurs and picking his brain on ideas. No formal relationship clearly, but continue to count John and and John and other people in on shaping in the circle of experts that I rely on for their opinions. >>All right, so we have some questions from the crowd here. Uh, one of the questions is for the dream team. You know, John and Dana. What's your next next collective venture? I don't think we're there yet, are we? No. I >>just say, as Dana said, we love talking to her about. You know, Dana, you just returned the compliment. We would try and give you advice and the deals you're looking at, and I'm sort of casually mentoring at least one of your portfolio entrepreneurs, and that's been a lot of fun for May on hopefully a value to them. But also Dana, We uran important pipeline to us in the world of some new things that are happening that we wouldn't see if you know you've shown us some things that you've said. What do you think of this business? And for us, it's like, Wow, it's cool to see that's going on And that's what's supposed to work in an ecosystem like this. So we we deeply value the ongoing relationship. And no, we're not starting something new. I got a lot of work left to do with what I'm doing and really happy. But we can We can collaborate in this way on other ventures. >>I like this question to somebody asking with the cloud options like on shape, Wilmore students have stem opportunities s Oh, that's a great question. Are you because of sass and cloud? Are you able to reach? You know, more students? Much more cost effectively. >>Yeah, Dave, I'm so glad that that that I was asked about this because Yes, and it's extremely gratifying us. Yes, we are because of cloud, because on shape is the only full cloud full SAS system. Our industry were able to reach stem education brings able to be part of bringing step education to students who couldn't get it otherwise. And one of most gratifying gratifying things to me is the emails were getting from teachers, um, that that really, um, on the phone calls that were they really pour their heart out and say We're able to get to students in areas that have very limited compute resource is that don't have an I T staff where they don't know what computer that the students can have at home, and they probably don't even have a computer. We're talking about being able to teach them on a phone to have an android phone a low end android phone. You could do three D modeling on there with on shape. Now you can't do it any other system, but with on shape, you could do it. And so the teacher can say to the students, They have to have Internet access, and I know there's a huge community that doesn't even have Internet access, and we're not able, unfortunately to help that. But if you have Internet and you have even an android phone, we can enable the educator to teach them. And so we have case after case of saving a stem program or expanding it into the students that need it most is the ones we're helping here. So really excited about that. And we're also able to let in addition to the run on run on whatever computing devices they have, we also offer them the tools they need for remote teaching with a much richer experience. You know, could you teach solid works remotely? Well, maybe if the student ran it had a windows workstation, you know, big, big, high and workstation. Maybe it could, but it would be like the difference between collaborating with on shape and collaborate with solid works. Like the difference between a zoom video call and talking on the landline phone. You know, it's a much richer experience, and that's what you need in stem teaching. Stem is hard. So, yeah, we're super super excited about bringing stem to more students because of clouds. >>Yeah, we're talking about innovation for good, and then the discussion, John, you just had it. Really? There could be a whole another vector here. We could discuss on diversity, and I wanna end with just pointing out So, Dana, your new firm. It's a woman led firm, too. Two women leaders, you know, going forward. So that's awesome to see, so really? Yeah, thumbs up on that. Congratulations on getting that off the ground. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. So thank you guys. Really appreciate It was a great discussion. I learned a lot, and I'm sure the audience did a swell in a moment. We're gonna talk with on shape customers to see how they're applying tech for good and some of the products that they're building. So keep it right there. I'm Dave Volonte. You're watching innovation for good on the Cube, the global leader in digital tech event coverage. Stay right there. Yeah.

(vibrant music) >> Everybody welcome to the special CUBE conversation here at the Palo Alto studios of theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here with Dayna Rothman, Vice President of Marketing at Mesosphere. Great to see you. Thanks for coming in. >> Yeah, thanks so much for having me. >> So you guys have a lot of action going on. >> Yes. >> A lot of funding, new CEO, a very successful KubeCon part of the CNCF, we saw each other there. The space is out of control right now. The growth is amazing. >> Yes. >> Amazon reinvent two weeks before in Vegas, packed. >> There's been a lot going on, geez. >> Talk about Mesosphere. You guys got some news and momentum. Talk about the momentum. >> Yeah, we've had a ton of momentum. We got 126 million in funding about eight months ago, or so, a little bit before I joined. I joined five, six months ago. Things have really kicked off in the space. Obviously, the space has gone crazy with everything around Kubernetes and all the different acquisitions and just almost crossing the chasm into some of those later adopters now, which has been really, really great for us. After the funding and hiring on a lot of seasoned executives, we're really taking marketing to the next place, taking what we're doing with product to the next phase, so it's been a great ride so far. >> Yeah, we've had a chance to interview you guys a lot over the years from OpenStack and then as the Cloud Native moves into the mainstream. It's interesting. The tech chops are solid, great company DNA, but it's interesting. You go back a year and a half or two years ago and say the word Kubernete, would be like, what language are you speaking? >> Yeah. >> Now, you see it in Forbes, see it everywhere. Kubernetes has risen to mainstream. Amazon Cloud, Google, Microsoft, they're all growing. Kubernetes is like a core, major generational thing in the tech world. You're new. >> Yes. >> What do you think about Kubernetes? Do you look at this, wow, what is Kubernetes? How did you get attracted to Mesosphere and what do you think about all this? >> Yeah, the funny thing about, just a Kubernetes story and me, I guess. A couple companies ago, working for MarTech company, I did have a boss that actually came from this space and I distinctly remember him talking about Kubernetes at that time and, coming from a different space, I just had like, what are you even talking about? He was going to KubeCon in the early days. So, I was actually familiar with it. Then, how I got attracted to Mesosphere and this space, I'd been at MarTech for a decade and really looking just to do something else and who's doing something really innovative, where's a different space that I can go in that's really growing. MarTech and SalesTech, a lot of these little players right now and nobody's really innovating. Actually, with Mesosphere, my husband actually works there as well and he started about a year and a half ago and I had spoken to the executive team several times about just marketing, best practices and marketing leadership, revenue and attribution, and the more I spoke to them, the more interested I got in the company, and then this role was available and it was just a great fit, plus I knew some of the ins and outs already just from having that connection to Mesosphere in the first place. >> Was it just saying too, you mentioned MarTech. We've been following that space for a long time. We actually got to see how this works with the first cloud before Cloud was a cloud. MarTech was very Cloud-oriented from day one. You think about what that was, self-service, lot of data issues, lot of applications that had real value, 'cause money's there. You got leads and all kinds of marketing activity, so MarTech has that almost cloud-first DNA to begin with and you come from that. Now when you come over to the Cloud Native, you're seeing the developer world building a whole 'nother generation of what looks like many industries that have that same characteristics, self-service, large scale, data. These are the top conversations. >> Yeah. >> So, interesting connection that you have that background. So when you come into this world and you see all these developers building out this application layer, CICD pipelining, and then below Kubernetes, you got all this tech, where are the opportunities? What's the value proposition from Mesosphere? What are you guys attacking? Who's your buyer? Are they developers, are they going to be businesses? Take a minute to explain that. >> A couple of different things to address some of your points. As far as our buyers and where the space is going, I think where we're really strong is really having that enterprise DNA where we can take a lot of this tech and a lot of these open-source projects and really make them enterprise ready so that companies that are much bigger and have all these security regulations and red tape can actually leverage them so that they can continue innovating. As we grow, our buyers are also evolving, from, in the earlier days, mostly developers, engineers, more of that technical crowd, but now we're coming across a lot more executive level folks. We're talking to the CIOs, the CTOs, the business users where we have to shift a little bit and have more of that business use case. The other thing is really that we're getting past the point of the really early adopters. We have customers that have been with us for awhile that are very innovative, Silicon Valley companies, and now we're seeing different industries. We have a lot of automotive clients, finance, manufacturings, some of these older industries that want to adopt technology like Kubernetes, but they don't know how to fit it into what their organization needs and wants from the IT department. >> So there's a lot of education involved, probably. >> I would imagine. >> Yes. >> Value creates other customers. Okay, I've got all these workloads. I see all the early adopters and the web-scale guys. We all live around here. We know all the Ubers and everyone else out there. Lift, what a great case study when you read those guys. But the mainstreamed America kind of companies that have data sets and are going to go to Cloud have to move these workloads around. Are they coming to you guys for specific help? Are they saying, teach us how to do it? What are the specific conversations that you guys have with those customers? >> Sure. Sometimes they come to us with a specific project, but the education piece I think is really big for us to get to the next level on what we're trying to do. That's where what I'm building out in the marketing team is going to be really powerful, so that instead of people coming to us on a project basis, we're educating some of these enterprise companies on how they can leverage it, what they should be thinking about, how they can make that transformation to more of a cloud-like environment and what they need to think about. That's a big part of the strategy going forward, is that we want to get out there as educators, as thought leaders in the space so that we can get in front of some of these folks that maybe have heard of Kubernetes or are thinking about it but don't quite understand what it is and how it fits into their business. We do, though, get several questions on just, hey, I'm interested in CICD, what is it, or what is this Kubernetes, can you guys help us? That's where we're jumping in. >> I want to ask you a question about the B2Bs and the BI space because one of the things I think is really interesting is you start to see the mainstream tech press go, whoa, Enterprise is hot, consumer's not. It tends to have these cycles and when you start to see companies like Mesosphere going to the next level, they're targeting customers in mainstream enterprise. They have to up their game and get on the marketing side. You're hired to do that. What's your strategy? Is it fill the pipeline, is it more educational, build more event, evangelism, localization, is it global? Take us through your vision of what's next level for Mesosphere. >> I think definitely all of those things and one of the most important things for me is, when I came on board, it was really, from an operational perspective, making sure that our marketing department is ready for scale in that we have all the things that we need in order to generate those leads and accelerate them through the pipeline and that we're really partnering with the sales team, so when I think about marketing, it's not just top funnel region, it's like what are the different programs that we're doing in the middle of the funnel to accelerate opportunities to help close deals and that's where we actually create different campaigns to serve some of the middle of the funnel functions. Content is a big piece of my strategy. I come from a content marketing background. I ran content marketing at Marketo for several years pre IPO into post and I really created the content engine there. So I've seen the value of thought leadership content, creating content for the different levels of the buyer journey, so that's a big focus for my team and then building that out with different multi-channel campaigns. Events are huge for us. I love events and we do big scale conferences and ancillary events around the conferences and then we also have a very active field marketing program where we're going into the regions and doing these smaller executive events that are very high-touch. So, it's really like all the different pieces. Right now, we're working on brand, we're working on look and feel, we'll redo the website, so we have everything. >> You're busy. >> Very. (laughs) >> You look great. >> Well, I'm going on. >> You look like you're not stressed at all. You look really relaxed. >> No. >> I want to ask you a question, 'cause you're on the cutting edge, you've got a great background. I love the MarTech. I've always said MarTech never really lived up to its promise because Cloud changed the game, but I still think MarTech will be huge, because with Cloud-scale and data driven strategies, I think it's going to be explosive even further than what we've seen, but there's been a lot of venture backing as Marketo has been successful, just recently bought by Adobe, but as you look at the digital landscape, you mentioned events, what's your thoughts on digital and physical events, 'cause you mentioned high-touch events, spectrum of activities you're deploying, you got physical events which are turning out to be quite fantastic, Face-to-Face is intimate. There's a lot of networking, and digital. How do you bring the event physical world with the digital. How do you view that as a marketer? We combine them, especially for the bigger event campaigns, so whether it's a trade show booth or an ancillary event around a trade show, like a very large party or something like that, we'll have a whole digital promotional strategy around that that includes, maybe we'll create a micro-site, we have ads that are targeted to people that we think that are going to attend these events, we'll do paid programs, other paid channels to drive attendance and to generate that visibility, so I really like to combine them and also email and nurturing is a big part of the strategy as well but it's important to have that online and offline presence and they should map to each other. >> It's interesting, we're seeing a trend, through theCUBE I've been to a lot of events where people want the digital experience to map to what's it like onsite; reputation, work with good people, have that kind of vibe, and it's evolving and search marketing has always been effective. Email marketing is out there, that's tried and true ways to fill the top of the funnel. Is there new techniques that you see coming that marketers should be aware of? You have that history with MarTech. You've seen where it's been and where it's going. What's a new hot area that you're watching that's evolving in real time, because we're go to a web 3.0 where the users have different expectations. It's not just email blasts anymore, although that's one mechanism. What's the new thing? What are you looking at? >> It's this like a new-old thing, I guess, (laughs) but comp-based marketing is something a lot of marketers are getting into right now and it's certainly a hot trend and a hot topic and it's really, I guess, an older way of thinking about marketing instead of that very wide top funnel region where you're just trying to get just thousands of people into your funnel and doing different things, you have your set key account list that you're going after, that your company and your reps and marketing all agree on and you're doing very targeted campaigns to those specific accounts, so we've been doing some really interesting things with different ad platforms. They have ad platforms now where you can actually target on an account by account basis, based on IP address and a lot of other attributes, and you can actually do account-based nurturing through ads, which is very interesting. I can have an ad that specifically calls out the company that only that company sees. Direct mail is actually also a pretty big piece of this, which again, is an older thing. Not direct mail like a little postcard you get, but like a dimensional mailer for an executive >> It's not a spray and pray, very targeted. >> No, it's very targeted. >> Talk about the dynamic, because you're now getting into what we're seeing as a trend where it's not just the marketing person, hey where are my Glengarry leads, or where are the leads, the leads aren't good enough, always that finger-pointing that's tended to go on traditionally, and I may be oversimplifying it, but-- >> It still happens. (laughs) >> The partnering with sales becomes even more critical because you have a lot of surface area in your marketing mix. That's not going away, you mentioned those variety of things, but tightening it up with sales and sales enablement seems to be a trend in marketing in general with data-driven things, because now you can measure everything. Now, it's like, what do you measure? So, having a tighter coupling with sales is a key thing. Talk about that dynamic and how it's changing and what you guys are doing. >> Being really tightly coupled with the sales development team and the sales team is a super important part of our strategy. Even when I think of what our goals are as a marketing organization, it's a lot later in the funnel than I think, historically, marketers have been measured. When I'm reporting out on performance, I report out on the entire funnel. I look at conversion rates for every single stage. Marketing is measured on pipeline and revenue and because of that reason, that requires a very tight coupling with the sales department, understanding who they're going after, what's working, what's not and where people are in the sales cycle so that marketing can jump in and it really assists them. It's not like a who gets credit for what type of situation. It's like we're all moving towards the same goal, so different things that we do, and I think attribution and measurement really helps quite a bit with this, is we can measure what campaign works for different regions. We know what campaigns are good for sourcing people, what campaigns are good for accelerating somebody from a meeting to an op. We can get very granular with topics, channels, campaign types and even accounts, looking at account engagement, so that information is really powerful when you partner with an AE and go at it together. We do a lot of later-stage field events as well, where we're going after key executives in open opportunities and doing very high-end dinners or maybe we're doing a track day or something like that. >> It's interesting because the world's changing from the, again, old to new, is interesting. I love how you put that, because the old way was big end budget, throw it out there, get the reach, and then now it's much more targeted, much more tactical. Still the same strategic objectives, but then cut up into more tactical programs. Is that a challenge for some? Just while you're here, your insight is so amazing. Other marketers that aren't as savvy as you, try to tackle this, what's your advice to them when you start thinking about that, because I'm sure you get asked all the time, how do I tackle this new world? How do you advise friends and colleagues in the industry when they say, I've got to move from the 50/50 ad spin where I don't know where it's being measured, it's a big budget, big ad agency, I want to take those dollars and deploy them into what looks like programs that used to have smaller budgets but in totality can be effective? What's your advice? >> I think it's a hard jump for a lot of marketers. A lot of marketers that I've come in contact with do have that, even if it's not like that big ad budget mentality, it's like that, oh we're responsible for generating leads, and that's kind of where it ends, and you talk impressions in those types of metrics. I think in order to really survive as a marketer these days, you have to move to that next level where you're measuring things and you're really thinking about that full funnel. The advice that I give to a lot of high-end executive teams is to start measuring your marketing department, your VP, your CMO on later stage metrics so that potentially their comp, if it's a bonus or whatever, that it's aligned to the sales team and that we're looking at pipeline and revenue instead of leads generated or impressions or other things like that. >> So real conversion. >> Yeah, just a little bit of a forcing function to get folks there and that's what I do with my team when we look at performance. >> Well Dayna, you're a real pro. Looking forward to having more conversations. I love the MarTech background that you have. I think Cloud Native is essentially going to have, as a major feature, MarTech kind of things. Data, content, analysis, real time, full measurement across multiple spectrums. That's the premise of Cloud, so love to follow up with you. Final topic area is Mesosphere. As you guys go next level, got some big funding, new CEO, what's the positioning, what's the value statement, how are you guys posturing to the marketplace? >> Really focusing on that, how these leader adopters are able to have these enterprise standards by having the flexibility of what some of these different technologies and platforms are able to give these companies. We're definitely focusing a lot on innovating through IOT and we're doing some really cool projects with customers on how they can use our platform for those types of projects and really, from a Kupernetes perspective, we're continuing to work on how we can optimize and drive our value proposition there. Then, again, thinking more in that Cloud-like way, how can we continue pushing the envelope in that Cloud-like experience for our own platform and software. >> Takeaway for you when you look at Amazon reinvent, which was a couple weeks ago and then KubeCon CNCF, Cloud Native Computing Foundation event in Seattle just last week. What was your big takeaway? If you had to look back and zoom out and go on the balcony and look at the stage of the industry, what was your takeaway? What was your personal takeaway? What anecdotal things popped out at you? What was the learnings that you saw in those two events? What's happening? >> I think, again, as time goes, I think a lot of the themes I've been talking about. Especially at KubeCon with 8000 people, they were sold out way before the event. We were actually very surprised that they sold out. We weren't prepared for that 'cause we still had to purchase a bunch of additional tickets, but I think just the popularity of some of these technologies and the business folks and the executives that are attending these events, it is starting to move more towards that enterprise. How can we adopt this stuff for the enterprise? For both events, for me that was a key takeaway. When you're looking at the different vendors, even on the expo floor, what are they talking about, what are they trying to do? Then the attendance at these events and even a lot of the talks were around bringing this stuff to the next level, having more of that cloud-like experience for the enterprise and having those best practices in there. >> As the serious marketer that you are, what was your impression of the role the community plays, because Mesosphere has a great position in the community. They've been a great steward in the community, have a great reputation. The role of the community now as part of the whole marketing production system in and of itself. Reputation, referrals, this is a big part of it. This is a dynamic. Your thoughts on role of the community in marketing in these new areas. >> Role of the community is huge. You need the community on your side in order to grow the business, because those are the folks that are going to evangelize. Those are where the influencers are coming from. For me, as I've gotten into this space, it's really been trying to understand who these people are, what they're interested in, how we can provide value, how we can provide fun, what are the ways we can partner with the community and approach it in more of like a humanistic way, so that's what we've been doing a lot of work, in just trying to get to know the community and creating marketing that is effective and an assistance to them as well. >> One that adds value is always, it's like an upstream project. You create value, you get respected for it, as long as you're not trying to overplay your hand. I do want to get your thoughts on reaction to KubeCon. I thought one of the things that happened there, besides theCUBE being there, of course, we were there from the beginning, was, you guys stole the show at Mesosphere. You had Ice Cube perform, and that was the buzz of the show. Talk about what happened, what was the response, Ice Cube performed, it was great reviews, saw it on Twitter. What was that all about? Share some stories. >> I thought, when we were trying to plan KubeCon, and how can we really, my goal was, I want to take over the show and really generate that buzz. Again, a big piece of that is the community and trying to think of, what can we do for the community that's going to get them excited. Picking an artist is a challenge, right? It's got to hit all these different goals, like you've got to pick somebody that's not crazy millions of dollars, you have to pick somebody that people are really familiar with, you have to pick somebody that most people like that's still relevant. So I think choosing Ice Cube was an important piece of that. Then, that it was just, to me, having come from the MarTech space and the sales-type space, I know what some of these huge, impactful parties and side events can have on a brand and that space is very, that happens a lot, and I've done that in several companies. I don't think it's really happening as much in this space from my experience so far, >> That KubeCon first and that was a big, big production. >> Yeah, exactly. >> What was the feedback? Were you happy with the results, 'cause I thought it was fantastic. >> It was great. We got fantastic feedback. I knew it would be, when we launched it, a very new thing, so it created a lot of buzz, a lot of chatter, could be controversial, which I was prepared for and I thought would be good to start that conversation, but at the event, it was just incredible. We had a completely packed house. Everyone was so excited to be there. We had great reactions on Twitter and I think that the community was just really happy to have that place where we can all come together and have a great time and that enabled us to put our brand out there as, so when people think of Mesosphere, they'll remember that event, so it's been incredibly successful. >> The Ice Cube, great job. Okay, I want to get your thoughts, 2019, what's going to happen for you in 2019? What can we expect from Mesosphere? >> We can definitely expect some great product innovations, different things we're working on, especially with the funding, and a new CEO. We're definitely looking to, we're going to take the brand into the next level. I think you're going to see us a lot more. I'm thinking through a potential, kind of our own user conference in San Francisco for next year, where we'll do a couple of days. Multi-track, thought leadership, a bigger production, so that's something that's exciting. We've got a lot of great programs planned for 2019. >> Awesome. Well, congratulations on a great event at KubeCon with Ice Cube and all of the successful momentum at Mesosphere. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Dayna Rothman here, Vice President of Marketing at Mesosphere, turning up the heat in the marketing, bringing Mesosphere to the next level. A lot of momentum. The industry's on fire, it's just an amazing time in Cloud Native. This is theCUBE covering every day in Cloud Native here. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. (vibrant music)

(vibrant music) >> Everybody welcome to the special CUBE conversation here at the Palo Alto studios of theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here with Dayna Rothman, Vice President of Marketing at Mesosphere. Great to see you. Thanks for coming in. >> Yeah, thanks so much for having me. >> So you guys have a lot of action going on. >> Yes. >> A lot of funding, new CEO, a very successful CubeCon part of the CNCF, we saw each other there. The space is out of control right now. The growth is amazing. >> Yes. >> Amazon reinvent two weeks before in Vegas, packed. >> There's been a lot going on, geez. >> Talk about Mesosphere. You guys got some news and momentum. Talk about the momentum. >> Yeah, we've had a ton of momentum. We got 126 million in funding about eight months ago, or so, a little bit before I joined. I joined five, six months ago. Things have really kicked off in the space. Obviously, the space has gone crazy with everything around Kubernetes and all the different acquisitions and just almost crossing the chasm into some of those later adopters now, which has been really, really great for us. After the funding and hiring on a lot of seasoned executives, we're really taking marketing to the next place, taking what we're doing with product to the next phase, so it's been a great ride so far. >> Yeah, we've had a chance to interview you guys a lot over the years from OpenStack and then as the Cloud Native moves into the mainstream. It's interesting. The tech chops are solid, great company DNA, but it's interesting. You go back a year and a half or two years ago and say the word Kubernete, would be like, what language are you speaking? >> Yeah. >> Now, you see it in Forbes, see it everywhere. Kubernetes has risen to mainstream. Amazon Cloud, Google, Microsoft, they're all growing. Kubernetes is like a core, major generational thing in the tech world. You're new. >> Yes. >> What do you think about Kubernetes? Do you look at this, wow, what is Kubernetes? How did you get attracted to Mesosphere and what do you think about all this? >> Yeah, the funny thing about, just a Kubernetes story and me, I guess. A couple companies ago, working for MarTech company, I did have a boss that actually came from this space and I distinctly remember him talking about Kubernetes at that time and, coming from a different space, I just had like, what are you even talking about? He was going to CubeCon in the early days. So, I was actually familiar with it. Then, how I got attracted to Mesosphere and this space, I'd been at MarTech for a decade and really looking just to do something else and who's doing something really innovative, where's a different space that I can go in that's really growing. MarTech and SalesTech, a lot of these little players right now and nobody's really innovating. Actually, with Mesosphere, my husband actually works there as well and he started about a year and a half ago and I had spoken to the executive team several times about just marketing, best practices and marketing leadership, revenue and attribution, and the more I spoke to them, the more interested I got in the company, and then this role was available and it was just a great fit, plus I knew some of the ins and outs already just from having that connection to Mesosphere in the first place. >> Was it just saying too, you mentioned MarTech. We've been following that space for a long time. We actually got to see how this works with the first cloud before Cloud was a cloud. MarTech was very Cloud-oriented from day one. You think about what that was, self-service, lot of data issues, lot of applications that had real value, 'cause money's there. You got leads and all kinds of marketing activity, so MarTech has that almost cloud-first DNA to begin with and you come from that. Now when you come over to the Cloud Native, you're seeing the developer world building a whole 'nother generation of what looks like many industries that have that same characteristics, self-service, large scale, data. These are the top conversations. >> Yeah. >> So, interesting connection that you have that background. So when you come into this world and you see all these developers building out this application layer, CICD pipelining, and then below Kubernetes, you got all this tech, where are the opportunities? What's the value proposition from Mesosphere? What are you guys attacking? Who's your buyer? Are they developers, are they going to be businesses? Take a minute to explain that. >> A couple of different things to address some of your points. As far as our buyers and where the space is going, I think where we're really strong is really having that enterprise DNA where we can take a lot of this tech and a lot of these open-source projects and really make them enterprise ready so that companies that are much bigger and have all these security regulations and red tape can actually leverage them so that they can continue innovating. As we grow, our buyers are also evolving, from, in the earlier days, mostly developers, engineers, more of that technical crowd, but now we're coming across a lot more executive level folks. We're talking to the CIOs, the CTOs, the business users where we have to shift a little bit and have more of that business use case. The other thing is really that we're getting past the point of the really early adopters. We have customers that have been with us for awhile that are very innovative, Silicon Valley companies, and now we're seeing different industries. We have a lot of automotive clients, finance, manufacturings, some of these older industries that want to adopt technology like Kubernetes, but they don't know how to fit it into what their organization needs and wants from the IT department. >> So there's a lot of education involved, probably. >> I would imagine. >> Yes. >> Value creates other customers. Okay, I've got all these workloads. I see all the early adopters and the web-scale guys. We all live around here. We know all the Ubers and everyone else out there. Lift, what a great case study when you read those guys. But the mainstreamed America kind of companies that have data sets and are going to go to Cloud have to move these workloads around. Are they coming to you guys for specific help? Are they saying, teach us how to do it? What are the specific conversations that you guys have with those customers? >> Sure. Sometimes they come to us with a specific project, but the education piece I think is really big for us to get to the next level on what we're trying to do. That's where what I'm building out in the marketing team is going to be really powerful, so that instead of people coming to us on a project basis, we're educating some of these enterprise companies on how they can leverage it, what they should be thinking about, how they can make that transformation to more of a cloud-like environment and what they need to think about. That's a big part of the strategy going forward, is that we want to get out there as educators, as thought leaders in the space so that we can get in front of some of these folks that maybe have heard of Kubernetes or are thinking about it but don't quite understand what it is and how it fits into their business. We do, though, get several questions on just, hey, I'm interested in CICD, what is it, or what is this Kubernetes, can you guys help us? That's where we're jumping in. >> I want to ask you a question about the B2Bs and the BI space because one of the things I think is really interesting is you start to see the mainstream tech press go, whoa, Enterprise is hot, consumer's not. It tends to have these cycles and when you start to see companies like Mesosphere going to the next level, they're targeting customers in mainstream enterprise. They have to up their game and get on the marketing side. You're hired to do that. What's your strategy? Is it fill the pipeline, is it more educational, build more event, evangelism, localization, is it global? Take us through your vision of what's next level for Mesosphere. >> I think definitely all of those things and one of the most important things for me is, when I came on board, it was really, from an operational perspective, making sure that our marketing department is ready for scale in that we have all the things that we need in order to generate those leads and accelerate them through the pipeline and that we're really partnering with the sales team, so when I think about marketing, it's not just top funnel region, it's like what are the different programs that we're doing in the middle of the funnel to accelerate opportunities to help close deals and that's where we actually create different campaigns to serve some of the middle of the funnel functions. Content is a big piece of my strategy. I come from a content marketing background. I ran content marketing at Marketo for several years pre IPO into post and I really created the content engine there. So I've seen the value of thought leadership content, creating content for the different levels of the buyer journey, so that's a big focus for my team and then building that out with different multi-channel campaigns. Events are huge for us. I love events and we do big scale conferences and ancillary events around the conferences and then we also have a very active field marketing program where we're going into the regions and doing these smaller executive events that are very high-touch. So, it's really like all the different pieces. Right now, we're working on brand, we're working on look and feel, we'll redo the website, so we have everything. >> You're busy. >> Very. (laughs) >> You look great. >> Well, I'm going on. >> You look like you're not stressed at all. You look really relaxed. >> No. >> I want to ask you a question, 'cause you're on the cutting edge, you've got a great background. I love the MarTech. I've always said MarTech never really lived up to its promise because Cloud changed the game, but I still think MarTech will be huge, because with Cloud-scale and data driven strategies, I think it's going to be explosive even further than what we've seen, but there's been a lot of venture backing as Marketo has been successful, just recently bought by Adobe, but as you look at the digital landscape, you mentioned events, what's your thoughts on digital and physical events, 'cause you mentioned high-touch events, spectrum of activities you're deploying, you got physical events which are turning out to be quite fantastic, Face-to-Face is intimate. There's a lot of networking, and digital. How do you bring the event physical world with the digital. How do you view that as a marketer? We combine them, especially for the bigger event campaigns, so whether it's a trade show booth or an ancillary event around a trade show, like a very large party or something like that, we'll have a whole digital promotional strategy around that that includes, maybe we'll create a micro-site, we have ads that are targeted to people that we think that are going to attend these events, we'll do paid programs, other paid channels to drive attendance and to generate that visibility, so I really like to combine them and also email and nurturing is a big part of the strategy as well but it's important to have that online and offline presence and they should map to each other. >> It's interesting, we're seeing a trend, through theCUBE I've been to a lot of events where people want the digital experience to map to what's it like onsite; reputation, work with good people, have that kind of vibe, and it's evolving and search marketing has always been effective. Email marketing is out there, that's tried and true ways to fill the top of the funnel. Is there new techniques that you see coming that marketers should be aware of? You have that history with MarTech. You've seen where it's been and where it's going. What's a new hot area that you're watching that's evolving in real time, because we're go to a web 3.0 where the users have different expectations. It's not just email blasts anymore, although that's one mechanism. What's the new thing? What are you looking at? >> It's this like a new-old thing, I guess, (laughs) but comp-based marketing is something a lot of marketers are getting into right now and it's certainly a hot trend and a hot topic and it's really, I guess, an older way of thinking about marketing instead of that very wide top funnel region where you're just trying to get just thousands of people into your funnel and doing different things, you have your set key account list that you're going after, that your company and your reps and marketing all agree on and you're doing very targeted campaigns to those specific accounts, so we've been doing some really interesting things with different ad platforms. They have ad platforms now where you can actually target on an account by account basis, based on IP address and a lot of other attributes, and you can actually do account-based nurturing through ads, which is very interesting. I can have an ad that specifically calls out the company that only that company sees. Direct mail is actually also a pretty big piece of this, which again, is an older thing. Not direct mail like a little postcard you get, but like a dimensional mailer for an executive >> It's not a spray and pray, very targeted. >> No, it's very targeted. >> Talk about the dynamic, because you're now getting into what we're seeing as a trend where it's not just the marketing person, hey where are my Glengarry leads, or where are the leads, the leads aren't good enough, always that finger-pointing that's tended to go on traditionally, and I may be oversimplifying it, but-- >> It still happens. (laughs) >> The partnering with sales becomes even more critical because you have a lot of surface area in your marketing mix. That's not going away, you mentioned those variety of things, but tightening it up with sales and sales enablement seems to be a trend in marketing in general with data-driven things, because now you can measure everything. Now, it's like, what do you measure? So, having a tighter coupling with sales is a key thing. Talk about that dynamic and how it's changing and what you guys are doing. >> Being really tightly coupled with the sales development team and the sales team is a super important part of our strategy. Even when I think of what our goals are as a marketing organization, it's a lot later in the funnel than I think, historically, marketers have been measured. When I'm reporting out on performance, I report out on the entire funnel. I look at conversion rates for every single stage. Marketing is measured on pipeline and revenue and because of that reason, that requires a very tight coupling with the sales department, understanding who they're going after, what's working, what's not and where people are in the sales cycle so that marketing can jump in and it really assists them. It's not like a who gets credit for what type of situation. It's like we're all moving towards the same goal, so different things that we do, and I think attribution and measurement really helps quite a bit with this, is we can measure what campaign works for different regions. We know what campaigns are good for sourcing people, what campaigns are good for accelerating somebody from a meeting to an op. We can get very granular with topics, channels, campaign types and even accounts, looking at account engagement, so that information is really powerful when you partner with an AE and go at it together. We do a lot of later-stage field events as well, where we're going after key executives in open opportunities and doing very high-end dinners or maybe we're doing a track day or something like that. >> It's interesting because the world's changing from the, again, old to new, is interesting. I love how you put that, because the old way was big end budget, throw it out there, get the reach, and then now it's much more targeted, much more tactical. Still the same strategic objectives, but then cut up into more tactical programs. Is that a challenge for some? Just while you're here, your insight is so amazing. Other marketers that aren't as savvy as you, try to tackle this, what's your advice to them when you start thinking about that, because I'm sure you get asked all the time, how do I tackle this new world? How do you advise friends and colleagues in the industry when they say, I've got to move from the 50/50 ad spin where I don't know where it's being measured, it's a big budget, big ad agency, I want to take those dollars and deploy them into what looks like programs that used to have smaller budgets but in totality can be effective? What's your advice? >> I think it's a hard jump for a lot of marketers. A lot of marketers that I've come in contact with do have that, even if it's not like that big ad budget mentality, it's like that, oh we're responsible for generating leads, and that's kind of where it ends, and you talk impressions in those types of metrics. I think in order to really survive as a marketer these days, you have to move to that next level where you're measuring things and you're really thinking about that full funnel. The advice that I give to a lot of high-end executive teams is to start measuring your marketing department, your VP, your CMO on later stage metrics so that potentially their comp, if it's a bonus or whatever, that it's aligned to the sales team and that we're looking at pipeline and revenue instead of leads generated or impressions or other things like that. >> So real conversion. >> Yeah, just a little bit of a forcing function to get folks there and that's what I do with my team when we look at performance. >> Well Dayna, you're a real pro. Looking forward to having more conversations. I love the MarTech background that you have. I think Cloud Native is essentially going to have, as a major feature, MarTech kind of things. Data, content, analysis, real time, full measurement across multiple spectrums. That's the premise of Cloud, so love to follow up with you. Final topic area is Mesosphere. As you guys go next level, got some big funding, new CEO, what's the positioning, what's the value statement, how are you guys posturing to the marketplace? >> Really focusing on that, how these leader adopters are able to have these enterprise standards by having the flexibility of what some of these different technologies and platforms are able to give these companies. We're definitely focusing a lot on innovating through IOT and we're doing some really cool projects with customers on how they can use our platform for those types of projects and really, from a Kupernetes perspective, we're continuing to work on how we can optimize and drive our value proposition there. Then, again, thinking more in that Cloud-like way, how can we continue pushing the envelope in that Cloud-like experience for our own platform and software. >> Takeaway for you when you look at Amazon reinvent, which was a couple weeks ago and then CubeCon CNCF, Cloud Native Computing Foundation event in Seattle just last week. What was your big takeaway? If you had to look back and zoom out and go on the balcony and look at the stage of the industry, what was your takeaway? What was your personal takeaway? What anecdotal things popped out at you? What was the learnings that you saw in those two events? What's happening? >> I think, again, as time goes, I think a lot of the themes I've been talking about. Especially at CubeCon with 8000 people, they were sold out way before the event. We were actually very surprised that they sold out. We weren't prepared for that 'cause we still had to purchase a bunch of additional tickets, but I think just the popularity of some of these technologies and the business folks and the executives that are attending these events, it is starting to move more towards that enterprise. How can we adopt this stuff for the enterprise? For both events, for me that was a key takeaway. When you're looking at the different vendors, even on the expo floor, what are they talking about, what are they trying to do? Then the attendance at these events and even a lot of the talks were around bringing this stuff to the next level, having more of that cloud-like experience for the enterprise and having those best practices in there. >> As the serious marketer that you are, what was your impression of the role the community plays, because Mesosphere has a great position in the community. They've been a great steward in the community, have a great reputation. The role of the community now as part of the whole marketing production system in and of itself. Reputation, referrals, this is a big part of it. This is a dynamic. Your thoughts on role of the community in marketing in these new areas. >> Role of the community is huge. You need the community on your side in order to grow the business, because those are the folks that are going to evangelize. Those are where the influencers are coming from. For me, as I've gotten into this space, it's really been trying to understand who these people are, what they're interested in, how we can provide value, how we can provide fun, what are the ways we can partner with the community and approach it in more of like a humanistic way, so that's what we've been doing a lot of work, in just trying to get to know the community and creating marketing that is effective and an assistance to them as well. >> One that adds value is always, it's like an upstream project. You create value, you get respected for it, as long as you're not trying to overplay your hand. I do want to get your thoughts on reaction to CubeCon. I thought one of the things that happened there, besides theCUBE being there, of course, we were there from the beginning, was, you guys stole the show at Mesosphere. You had Ice Cube perform, and that was the buzz of the show. Talk about what happened, what was the response, Ice Cube performed, it was great reviews, saw it on Twitter. What was that all about? Share some stories. >> I thought, when we were trying to plan CubeCon, and how can we really, my goal was, I want to take over the show and really generate that buzz. Again, a big piece of that is the community and trying to think of, what can we do for the community that's going to get them excited. Picking an artist is a challenge, right? It's got to hit all these different goals, like you've got to pick somebody that's not crazy millions of dollars, you have to pick somebody that people are really familiar with, you have to pick somebody that most people like that's still relevant. So I think choosing Ice Cube was an important piece of that. Then, that it was just, to me, having come from the MarTech space and the sales-type space, I know what some of these huge, impactful parties and side events can have on a brand and that space is very, that happens a lot, and I've done that in several companies. I don't think it's really happening as much in this space from my experience so far, >> That CubeCon first and that was a big, big production. >> Yeah, exactly. >> What was the feedback? Were you happy with the results, 'cause I thought it was fantastic. >> It was great. We got fantastic feedback. I knew it would be, when we launched it, a very new thing, so it created a lot of buzz, a lot of chatter, could be controversial, which I was prepared for and I thought would be good to start that conversation, but at the event, it was just incredible. We had a completely packed house. Everyone was so excited to be there. We had great reactions on Twitter and I think that the community was just really happy to have that place where we can all come together and have a great time and that enabled us to put our brand out there as, so when people think of Mesosphere, they'll remember that event, so it's been incredibly successful. >> The Ice Cube, great job. Okay, I want to get your thoughts, 2019, what's going to happen for you in 2019? What can we expect from Mesosphere? >> We can definitely expect some great product innovations, different things we're working on, especially with the funding, and a new CEO. We're definitely looking to, we're going to take the brand into the next level. I think you're going to see us a lot more. I'm thinking through a potential, kind of our own user conference in San Francisco for next year, where we'll do a couple of days. Multi-track, thought leadership, a bigger production, so that's something that's exciting. We've got a lot of great programs planned for 2019. >> Awesome. Well, congratulations on a great event at CubeCon with Ice Cube and all of the successful momentum at Mesosphere. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Dayna Rothman here, Vice President of Marketing at Mesosphere, turning up the heat in the marketing, bringing Mesosphere to the next level. A lot of momentum. The industry's on fire, it's just an amazing time in Cloud Native. This is theCUBE covering every day in Cloud Native here. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. (vibrant music)

from our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley Palo Alto California this is a cute conversation hey welcome back everybody Jeffrey here with the cube we're in our Palo Alto Studios here today for a cute conversation it's a little bit of a dog days of summer conference seasons a little bit slow so we're excited we can kind of take a step back and we're gonna look back actually in time we're excited to have a very special guest rich Kolbert he is the field CTO at Dell EMC but really what we're talking about today is this data domain is 10-year anniversary of the date domain acquisition so rich first off welcome to the to the cube thanks Jeff excited to be here thanks for the invitation appreciate it I can't believe we're talking before we turned the cameras on that you join in 2006 and yet it's been 10 years I'm like wait 2006 was more than 10 can that be we're just getting old I don't know things are changing too fast no it's like a trip down memory lane and it just seems so long ago and yes in a way it also seems like yesterday I think things have gone so quickly so we're also joined in this segment by our top data analyst also the founder of wiki bond and co-ceo of Silicon angle media and founder of that as well so Dave Villante is joining us all the way from Boston Dave good to see ya hey Jeff hi rich to talk to you guys hey Dave so let's take a quick trip back 10 years ago actually maybe 11 years ago things were starting to heat up there was a lot of different vendors out there a lot of different players and things started to consolidate so I wonder if you can give us a little bit of your perspective what what's going on rich and then we'll get Dave's perspective yeah it was an interesting time right before the data domain acquisition we actually went through some economic times in 2008 and the markets are changing and and and some companies are becoming more successful some companies were struggling through that time customers were also looking for ways to to you know save money and do some interesting things there so it was a mixed feeling set of you know through that times data domain had IPO in 2007 and we were kind of going through this this explosive period of growth but you know across the board we just saw so many things change all at once and we really were surprised I think when initially was NetApp that an that they had intentions to bias and I think that was due to some of the economic factors of play and then of course EMC stepped in and and started a bidding contest with NetApp for for the company right so I Dave wonder if you could share your perspective you're sitting as an analyst you got Jo TG The Godfather of storage back in Boston what were you seeing in terms of the kind of the market dynamics and was it a surprise wouldn't that app decided to make a move well if you know first first of all I had left the storage industry for quite some time and when I started wiki bond we looked at storage and nothing had changed except one thing which was David deduplication that was new until a new tape was finally I always hated the tape the tape was finally being attacked so it was it was amazing time and EMC at the time we had some obviously great management yet Frank Sluman running data domain yo Joe Tucci who always balanced out acquisitions with organic you know in how to R&D and when Tom Georgians and NetApp said they were gonna go by David domain emt's walk right in and said no way so it was somewhat of a defensive move but at the same time when you talk to the M&A guys they said no no it's not just defense we can actually make this a growth play and that's exactly what happened Dayna domain I think at the time rich was probably a couple of hundred million dollar company and then they they popped that at the EMC and scaled that to you know well over a billion dollars and it'll maintain the the franchise and then grew it quite dramatically beyond where all the expectations were for the market the market team at the time was probably around a billion and I think ID seen rich as a over three billion today yeah one of the things that's so don't quote me on all the numbers because I'm not like you know watching the market caps and stocks but I think we'd gotten up to about a 500 million dollar run rate in terms of sales and prior to the crash I think our market cap was actually significantly higher so so our price came down you know which is one of the things I think that attracted NetApp to the game so the interesting dynamic inside the company was that the NetApp offer was was kind of the first one so they were working with the data domain leadership and they were speaking with us EMC was more of a kind of unsolicited offer so there was less communication and I remember there was a morning I was at San Francisco Airport going out to meet a customer and Joe to Chi put out a full-page ad in a local newspaper and we were reading that and that was his way of communicating to the to the people a data domain saying he wants to welcome us into the family it was quite a moment well it sure was and of course you guys were fierce competitors data domain was fierce competitors with with EMC you know fighting for for the install base and then all of a sudden you know the cultures it's somehow work EMC was was very good at acquisitions and he made it work and they not active it was an outside observer but you were there you know Frank Sluman came in did it's kind of running the the data protection organization but a lot has changed since then hasn't it I mean back then you stored you know a little bit of data I think accounting of terabytes today we live in a petabyte scale world I could talk about what's changed well you know the scales and performance certainly has changed I think the data domain platform today is about a thousand times larger than it was when it first came to market and in fact when we were being bid on by NetApp and EMC we had a flagship product is the DD 690 you know behind the scenes we had a system that was coming out that was double that size and EMC nor Netta knew about that so once the deal closed they got to find out that our size had just doubled in our performance and doubled at the same time but you're right you kind of talked about the dynamics inside of EMC EMC had a very large data protection you know division they had avemar networker santaros v TLS they also had an OEM arrangement for a competing product with the data domain platform so it was really like you know I compared to going to Hogwarts right where you have all of these different houses and we came in with with data domain and and I think the thing that really the glue that really helped it come to get was Joe Tucci you know tapping Frank's Luqman on the shoulder as the leader to bring this together and taking what was the borough division and and reforming it as the BRS division and I think we came together very quickly as a team even though people came from all of these different backgrounds you know standing for these different products rich let me follow up on that because there's a lot of M&A activity going on right now and and not very many big M&A deals are ultimately successful it turns out so what you said a little bit about you know Joe and Frank you know coming together but what are some of the other attributes that you would say that made it work it actually did what everybody hopes on an acquisition which is take great technology put it into a big sales machine and watch it grow and grow I think part of it you know quite frankly just comes down to the product and being differentiated because there are a lot of products out there and and if you take a step back they have good things that they're doing but it's very hard to find a product that says hey you're doing something that even if you put the blueprints out there it's very hard for other people to follow in those footsteps and create a similar value proposition and I think I think in this case it was a differentiated product and it had a lot of energy of its own and and I think from an EMC perspective they just stood back and said let's take this momentum and and play it out and see how how far it can take itself unfortunately I think a lot of times they don't do that right a lot of times acquiring companies don't just take this great thing and kind of get out of the way and add the juice where they can but you try to to try to change it so that's a really nice statement on Joe to G and what he was able to accomplish yeah no he was fantastic for us and and his support was tremendous but also his you know delegation and and kind of seeing how this but you know kind of having a vision of how this business unit should be formed right I think what was was very prison and then now you're part of Dell so obviously Michael Dell big personality as well the Dell technology stories he's doing a great job of pulling all these pieces together and you know kind of reinvigorating the brand coming back out of the little little side bar you know make it private for a while and come back so I wonder if you can talk about that integration how's that going as you've gone now a couple of times well I think it's been very exciting for us because the one piece that EMC had always been lacking had been the the compute part of the picture and now we have really the ability to go in and talk about the entire stack with our customers and that's that's a lot more powerful than saying here is an element of it and then if you want to go and add compute to that perhaps you know put in your virtual or physical servers then you're gonna we're going to need to partner with somebody and you know it's it's just a much cleaner story from end to end right right so the big big change obviously that wasn't around ten years ago that is around today is public cloud right huge impact not only directly in in taking workloads to the public cloud but also I think much more importantly changing the way people think about provisioning thinking about the way people think about elastic capacity so as as the market has evolved the rise of AWS and any other public clouds how has that changed what you guys are doing how are you reacting to that house at a new opportunity you know to kind of grow the maturity of the core product yeah well the thing is we have taken a lot of approach you know that's been learning and evolving as well right so so you know developers and applications really figured out AWS and the public cloud early I think data protection has has followed along with a couple years of lag in terms of doing that so you know our perspective is we learned as well right so so 2015 2016 I think there was some resistance and I think ultimately when we started to follow those workloads into the cloud there was a little bit of a lift and shift what we've learned is that the architecture really matters when you get to the cloud so the efficient use of resources the ability to do things in a cloud like way to use for example object storage instead of block storage when when the case presents itself so we took our products and virtualize them and followed them into the cloud but we realized that just taking the on-premise version of the product and putting it in the cloud itself isn't enough right because at the end of the day the customer is paying for all the underlying resources and so if your architecture is an efficient from a cost perspective as well as a performance perspective it's not going to be a viable solution and so 2017-2018 we've really seen a big acceleration in our adoption in the cloud because we have adapted our architecture to be more cloud friendly and more cost-effective for our customers to deploy but it was a learning experience for sure you know and and I think we're continuing to learn and continue to develop in that space and there's a lot of opportunity ahead of us the other big change I think that's come that we see over and over and over is really data as an asset only as an asset but as a huge valuable asset that drives your business drives real lytx but then becomes actually something that drives your company value and I think we see that and the Facebook's of the world and the googles of the world of why they have these crazy high valuations relative to here to their revenue and their profits because they're getting value for the data alright great news for you right it used to be a sample the day of the day was a pain it was expensive to store I didn't want to keep it all now everyone wants all the data they want to analyze it in real time and they want to put it in a place where they can actually put multiple applications across that same data set to do all kinds of new analytics so again super opportunity for you guys people aren't storing any less data no absolutely yeah no the data amount being stored is definitely growing one of the things that we're seeing that that's this kind of pervasive is this idea of of really using the right data the right place the right time so accessibility to whether it is a data Lake or it is your protection copies or you know an instant access of your protection copies there's a lot of different thing customers are doing with data but it's no longer a one-size-fits-all proposition like it was back in the tape automation days where I'm just throwing all of this stuff into a box and and never accessing it again right so the dynamics are changing and continue to evolve I expect that if we have this conversation two or three years down the road we're going to see some amazing things happen in the next couple of years that and some of it we were not predicting now we're gonna find out as customer demand and as innovation guides us along right because then the other big piece is the media right we've talked about tapes and the original data domain was was in response to some issues with tape and we get spinning rust as everybody likes to call it and now of course flash so yeah again see change in terms of capability the cost is coming down it's no longer the super high-end thing just for super high value applications so very transfer transformative opportunity on the on the media side as well on the flashlight as well you hit on a couple of really key things data domain was very successful because it became viable and practical to displace tape automation and nobody was a fan of their tape automation environments and now I think we're gonna see that's that same shift you know spinning disk is right now being relegated to archival and backup purposes but we're gonna hit an inflection point very soon I think we're where every instance of spinning disk probably can be questioned and so we are actually doing the you know kind of getting ahead of that curve and coming out with all flash products as a choice for a customer so we'll still have spinning disk for some backup use cases but we'll also have you know be able to offer customers a choice of the data domain technology on an all flash set of platforms and that will give customers a chance to get out of the yeah that spinning disk business as well right good I wonder if I get what if I get chime in here I you guys were talking about the the technologies and the cloud and the architecture it's interesting it David the main really started out don't hate me for saying this but as a feature product and the key feature was data deduplication data domain had the best you had a lot of guys doing post process you had you know some guys trying to do server-side avemar itself for example but they domain really killed it with regard to data David II do and if this feature product became a platform and had an architecture people became as you know unicorn times 2 plus plus and so I wanted to ask you rich about that architecture and aware it can go you're talking about different media now beyond spinning disk you know it used to be just a kind of a dumb target you've now got integrated appliances you've got software that's integrated there so it's you know you talked about the scale and the capacity where do you see this architecture going I wonder if you could comment on yeah well I think a lot of that belongs in in the realm of the data management software that speaks to it and and by having a distributed ecosystem and having things like you know distributed segment processing so we can take data domains technology and extend it out into those data management activities because a lot of the what's happening in the market is as new workloads are coming into the market they're having their own methods and native tools built-in for data protection and to be able to leverage those and have a highly consolidated affect on the backend is still extremely valuable to our customers and you're right it was a differentiated product from a deduplication standpoint but really the feature was that I can keep my 30 60 or 90 days worth of copies that are separate from my primary copies so I putting them somewhere safe I can even put them under different governance from my primary storage or my primary application owners right and it's practical and feasible and and prior to that the only real way to do that was with tape automation deduplication has become more of a broader word itself and it goes beyond what data domain does so there's deduplication and primary storage but if you look at primary storage deduplication it's good but it's designed to help you reduce the use of primary storage by 2 or 3 times it doesn't touch on the 30 60 90 days of retention that data domain does so there the similar technologies and a common use of the word but but they're two different use cases that the the remains separate I think yeah and you know as a former practitioner the other you are I think a former customer the genius part of the genius of data domain was its ability to just plug in to existing processes yes you didn't have to change things up and so it was an easy in but but it's impressive that you've been able to keep that that architecture going I wanted to ask you about market share you aided them in has always had a sixty plus percent market share I think it's at sixty now but it's it's like the Cisco of purpose-built backhaul appliances you're able to sort of dominate that little segment of the market which keeps getting bigger what but now you've got a lot of new entrants you know on VC money pouring in a lot of noise in the marketplace I feel like you guys maybe a couple years ago took your eye off the wall and now you've got this renewed sense of a vigor you know maybe it was parked partly the acquisition but you know we've talked to Beth Phelan about this a number of times you've really refreshed the portfolio so so wonder if you can talk about that and my question is what gives you confidence that you can continue to maintain your dominance yeah that's a great question and things have really changed I think starting around 2014 we were having some internal conversations about things like simplification the consumerization of IT and and all of those those dollars that you're talking about are really being poured into companies that are trying to take a different approach they're going into the white space that we had kind of left open which was simplicity right if you if you look back 10 or 15 years and you look at the the data management and enterprise backup software space enterprise backup software has been complicated and as you add more use cases it has become even more complicated and the customer base is no longer tolerant of that that's something that that maybe 10 or 15 years ago that was kind of a badge of honor to be working with complex and people just don't have the time for that there's a lot of IT generalists and folks that are out there that don't want to go to training class you know you know five days or ten days out of the year to learn how to use a product so that was a really good thing that we're seeing in the marketplace in terms of making products simpler easier to use and more approachable with things like discoverable functionality we certainly have the you know put a lot of effort into going in that direction because we think that's the right direction but what gives me confidence is the underlying storage value proposition about efficiency and performance and scale is something that we've still think that we have a strong upper hand on and when it comes down to that you know we take cloud as an example our data reduction in the cloud we think allows a much lower cost to serve and you know the customer is going to pay for that cloud storage or that cloud compute regardless of which vendor they're trusting in terms of their their solutions so simple only goes so far we think we can get there with simple but we don't necessarily see our competition having the efficiencies scalability and and so forth that we've already had so that that's good that gives me a lot of confidence so when you talk to customers what's the big problem the big hairy problem that they're trying to solve in your space and how are you guys helping so I one of the two big problems I see is is really a lot of IT teams are confronted with they've got a digital transformation going on they've got a cloud strategy going on an IT isn't necessarily being invited to the table early enough or often enough to go ahead and help with that process so what you have is you a cloud team building applications bringing things online and then the data protection the backups the snapshots whatever they're doing to make sure that that data is safe is is a bit of an afterthought and it you know I think of DevOps and I think about the ops part and I've never really come across an application team that wanted to own the business responsibility for the risk of you know backups recovery replication and all of that and I think IT has a lot of established practices that would be good to inform how those things should be built so the number one thing that I'm talking to with my customers when we're talking about this whole you know tectonic shift and in the way things are being done is that IT and the digital transformation or the cloud team do need to speak early and often and proactively about how they approach data protection because they continue to need to have a strategy that evolves and make sure they keep themselves protected as they start moving these critical workloads into the cloud it's an age-old problem with backup and data protection people think of it as a back as a bolt-on is an afterthought and your point is right on it's got to be a fundamental part of any transformation it's just like security you can't bolt it on earth just doesn't scale yeah and it's very much like you know back in the day when open systems was just coming of age there was a lot of operational discipline that the mainframe teams had and the mid-range teams had but the open systems was the Wild West and eventually open systems learned and and and a lot of that you know was knowledge sharing about best practices and you know Mis became IT now IT is becoming you know DevOps and digital transformation we're seeing a lot of that same dynamic happening again and and you know my main point is just you know start those conversations and if you're on the IT side start those conversations proactively you might not be getting invited to the digital transformation party invite yourself rich has been quite a 10 years and and as I was just watching an Andy Jazzy interview if you think the last 10 years have been crazy you ain't seen nothing yet so you guys are in a great position to stay agile and I'm gonna steal your line that it's no longer an honor to work on complicated systems that's great yeah it's been great being here thanks for having me and looking forward to maybe coming back in ten years and seeing what changed so hopefully we won't wait 10 years so rich thanks for stopping by Dave thanks for checking in from Boston and it's great to see you as well thanks you guys thanks Dave thanks Jeff [Music]