>> Hello everyone. Welcome to this Cube conversation here in Palo Alto. On John Furrier, co host of the Cube. I'm here. Aaron Kalb is the co founder and VP of design and Alation. Great to see them on some fresh funding news. Aaron, Thanks for coming. And spend the time. Good to see you again. >> Good to see you, John. Thanks for having me >> So big news. You guys got a very big round of financing because you go to the next level. A startup. Certainly coming out that start up phase and growth phase super exciting news. You guys doing some very innovative things around, date around community around people and really kind of cracking the code on this humanization democratization of data, but actually helping businesses. I want to talk about it with you. First. Give us the update on the financing, the amount what it means to the company. A lot of cash. >> Yeah. So we're very excited to have raised a fifty million dollar round. Sapphire led the round, and we also had, you know, re ups from all of our existing investors. And, you know, as as a co founder, he always had big dreams for growth. And it's just validating tohave. Ah, a community of investors who can see the future, too, as well as our great community of over one hundred customers now who want to build this data democratized future with us. >> We've been following you guys since the founding obviously watching you guys great use of capital. Fifty million's a lot of capital, so obviously validation check. Good, good job. But now you go to a whole other level growth. What's the capital gonna be deployed for? What's going on with company where you guys I and in terms of innovation, what's the key focus? >> It's a great question. So you know, obviously we have revenue from our customers. But getting this extra infusion from VC lets us just supercharge our development. It's growth. It's going to more customers, both domestically and abroad, goingto a broader user base. And we're Enterprise-wide Adoption within those customers, as well as innovation in the core product, new technology, great design and futures. that are really going to change the organization's access and use data to make better decisions? >> What was the key Learnings As you guys went into this round of funding outside the validation to get through due diligence, all that good stuff. But you guys have made some successful milestones. What was the key? Notable accomplishments that Alation hit to kind of hit this trigger point here for the fifty million? >> Yeah, I'm glad you asked about that. I think that the key thing that's changed it's enabled this. This next phase is that the data catalog market has really come into its own right. In the beginning, in the early days, we were knocking on doors, trying to say, You know, we don't even know it was going to be called data catalog in our first few months. And even though we had the technology, we said, Hey, we got this thing and we know it's useful. Please buy it. Please want it. And the question was, you know, what's the data catalog by what I ever even look at that? And it's just turned a corner. Now, you know, Thanks. In part of things like Gartner telling companies you know, in the next year by twenty twenty, if you have a data catalog, you're goingto see twice the ROI from your existing data investments than if you don't your stories like that are making companies say? Of course, you want to data catalog. It just turned out a dime. Now they're asking, Which data catalog should we get? Why is yours the best in this change of the market maturing? I think it's the biggest change we've seen >> with one thing that we've observed. I want to get your reaction to This is that I'll stay with cloud computing economics, a phenomenally C scale data data science working the cloud. We see great success there. Now there's multiple clouds, multi clouds, a big trend, but also the validation that it's not just all cloud anymore. The on premises activity steel is relevant, although it might have a cloud. Operations really kind of changes the role of data. You mentioned the data catalogue kind of being kind of having a common mainstream visibility from the analysts like Gardner and others on Wiki Bond as well. It makes data the center of the innovation. Now you have data challenges around. Okay, where's the data deployed? Where my using the data? Because data scientists want ease of data, they want quality data. They want to make sure their their algorithm, whether it's machine learning component or software actually running a good data. So data effectiveness is now part of the operations of most businesses. What's your reaction to that? Which your thoughts. Is that how you see it? Is there something different there? What's going on with the whole date at the center? >> Absolutely hit on two key themes for us. One of that idea of the center and the other is your point about data quality and data trust. So, so centrality, we think, is really essential. You know, we're seeing cataloging technology crop up more and more. A lot of people were coming out with catalogs or catalog kind of add ons to their products. But what our customers really tell us is they want the data catalog to be the hub, that one stop shop where they go to to access any data, wherever it lives, whether it's in the cloud or on Prem, whether it's in a relational database or a file system, so is one of Alations key. Differentiators early on was being that central index, much like Google is out of the front page to the Internet, even though it's linking to ad pages all over the place. And the other thing in terms of that data quality and data trustworthiness has been a differentiator, and this was something that was part of our technology when we launched that we didn't put the label out till later. Is this idea of Behavior IO, that's kind of looking at previous human behavior to influence future human behavior to be better. And there's another place we really took some inspiration from Google and Terry Winograd at Stanford before that, you know, he observed. You know, if you remember back before Google search sucked, frankly, right, the results on top are not the most development were not the most trustworthy. And the reason was those algorithms were based on saying, how often does your key word appear in that website? Built, in other words, and so you'd get results on top. That might just not be very good. Or even that were created by spammers who put in a lot of words to get SEO and and, you know, that isn't the best result for you on what Google did was turned that around with page rank and say, Let's use the signals that other people are getting behind about the pages they find valuable to get the best result on top. And Alation is the exact same thing our patented proprietary behavior technology lets us say Who's using this data? How were they using it? Is it reputable? And that enables us to get the right data and transfer the data in front of decision makers. >> And you call that Behavioral IO >> Behavior IO, that's right. >> I mean, certainly remember Google algorithmic search was pooh poohed. It first had to be a portal. Everyone kind of my age. You can't remember those those days and the results were key word stuff by spammer's. But algorithmic search accelerated the quality. So I got to ask you the behavioral Io to kind of impact a little bit. Go a little deeper. What does that mean for customers? Because now I'll see as people start thinking, OK, I need to catalogue my data because now I need to have replication, all kinds of least technical things that are going on around integrity of the data. But why Behavioral Aya? What's the angle on that? What's the impact of the customer? Why is this important? Absolutely so. >> Might have to work through an example, you know we joke about. You might be looking around in your SharePoint drive and find an Excel file called Q three Numbers final. Underscore final. Okay, that seems that'S inject the final numbers, and then you see next to it when it says underscore final underscore, final underscore finalist. Okay, well, is that one final? And it turns out what Data says about itself is less reliable than what other people say about the data. Same thing with Google that if everyone's linking with Wikipedia Page, that's a more reliable page than one that just has, you know, paid for a higher placement, Right? So what a means an organization is with Alation will tell you. You know, this is the data table that was refreshed yesterday and that the CFO and everybody in this department is using every day. That's a really strong signal. That's trustworthy data, as opposed to something that was only used once a year ago. >> So relevance is key there. >> Absolutely. It's relevant. And trustworthiness. We find both all right, indicated more strongly by who's using it and how than by the data itself. >> Are you seeing adoption with data scientist and people who were wrangling date or data analysts that if the date is not high quality, they abandoned. The usage is they're getting kind of stats around that are because that we're hearing a lot of Hey, you know, that I'm not going to really work on the data. But I'm not going to do all the heavy lifting on the front end the data qualities, not there. >> Absolutely. We see a really cool upward spiral. So in Alation, we have a mix of manual, human curated metadata, you know, data stewards and that a curator saying, this is endorsed data. It's a certified data. This is applicable for this context. But we also do this automatic behavior. Io. We parse the query logs. These logs were, you know, put there for audit on debugging purposes. But we were mining that for behavioral insight, and we'll show them side by side on what we see is overtime on day one. There's no manual curation. But as that curation gets added in, we see a strong correlation between the best highest quality data and the most used data. And we also see an upward spiral where, if on day one. People are using data that isn't trustworthy that stale or miscalculated as soon as Ah, an Alation steward slaps a deprecation or a warning on the data asset because of technology like trust check talking about last time I was here, that technology, that's the O part of behavior IO We then stop the future behavior from being on bad data, and we see an upward spiral where suddenly the bad sata is no longer being used and everyone's guided put the pound. >> One thing I'm really impressed with you guys on is you have a great management team and overall team with mixed disciplines. Okay, I think last night about your role, Stanford and the human side of the world. But you have to search analogy, which is interesting because you have search folks. You got hardcore data data geeks all working together. And if you think about Discovery and navigation, which is the Google parent, I need to find a Web page and go, Go, go to it. You guys were in that same business of helping people discover data and act on it or take action. Same kind of paradigm, so explain some customer impact anecdotes. People who bought Alation, what your service and offering and what happened after and what was it like before? We talk about some of that? And because I think you're onto something pretty big here with this discovery. Actionable data perspective. >> Yeah, well, one of our values, it Alation, is that we measure our success through customer impact, you know, not do financing or other other milestones that we are excited about them. So I I would love to talk about our customers. One example of a business impact is an example that our champion at Safeway Albertsons describes where, after safe, it was acquired by Albertson's. They've been sort of pioneers of sort of digital, ah, loyalty and engagement. And there was a move to kind of stop that in its tracks and switch should just mailing people big books of coupons that of customizing, you know, deals for you based on your buying behavior. And they talked about getting a thirty x  ROI on the dollars they've spent on Alation by basically proving the value of their program and kind of maximizing their relationship with their customers. But the stories they're even more exciting to me, then just business impacts in dollars and cents when we can leave a positive impact on people's lives with data. There's a few examples of that Munich reinsurance, the biggest being sure and also a primary ensure in Europe, had some coverage and Forbes about the way that they use Alation, other data tools to be able to help people get back on their feet more quickly after, ah, earthquakes and other natural disasters. And similarly, there's a piece in The Wall Street Journal about how Pfizer is able to create diagnostics and treatments for rare diseases where it wouldn't have been a good ROI even invest in those if they didn't get that increased efficient CNN analytics from Alation on the other data. >> So it's not just one little vertical. It's kind of mean data is horizontally. Scaleable is not like one. Industry is going to leverage Alation, >> Absolutely so you know, I mentioned just now. Insurance and health care and retail were also in tech were in basically every vertical you can imagine and even multiple sectors. You know, I've been focusing on industry, but there's another case that you can read about at the city of San Diego were there. They're doing an open data initiative, enabling people to figure out everything from where parking is easiest, the hardest to anything else. >> The behavioral Io. And it's all about context and behavior, role of data and all this. It's kind of fundamental to businesses. >> That's right. It's all about taking everything about how people using data today and driving people to be even more data driven, more accurate, better able to satisfy their curiosity and be more rational in >> the future. So if I'm a from a potential customer and I heard a rAlation, get the buzz out there, why would I need you? What air? Some signals that would indicate that I should call Alation. What's some of that Corvette? What's the pitch? >> Yeah, it's a great question. No, I sometimes joke with the team that you know every five minutes another enterprise reaches that point where they can't do it the old way anymore. And the needle ations. And the reason for that is that data is growing exponentially and people can only grow at most, you know, linearly. So I compare it a bit again to the days of of Yahoo When the Internet was small, you make a table of contents for it. But as there came to be trillions of red pages, you needed an automatic index with pay drink to make sense of it. So I would say, once you find that your analytics team has spread out and they're spending, you know eighty percent of their time calling up other people to find where development data is, you're asked to Your point is this data high quality show even spend my time on it? You know that's probably not money is well spent with these highly paid people spending other times scrounging If you switch from scrounging to finding understanding and trusting their data for quick and accurate analysis, give us >> a call. So basically the pitches, if you want to be like Yahoo, do it the old way. We know what happened. Yeah, you want to be like Google, two algorithmic and have data >> God rAlation, and you'll be around for a while very well. After that, maybe the one see that that's my words. >> And and that's part of turning that corner. I think in the beginning we were trying to tell people this could be a nice toe have. And now customers are coming to us realizing it's a must have to stay a relevant, you know, And if you've made all these investments in data infrastructure and data people, but you can't connect the dots is you said, between the human side and the tech side that money's all wasted and you're going to not be able to compete against your competitors and impact of customers what you want. >> Well, Eric, congratulations. Certainly is the co founder. It's great success. And how hard is that you start ups? You guys worked hard and again. Why following you guys? Been interesting to see that growth and this innovation involved in creative, A lot of energy. You guys do a good job. So final question, talk about the secret sauce of Alation. What's the key innovation formula? And now that you got the funding where you're going to double down on, where's the innovation going to come next? So the innovation formula and where the innovation, the future, >> absolutely innovation has been critical for us to get here on our customers didn't just buy the exciting features with behavioral and trust. Check that we had but also are buying into the idea that we're going to continue to be the leaders and to innovate. Andi, we're going to do that. So I think the secret sauce which we've had in the past, we're going to continue to innovate in this vein, is to be really conscious of water computers great at and what humans uniquely good at what you humans like doing and trying to have the human and computers work together to really help the human achieve their goals. Right? So, Doctor, the Google example. You know, there's a bunch of systems for collaboratively ranking things, but it takes work to, you know, write a review on the upper Amazon. Google had the insight that we could leverage people are already doing and make it about it. Out of that, we're going to continue to do that. >> The other kind of innovation you'll see is bringing Alation to a wider and wider audience, with less and less technical skill needed. So I came from Syria Apple, and the idea is you have to learn a programming language to Queria database. You could just speak in English. That helps you ask answer questions like What's the weather today? Imagine taking that same kind of experience of seamless integration to the more important questions enterprises are asking. >> We'll have to tap your expertise is we want to have an app called the Cube Syria, which is a cube. What's the innovation in Silicon Valley and have it just spit out a video on the kidding? Final question just to double down on that piece, because I think the human interactions a big part of what you're saying I've always loved that about with your vision is. But this points to a major problems. Seeing whether it's, you know, media, the news cycle These days, people are challenging the efficacy of finding the research and the real deep research on the media. So I was seeing scale on data scale is a huge challenge. You mentioned the growth of data. Computers can scale things, but the knowledge and the curation kind of dynamic of packaging it, finding it, acting on it. It's kind of where you guys are hitting. Talk about that tie name, my getting that right and set is that important? Because, you know, certainly scale is table stakes these days. >> That is super insightful John, because I think human cognition and human thought excuse me, is the bottleneck four being data driven right we have on the Internet trillions of Web pages, you know, more than the Library of Alexandria a hundred times over, and we have in databases millions of columns and trillions of rose. But for that to actually impact the business and impact the world in a positive way, it's got to go through a person who could understand it. And so, in the same way that Google became the mechanism by which the Internet becomes accessible, we think that Alation for organizations is becoming the way that data can become actionable. And the other thing I would say is, you know, in this age of alternative facts and mistrust of data, you know, we've sort of realizing the just having more information out there doesn't actually make people wiser and better able to reason. It can actually be a lot of noise that muddies the signal and confuses people. So we think Alation by also using human computer interaction to help separate the signal from the noise and the quality from the garbage can help stop the garbage in garbage out and make people more rational and more curious and have more trust than what there. Hearing understanding >> build that Paige rang kind of metaphor is interesting because the human gestures, whether it's work or engaging on the data, is a signal tube, not just algorithmic meta data extraction. >> Absolutely anything you do with data and any tool, even outside of Alation. Alation will capture that and use it to guide future behavior for you and your appears to be better and smarter. >> Fifty million dollars. Where's this all going to lead to wins the next innovation. What do you guys see? The future for rAlation? >> Well, you know, I, uh I was just thinking before the show I used to be an apple kind of in the golden Age when Apple was really innovative. And there was the joke where they released something new and say, Redman, start your photocopier. So in this interview, I'm going to be a little close to the chest about the specifics, but we're releasing. But I will tell you we have a room that we're really excited about to go to a broader and broader audience that impactor customers more fully >> well you feel free to say one more thing? >> Yeah. I think the secret to the future is Aaron. Thanks for coming on. >> Really preachy. Congratulations on the funding. He has got a very innovative formula. Good luck. And we'll be following you guys. Thanks, but come on, keep commerce. Thanks so much. Eric Kalb, co founder and VP of designing Alation. Interesting formula. Great. Successful. Former great innovation. Alation. Check him out. I'm Jennifer here in Palo Alto for cube conversation. Thanks for watching.