>> [Narrator] From the SiliconANGLE media office in Boston, Massachusets, it's theCUBE. Now, here's your host, Dave Vellante. >> Hi everybody, Dave Vellante here coming at you from our East Coast studios in Marlborough, MA just outside of Boston. What I wanted to do is give you a little recap of 2017 and what's happening and give you an update on SiliconANGLE Media. So as many of you know SiliconANGLE Media INC comprises three brands. TheCUBE, which as most of you know is we call it sometimes the ESPN of tech, it's our live and on demand video broadcasting element. And of course we have the research arm which is Wikibon and Wikibon.com And then, SiliconANGLE is our news site. And so I want to just, as I said, recap what went down in 2017 some of the things you may not know about. >> Last February, February first, actually we opened the new studio in Palo Alto, California. It's at 989 Commercial ST, you should check it out. It's sort of near the mountain view line but it's in Palo Alto, it's a great location, we have a large studio there. And throughout the year, in 2017 we held events, we had launches, but most importantly John Furrier, my business partner, is really running editorial content programs out of that studio. >> So every Thursday Furrier has high level key guests come in CEOs, VCs, in customers, and they just riff on what's going on in the industry and what's happening It's been an absolutely awesome resource for us and I really encourage you guys to go check it out. We did 135 show days last year. TheCUBE is run by our general manager, Jeff Frick and 135 show days meaning we broadcast live at 135 days at events last year, which is just incredible. >> It was our first year we ever did anything in China We did the Alibaba conference, the cloud show there that was very exciting. We did a number of shows in Europe and of course all the big shows in the United States as well >> We launched three websites last year. TheCUBE.net is the latest one. You know, a lot of times we talk about data driven media. If you go to theCube.net and check it out, you'll see something called theCUBE Alumni database. And theCUBE Alumni database contains virtually everybody who's ever been on theCUBE. So you can search CIOs, CEOs, developers, bloggers, analysts all the folks that have been on theCUBE you can see and they've got a profile page on each one of those so, we're collecting all that data SiliconANGLE.com we launched the new website >> SiliconANGLE is run by Rob Hof, who is our Editor-in-Chief Rob was the Silicon Valley beuro chief for business week for the better part of a decade, so we're really proud to have Rob on. He's been on for the last couple of years and just doing a great job with that site. >> And then Wikibon.com is run by Peter Burris he's our Chief Research Officer He's been with us now for the better part of 2 years and he's got that team cranking on all kinds of research in cloud and AI and data orientation, the edge, and infrastructure for emerging applications like AI. >> One of the areas we're most excited about that we launched in 2017 was a new capability called Clipper. So we have this tool called Video Clipper as you know, John Furrier and I, when we met we had this vision for data driven media and innovation and we launched this tool we call video clipper that was developed by Kent Libbey and his team one of our newer executives that we brought in last year on the product side. >> What Video Clipper does is we transcribe every video now that we do, we'll transcribe this video, and then we synchronize the transcript with the video and we're able to then search video, highlight a text, a paragraph let's say, push a button and boom we've got a clip and that clip is ready to be shared throughout various social media platforms like Twitter, and LinkedIn, and Facebook and the like So very, very excited about that tool you're going to be hearing more about that We don't sell it as a separate tool, we integrate it as part of our offerings and got some new offerings that we're bringing to customers in 2018. >> One of the other really exciting things in 2017 we brought in a new chief revenue officer his name is Greg Theriault, I'm going to introduce you to him today Greg Theriault is with me here in studio, Greg, it's great see you, thanks for spending some time with us. >> [Greg] Thank you, Dave, thanks for the opportunity I've never been more excited. Let me tell you a little bit about myself I live in Concord, MA right around the studio here and I came from the IT industry. I've been there for a long time. I used to be at a small systems integrator, kind of the size of SiliconANGLE Media, building client servers, computing, got certified in Novell, and then I jumped into sales. I worked most recently at Forester Research and was there for almost 18 years, two decades, building the sales capabilities, always wrapped around the customers, but I am thrilled to be here today >> [Dave] So, Novell, when our network goes down can you help us fix that? >> It was about 20 years ago but, you know the history with Novell >> Yeah, another Utah company that somehow didn't make it, but for a while they were a little monopoly. So you've been in the business now for a couple of decades maybe, you know, think about what has happened over the last 20 years, what kind of changes have you seen? Share with us your perspectives. >> I've never seen so much disruption from client server, to social computing, to AI, now it's digital disruption in everything and you hear about this all the time in the news that companies are becoming software companies look around the corner, GE is now GE digital, they're trying to reinvent themselves, very, very exciting times. AI machine learning, autonomous computing, and then right around the corner there's block chain I mean that's the big buzz these days Also there's the autonomous vehicles, and let em give you a quick story About two years ago my son was born and I was fortunate enough to have a breakfast with the CEO of Tesla, and I asked him "Hey, he was born, what's going to happen in 16 years?" and JB said to me quite candidly, he said "if your son is driving a car that's not autonomous it won't be safe and he won't need a license" So, things are happening at an epic speed I don't know I these prediction will be true but it is Telsa >> [Dave] Won't need a license, you know it's funny, I mean, I don't know how you feel about it but when I turned 16 it was one of the most exciting days of a young person's life. You wonder what the social implications of that is if you don't need a license, I don't know maybe they can start driving at 14 or 13, you know whatever but you know what I'm saying? >> [Greg] Yeah That was a really exciting time we couldn't wait to get our permits and "Dad can I drive you to the dump?" Right? It's like... >> Self driving cars and self driving refrigerators, I mean, it's moving fast it's at an epic speed right now >> Well everything, and again, you take that business it's all about the data, as I said in my intro we always talk about data driven media we got so much data, you talk about digital transformation, philosophy is digital meets data >> Right >> and you talked about GE you're seeing all these companies now getting disrupted because digital allows people to move so fast, it allows companies like Apple to get into financial servies and you're seeing Amazon become a content company and it's really all around the data, isn't it? >> [Greg] Absolutely >> So, I wonder if you could share with our audience, SiliconANGLE Media, small company you came from a much larger firm, a big brand, Forester, your former company. What attracted you to SiliconANGLE Media? >> I think it was the fact that I jumped on airplane and went out to Palo Alto and met with your general managers. I think the innovation and the speed, the speed around it's in your DNA and then you took social computing, combined it with really computing power. And then I saw the Video Clipper tool. It's the fastest application I've ever seen to clip video and that innovation, the speed really attracted me to the company, to build really powerful content >> [Dave] Yeah it's been quite a ride since I met John Furrier in 2010. You know, John at the time, said "Dave, whatever we do we have to innovate. "We have to continue to invest in R&D" And those R&D experiments they don't always pay off but when one hits, like the Clipepr tool, it can be a home run so we're very excited about that. Share with us your philosophy, what can we expect from Greg Theriault? >> [Greg] Sure, I appreciate that. Well I'm happy to be here I actually blogged on LinkedIn over the weekend about my transition here, and I think it starts off with my family, my son and my wife they helped me, they grounded me, but my philosophy on business is to really be customer focused to hire the right people, train and coach, and build a different mindset which I call the growth mindset the sales rep of the future is being disrupted right now just like very other function. And that is absolutely pivotal. I think the buyers change, Dave. Faster in two years than the past 100 years the buyer is in control, you have to build systems, processes and technologies wrapped around how do you help the customer be successful at drygrowth and that's the biggest shift going on right now I mean sales right now, again, is being disrupted so social selling and things like that, I want to bring that kind of discipline and processes to SiliconANGLE Media >> [Dave] Well, what about social selling? A lot of people will, when social media really started to come into play, a lot of people say "well, we sell to IT people, and IT people, they don't have time to go on Twitter, they don't do Facebook" What's your perspective, has that changed you know and what about that? >> It's changed faster than I could ever believe buyers buy differently but they also need to see the different presence in social that's Twitter, that's LinkedIn, and that's also you have to be on the phone, you have to be in front of customers but it absolutely is pivotal that the new, let's call it a digital rep, needs to understand the tools to listen. Listen to the customer first and foremost, and it's a new channel but it's a channel here for a long time. Again, it's disrupting sales at an epic pace >> [Dave] So what are your priorities, looking out, say, near term, mid-term, long term? >> [Greg] To wrap my hand around the customer base you have to innovate with them, with the team we build And also to build the collaborative culture I'm really into culture and the ability to kind of game-afy the culture, grow the business, accelerate the business, and also develop the team that we build. I mean, the aspirations to where do they want to be in a couple years will help build the business and that's a global business as well >> Well, of course, a lot of the action in the tech business is out in Silicon Valley, and you and I are based here in the East coast, What can we expect in terms of your presence in Silicon Valley? >> I'll be on a plane a lot, and I don't mind that at all I mean, it's a flat country right now So I'll be on a plane, but also the heat is in Boston, New York, Chicago, but the Valley is where it's at so I'm going to be jumping on plane in two weeks to meet with the team, I can't wait >> [Dave] Well, we're excited Greg, to have an executive of your callabor join our team. >> [Greg] Thank you, appreciate that >> Congratulations, and look forward to many, many years of productive growth and adding value for our clients with you >> [Greg] Likewise, thank you >> Alright, you're welcome. Thanks for watching everybody, this is Dave Vellante with Greg Theriault, we'll see you next time.