from New York City it's the cube covering welcome to the new edge brought to you by pensando systems hey welcome back here ready Jeff Rick here with the cube we are in downtown Manhattan at the top of goldman sachs it was a beautiful day now the clouds coming in but that's appropriate because we're talking about cloud we're talking about edge and the launch of a brand new company is pensando and their event it's called welcome to the new edge and we're happy to have since we're goldman the guys who have the money we're barry Eggers a founding partner of Lightspeed ventures and randy pond the CFO a pensando gentlemen welcome thank you thank you so Barry let's start with you you think you were involved at this early on why did you get involved what what kind of sparked your interest we got involved in this round and the reason we got involved were mainly because we've worked with this team before at Cisco we know they're fantastic they're probably the most prolific team and the enterprise and they're going after a big opportunity so we were pleased when the company said hey you guys want to work with us on this as a financial investor and we did some diligence and dug in and found you know everything to our liking and jump right in didn't anybody tell them this startup is a young man's game they mixed up the twenty-something I think yeah they sort of turned the startup on its head if you will no pun intended that's going right yeah yeah and Randy you've joined him a CFO you've known them for a while I mean what is it about this group of people that execute kind of forward-looking transformation transformational technologies time and time again that's not a very common trait it's a it's a great question so you know the key for these guys have been well they've been together since the 80s so Mario look and primitive this is the 80s I work with them at their previous startup before Christian two ladies and they're the combination of their skills are phenomenal together so you know one of them has some of the vision of where they want to go the second guy is a substantive sort of engineer takes it from concept first drawing and then the Prem takes over the execution perspective and then drives this thing and they've really been incredible together and then we added Sony at crescendo as a as a product marketing person and she's really stepped up and become integral part on the team so they work together so well it just makes a huge difference yeah it's it's it's amazing that that a that they keep doing it and B that they want to keep doing it right because they've got a few bucks in the bank and they don't really need to do it but still to take on a big challenge and then to keep it under wraps for two and a half years that's pretty pretty amazing so curious Barry from your point of view venture investing you guys kind of see the future you get pitched by smart people all day when you looked at John Chambers kind of conversation of these ten-year kind of big cycles you know what did you think of that how do you guys kind of slice and dice your opportunities and looking at these big Nick's yeah going back going back to the team a little bit they've been pretty good at identifying a lot of these cycles they brought us land switching a long time ago with crescendo they sort of redefined the data center several times and so there's another opportunity what's driving this opportunity really is the fact that explosion of applications in the network and of course east-west traffic in the network so networks were more designed north-south and they're slowly becoming more east-west but because the applications are closer to the edge and networks today mostly provide services in the core the idea for pensando is well why don't we bring the service deliver the services closer to the applications improve performance better security and better monitoring yeah and then just the just the hyper acceleration of you know the amount of data the amount of applications and then this age-old it's we're going to use the data to the computer do you move the compute to the data now the answer is yes all the above so you got some money to work with we do you got a round that he could be around you guys are closing the C round so I think 180 people approximately I think somebody told me close enough so as you put some of this capital to work what are some of your priorities going forward so we will continue to hire both in the engineering side but more importantly now we're hiring in sales and service we've been waiting for the product quite frankly so we've just got our first few sales guys hired we've got a pretty aggressive ramp especially with the HP relationship to put people out into the field we've hired a couple guys in New York will continue to hire at the sales team we're ramping the supply chain and we've got a relative complicated supply chain model but that has to react now that we're going to market all that might be pretty used to do that we're changing facilities we need to grow we're sort of cramped in a one-story building open up one floor of a building right now so the money is going to be used sort of critically to really scale the business down they can go to market okay but a pretty impressive list of both partners and customers on launch day you don't see Goldman HPE Equinix I think it was quite a slide some of that is the uniqueness of the way we went to market and did the original due diligence on the product and bringing customers in early and then converting them to investors you end up with a customer investment model so they stayed with us Goldman's been through all three rounds we've been about HP and last model we had NetApp has been um two rounds now so we've we've continued to develop as a business with this small core group of customers and investors that we could try to expand every time we move to the next round and as Barry said earlier this is the first time we had a traditional financial investor in our rounds the rest of them have all been customers they've been friends and family for the most part did you join the board too right I did yeah so what are you what are you excited about what what do you see is I mean just clearly your side you invested but is there something just extra special here you know react chambers put in a 10-year 10-year cycle yeah we've talked about it I mean I'm excited to work with the team right there best-in-class working closely with John again is a lot of fun a chance to not exhaust yeah yeah you know a chance to read redefine the data center and be part of the next way even as a VC you love waves and build my Connick company right and I think we have a real opportunity in front of us it it takes a lot of money to do this and do it right and I think we have the team that proven they can execute on this kind of opportunities from I'm excited to see what the next five years hold for this company good well it was funny John teased him a little bit about you know all the M&A stuff that he was famous for at Cisco he's like I don't do that anymore now I'm an investor I want IPOs all the way what's all 18 thinks it is 18 companies in his portfolio their routes they're going to IPO all the way yeah that's that's a good point actually this team has been prolific and they've delivered products that have generated fifty billion dollars and any walk into any data center in the world you're gonna see a product this team has built however this team has not taken a company public so that's really the opportunity I think that's what excites them Randy's here it's why Jon's here that's why I'm here we want to build a company that can be an independent company be a lasting leader in a new category yeah so last word Randy for you for people that aren't familiar with the team that aren't familiar with with with what they've done what would you tell them about why you came to this opportunity and why you're excited about it well this there is no higher quality engineering team in the world didn't these people so it's to get re-engaged with them again with an entirely new concept that's catching a transition and the market was just too good an opportunity to pass I mean I had retired for 15 months and I came out of retirement to join this team much to the chagrin of my wife but I just couldn't pass up the opportunity high caliber talent it's um every day is is interesting I have to say well thanks for for sharing the story with us and and congratulations on a great day and in a terrific event thank you thank you very much all right he's berry he's Randy I'm Jeff you're watching the cube from the top of goldman sachs in Manhattan thanks for watching we'll see you next time