>> From Seattle Washington, it's theCUBE, covering AWS Imagine, nonprofit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're actually on the waterfront in Seattle at the AWS Imagine nonprofit event. We were here a couple weeks ago for the AWS Imagine education event. This is really about nonprofits and solving big, big problems. So Dave Levy and team have you know dedicated to some of these big problems. And one of the big problems in the world is human trafficking, and problems that people are encountering and all kinds of nasty situations all over the world. And we're really excited to have someone who's tackling that problem, and really trying to bring a voice to those people that wouldn't otherwise have a voice. And she's Hend Alhinnawai, she's the CEO of Humanitarian Tracker. Hend, good to see you. >> Thank you Jeff, good to be here. >> Absolutely. So before we jump into it, impressions on this event? >> Wonderful event bringing together technologists, people in nonprofits, really creating synergies for people to collaborate and talk to each other and network and learn how they can advance their organizations. >> Such important work. >> Yes. >> So give us kind of the background on what you're up to, what Humanitarian Tracker's all about. >> So Humanitarian Tracker's a nonprofit forum. It was created to connect and empower citizens using innovation and technology, but specifically for humanitarian events. We were among the first to combine crowdsourced reports with data mining and artificial intelligence and apply them to humanitarian disasters, conflicts, human rights violations, disease outbreak. All the way to tracking the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Really giving a holistic view of what's happening. >> It's interesting, you know, it's probably like the middle eastern spring, I can't remember the exact term that people use, where it was kind of the first use of regular people using their mobile phones to kind of grab a ground swell of action. You're not looking at the politics specifically, you're looking more at humanitarian disasters. But pretty amazing kind of what a connected phone represents to anyone anywhere in the world now to communicate what's happening to them. To share that story. We really didn't have anything like that before. To get that personal event on the ground. >> No it's really a new way of consuming, creating and consuming information. So the cell phone has really given people on the ground a chance to tell their own story. But it's not enough. If you have an event that happens to you. Something happens to you. And you record it, it stops there. But the unique thing with Humanitarian Tracker is it gives people that forum to show the world and tell them what's happening to and around them. >> Right, but it's not just about the individual. And what you guys are doing is using cutting edge technology, obviously you're here as part of the AWS event. In terms of machine-learning and big data to grab a large number of these reported events and distill it into more of an overarching view of what is actually happening on the ground. How did you do that, where did you get that vision, how are you executing that? >> Well, we're all about empowering the citizen. And in our line of work we deal with a lot of data, a lot of information, most of it is unstructured, most of it is crowdsourced. So we use machine-learning to help us extract important details. Information on time. Event location, what is happening. And at the same time we really cared that this reporter, stays anonymous for their own safety. We, privacy and security is utmost importance to us. So that's always our focus. So in that space, we de-identify them. We take out any information that could be identifiable, that could lead to their arrest, or could lead to someone identifying that it was them that reported. >> And how do you get this information to the people that are suffering this activity ground? How do they know about you, how do they know that you are anonymizing their information so there's not going to be repercussions if they report. You know, how do, kind of I guess your go-to-market, to steal a business terms, in making sure that people know this tool's available for help? >> It depends on the situation. For example in the conflict situation, we rolled it out, and we kept it low key for awhile. Because we didn't want government attacks, we didn't want people to be arrested, or to be tried. So we rolled it out. And it was word of mouth that spreads. And people started submitting supports. Actually the first project we did with conflict, we weren't sure if we were going to get one report, zero reports. The first week we got nothing. And then slowly as people learned about it they started submitting their reports. And we see our job as really elevating the otherwise marginalized voice. So you submit a report to us, we then take it. We verify it. We make it public. And that, we welcome, we encourage, we want people to consume it. Whether you're a student, whether you're a journalist, whether you're a government, whether you work in a nonprofit, the UN. It's been used to address human rights violations, it's been used to identify humanitarian hotspots. The data's phenomenal, and what you get from it. It's not just collecting data. We're not just about collecting the data. We want to make sure it's meaningful, and we want to derive insights. So we want to know what is the data actually telling us? >> Right, right. So just to be clear for people that don't know, so you're making that data available, you're cleansing the data, you're running some AI on it to try to get a bigger picture, and anyone with a login, any kind of journalist can now access that data in support of whatever issue or topic or story they're chasing? >> That's it Jeff. >> That's phenomenal. And just kind of size and scope. You've been at this I think you said since 2011. You know kind of how many active, activities, crisis, I don't know, what the definition is of a bucket of these problems. Are you tracking historically at a given point in time? Give us some kind of basic sizing type of dimensions. >> It really ranges, because it could, when we were tracking conflict for example, we were really focused on one area, and the surrounding countries. Because you had refugee population, you had displacement, you had all sorts of issues. But it could be anywhere from five projects, it just depends. And we want to make sure that each project we're taking on we're giving it our full attention, full scope. And I like to run the organization like a two-team pizza team. And so I don't take on more than I could handle. >> Right, right. So then how did it morph from the conflict to the Global Sustainability Goal? So we've worked with Western Digital, they're doing a lot of work, ASP's doing a lot of work on kind of these global sustainability goals. How did you get involved in that, and how did the two kind of dovetail together? >> So the elasticity of the cloud has helped our operation scale tremendously. And in 2016 we were selected as a top 10 global innovation, that could be applied to the Sustainable Development Goals, and-- >> So they found you, the UN find you, or did you get nominated? How did that happen? >> We were nominated, and from over 1,000 solutions we were chosen. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you. And we were showcased at the Solutions Summit which is hosted at the United Nations. And just based on that experience of meeting people that were doing really cool things in their respective communities, we launched the Global Action Mosaic. Because we wanted to create one place where people that are doing projects in their communities could submit it, and have it showcased. And the goals are not only to crowdsource the SGD's, but to also be a part of the effort to track what's happening. Who's doing what where, make it easy for people to search say, Jeff you decided to get involved in a project with education. You can go onto our Global Action Mosaic, search projects on education in your community or in other parts of the world and then get involved in it. So it's really creating a centralized place where people can get information on the global goals. >> Awesome. So that's pretty much the Global Action Mosaic. It's pretty much focused on the UN global goals versus your core efforts around the Humanitarian Tracker. >> Yes. >> That's great. So we're here at AWS. Have you always been on AWS? Is this something new? How does being on kind of the AWS infrastructure help you do your mission better? >> We are, we've been partners in running AWS since we actually started. >> Since the beginning. >> Yes we have Yusheheedi as one of our partners, development partners, AWS. And because one of the core, one of the most important things to us is privacy and security, we want to make sure that whatever data is being handled and received is stored securely. >> Right, right. >> And that information transmitted, handled is also being done so in a secure way. Like I mentioned, the elasticity of the cloud has helped us scale our mission tremendously. It's affordable, we've been able to us it, we've learned their machine-learning stock to de-identify some of the data that comes in. So we're firm believers that AWS is essential to how we run our operation. >> Because do the individual conflicts kind of grow and shrink over time? Do you see it's really a collection of kind of firing up hotspots and then turning down versus one long, sustained, relatively flat, from kind of a utilization and capacity point of view? >> Yeah, no it definitely, it flares up and you'll have like a year, months, weeks sometimes where it's just focused on one area. But one of the things we focus on, it's not just. So what is the data actually telling us? So say you're focusing on point A. But just down the street in location B there is a dire humanitarian emergency that needs to be addressed. The crowdsourced reports, combined with the data mining and the AI, helps us identify those hotspots. So everybody could be focused here, but there could be an emergency down the street that needs to be addressed as well. It just depends. >> And do you have your own data scientists or do you, do other people take your data and run it through their own processes to try to find some of these insights? >> We have both. >> You have both. >> Yeah. >> So what's been the biggest surprise when you anonymize and aggregate the data around some of these hotspots? Is there a particular pattern that you see over and over? Is there some insight, that now that you've seen so much of it, from kind of the (muffled speaking) that you can share and reflect on? >> I think it' very unique to each project to do. But there is one thing that I strongly support, that I don't see enough of, and that's the sharing of data within the organizations. And so, for example just getting to that culture where sharing your data between organizations is encouraged and actually done. Could help create a, create a pool of knowledge. So, for example we worked with 13 different organizations that were all tackling humanitarian events. The same one, in Syria. And the 13 did not share data and did not talk to each other. And so we found that for example, they were all focused on one area. When just a few miles down, there was a need that wasn't being addressed. But because they don't share information, they had no idea. >> Right. >> It was only when we were able to take a look at it, kind of from the, from an overarching view, looking all their data, we were able to say you know, it would be helpful, it would actually, you could save on resources, and less time, and less effort, and you guys are tackling a small funding pool to begin with. If you shared information and tackled different things, instead of focusing on one area, because you don't know what the other guys doing. >> And were they using crowdsource data, is there source data, or were they just trying to collect their own from the field? >> They were collecting their own. >> So I assume that the depth, and the richness, and the broadness of data is nothing like you're collecting. >> Well you get a different kind of, you get different kind of information when the individuals actually telling you what's happening versus you asking a very direct question like, "Are you healthy? Yes or No?". Whereas you give them the chance, they might tell you that they haven't eaten, and their diabetic and you know, give you other pieces of information. Where they're living, are they refugees? Are they healthy? Are they not healthy? Do they go to school? Do their kids go to school? How many kids they have? Are they a female-run household? All this information could help guide development in the proper way. >> Right, right. All right. So give you the final word, how should people get involved if they want to help? >> You can go to humanitariantracker.org if you want to volunteer with us. And if you're doing a project that is related to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, I would like you to go to globalactionmosaic.org, and map it there, and be part of our community. >> So Hend, thank you for taking a few minutes to share your story, and for all the good work that you're doing out there. >> Thank you Jeff it was a pleasure. >> All right, she's Hend, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're at AWS Imagine nonprofit. Thanks for watching we'll see you next time. (techno music)

>>Hi, welcome to this cube conversation here in Palo Alto, California. I'm John fur, host of the cube here at our headquarters on the west coast in Palo Alto, California. Got a great news guest here. Matt McGill, Wayne managing director of Madrona venture group is here with me on the big news and drone raising their record 690 million fund and partnering with their innovative founders. Matt, thanks for coming on and, and talking about the news and congratulations on the dry powder. >>Well, Hey, thanks so much, John. Appreciate you having me on the show. >>Well, great news here. Oley validation. We're in a new market. Everyone's talking about the new normal, we're talking about a recession inflation, but yet we've been reporting that this is kind of the first generation that cloud hyperscale economic scale and technical benefits have kind of hit any kind of economic downturn. If you go back to to 2008, our last downturn, the cloud really hasn't hit that tipping point. Now the innovation, as we've been reporting with our startup showcases and looking at the results from the hyperscalers, this funding news is kind of validation that the tech society intersection is working. You guys just get to the news 430 million in the Madrona fund nine and 200. And I think 60 million acceleration fund three, which means you're gonna go stay with your roots with seed early stage and then have some rocket fuel for kind of the accelerated expansion growth side of it. Not like late stage growth, but like scaling growth. This is kind of the news. Is that right? >>That's right. You know, we, we've had a long time strategy over 25 years here in Seattle of being early, early stage. You know, it's like our friends at Amazon like to say is, well, we're there at day one and we wanna help build companies for the long run for over 25 years. We've been doing that in Seattle. And I think one of the things we've realized, I mean, this is, these funds are the largest funds ever raised by a Seattle based venture capital firm and that's notable in and of itself. But we think that's the reason is because Seattle has continued to innovate in areas like consumer internet software cloud, of course, where the cloud capital of the world and increasingly the applications of machine learning. And so with all that combination, we believe there's a ton more companies to be built here in the Pacific Northwest and in Seattle in particular. And then through our acceleration fund where we're investing in companies anywhere in the country, in fact, anywhere in the world, those are the kinds of companies that want to have the Seattle point of view. They don't understand how to work with Amazon and AWS. They don't understand how to work with Microsoft and we have some unique relationships in those places and we think we can help them succeed in doing that. >>You know, it's notable that you guys in particular have been very close with Jeff Bayo Andy Jesse, and the success of ABUS as well as Microsoft. So, you know, Seattle has become cloud city. Everyone kind of knows that from a cloud perspective, obviously Microsoft's roots have been there for a long, long time. You go back, I mean, August capital, early days, funding Microsoft. You remember those days not to date myself, but you know, Microsoft kind of went up there and kind of established it a Amazon there as well. Now you got Google here, you got Facebook in the valley. You guys are now also coming down. This funding comes on the heels of you appointing a new managing director here in Palo Alto. This is now the migration of Madrona coming into the valley. Is that right? Is that what we're seeing? >>Well, I think what we're trying to do is bring the things that we know uniquely from Seattle and the companies here down to Silicon valley. We've got a terrific partner in Karama Hend, Andrew he's somebody that we have worked together with over the years, co-investing in companies. So we knew him really well. It was a bit opportunistic for us, but what we're hearing over and over again is a lot of these companies based in the valley, based in other parts of the country, they don't know really how to best work with the Microsoft and Amazons are understand the services that they offer. And, you know, we have that capability. We have those relationships. We wanna bring that to bear and helping build great companies. >>What is your expectation on the Silicon valley presence here? You can kind of give a hint here kind of a gateway to Seattle, but you got a lot of developers here. We just reported this morning that MEA just open source pie, torch to the Linux foundation again, and Mary material kind of trend we are seeing open source now has become there's no debate anymore has become the software industry. There's no more issue around that. This is real. I >>Think that's right. I mean, you know, once, you know, Satya became CEO, Microsoft, and they started embracing open source, you know, that was gonna be the last big tech holdout. We think open source is very interesting in terms of what it can produce and create in terms of next generation, innovative innovation. It's great to see companies like Facebook like Uber and others that have had a long track record of open source capabilities. But what we're also seeing is you need to build businesses around that, that a lot of enterprises don't wanna buy just the open source and stitch it together themselves. They want somebody to do it with them. And whether that's the way that, you know, companies like MongoDB have built that out over time or that's, you know, or elastic or, you know, companies like opt ML and our portfolio, or even the big cloud, you know, hyperscalers, you know, they are increasingly embracing open source and building finished services, managed services on top of it. So that's a big wave that we've been investing in for a number of years now and are highly confident gonna >>Continue. You know, I've been a big fan of Pacific Northwest for a while. You know, love going up there and talking to the folks at Microsoft and Amazon and AWS, but there's been a big trend in venture capital where a lot of the, the later stage folks, including private equity have come in, you seen tiger global even tiger global alumni, that the Cubs they call them, you know, they're coming down and playing in the early state and the results haven't been that good. You guys have had a track record in your success. Again, a hundred percent of your institutional investors have honed up with you on this two fund strategy of close to 700 million. What's this formula says, why aren't they winning what's is it, they don't have the ecosystem? Is it they're spraying and praying without a lot of discipline? What's the dynamic between the folks like Madrona, the Neas of the world who kind of come in and Sequoia who kind of do it right, right. Come in. And they get it done in the right way. The early stage. I just say the private equity folks, >>You know, I think that early stage venture is a local business. It is a geographically proximate business when you're helping incredible founders, try to really dial in that early founder market fit. This is before you even get to product market fit. And, and so the, the team building that goes on the talking to potential customers, the ITER iterating on business strategy, this is a roll up your sleeves kind of thing. It's not a financial transaction. And so what you're trying to do is have a presence and an understanding, a prepared mind of one of the big themes and the kinds of founders that with, you know, our encouragement and our help can go build lasting companies. Now, when you get to a, a, a later stage, you know, you get to that growth stage. It is generally more of a financial, you know, kind of engineering sort of proposition. And there's some folks that are great at that. What we do is we support these companies all the way through. We reserve enough capital to be with them at the seed stage, the series B stage the, you know, the crossover round before you go public, all of those sorts of things. And we love partnering with some of these other people, but there's a lot of heavy lifting at the early, early stages of a business. And it's, it's not, I think a model that everybody's architected to do >>Well, you know, trust becomes a big factor in all this. You kind of, when you talk about like that, I hear you speaking. It makes me think of like trusted advisor meets money, not so much telling people what to do. You guys have had a good track record and, and being added value, not values from track. And sometimes that values from track is getting in the way of the entrepreneur by, you know, running the certain meetings, driving board meetings and driving the agenda that you see to see that trend where people try too hard and that a force function, the entrepreneur we're living in a world now where everyone's talking to each other, you got, you know, there's no more glass door it's everyone's on Twitter, right? So you can see some move, someone trying to control the supply chain of talent by term sheet, overvaluing them. >>You guys are, have a different strategy. You guys have a network I've noticed that Madrona has attracted them high end talent coming outta Microsoft outta AWS season, season, senior talent. I won't say, you know, senior citizens, but you know, people have done things scaled up businesses, as well as attract young talent. Can you share with our audience that dynamic of the, the seasoned veterans, the systems thinkers, the ones who have been there done that built software, built teams to the new young entrepreneurs coming in, what's the dynamic, like, how do you guys look at at those networks? How do you nurture them? Could you share your, your strategy on how you're gonna pull all this together, going forward? >>You know, we, we think a lot about building the innovation ecosystem, like a phrase around here that you hear a lot is the bigger pie theory. How do we build the bigger pie? If we're focusing on building the bigger pie, there'll be plenty of that pie for Madrona Madrona companies. And in that mindset says, okay, how are we gonna invest in the innovation ecosystem? And then actually to use a term, you know, one of our founders who unfortunately passed away this year, Tom Aber, he had just written a book called flywheel. And I think it embodies this mindset that we have of how do you create that flywheel within a community? And of course, interestingly enough, I think Tom both learned and contributed to that. He was on the board of Amazon for almost 20 years in helping build some of the flywheels at Amazon. >>So that's what we carry forward. And we know that there's a lot of value in experiential learning. And so we've been fortunate to have some folks, you know, that have worked at some of those, you know, kind iconic companies, join us and find that they really love this company building journey. We've also got some terrific younger folks that have, you know, some very fresh perspectives and a lot of, a lot of creativity. And they're bringing that together with our team overall. And you know, what we really are trying to do at the end of the day is find incredible founders who wanna build something lasting, insignificant, and provide our kind of our time, our best ideas, our, our perspective. And of course our capital to help them be >>Successful. I love the ecosystem play. I think that's a human capital game too. I like the way you guys are thinking about that. I do wanna get your reaction, cause I know you're close to Amazon and Microsoft, but mainly Jeff Bezos as well. You mentioned your, your partner who passed away was on the board. A lot of great props on and tributes online. I saw that, I know I didn't know him at all. So I really can't comment, but I did notice that Bezos and, and jazz in particular were complimentary. And recently I just saw Bezos comment on Twitter about the, you know, the Lord of the rings movie. They're putting out the series and he says, you gotta have a team. That's kinda like rebels. I'm paraphrasing, cuz these folks never done a movie like this before. So they're, they're getting good props and reviews in this new world order where entrepreneurs gotta do things different. >>What's the one thing that you think entrepreneurs need to do different to make this next startup journey different and successful because the world is different. There's not a lot of press to relate to Andy Jassey even on stage last week in, in, in LA was kind of, he's not really revealing. He's on his talking points, message, the press aren't out there and big numbers anymore. And you got a lot of different go-to market strategies, omnichannel, social different ways to communicate to customers. Yeah. So product market fit is becomes big. So how do you see this new flywheel emerging for those entrepreneurs have to go out there, roll up their sleeves and make it happen. And what kind of resources do you think they need to be successful? What are you guys advocating? >>Well, you know, what's really interesting about that question is I've heard Jeff say many times that when people ask him, what's gotta be different. He, he reminds them to think about what's not gonna change. And he usually starts to then talk about things like price, convenience, and selection. Customer's never gonna want a higher price, less convenience, smaller selection. And so when you build on some of those principles of, what's not gonna change, it's easier for you to understand what could be changing as it relates to the differences. One of the biggest differences, I don't think any of us have fully figured out yet is what does it mean to be productive in a hybrid work mode? We happen to believe that it's still gonna have a kernel of people that are geographically close, that are part of the founding and building in the early stages of a company. >>And, and it's an and equation that they're going to also have people that are distributed around the country, perhaps around the world that are some of the best talent that they attract to their team. The other thing that I think coming back to what remains the same is being hyper focused on a certain customer and a certain problem that you're passionate about solving. And that's really what we look for when we look for this founder market fit. And it can be a lot of different things from the next generation water bottle to a better way to handle deep learning models and get 'em deployed in the cloud. If you've got that passion and you've got some inkling of the skill of how to build a better solution, that's never gonna go away. That's gonna be enduring, but exactly how you do that as a team in a hybrid world, I think that's gonna be different. >>Yeah. One thing that's not changing is that your investor, makeup's not changing a hundred percent of your existing institutional investors have signed back on with you guys and your oversubscribed, lot of demand. What is your flywheel success formula? Why is Tron is so successful? Can you share some feedback from your investors? What are they saying? Why are they re-upping share some inside baseball or anecdotal praise? >>Well, I think it's very kind to you to frame it that way. I mean, you know, it does for investors come back to performance. You know, these are university endowments and foundations that have a responsibility to, to generate great returns. And we understand that and we're very aligned with that. I think to be specific in the last couple years, they appreciated that we were also not holding onto our, our stocks forever, that we actually made some thoughtful decisions to sell some shares of companies like Smartsheet and snowflake and accolade in others, and actually distribute capital back to them when things were looking really, really good. But I think the thing, other thing that's very important here is that we've created a flywheel with our core strategy being Seattle based and then going out from there to try to find the best founders, build great companies with them, roll up our sleeves in a productive way and help them for the long term, which now leads to multiple generations of people, you know, at those companies. And beyond that we wanna be, you know, partner with and back again. And so you create this flywheel by having success with people in doing it in a respectful. And as you said earlier, a trusted way, >>What's the message for the Silicon valley crowd, obviously bay area, Silicon valley, Palo Alto office, and the center of it. Obviously you got them hybrid workforce hybrid venture model developing what's the goals. What's the message for Silicon valley? >>Well, our message for folks in Silicon valley is the same. It's always been, we we're excited to partner with them largely up here again, cause this is still our home base, but there'll be a, you know, select number of opportunities where we'll get a chance to partner together down in Silicon valley. And we think we bring something different with that deep understanding of cloud computing, that deep understanding of applied machine learning. And of course, some of our unique relationships up here that can be additive to what the they've already done. And some of them are just great partners and have built, you know, help build some really incredible companies over >>The years. Matt, I really appreciate you taking the time for this interview, given them big news. I guess the question on everyone's mind, certainly the entrepreneur's mind is how do I get some of that cash you have and put it into work for my opportunity. One what's the investment thesis can take a minute to put the plug in for the firm. What are you looking to invest in? What's the thesis? What kind of entrepreneurs you're looking for? I know fund one is seed fund nine is seed to, to a and B and the second one is beyond B and beyond for growth. What's the pitch. What's the pitch. >>Yeah. Well you can, you can think of us as you know, any stage from pre-seed to series seed. You know, we'll make a new investment in companies in all of those stages. You know, I think that, you know, the, the core pitch, you know, to us is, you know, your passion for the, for the problem that you're trying to, trying to get solved. And we're of course, very excited about that. And you know, at, at, at the end of the day, you know, if you want somebody that has a distinct point of view on the market that is based up here and can roll up their sleeves and work alongside you. We're, we're, we're the ones that are more than happy to do that. Proven track record of doing that for 25 plus years. And there's so much innovation ahead. There's so many opportunities to disrupt to pioneer, and we're excited to be a part of working with great founders to do that. >>Well, great stuff. We'll see you ATS reinvent coming up shortly and your annual get together. You always have your crew down there and, and team engaging with some of the cloud players as well. And looking forward to seeing how the Palo Alto team expands out. And Matt, thanks for coming on the cube. Appreciate your time. >>Thanks very much, John. Appreciate you having me look forward to seeing you at reinvent. >>Okay. Matt, Matt here with Madrona venture group, he's the partner managing partner Madrona group raises 690 million to fund nine and, and, and again, and big funds for accelerated growth fund. Three lot of dry powder. Again, entrepreneurship in technology is scaling. It's not going down. It's continuing to accelerate into this next generation super cloud multi-cloud hybrid cloud world steady state. This is the cubes coverage. I'm John for Silicon angle and host of the cube. Thanks for watching.