>>from the Cube >>Studios in Palo Alto and Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cube conversation. >>I am stupid, man. And welcome to a cube conversation. Really? Please welcome back to the program. One of our Cube alumni, Sony, Ge and Donnie. She is a co founder and also the business off of pensando. Tony, thanks so much for joining us. >>I thank you for having me here. >>All right. So, Sonny, we've had you on the program a few times. You know, those that have watched the program or followed your career? You've had a story career. You know, I've worked with you as a partner back through some of the spinning disk. You're one of the mpls group. And now, of course, Pensando we helped launch towards the end of 2019. I just want to take a step back and, you know, understand, You know, how did you find yourself in the startup world? >>You know, I got involved with startup ventures as part of the Mpls team. This is going back now. Gosh, 20 years ago, in calendar year 2000 my first venture was with Andy ammo. It was a very unique situation that Mario look up on myself or part of a set up on a startup venture. But all four of us, the Mpls group, did not have any equity in it. Look, and I basically what asked to operate within the with that venture to ensure its ultimate success from a product execution on the go to market perspective? Ah, lot of those elements did not exist from a go to market perspective in Cisco at that time, and it was basically a ground up effort for look and me to not have any financial association with the outcome off the Andy, um, a venture, but at the same time, take on the responsibility from the execution perspective and building up the whole go to market. >>Yeah, so, you know, talking about that these startups, you've been apart of two things. First of all, you were part of and, ya know, you ova in CNI. So did you need to learn Italian to be part of these projects? But more importantly, how did how did you work on that? You know, product customer fit, understanding what the build and, you know, you talk about right How do you make some things that festival? It is super challenging. >>Yeah, well, first and foremost, I think I've been fortunate in that the group that we're all part off it is definitely Italian Indian. And some folks, like from Indiana, for example, like Randy Pond, who is part of this venture with us at Pensando. If I if I would go back and take a look at the simple formula, I mean Mario look, and from, ah, they're veterans in this industry. And they typically focused on the conceiving off the idea and the brought up, uh, and starting with a clean slate approach. Of course, I participate from a market validation development, competitive landscape on a business on all related aspects, bringing the product to market on how that maps into customers and partners what we have consistently focused on market disruption. Particularly for the last two decades, the biggest focus has been on what are the market transitions occurring both from a business and a technology perspective on that is ultimately what creates the opportunity to emerge on and drive these concepts into reality and what yourself, in a market leadership position, is to capture the transition at the right time. >>Yeah, I think back. You know, some of your previous ventures and understand, you know, some of the waves of technologies coming together sometimes the maturity of a technology or being able to take advantage of something new to talk specifically about. Pensando what are you know, those waves of change and the technology coming together that makes the opportunity that you're in today? >>Well, I mean, if you go back and you take a look at really what has been exciting about this pensando opportunity has been to look at the unique ability that have been coming upon us. You know, with this market transition where the cloud is moving to the edge, what is ultimately driving this movement to the edge has been the application. Uh, the applications is is you know, whether it's driven by technology trends like five G, for example. Ah, and and the fact that bulk off what the customer's data is being driven is going to be at the edge. That when when you look at the cloud moving to the edge and evolving that with the transitions occurring, ah, this will require deep innovation. Deep innovation in the areas of distributed network processing security, like encryption, full observe ability while you have turned on encryption, traffic engineering and doing it at very low, predictable agency at the speeds of 100 gig and above all, doing it on a small footprint. We were really the only guys and gals who could do this. And we have done it, >>Yeah, so certainly some really big challenges that they laid out there bring >>us inside >>a little bit. You know, customers. You know, I think about, you know, when I've been watching edge computing for the last three or four years. Uh, you know, it's still relatively early days for customers, but there's a lot of technical challenges there, So help us understand how much you know it was you had technology that could help solve something and how much it is driven by some of the customers that you've been talking to over the years >>Now. One of the key things that we learned and this was going back to the early days of Cisco is that everything we were doing, we had the customer at the center off and at the heart off what innovation we were building from an engineering perspective. You want to build things that can have the most impact in the marketplace and within your customer base. So, uh, one of the early times we went back, who do getting our customers involved in the innovations we were bringing to bear. I still have recollections off a blueprint that we had iterated upon, uh, and sitting in a room, whether it was with the likes of Josh Matthew at Goldman Sachs all whether it was with some of our early cloud customers like the Oracle Cloud, to better understand with these innovation and these blueprints, what were their burning problems? What were they used, cases that we could really go and tackle? So it is one thing to think about market destructions. It's another to bring it to life and having customers engaged with you during the early phases. Off as you are incubating, something is a very important item because it helps you focus your biggest energy on the areas so that you can put your arms around what problems are worth solving. And how can you bring that to life with with customers? Use case. And this is something we have done time and over again. So this is a constant refinement off what we have been doing now for now, to over two decades. As I said, >>Yeah, it's, you know, fascinating here. And when you've got the chief business officer idle, Sony, You know, one of the biggest changes, obviously, is if I look back in the spin ins, you kind of understood how to go to market was what was involved the, you know, the Cisco execution machine that the sales process that they had in plug in a product, that they would help. All right, what you're doing now, you've got some, you know, feel, William partnerships. You have relationship with customers, help us understand a little bit. You know the update on the go to market, how you have. I have a solution that fits for not only the end users, but through multiple different, uh, you know, go to market partners. >>So I think it's, you know, it's very important that as a startup we stay very close to our customers and apart, not just men. We are thinking about what the innovation is and how can it solve their problems. But I think in a world where the way we want to go solve for what? The customer where we want the customer, where our customers want us to be our partnerships is a core part of it. I mean, if you look at from the early days we secured successfully funding from our customers and our strategic partners and it is these customers and strategic partners that are shaping the roadmap on are shaping the routes to market on. What we're doing is we're successfully not only delivering the product, so these strategic customers and partners, but we're also then replicating it across the verticals. If you think about in the enterprise space, our focus has been the focus on regulated market markets where security is essential. Real time, observe ability that can increase your security posture is a very important element. So taking the blueprints that we're taking into global financial services customers, the healthcare industry, the the education market on the federal market, then those are the industries that really care about, and I in regulated markets where we can take the blueprint that we have already built on an amplify across those customers. So there again includes alignment and a partnership with HP. We're working very closely that, while recognizing that we will be doing strategic elements only with partners like HP, we're also on boarding and getting certifications done with Dell because most enterprises have at least dual source vendors from a server, so that that is one aspect. The other aspect is working in a high touch model with the cloud customers and having the opportunity to deliver to them Ah, and onboard them from a production worthy perspective while taking that same blueprint and applying it to other cloud customers and other service provider edge providers that can take advantage of the similar capability. >>Yeah, um, I'm curious. Sony, you know, obviously, the cloud is a space that has been going through a lot of change and accelerating. You know, I'd say much faster than traditional networking did. So you know, curious what you see what you're hearing from customers when they talk about you know, their needs for your solution, what they're doing with multi cloud environment. What is that? That landscape you. And I guess we would love to hear a little bit about how you would compare and contrast yourself. The other solutions out there the one that comes to mind, of course, is you know, eight of us what they're doing with the Annapurna chip in there nitro offering as part of their out. >>You know, as I mentioned earlier, I think the cloud is pushing to the edge. There's a high demand for a lot of packet processing needs with these New Age applications. Customers want to build on and give the you know, we want to be in a position to provide through the democratization and open availability off our products to multiple cloud providers, our technology and as they are experiencing tremendous growth, they're seeking to build cloud with more capacity, with greater degree off security and services functionality. And the ability to process a lot of data at the edge is with millions of simultaneous connections happening at a very small footprint. And that's where we come in. The value that we are essentially providing who not only the existing cloud strategic partners but additional cloud customers we're taking into production this year is that we are enabling them to leapfrog the nitro technology on multiple, whether it is the ability to ah have predictably low latency on and consistently low jitter in the nanoseconds. That is the eight times superior than what a nitro can do today, or the ability to pack their toe process up to nine times more backend processes in the millions of on the ability to do it in a power footprint, which is almost 1/3 that of what you would need on AWS nitro, where they need five times more nitro elements than then we can with a single device, Um, or whether it is the ability now to handle not just power and latency, but millions off flows that can run simultaneously on maintaining the state of all of those and the power of the end, the ability to run multiple services. Uh, with security turned on at the same time are all elements that really differentiate us on. This technology is now readily available to all of us. >>All right, so I understand some of the technical issue items that you're stating there. What I'm curious about is when I look at out both, most customers don't really think about the night. It's that Amazon's providing an extension of their solution into my environment, and they manage everything and so you know, you can't talk about multi cloud environment without talking about Amazon is every customer almost everything right? More than one cloud in one of them is almost always Amazon, though. How does your solution fit into that whole discussion? And then? >>So I think that, you know, one of the things that becomes very important is that if I put my customer enterprise customer hat on, I want to be an enabling my private cloud the private cloud that I build. You have the ability to not just have the option to the port and Amazon cloud, but I typically already and minimal child and barn. So while Outpost and Nitro Nitrogen really enabling, are supposed to deliver those services on our customer's premises, it's only allowing that customer to be locked into one way off dealing with one public cloud company. But if I had to go and think about as I build out my hybrid cloud strategy as an enterprise customer, I want to have the same building blocks on the same policy models that are consistent with all the with the entire dress off cloud vendors that I'm dealing with. The bulk of our customers are essentially telling us I don't want to be locked into a single public cloud company from a hybrid strategy. I want to have the ability to drive a public, private cloud architect that is cloud like from a policy delivery perspective. But at the same time, I want to have the flexibility off deploying a multi cloud and BART, and what we would provide them is the consistency off that same policy model that you would only find in a public cloud with the freedom to not have to buy themselves or lock themselves up into a single public cloud costs. >>So your team, you said, over two decades of experience, there have been some global impacts that have happened during that you got together in 2000. 2001 was right there in front of you that the 2008 you know, down in there, though you're in 2020 obviously the global endemic, as you know, broad financial ripples. How's this impacting Dondo? How's that impacting your discussions with your partners and your customers? >>Well, you know, honestly, I would say that we, like everyone else, have been affected by the pandemic, and we pray that everyone recovers soon with minimum lost to themselves and their families. And this is something very personal. This is here. I feel very passionate about hoping that everybody comes through with this on and their families are all OK. That's all the most important thing in my mind now for us, from a pandemic perspective. What this has done is it has made us more resolute to continue to execute remotely to the best of our ability to meet our customers. Expectations. The advice that I would give to other startups is Keep your head down. Focus on the 80 20 rule, execute on 20% of the things that need to be done, that we'll have 80% of the impact to your business, including undeterred product execution. Stay close to your customers and your partners. Spend your cash judiciously. You know, be very careful on where you're spending your money to make it last. As long as you can ride this pandemic out and double down on being close to your partners and customers. Fortify your sales plans. Meet your customers where they are not where you thought they were, but where they really are and partner with them on this journey and partner with your supply chain. You're going to need that. So this is your time to really be a partner to them, as opposed to see how can you change them? No, no. The really partner with your supply chain Because you're gonna need that. >>Yeah, that's a very sound advice there, Sony. While we're talking advice that, you know, you're very successful career, I'm wondering what advice you would give the other women look at pursuing careers. In fact, specifically, if you know they wanted, you know, start a startup, be a founder, whether that in Silicon Valley or outside, what advice would >>you know? My advice would be to have an undeterred focus. Focus is extremely important. Look, I used to always remind me, Sony, when you're focused on two things, you're d focus. So focus on data. Focus, be driven. Believe in the vision that you have set out for yourself and your team on and keep your eye on the customer. I think in customers successful on your success. That's the message I would give. I would give that same message. My female and the male colleagues. >>Alright, well, we know that you and your team. Sony are very focused, so I'll give you the final word. Gives a little look forward if we go forward. You know, 18 to 24 months. What should we be expecting to see from PENSANDO and your solution? >>Well, in the next 18 to 24 months, we would like to meet and hopefully also exceed our customer's expectation in terms of product execution and the ramp off course. Profitability will be a very important aspect that we're going to keep a very close eye. I think it's too early to be thinking of an ideal, and our focus remains to be on customer success. We have been in the market for a little over. I was a little less than six months. Ah, with the product, September 2019 October 2019 is really when we launched the company on and, uh, the customer always is at the center of everything we do. So that's where we're gonna be focusing on product execution and ramp ramp off product, ramp off estimates. >>Well, so needy. And Dani, it's a pleasure to catch up with you. Thank you so much in the state. >>Thank you. You too. >>Alright. Be sure to check out the cube dot net for all the interviews, you can go see the launch videos that did at go back office in New York City from 2019. If you go to the cube dot net and many more interviews from Sony and her team, I'm stew Minimum. And thank you for watching you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.