>> From Washington D.C.. It CUBE conversations with John Furrier. >> Welcome to this special exclusive CUBE conversation I'm joined for a year. The heart of the Amazon Web Services headquarters in Arlington Virginia the heart of Washington D.C.. I'm here with Teresa Carlson who is the chief of the Amazon Web Services Public Sector team. >> Great to see you again welcome to Washington D.C. John. >> A lot of action, having the CUBE on the ground all day yesterday. We've got interviews all day this afternoon, really getting the top stories and the big story is the the cloud computing impact to government. You've been leading the team in the public sector worldwide for Amazon Web Services really had great success since the CIA deal four years ago, which was a watershed moment to this gestation period of Amazon filtrating into all the different systems of the government, and worldwide. Congratulations. >> Thank you. It's been a great seven and a half years. It's gone by so fast. I still feel like every day is day one. >> One of the things that I'm the most impressed with you, and I want to get your take on it is: you've been very passionate about the mission of the public sector from nonprofits, education, inclusion and diversity, Women in Tech-- a variety of things-- as almost a higher level mission. But Amazon has been a real enabler for the change as well. So what is your official role now at Amazon. It's now Global has been. How has it changed over the past few years. >> Well in the early days, even though when I started here anyhow I always agreed it was worldwide that what ended up happening was the fact that it went from really just focused focusing on the U.S. to actually focusing on worldwide because if we didn't really win business here in the U.S. it was going to be hard to win business worldwide. >> You were the most powerful women in Washington D.C. as voted recently one of the magazine's. You've been doing great work here in D.C., but also globally. But one of the things that you're doing I want to explore with you is you're changing the game not just with technology and government, but in society entrepreneurship that you're enabling. You've kind of cracked the code on this formula with the work with Amazon where there's now the silos are being broken down and the blurring lines between the different sectors are all cross pollinating we're seeing that with entrepreneurship, nonprofits, education; what's going on there what's your view on this? >> Well when you're really going to drive change globally and when you're doing such a transformational change and shift with technology you can't just look at it as a shift of technology. It's got to be a shift to the sectors of what's happening. And also you can't just educate one group you have to go in and educate the society and have real societal change. Everything from ensuring that the community colleges have the right kind of programs for computer science that K through 12 that they have access, because if you miss one group you're going to miss a whole generation of something. >> The realities are there's millions of jobs worldwide that are needed for cloud computing and a variety of roles including new ones for AI and machine learning which we almost have no know individuals that are as qualified as we want them. So to drive real change you have to start at the policy level and ensure policy makers and regulators around the world are aware of what they need to put in place, so that these tools and technologies are enabled that they're promoting and budgeting for things like educational programs and they're very focused on not just old-tech companies but actual new-tech companies that are driving forward to start apps entrepreneurs and social engineers I'll call them. And that's really where we are trying to drive toward social change or societal change starting at the policy in going all the way down to education on diversity issues around the world. >> One of the things that you guys have done here in Washington has been as successful as you've done the hard work you put the time in. You paid your dues. Did the the brute force work you need to do with security and cloud. Now it's up and running is successful. Now you have a elevated responsibility with the cloud to enable wealth creation value creation change in society. So you're steward of a change agent at the same time you have to create value across those sectors. What does that responsibility mean to you and how are you leaving the team to continue to up the bar on the innovation in that area? >> Well it does mean a lot to me and it is super important because if you again get one element wrong it's almost like you misstep something. So we are we are like my entire team is really gritty, like we every day. We're sort of challenging each other. Do we have it right? The whole concept of the ability to dive and really understand your customers and what they need to do. That example of that would be is we really have sort of a model we developed as a team for going in and creating digital innovation or digital footprints for countries. So if you think about this if you walk into a country and they have zero idea how to become a digital nation you have to through her influence and your experience really educate them on what are the elements and again that goes through everything through. How did they set up policies. How do they have acquisition vehicles. How are their regulators working everything through the financial regulators telecommunication providers through the educational systems of how you operate within. Not only that but the entrepreneurs. How do they actually set up a group teach and train them. Sometimes in societies that really have not had zero training in entrepreneurship. You know you think about the United States I could call you up and say hey I have a question about something I'm doing in media. Can you like give me some suggestions. You would help me if you go to countries like that. They don't have the same network. We even have here. So really establishing helping them establish what is their blueprint. >> And I will tell you it's working. And the reason I think it's worth working is because we go in very humbly, we begin to we're very patient, we have a long term view and what we're doing and we really demonstrate for them and not just demonstrate that help them ensure that they're getting there and that's the customer obsession side of us. >> And the old way the old competitive landscape used to be a price on our product performance is the best. Therefore you should buy it right and make as much money as possible and provide some customer support and some maintenance. Okay. Now you guys have hit the form. That's just one element of a successful formula. Mission driven but also ecosystem and community. >> That's right. >> Talk about the dynamic between those three things having the mission the right price performance and also community and how is that formula work for you guys and how do you make that successful. > Yeah well so here's the really interesting fact: when we decide to go in and build in the region we can. The realities are we could go anywhere in the world and build region but will that region be successful. And there's many elements to that being a success. And one of the things as an example is price. So in order to have a region that is priced in in a manner that individuals can buy for cloud computing you've got to ensure that the elements that you need to build that region are in place. So you've got to think about things like utilities, power, water, land, networking, telecommunications, and then education, are the people there that can actually respond and take the jobs that are required. So you have to look at each and every element and go in and really make those changes. And an example that I'll share is telecommunication providers around the world were the most advanced in the world in the United States in telecommunications. But if you go to other parts of the world there's a there's a monopoly or duopoly and their prices are generally outrageous. And for a company like ours of course we're a big networking company and if you go in and if a customer pays a hundred percent more than they would pay in a region that was right next door they're probably not going to want to use that cloud. So when I say that we're going in and driving real change we really feel like it's our obligation to go in and ensure that we put all the pieces and parts in place with that country and those officials to ensure that they understand. And then that added element if we're going to do that to telecommunications provider that may be part of their revenues for government or it's all they know then we need to teach them how they set up new business models because there are fantastic business models for telecommunication providers with cloud computing managed service offerings they can do a lot more mobility, gaming there's so much stuff that many of them have been so used to an old business model. We really have to help them transform in order for that entire community and region to be successful. >> Would it be safe to say that you guys are enabling value creation and that you guys are allowing others to take advantage of that it's not just your profit you're enabling them to profit and or how they see that it could be for social good but also could be for making more money? You can't lose by helping people make more money or to achieve their objective. >> We love that. Will that any if you think about Amazon Web Services, our you know where we started was with startups and entrepreneurs the ones that led us first were the developers and engineers right. They came in and they start using AWS and then those developers and engineers turned into small companies and start ups and large companies and so we really have a soft spot for entrepreneurs and startups. So you know we talk about all the time in all parts of our business that we really need to be focused on those young entrepreneurs that are creating value in wealth. And if you do that you really see you want to change it even if you can back to the United States, you're starting to see in small communities. I'm from Kentucky we have agri-entrepreneurs. We have individuals that are looking at new farming techniques. They're taking health care startups in Kentucky. I mean it's great because you don't need to be in Silicon Valley anymore to have a startup and do really great work. >> You're a disruptive enabler you're changing your force of nature. You're one of the most powerful people in Washington. You're from a small town where this make you feel. I mean sometimes you pinch yourself. >> I'm very humbled. I'm super humbled. I know my parents were both teachers my dad was a high school basketball coach love coaching I'm a huge Kentucky basketball fan but you know humble I feel blessed every day that I get to do this role and that I've been able to work for such an amazing company who believes in this because you know Andy Jassy and myself always said, from day one the first day I met him, I was like wow he is gonna be such a champion of this because we talked about paving the way for disruptive innovation and making the world a better place and in order to do that there's multiple aspects of those things. And again the technology is that is that bridge builder. It really helps take the divided and pull it together but it's got to be all these other elements that really make it work completely. >> With this power you have in, and you're too humble to say that, but that that's true comes great responsibility. How are you using this opportunity to go to the next level at a higher level not just help them as other achieve their business objectives within D.C. you do involve them some things. What's your mission on that level. You go to a higher level. What is that and what are you doing with this opportunity that you have. >> Well it's really about helping drive social entrepreneurship. And then I would say the second one is diversity and ensuring that we are really getting more women in tech and a more diverse work environment for tech. And I'll just start on the social entrepreneurship side. It really interacts nicely with all of our goals. The thing that's really change about social entrepreneurship in the early days people thought of that just as a not for profit come of it. People were like that's not so cool. Well today social entrepreneurship is cool. Many young men and women if you talk to them they want to be involved in something they want like many but they want to be involved in something that's really doing good things. And we've sort of again been able to bridge how we're doing things that eight of us through social entrepreneurship. So an example we talked about Bahrain a little bit we have a scale in Bahrain where we take these groups in that we have also one here in Washington D.C. at the U.S. Institute of Peace for Peace tech which we're looking at technologies that helped push down correction and improve peace around the world. And then we have Halcyon House which we support and Halcyon is just as beautiful Georgetown has such a lovely place that Dr Satsha Kuno started where, we support but it's all social entrepreneurs that live there for five and residency and their health. Thirty seven the most amazing are in Washington become social entrepreneurs and they have technology enablement legal enable a venture capital access and that's good. >> And then the last one that we've done is called Cal Polytech we're with the president there President Armstrong he's another gentleman from Kentucky. We started there he left what we were doing and he said I want to go all in on that. Yes. And I want to start in innovations in hardware right here on campus where we can bring our talented students. We can also merge with community and Sabriel government issues. So they're they're doing areas of justice and public safety. They're looking at health care issues. They're looking at their looking and also child exploitation issues and they're bringing all those things together to try to solve real problems. And we're helping. So it's really How about the women in tech. You're involved in. So you are women tech leader again most powerful women DC powerful people in DC. >> Well women in tech is such an important issue because again we're a fairly significant part of the population and pretty underrepresented in tech. And one of the things that we've done we started a program at AWS yes called we power tech where it's really about diversity and overall but we go out into communities we work with the schools. We have coding days on campuses. We have started in clubs. We have empowerment days where we teach women how to you, how do you interview. How do you understand the roles in tech. We do serve early. What is Cloud and how do you get involved with cloud and you would talk about other jobs. You know I've had this conversation before about tech is great in the coding part but also there's so many other jobs in tech like and to finance its operations its sales you know PR marketing and your you have to be pretty talented in tech to do any of that. It's not again I'll say for the faint heart. So we are making progress but we still have a long way to go and take a superfund. >> What's your secret of success. >> I think I learned very early on how to operate in a very diverse world. My dad was a basketball coach during my time growing and I had a lot of young men basketball players our home. We were always kicking and I had to stand toe to toe with them all the time in every aspect. I could not you know I just really I was like you know I'm going to win this argument. So the court and >> >> I don't want delays for sure but I really once I guess once I set my mind to something I really believe in it. There's passion in me. I just keep going. I don't know. That is not the right answer. How do we get there blockers are just something that can be removed in my mind and I think Amazon is the kind of culture that you know obviously the way the whole company has been created and how it's driven nothing has gotten in the way. You just sort of learn from those things and if you if you say every day we may not have gotten to where we want to be today but we learned from that from the failure that we had today in that experience and you take that in each day you sort of evolve until OK. Now we learn from that suggest and I and the other thing I tell my team because we're said to Yang Campany you don't really know what you know so don't get tied to the ways that you're doing things because we need to adjust very quickly. So I so I try to promote a an environment where we don't we've made progress. We don't know the right answer every day and we need to constantly be looking at do we get that right and how do we adjust so you know getting that agility in your business has a lot of the hiring that we do today. There's so many that we bring in that are from sort of an old school mindset because these companies did not grow as fast as we're grown and we are in a hyper growth mode. And when you're in a hyper growth mode you have to constantly look for leaders that can scale. And so that's the other sort of thing. >> So the place that can you hang with it. I've seen people you know where they sort of hit a wall and they come back but you really have to constantly say you know this is strapon. You're probably not going to have the same experience ever again. >> Here's some oxygen for some people that are not really oriented so culturally you feel that you're a good fit for Amazon given your personality. That's a key and >> I love it. I mean I love it because of the pace I love it because it change we're driving and the other thing after years of working in tech it's so fun to see your customers be successful. I mean I can't that high seeing customers actually drive results in young entrepreneurs be able to create a company. I had a young girl in Brazil I was in Brazil at the embassy and we had a we had a actually a women's panel and she Saanich like 23 years old and we got to talking and she said I just she said I created my first gaming video at 16 and sold it at 18 percent millions and she was like in her third company. She said all built on a yes. And that is like so cool. >> Like those stories you're just like wow and wouldn't be possible if you went through the old gatekeeper's other ways. >> Well I mean you know I was part of all that. I mean you spent so much of your many on just building out the tech the servers and you know in the early days entrepreneurs. >> So in each of their early capital on that. And now I think that's why you know private equity and venture pathless we are involved with them so much because they see the value that cloud computing can have in their portfolio as trying to value their image. And then the entrepreneurs you'll see seven they'll have to have Mini's going at once you know what it's like it's a good thing because that cost of creating a business is a lot less they can focus on their real talent not just buying servers and stacking them. >> Final question for you talk about the impact that you've had with either the U.S. public sector here in town your event that you started the public sector summit early days conference room in a hotel ballroom or hotel where she was at the major convergence center. It's looks like reinvent. So you had an impact. And this year probably going to be bigger. That is an indicator that something is going right there. >> Well I'm very proud of my team for helping us build this thing out that it was early days. I do think we I say up until this thing we had maybe 50 50 people. And I think last year we had about eight or nine thousand and growing and it is likely that we'll reinvent we have in over a two day period will be June 20th and 21st this year. Please can we have you back. We will be there. But we're doing something a little bit unique this year we're going to have a Space Day on the 19th. And what you know obviously eight of us Amazon we really like space has a leg like you know the cars. Yeah like SpaceX blew out like a comfortable space safe space in the clouds and way beyond that. >> And this is a really interesting area because you know space I remember as a young girl you know sing sing you know the first whole videos of walking on the moon and it makes you feel so good. You know that science and technology emerging that there's a lot of that that needs to be updated and modernized now. And we work with a lot of partners now you know like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon groups that are building tools Blue Origin Space X Nassa Air Force has been a huge robotic surgery of robotics and software involved in machine learning. I mean you think about ground stations and if you think about ground and satellite stations a lot of that is very outdated technology and that's where cloud computing and the new tools that you know that we are driving in our age on machine learning space are really going to help as well as that storage and compete and do more things at the edge with that. So so that's going to be a really fun day and we're going to have folks from all of them helping the public and the public. So it's like a precursor day to our two hour meeting and then all our public sector many re reinvent. So we're we're really excited about that. And it's something new we're going to try this year and see what kind of momentum that we want to add that we have a lot of requests with. Let's just do it. >> What's your goals. Next couple of months. See you at Public Sector Summit your event in June. Q I'll be there. What's what's on your radar. I'll have. >> A big agenda for global traveling. I'm going to be in Australia Singapore Argentina. I've got a couple of trips to Canada. I'm going to be doing very shortly here in London. I'm going to be doing a girls and tech conference and I have went out to San Francisco for the keynoting that so I have a big agenda this year of travel so get myself all geared up for my year on the road. But it's going to be fun. We have a lot of great things going on this year worldwide public sector. >> Congratulations on your success. Thanks for spending that time. Thank you Don. It's good conversation here in Washington D.C. We're in Arlington Virginia. Amazon Web Services headquarters here in Washington. Thanks for watching.

(uptempo techno music) >> Announcer: Live from Washington, D.C, it's CUBE Conversations with John Furrier. >> Hello there and welcome to this special CUBE Conversations here in Washington, D.C. We're getting all the stories, we're at the Halcyon House here with Kate Goodall who is the Co-Founder and CEO of Halcyon for a CUBE Conversation. Thanks for joining me today. >> My pleasure. >> So talk about Halcyon and your mission. You're doing something really important here in societal entrepreneurship. It's a non-profit, it's a really interesting mission. You're having an impact. Talk about what you guys are doing. >> Yeah, we believe in the power of human creativity and the power of compassion to change the world for the better. And by that I mean that we take some incredible change makers with really bold ideas about how they can affect societal change through business and art, and we give them a number of supports including a free place to live in this very expensive city, a fantastic mentor, an office, a community around them, money, and we don't take equity in their ventures. >> And this house that we're here is a mansion in Washington, D.C. Talk about the story about this house and this residence. >> Yeah, it's got very revolutionary roots. It was built by Benjamin Stoddert who was the first Secretary of the Navy during the Revolutionary War. And from then it exchanged hands several times. One of them was a relative of Mark Twain. And he is responsible for most of its 30,000 square feet. And then lastly, it was in the hands of the Dreyfus family before it was bought by Dr. Kuno who is my co-founder and the chair of Halcyon. >> And the Halcyon mission, you guys have a unique formula. Talk about how the fellowships, how do you guys select the ventures, what's the program? They live here. >> Yeah. >> It's a residence. >> Yeah. >> So it's interesting. >> Yeah, we give them three things, everything thing breaks down into three things. Space, community, and access. We believe that if you give people not only physical space, which is important because we have to remember that not everyone has a parents' basement they can live in and friends and family they can go get money from. So it democratizes the playing field to just be able to select people with the best ideas and the most talent and not the best drive. But also head space. What does it mean when you give someone with a brilliant idea five months to just work on their idea? Then community is very, very important. There's a lot of atrocious analogies for entrepreneurship. People compare it to staring into the abyss or chewing glass or... It creates a lot of emotions, lots of ups and downs. So having a built in community, which we have here is very important. Then lastly access, and by that I mean there are not only investors, but these days governments, philanthropists, others that are seeking solutions to some of these very hairy 21st century problems. They want access to these ideas. And if we do our job correctly, we're creating a bridge for these entrepreneurs to those people as well. >> Yeah entrepreneurship certainly is hard. And it's even harder when you're trying to crack the code on societal problems. >> Kate: Yes. >> And so this kind of brings up an interesting trend that we've been seeing emerging really rapidly in the past few years with cloud computing and other... Big data, internet of things technologies on a global scale, is the societal entrepreneurship model where you're accelerating opening up new ways to democratize, crowd source, fund, and change the game and reimagine philanthropy, policy, education, diversity, all in one. >> Yeah. >> You guys are kind of doing that here. It really is a ground zero here in Washington, D.C because of the access and the ecosystem of governments and everything's here. So you're seeing this building up in Washington, D.C. Talk about this new force, this new driving force of change called societal entrepreneurship. >> Yeah so it's, we believe it's definitely one way to really change the game. It's a way to use business principles to attack some of these enormous social problems. Many would argue that philanthropy and perhaps government have failed at some of this recently. Philanthropy was originally designed to solve problems, not to become a charity machine. And certainly, the government finds it hard to do some of those things today as well. And so figuring out how to really attack some of these enormous, hairy 21st century problems using these business principles so that their solutions can also be scaled effectively is absolutely what we're trying to approach. >> It's interesting, you see the old guard, the old ways of doing things, policy, people just checking boxes, philanthropy a big donor kind of model. And then now with cloud computing, new things are emerging. In your mind, what's changed the most now from just even 5, 10 years ago? What's the big difference in today's culture and today's environment in the world and Washington, D.C? >> Oh my gosh, so many things I could talk about. One of the reasons I think that social enterprise really came into being, partially is because there was recession and millennials didn't have jobs. So they had to create them and they created them in a new model. They created them in a way that gave them satisfaction beyond just getting a paycheck. The Jobs Act gave foundations the ability to invest in for profits and gave us crowd sourcing and crowd funding. And these things have really made some of this cross sectoral pollenization possible for the first time. I think people genuinely are frustrated that this amazing pace of change and Internet of Things and all of this stuff still hasn't solved some of these big problems. So there's so many forces at play. And I think one thing that I'll also point to because as I explained to you, I'm an archeologist and historian by training, and if you look over the course of human history, any time when you've had rapid change in technologies or you've had vast inequalities in terms of wealth, you end up with a depression or a war, or both. And I really believe that the power of social entrepreneurship can, for once, maybe let the gas out of the balloon a little bit more gently, and I think that's something really great to be optimistic about. >> How do you see that happening? I mean, we're a connected society now. >> Yeah. >> We have our mobile devices. >> Yeah, yeah. >> We have our things on our body, Internet of Things. It's all there, is that how you see it? How do you see the relief coming so we don't have a war or a depression? >> Yeah, I think that's the point, we have tremendous power now, right? To just in our hands, to be able solve some of these problems. Human ingenuity is a great thing. I think creativity and compassion are going to be the things that machines replicate last. And so we support that wholeheartedly. And I think maybe we can talk about some examples of some of our ventures, right, and what they're doing because I think that's the best way to paint. What does this mean, what is it? One of our current fellows, Ryan Soscia has created JDoe which is a way to anonymously unite victims of sexual assaults so that they can take legal action. It has a business model, but it's been proven that victims of assault are much more effective when they go as a group instead of alone. So it's a really brilliant way to use technology. Another one from our past cohort, Brandon Anderson is using a chat bot, Raheem AI to collect better data on policing. And then is working with police departments to use that data so that they can have better community relations. So these are both very relevant and timely issues that we're approaching in a non-partisan way using technology to solve. One more I'll give in our current cohort. Pilleve, which is a company that's thinking about the Internet of Things and how it can solve for the opiate crisis. They've created a pill bottle that connects to your phone or your family's phone and can give data and control over medication so that you can really start to attack addiction. >> Kate, talk about the power of we capital, what you've been doing with women's networking in Washington DC. >> Yeah. >> Because it's not just the women in tech inclusion issue, there's a lot of disparity we've been covering certainly at Silicon Angle, but there's really a lot of powerful women and talented folks, whether it's creative or on the business side or technical side, where the societal problems, these are products that are used by the entire population and so there's an effort to have more women involved in not just designing products, but actually being part of these new re-imagined solutions and technologies. >> Yeah. >> How important do you see that here, and what are some of the hurdles and successes that you've had here? >> I agree with that analysis completely. And I'm biased, but I think that Washington is an amazing city for some incredibly smart women. And when we created Halcyon, we created a committee that was diverse and reflective of the diversity we wanted to see how cohorts. So diverse by any factor. Age, gender, race, sexual orientation and what's that resulted in happily is a housing community that has 52% of our ventures founded or co-founded by women, and 58% of our ventures founded by a person of color. But then when we looked around, the investor base didn't exactly reflect our fellows. So we started to think about how we could engender and cultivate investors that were also diverse. And one of the ways to do that was to create a group of women in D.C. that wanted to fund social impact, leaning women led ventures, and it's called the WE Capital. It's led by Dr. Kuno, who is my co-founder and chair at Halcyon, and Sheila Johnson who was one of the founders of BET and has now founded Salamander Resorts. And there's 13 other remarkable women in that contingent and they're all paying it back. But and a very smart way that gets them market rate returns. >> This is interesting, the community paying forward has been the ethos of very robust and successful communities Silicon Valley here in Washington, D.C. How do you scale that? How do you go global with this? Because now you have a global model. Silicon Valley D.C. and all around world where you now have different communities coming together, all the same mission potentially. How do you blend it all in? How do you take that to the next level? >> That's a good question. We're gradually building what I call a kind Army. Just this amazing community that has ripple effects. We don't feel that we have to own or control this in anyway. Just over 3 1/2 years, we've had 55 ventures come through here. They've raised nearly $40 million dollars. Impacted half a million people around the world in a positive way. They've created nearly 500 jobs. You start to see the exponential growth even just as we sit here in this building. But I do think that's a long way to go in terms of people understanding this social societal entrepreneurship. People have different definitions for it and it's a long way to go in term terms of government and philanthropy really being able to understand it. Because in some ways as I mentioned, they lost touch with who their customers are. >> Okay and I've always been saying in Silicon Valley and on my Facebook page and also on theCube that SiliconValley doesn't get D.C. They try to come in waves around. You don't get it and they're impatient, I would say if I categorize. They get D.C. but I don't think they have the patience for it. It's a new culture here. Also the pace of change is accelerating in D.C. but it's a formula for D.C. What is the secret to be successful in Washington, D.C if you're a tech entrepreneur or investor or someone from Silicon Valley or not from here? >> We do get the advantage of being able to see who does that well and who doesn't. And tech is obviously leading ahead of policy. Policy is trailing tech and I think that can understandably make policymakers nervous. They've got a lot of understanding to do to be able to make some policy decisions. And these tech solutions are very complicated so the people in tech that I see being successful around policy of those that will take the time to really sit down and pick through a problem with policy maker and help them to understand it. Policy makers are actually very smart but they're dealing with a lot. >> John: So education. >> Education, education absolutely. You can't come in here >> Patience. >> And be impatient that they're not getting it. But I think that's going to essential. We've got to figure out how to talk each other and how to talk across different languages, different domain, different sectors and creates some better intersectionality. >> So what's next for Halcyon? What's the vision? What's your vision of how this will go forward? Obviously you've got a great model, batches coming through cohorts, and you have demo days here. I noticed your set up downstairs for a demo day so it's very robust, classic incubator, accelerator model with the residences leading it there. What's next? Where do you go from here? >> We don't take equity in any of our ventures but we are thinking about creating a fund, because so many of our ventures are performing exceptionally well. And we're actually going to be launching a festival that really takes the power of creativity and compassion, and art and technology here in D.C. and that will be in June. And we're hoping it that way, we can reach a wide audience, and that's going to be very exciting. The long term vision really is how can we harness the power of compassionate and creativity to solve 21st century problems, and how can we do that at scale? >> The classic disruption model is gate keepers start being disrupted by the new guard as Andy Jassy would say in Amazon. These a new creative as well. I did a panel at Sundance a few weeks ago where we talked about this creative where democratization is happening at artist level, and the government maker level. And that seems to be happening across all industries. A new creative is developing. What's your view of the digital impact? Because artistry can be sculptures and painting and whatnot to classic artistry or film making but now tech's involved, digital. >> Yeah. >> It's coming together. Is the vision how you see art and science coming together? >> Yeah, artists are fantastic disrupters. Sometimes they don't even need to paint a picture. They just use their ability as an artist to do things other people can't. And that's why they're awfully fun to be round. I think that you're absolutely right. I point to Dee Rees as an great example, who didn't get her funding for her film Mudbound through the the Hollywood machine, instead she went straight to Netflix and now she's getting an Oscar. That's a new way of doing things. We have one of our fellows, DeShuna who created kweliTV which is Netflix for the African diaspora because Netflix just doesn't have the kind of black filmmaking that she wants to see. So yeah I absolutely see people using digital to do different kinds of disrupting including on the outside of things. We have another program, the Arts Lab. Very similar to this but working with excellent artists who are thinking about social justice. One of the artist, Georgia Os-acs is doing a project called Two Future Women. And she's collecting letters that women are writing to other women 19 years from now. They're being archived by the museums in D.C. and will be displayed on the eve of the Women's March. Wouldn't it be great to know what the suffragette were thinking? And that all requires technology to be able to successfully collect those, disseminate them, archive them et cetera. >> So New channels to the market place breaking down the barriers for the gate keeper seems to be the trend. How is that happening in your world, in D.C and in philanthropy? You're now creating a new model of entrepreneurship. >> Yes, yes. >> Not just philanthropy, hey nice job or policy check box, it's real change. >> And arguably a new model for philanthropy because very rarely is philanthropy so immersive where we're literally taking these people and we're in the living with them for five months, and giving them all of these supports. And I think it's also a new model and that it's risk taking. It's not a safe and secured, metric based, proven solutions. It's some of these centers are going to fail and I think that that's okay. That's just testing and trying and finding the best and moving forward. I was going to make another point. >> You guys are changing the world obviously, I made a comment on Facebook, we're saving the world at the same time because you mentioned you can actually get ahead of some of these trends with this gap. Whether it's inequity, inequality or however these gaps are causing even war or depression as history points out. Now you have an opportunity to use, not just diagnostic capability but predictive and prescriptive mechanisms. What are some of those things that someone could see and connect the dots around an example of something that's prescriptive. Say wait, wow, time out. We've got something going on over there as a problem space we can solve with a solution. What are some examples that you see playing out where this model could work? >> I'm not sure I quite understand the question. >> If you had the ability to use technology to solve some societal problems, what are some examples that you're seeing here in your incubator that are pointing to this new trend? >> Yeah, I think that our fellows are fantastic examples of that. Many of them are tech enabled whether or not they're using apps or the cloud or just a new actual technology product. One of our fellows is using, he's created a new product that disrupts the vestibular system so that you don't feel motion sickness. Now this is actually a product that is obviously very valuable for just everyday people, who are going to be in driver-less cars trying to do their work. But it turns out very useful for the military and very useful for people who are trying to create virtual reality. 40% of people can not put a virtual reality headset on and not feel nauseous. So I do think that it is tech's job to solve some of the problems that we haven't been able to solve yet. In many ways, the internet and the Internet of Things is our biggest leap forward since fire. Now how are we going to use it to create the disruption that fire did? Fire allowed us to eat more things, grow bigger then start to farm and and I think that we haven't even hit the cusp of what the internet can do yet. It can do way more things and deliver products to our doorsteps. >> Next up at the wheel, you get fired-- >> Right, what's is the tech wheel? I think it's going to be really-- >> Personal question for you, what is the big learnings that you've had over the past few years? (mumbles) say well I didn't expect that to happen or wow, that was super awesome or a failure or a success? What was your big learnings that you've come out-- >> Oh my gosh, do you have an hour? We've learnt how not to do and how to do mentorship very well. You can't take mentorship lightly. This is human chemistry we're talking about and even if you think you've got the perfect match on paper, it may not work. We have certainly learned a lot about how it is really important to have investors that reflect entrepreneurs because to your very point, that work is going to take everyone to create technologies that work for everyone. It also creates and builds even investors who look like everyone because otherwise there is an inherent bias. Really good people have inherent bias and that needs to be solved for. Because I straddle both art and entrepreneurship in my role. These some really interesting things that I've noticed in terms of how entrepreneurs see the world as infinite resource and artist see it as very finite. And how some of our systemic problems are reflected almost identically in both fields. This is an interesting statistic. 5% of venture capital goes to women, we know that and 1% to African Americans, 0.01% to Black women. In the museum world, in museums in the western hemisphere, 5% of their art collection is women artists, 1% is African American artists. That's not a coincidence, that's a clear picture of how power structures have evolved to make certain types of decisions about who should get capital, who is worth collecting, and we're definitely solving for that. >> And certainly having a lens on that and exposing that-- >> Kate: Absolutely. >> Is the way to-- >> It's very important. >> Talk about artistry, one of the things we've been talking about in the software and in the tech business is the role of artistry and craft. And that we see that swinging back with cloud computing. I would say to the craft out a software development but you're seeing these integrated solutions where craftsmanship and art are coming together. We're seeing examples, certainly in Asia, in China we're seeing examples where the development world, the technical world has come together with artistry world to create these new solutions. So you've got creative and you've got technical coming together. That's what you're doing. >> Yeah, no absolutely. >> What's the success formula? Is there one? Is it right brain, left brain, what's the-- >> I don't know. We've just got this bubbly caldron of creativity and we're pulling stuff out of it as we go, but I think it's important for us not to forget about art. Art has been at the forefront of every social change, every movement. If it does its job, it's of the moment and it tells us a lot about ourselves. But there's also that important thing about art with technology, and with consumer products. The reason that the iPhone was so successful is because it's a thing of beauty, and everyone is in awe of it. So design is critical, it's absolutely critical when you're thinking about scale or consumer products or tech that works. >> And having a good taste for a good art is also a skill. >> Yeah. >> Knowing what's beautiful. >> Of course. >> Tech guys love to have that skill. >> You could argue that that's getting democratized and disrupted as well. >> Kate, thanks so much for spending some time here. >> My pleasure, this is fun. >> Cube Conversation, Kate Goodall, co-founder and CEO of Halcyon here in Washington, D.C. Changing the world, societal entrepreneurship. A lot of great actions. This is theCube coverage. Thanks for watching. (uptempo techno music)