>> Hey. Welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here, with The Cube. We're in Denver, Colorado at the Airworks show, put on by DJI, and who knew that we would fly, like a thousand miles to see the keynote speaker, guest speakers, the Menlo Park Fire Department, real close to us in Palo Alto, So, we're excited to have them here, and, also, to learn about the practical applications of drone technology for public safety. So, we're joined by Michael Ralston, he runs the Crisis Response and Innovation in Technology Practice Initiative at Menlo Park Fires. So, Michael, great to see you. >> Thank you. Thanks for having me here, Jeff. >> Absolutely. You're obviously here on the invitation of DJI so you guys must be doing some pretty interesting things. Not only with drones, but really looking at a broader technology suite of things that you guys can bring to bare, to save lives and put out fires. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. We're excited to be here, and the thing about DJI is that we've been working with them for years. We've been getting into the whole concept of using drones and using technology in crisis response. And so, it's all coming together right at the right time. We're excited about the announcements that are going on here because it really represents a culmination of what we've been trying to do. >> Right. But still, you're a real customer, and I thought it was interesting. The first part of the story was you guys decided to get drones and use them, you got one, and then it sat on the shelf for two years. Right? I mean, it's just not as easy, and then I think the other really important message that came out of your talk was, you kept kind of stumbling on to all these new requirements. Insurance, training, certifications. So, it wasn't easy, but that was years ago. And now, you guys are really leading the charge in using this technology. >> There is many, many people in the country who are all uncovering this Van Gogh at the same time. And so, what we really try to do, and try to bring across in our program is that it's not all about us and we're not necessarily the leaders. We may be one of the ones who are leading the charge, but what we've discovered over the years, over the years in our term, right? Which is really months. Is that that initial foundation stage, getting the drone and having it sitting there, we discovered quite a bit. We discovered that you have to do this first. Oh, wait. You got to do this first, you got to do this. And once we got to that point, where we had the right regulatory and political, community support, then we got into this growth stage. This is an exciting time. It was a transition point where now we're starting to ... Things are moving faster, we're starting to learn. We got out of middle school, we're now in high school. But that growth phase, that was... As exciting as it was, we started doing more and more missions. Use whichever cliche you want. "Two steps forward, one step back," whatever. We discovered that there's an ecosystem out there. This ecosystem is bigger than we are, and involves all kinds of other critical elements that have to be put in place and have to be developed, have to get deep. Things that are beyond our expertise, things such as logistics, such as training or support, or other regulatory elements. All those things, and technology, obviously. As we learned about this ecosystem, we started to realize that that's what's going to make all this work. It's not just us, we're like a start-up company. We're like a technology start-up company, within the fire district. But we realized, like any start-up company, that market has to be made. And so, we've spent a lot of time, a lot of effort putting together things, bringing people together, saying... People listen to us, we're the fire department. It's kind of fun to hangout with us, or we like to think so, but... >> It is (laughs). >> But, what that means is we say, "Hey, why don't we get everybody together, and let's have a conversation together." And, it's that symbiosis. It's that synergy, energy coming together, that new links, new networks are formed, and people start to realize, "Oh wow. You're doing that? We're doing that, too. Let's work together." And, we just stand by and go, "This is awesome," because it gets us to where we want to be, which is saving lives, obviously. >> It's interesting because you showed a symposium that you put on at Slack, again not only the ecosystem to enable you, but then you guys took a real active role then in passing that knowledge on to other departments and other institutions. Wondering if you can explain a little bit, how did that come together? How well was it received? And is that now part of an ongoing thing that you guys are going to continue to support. >> Well, brief answer. Absolutely, it's an ongoing thing. It's an ongoing thing beyond just drones, so we're calling it Technology Symposium. Meaning, we started to realize that there's all kinds of inventive technology. My program, Crisis Response, Innovation, and Technology is how do we go and leverage... make use of all the things we can put into the fire service to help us do what we do. Now, specifically to your question, this symposium. We had all these folks there together, and it was great. It was very well received and a lot of people came up to us afterwards saying, "I'm so glad you did this." And, it was because everyone thought it should be done. We are blessed by the fact of where we are, or geographically speaking. And, by the fact that when we do knock on people's doors they tend to answer, they're excited to go and participate. So, we're good at hosting a party. But we were hosting a party, that's what it was. We contributed what we knew, which was, "Hey, we're trying to climb this mountain, and we took this path." But there's lots of other people who have just as important programs, and they've learned a lot of other things we haven't learned because they took this path. Let's get them all together, and the only way we can get to the mountain top together is to share that information. >> Give us some specific examples of things that you guys do with drones that you could not do before that have been some of the really... Like, "Wow," "A-ha" moments when you deploy these things. >> How much time do you go? >> Give me your top couple, we've got time. You're the fire department, we got time. Nothing's burning, they are running drones back there. You could probably hear them in the background. >> There's quite a bit. The first place that I would start is we are the fire department and we do regular fire department things. We put out fires, we go to auto accidents, we go to medical things. All those things that we do can come up with a use case for a drone because when you think about it, as Chief Calvert mentioned earlier on in our presentation, our fire district, like any other fire department around the country, around the world, we protect life, we protect property, we protect the environment, right? Well, but when you think about, "What can a drone do?" "What can technology do, in general?" It can do three main things, right? And, these are critical things to us. One, is provide more safety. One, is provide better situational awareness, two. And three is, of course, better response time. Well, response time, situational awareness, and safety, that applies to medical calls, applies to car accidents, applies to fire. A more specific example is, you have a fire, and, conceptually, we live... I don't know what the traffic is like where-- >> I live right by you, in Palo Alto. So, it's not good (laughs). >> Picture yourself needing the fire department to get there, you call 911 and there's traffic. Now, lights and sirens are going to let people know, but you can't go anywhere if you're in a traffic jam. We face the same challenge. What if a drone could go straight over head, line of sight, and get there. Now, in some cases, that's life saving stuff. Bring an AED. An AED is a defibrillator. >> Right. >> That's one way that you can actually make use of a drone to get life-saving stuff there faster. Or, what happens if someone calls 911, it's a car accident, because you're supposed to do that, but it's a minor accident. Well, it's safer for us to drive code two, what we call.. You know, to drive without lights and sirens, just to go there and check it out, but it's not an emergency. It's safer for the citizens, it's safer for us. Send a drone there, you see right away that this is a fender bender, off to the side of the road, go there to check it out, but don't go lights and sirens. It's safer for them, it's safer for us. Or, "Hey, this is a fire. It's getting bigger and bigger." Not just send one engine, but send the calvary. So, another example is situational awareness. If you're on scene somewhere, if you think about it... And, you know, for those of us who are parents out there, we know what it's like to run a zone defense on your kids. You're processing a lot of things at once. Well, the act of a battalion chief or incident commander on scene of a fire or of a large incident, it's chaos. There's a lot of stuff going through that person's mind. He or she has to remain focused on their mission, but also take in a lot of information. And they're constantly looking around, they're constantly moving. What if, they had eyes in the sky. What if, instead of them having to walk around the building to get a 360 view, they had a screen here, and you have a drone that's just circling. It would provide tremendous amount of information for them. That'd be a game changer. >> Yeah, and it really came up in the keynote, too, about having someone who's trained, looking at the picture, who knows what to look for. What are the key signs they want to check out. So, again, really invaluable service. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Yeah. Well, very exciting times, and congrats for being highlighted, and keep doing the great work that you do. >> Great. Thanks for having us. >> All right. He's Michael Ralston, I'm Jeff Rick. From Menlo Fire, I'm from The Cube. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time.

>>Trump and low park California in the heart of Silicon Valley. It's the cube covering cloud now. Awards 2020 brought to you by Silicon angle media. Now here's Sonya to garden. >>Hi and welcome to the cube. I'm your host Sonia to Gary. And we're on the ground at Facebook headquarters in Menlo park, California covering cloud now's top women entrepreneurs in cloud innovation awards. Joining us today is modest to get day, the cofounder of branch motto. Welcome to the cube. Thank you so much for having me. So you're receiving an award today for being a top female entrepreneur in cloud innovation. How does that feel? >>It feels awesome. I'm humbled to be in such amazing company with some great ladies that have started really great companies, so pretty excited to be here. >>Great. So just give us a brief overview of your background. >>Sure. Uh, my background, well, I probably don't have the regular Silicon Valley background. I was born and raised in communist Romania, uh, in a pretty small town called Barco, uh, in the Rijo Romania called Moldavia. I was very good at math. Um, and my parents, uh, pushed me to explore applying to schools in the United States, which I did. Um, and I applied to 23 colleges and the DOB, uh, getting a full scholarship from Cornell where I studied computer engineering. Um, I dreamt of working for big companies, which I did for a while, uh, until one day when I remember I was doing a master's to Stanford and one professor told me I was, I told him, I was like, I don't think I could ever start a company. And he was like, what if you don't? Like, who do you think? Well, so I was like, Oh, I never thought about it that way. Um, and that's when I think my entrepreneurial dream started. And a few years later I started, um, phone co-founders and started a few different companies that eventually ended up being branch. That's a long answer to your question. >>No, that's perfect. So what inspired you to start branch and how did you navigate getting funding? >>Um, it's a, it's an interesting story. I think we came together, my cofounders and I were in business school, Stanford, we all want to start a company and we did what all business school students do. We just started something that sounded cool but maybe it didn't have such a big market. Um, and uh, then pivoted and ended up building an app. So we worked on an app or the mobile photo printing app called kindred. We worked on the Apple for quite some time. It was, um, over a year we sold over 10,000 photo books. I've seen a lot of images of babies and pets and we reviewed manually every single book and we had a really hard time growing. So if you think about the mobile ecosystem today, and if you compare it to the web on the web, the web is a pretty democratic system. >>You, um, you have the HTTP protocol and you are able to put together a website and make sure that the website gets found through social media to research to all this other platforms. Apps are much harder to discover. Um, the app ecosystem is owned by the platforms. And we had a really hard time applying. I was coming from the web world and all the things I had done to market websites just in the work with the apps. And it was hard. Uh, you know, you could only Mark at the top and how out all the content inside the app. That's a lot more interesting than the app itself. So we, we felt that we were like really, really struggling and we would need it to kind of shut the company down. And then we realized that one of the things that we were trying to build for us to a disability to allow people to share and get to content within the app, which is in our case was photo books was actually something that everyone in the ecosystem needed. >>So we, we asked a lot of people and it seemed like this was a much bigger need. Uh, then, you know, the photo books. And, uh, we had started to already build it to solve our own problem. So we started building a linking and attribution platform, um, to help other app. And mobile companies grow and understand their user journey and help build like interesting connections for the user. So, you know, our mission is to, um, to help people discover content within apps, uh, through links that always work. Uh, and it's been a wonderful, like an F pretty exciting journey ever since. That's really inspiring and, and solving a real world problem, a real world problem. >> So it's interesting when you ask about fundraising. Uh, it was so hard to raise money for the photo book app. And we raised actually from, uh, uh, pay our ventures and they actually, even now I remember, uh, the guy patch man sat us down in a very Silicon Valley fashion at the rosewoods and was a very hot day and there was like Persian tea being served and he gave us money and he said, you know, I just want to do something. >>I am not investing in the idea. I'm investing in you as a team. Uh, and if you pivot away from photo books, you know, uh, which we did and I think we pivoted the way because we ended up finding a much, much bigger problem. And we felt that, you know, we could actually make a, an actual change into the mobile cloud ecosystem. And that's how, that's how it all started. Uh, and it wasn't actually was easier to raise money after we had a really big problem. We had a good team that had been working together for almost two years. We had product market fit. >> So, uh, so yeah. So what are some things that have influenced you in your journey to become an entrepreneur? Um, some things interesting. Um, well I would say the Stanford design school. Um, I think I came from working for Siemens, which is a giant company. >>And I started doing this project and I remember one of the projects was we built, um, an, uh, a toolbar we were supposed to where we're doing a project for, um, Firefox, which, you know, Mozilla was utilize browser, uh, which was in some ways the precursor to Chrome. And we're trying to help it grow. And we didn't know. And one of the ideas was we, we built this toolbar for eBay and eBay hadn't had a toolbar for Firefox. And we, you know, we were some students for two weeks. We build this toolbar bar and then someone bought the car to our toolbar. And I was like, wow. Like how incredible is it that you can just kind of put your thoughts on something and just get something done and make an actual impact someone's life. And I think that's when the spark of the entrepreneurial spark, it was during that time that, um, Michael Dearing course, a professor and one of my D school courses also told me the thing that if I don't do it, who will? >>And I think that's when, that's when it all started. I think the things that have helped me along the way, I mean, my cofounders, I think I've been incredibly lucky to find cofounders that are incredibly eager to be good at what they do and also very different from me. So I think if you think about why many companies implode, it's usually because of the founding team. We've been together for almost seven years now. Uh, and it's been an interesting way to find balance through so many failed companies. So many stages of growth branches over 400 people now. So you know, our roles have shifted over time and it's been like, uh, an interesting journey and I think recently more in the past few years, I think one of the things that has helped me find balance has been having a group of female founder friends. Um, it's really interesting to have a peer group that you can talk about things with and be vulnerable with. >>And I didn't have that in the first few years and I wish I did. My cofounders are amazing, but I think in some ways we are also coworkers. So having an external group has been incredibly helpful in helping me find balance in my life. So I think a lot of women feel that way. They feel that it's really difficult to navigate in this male dominated workspace. So what advice would you give to female entrepreneurs in this space? Yeah, I mean it is really hard and I think confidence is something that I've noticed with myself, my peers, the women that I've invested in. I do investing on the side. Uh, I would say believe that you can do it. Uh, believe that the only, the sky's the limit believe that, um, you can do more than you think you can do. I think sometimes, uh, you know, our, our background and the society around us, um, doesn't necessarily believe that we can do the things that we can do as women. >>So I think believing in ourselves is incredibly important. I think the second part is making sure that we build networks around us. They can tell us that they believe in us. They can push us beyond what we think is possible. And I think those networks can be peers. Like my funeral founder group, we call each other for ministers or, uh, I think investors. Um, I think it can be mentors. And I've had, I've been lucky enough to have amazing women investors, uh, women mentors. Um, and I, it's been a really incredible to see how much they helped me grow. So I think the interesting thing is when I was just getting started, I didn't look for those communities. I didn't look for a guy. I just kinda felt, Oh, I can do it. But I didn't actually realize that being part of a community, being vulnerable, asking questions can actually go help me go so much further. Um, so the advice would be to start early and find a small group of people that you can actually rely on, and that can be your advocates and your champions. So, yeah. Well, thank you so much for those words of wisdom. Thanks for having me. Thank you for being on the cube. I'm your host, Sonia to Gary. Thanks for watching the cube. Stay tuned for more.

>>from Menlo Park, California In the heart of Silicon Valley, it's the Cube covering cloud now. Awards 2020 Brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. Now here's Sonia category. >>Hi and welcome to the Cube. I'm your host Sonia category, and we're on the ground at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California covering Cloud now's top women entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. Joining us today is Tao Johnson, who's the CEO and founder of Kaizen Technology Partners. Now welcome to the Cube. Thank you. Thank you for having me. So give us a brief overview of your background. >>Sure, I actually have a finance degree and have no idea what technology was. I started as a finance analyst at Sun Microsystems and had no idea who they were or what job awas but having the interest to be a CFO one day, our CEO in another company, I figured I'd go into sales and really understand what drives a company growth and revenue. So I was actually trained by Scott McNealy's best of the best program and was in sales class with him and his with his sister in law. And, um, I never left sales after them, >>so um So you mentioned that you have a finance background? How do you think that background has helped you to become a successful CEO versus, say, a technical background? >>And I think having the finance background is very important because your cash flow management is one of the biggest reasons companies fail. You know, before they can get their next round of funding, they run out of their overhead costs, their monthly overhead costs. The other thing is really to understand how to sell in our ally and total cost of ownership to the decision powers that be at the CFO level and CEO CIO. >>Okay, Um, so you're on the cloud now advisory board to tell us, How did you join And how was that experience? Like, I think >>it grew organically having been a participant to a few of the events with Jocelyn and then helping her. Where can I help? How can I get speakers for you or winners? And over time, just like just came to me and said, You know, you have such a network, Why don't you join our board and help us where we can? Hence we have mailing today, um, as our keynote because of our network. >>And speaking of entrepreneurs, you, um, I just want to mention that you are at this program for Harvard, for entrepreneurs. Can you talk more about that? >>Sure, it's an amazing program. I wish that there were more women who applied and were able to invest the money and time into the program. It's, ah, owners and entrepreneurs who have companies around the world. There's 41 countries represented. Unfortunately, only about 17% of women of 151 participants in class. We meet three times once a year, and we go through three weeks of intensive training to discuss marketing finance how to scale operations. But the best thing you get out of it is 1 30% of it is learning this case studies method and Harvard, the other 30% is really the network and the different industry's. You get to meet. We have film. As you know, we've talked about retail and other industries there that you can self reflect on. How does that involve with technology? Um, and then the other 30 self reflection time. A lot of entrepreneurs, especially CEOs, don't have the time to get away from their business, and it really forces you to not be the operator. Walk away and be able to self reflect on Where do you want to take the business >>today >>and speaking about networking? What's your advice on networking within the industry? What are some tips and tricks >>in my belief? You know, we have social media, but the best way to meet people is through other people. So going to events like this and really having an idea of your goals at the event when you're going there, who's going to help you get to that person? Um, and having a focus, not. I want to meet 100 80 people, and I don't know who they're going to be really being able to say, Who do I want to meet at that event who can help me get there and preparing plan as much triple the time that you're gonna be even at the event? >>Yes, the networking can be really difficult. So as an entrepreneur, what do you think makes a great entrepreneur? >>You know, entrepreneurship is very hard because you really have to touch all facets of a company and find the right people to trust to do certain areas, but then be able to understand all the different parts of the company, right, from supply chain to partnerships to sales and finance. So what, you really have to be diverse and ambidextrous, and that makes it very difficult for some people who are only analytical or only sales e to be able to run a company in scale. >>And what advice do you have for female technologists who maybe feel that so it's really difficult to navigate in this male dominated industry? I would >>say to them they're stand out, make your different standout, right? Why make it a negative? The positive is you are female and you stand out so less men get called on by you and you might have a chance to get in the door. But you better have your ideas in line and your resource is and you better be >>kick ass. But use it to your >>advantage that you are different and that they're not used to hearing from women. >>So you've been with carved out for many years now. Where do you hope to see cloud now in the future, I >>would love to see cloud now be more, uh, geographically worldwide as we're doing more work in my non profit for women Rwanda, in Afghanistan as entrepreneurs, Um and I think, you know, we've upped and stepped up so much more with Facebook bringing in investments to us to compared to what we've done before, Um, I think just the awareness and may be doing this on a, um, twice a year basis instead of only once a year to be ableto celebrate these wonderful women. >>Don, thank you so much for being on the Cube. This has been really knowledgeable. Thank you for having me. I'm Sonia Tagaris. Thank you for watching the Cube stay tuned for more. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

From a little park, California in the heart of Silicon Valley. It's the cube covering cloud now. Awards 2020 brought to you by Silicon angle media. Here's Sonya to garden. Hi and welcome to the cube. I'm your host Sonia to Gary. And we're on the ground at Facebook headquarters in Menlo park, California covering cloud nows, top women entrepreneurs in cloud innovation awards. Joining us today is Christine Heckart, CEO of scaler. Christine, welcome to the cube. Thank you. So you're receiving an award today for being one of the top women in cloud. Um, how do you feel about that? >>Oh, it's always terrible to get an award. I mean, it's awesome. I'm very honored to be here. >>Awesome. Um, so give us a little brief overview of your background. >>Oh, 30 years in tech. Um, let's same now. I'm CEO of scaler. So we're a log analytics company. We scale to over a hundred terabytes a day in the cloud at ridiculously affordable prices. And we serve some of the best tech companies in the world. We sell into engineers and developers. >>And so you've been CEO for over a year now. What's that experience been like? What challenges have you faced along the way? >>Uh, exhilarating experience if you've never been at a startup? Um, it's a great place to be. It's a phenomenal team. Challenges are all about how you grow and how you serve customers well on a limited set of resource with unlimited choice sets and opportunities. And that's hard thing to do. >>So you've been an executive for quite a while now. What's the best part about being a CEO? >>The people are the best part. Um, both the employees. We have some incredible employees, very energized about the mission, very dedicated, uh, and then absolutely amazing customers that we serve. These, you know, we serve engineers whereby accompanied by engineers for engineers and engineers innovate to change the world. And our job is to help them innovate with more confidence so they can change the world more quickly. And so you're feeding into all these incredible missions around the world with these incredible people and you're helping them do their job better. And it's just every day is different and every day is fun. >>So what are the, some of the things that have influenced you along the way or some of the people who have influenced you? >>Jeez. Um, you know, I guess I'm influenced mostly by the people who I worked with and who have worked for me. Um, even more so maybe than the people I've worked for, although they've also been fabulous. Um, I just think you learn from, you learn from all the talent around you in the way people think differently about problems and, and how that synergy, um, often creates just magical outcomes. >>So as a CEO, um, what kind of workplace culture are striving to achieve? >>Uh, we have picked just one value and there are other companies that I think are doing the same and the value and we picked us care. And so we really strive to have a culture that encourages people to care about each other and care about the company's mission, uh, care about serving customers well and, and building a very high quality product with great experience, but also care about the environment and care about the community and care about people's lives outside of the day to day work job. Um, so we try to take a really holistic view, but on one key attribute, which is care. >>Well that's, that's awesome. I think everyone wants to go to work and, and just feel like, you know, that they're not bogged down by long hours or that >>we still have long hours. There's no doubt about that, but it's carrying long hours right there. Appreciate it. Yeah. Um, so what advice would you give to women who are considering a career in tech? I love tech. I've been 30 years in tech. I go out of my way to get people into the industry. Um, I do believe in all of its facets. It's the greatest industry in the history of history. I really do believe that it's also a hard place to work. It's a demanding place to work. Um, it's still hard place to work for women. Um, and any, I think kind of minority, uh, it's not as welcoming yet as it could be, but relative to 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, we've made enormous progress. I still believe we are making enormous progress and there's work to go, but it's very encouraging. >>That's great. Um, so, um, after being in the industry for a while, have you figured out a work life balance? Is there a secret? Is it a myth? >>Um, I am not the person to ask about work life balance for sure. Uh, most people would probably say I don't have it. Um, I don't look at it as balanced so much as, um, maybe juggling, like you just prioritize what's important in the moment. Um, I do believe in that. One of the great things about tech is usually you can do your job anytime from anywhere. Um, and you know, that has good and bad. So I tend to do my job all times everywhere. But you can do your job all times, everywhere and, and sometimes that's from home. And sometimes that's from other places, you know, anywhere around the world. >>And I'm sure especially as like, you know, moms and stuff like it's, it's great to have that flexibility. Um, and um, so, okay. So as a CEO, what do you think makes you a great leader? >>Um, I think any great leader is a leader who cares about their mission and their employees, uh, as people and not just as workers, um, and their customers as people and their, their holistic careers in their lives, not just as a source of revenue. So that's one of the reasons why we picked that value care is that, you know, it's super important for any leader at any level. What do you think leaders can do to, to make that, make it more welcoming for women in tech to be part of this industry? Um, it's not, this is not a question about women or any, anybody in particular, what people value is being appreciated and being included and being heard. That's it. Like, if you, if, if you can create an environment that is inclusive, where people can be heard and can be valued for what they contribute and their ideas, then I think, you know, it's a great place to work and, and, and that's a hard thing to do. It's white. It's easy to say. It's very hard to do culturally. Um, but I, I really think it's that simple. Well, thank you so much, Christine, for being on the. It's always great to have you here. Thank you for having me again. I'm sending it to Gary. Thanks for watching the cube. Stay tuned for more.

>>from Menlo Park, California In the heart of Silicon Valley, it's the Cube covering cloud now. Awards 2020 Brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. Now here's Sonia category. >>Hi, and welcome to the Cube. I'm your host Sonia category, and we're on the ground at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California covering Cloud now's top women entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. >>Joining us today is Get the Schmidt CEO of Human. Get that. Welcome to the Cube. >>Thank you. Thanks for having me. >>So just give us a brief overview of your background and more about Humira. All right, A brief >>overview. Let's see. Um, I'll start off that I've been in the industry for some time now. Um, since ah, 97 which I used to actually work at this campus that we're here today at when it used to be Sun Microsystems. So I started out in technology in product management and marketing. Mainly, um, when java was coming out so early days and really learned a lot about what it takes to take a product or a concept out to market very exciting in those early days and sort of, you know, move towards looking at Industries and Sister focused on financial services into the lot around financial services marketing. Also it son. >>And then I moved >>to Denmark, which is sort of a surprise, But I'm married to a day and we decided we would try something different. So I moved to Denmark, working at a consulting company software consulting company based in Denmark, fairly small and Ah, and was part of sort of building out of the conference and business development business they had over there. And ah, and that was a way for us, for me to understand a completely other side of the business consulting aspects where you really build software for a customer and really understand, you know, sort of the customer solution needs that are required versus when you're working at a large enterprise company kind of are separated away from the customers. And that was there where I met the two founding team members of Humi Oh, Christian and Trust in at Tri Fork into you. Essentially, we've been working together for 10 years, and, uh, we sort of all felt like we could really come out with the world's best logging solution and, ah, this was out of some of the pain we were running into by running other solutions in the market. And so we took a leap into building our own product business. And so we did that in 2016. And so that's really what brought me here into the CEO role. So we have a three person leisure leadership or executive team, our founding team, which is to verily technical folks. So the guys that really built the product and and, uh, and keep it running and take it to the next level every single day. But what was missing was really that commercial kind of leader that was ready to take that role, and that's where I came in. So they were very supportive and and bringing me on board. So that was into 2016 where I started that >>that's awesome. So how do you think having like a business and marketing background versus a technical background has helped you become a successful CEO? Um, I >>think it's really, really hard if you don't have different profiles on your founding team to be able to run a successful tech business. So there's technology that you could have the world's greatest technology like an example would be my you know, my co founders were building an amazing product, but until they came into the room, they hadn't thought about going out and trying to get a customer to use it. And essentially, that is one of the issues there is that you can sit and build something and build the best product out there. But if you're not getting feedback really, really early in the design and the concepts of product development, then customers our search of it's not built in. And so a lot of the thought process around him. EOS We like to say customers are in our DNA. We build >>our product >>for people to use 6 to 8 hours a day, and they're in it every day. And so it keeps this feeling of a customer feedback loop. And even if you're technical, it's really exciting. You know that you build something that somebody uses every day. It looks at every day, and so that's the kind of energy that we've tried to, you know, instill. Or maybe I've tried to instill in Humi Oh, that you know, our customers really matter, and I think that's one of the ways that we've been able to move, Let's say really, really fast in building the right features the right functionality, um, and the right things for people are using it on the on the on, the on the other and essentially >>so okay. And, um so you're here to receive an award for being one of the top female entrepreneurs in cloud innovation. So congratulations and And how does it feel to win this award? Super >>exciting. I mean, I'm glad that there are organizations like Cloud now that are doing amazing things for women and and also, you know, making examples of folks that are doing interesting roles in our industry, especially around B two B software. I think that's a real area where there's not many CIOs or leaders in our space where there should be. And, uh, and I think part of it is actually kind of highlighting that. But, you know, the other side is sort of an event like this today is bringing together a lot of other profiles that are women or diverse profiles together to sort of, you know, talk about this problem and acknowledge and also take, let's say, more of an active stance around, you know, making this place not so scary. I mean, I think I remember one of my early events and I was raising our series A when I walked into a VC event where there were no other female CIOs out there. There's 100 CIOs and I was the only one. And I think one of the hard parts is I walked in there and, you know, it felt a bit uncomfortable, But there were some. There were two amazing VC partners at the company that I first started talking to, and that just really used the sort of like, you know, I guess. Uncomfortable, itty. So I think the main focus at things like today or, you know, the people that are here today. So I think we can help each other. And I think that's something that you know. That's something that I'd like to see more of, that we actively sort of create environments and communities for that to happen, and cloud now is one of them. >>So I think a lot of women have had that experience where they're the only woman in the room, you know, and it's just really hard to like. Figure out your path from there. So as the company as Julio, how do you What's your strategy for inclusion? >>Um, so, like I like to call it active inclusion. I think part of this is like having a diverse workforce, which is, you know, obviously including women and different backgrounds. Other things. But >>one of >>the big things we think about at Hume Eo is we really like to, let's say, celebrate people's differences so like that you're able to be yourself and almost eccentric is a good thing. And be able to feel safe in that environment to feel safe, that you can express your opinions, feel comfortable and safe when you're, you know, coming with a opposite viewpoint. Because the diversity of thought is really what we're trying to include in our company. So it means bringing together folks that don't look like each other where exactly, the same clothes and do the exact same hobbies and come from the same countries like we have. Ah, very, you know, global workforce. So we have folks, you know in Denmark of an office in Denmark. We have an office in the UK, and we have folks all over the U. S. We have a lot of backgrounds that have come from different cultures, and I think there's a beauty to that. There's a beauty to actually combining a lot of ways to solve problems. Everyone from a different culture has different ways of solving those. And so I think part of this is all around making that. Okay, right. So, you know, active inclusion is a way to to sort of put it into terms. So So we're definitely looking for people, Actively, that would like to join something like >>this. So I love that. Um, So if you were personally, if you were to have your own board of directors, like, who would they be? Um, it's not really >>the who. It's almost like the profiles or the people. I mean, we already have a personal board like I call it. I mean, it's something that I actively started doing. Um, once I once I started with a company board, I realized, you know, I probably need my own personal board, my own sort of support infrastructure That includes folks like my family, my sisters and my mom. It also includes you know, some younger junior folks that are actually much younger >>than me. >>But I learned so much from so um, to one of my good friend Cindy, who's who is brilliant at describing technology concepts. And and I think just some of the conversations I've had with her just opened my eyes to something that I hadn't seen before. And I think that's the area where I like to say the personal board isn't exactly you know people. It's it's profile. So along the way, as you grow, you're looking for new types of profiles. Let's say you want to learn about a new concept or a new technology or, you know, get better at running or something. So it's part of bringing those profiles in tow, learn about it and then back to this board concept. It's It's not as though it's a linked in network or it's actually sort of a group of people that you sort of rely on. And then it's a It's a two way street. So essentially, you know, there could be things that the other person could gain from knowing me, and ideally, that those were the best relationships in a personal board. So so I encourage alive women to do this because it builds a support infrastructure that is not related to your job. It's not your manager. It's not your co worker. You kind of feel some level of freedom having those discussions because those people aren't looking at your company. They're looking at helping you. So So that's That's sort of the concepts around >>the personal board idea and anything as women like having a sport system is so necessary, especially in this, like male dominated industry. Well, I think it's back >>to that whole feeling like you're the one person in the room, right? Right, so you're not the one person in the room, and I think we need to change that. And I think that's like some you know, all of our kind of roles that for all the women intact. I mean, it's sort of like something that we could help each other with right, and and if we don't do it actively, I mean, you know the numbers and we know you know the percentages of these things. If we want to change that, it does require some active interest on on our part to make that happen. And I think those are the areas where I see, like, the support infrastructures, the events like this really kind of engaging, um, us to be aware and doing something about the >>problem. Thank you so much for being on the key of love having you here. Thanks for >>having me. I really appreciate it. >>I'm Sonia to Garry. Thanks for watching the Cube. Stay tuned for more. >>Yeah, yeah.

>> Narrator: From Sand Hill Road, in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's the CUBE. Presenting, The People First Network, insights from entrepreneurs and tech leaders. >> Hello everyone welcome to this special CUBE conversation, I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here at Mayfield Fund, on Sand Hill Road and Menlo Park. As part of Mayfield's People First Network, co-creation with SiliconANGLE and theCUBE and Mayfield. Next guest, Beth Devin, Managing Director of Innovation Network and Emerging Technologies at Citi Ventures. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having me. >> Hey, thanks for coming in. We're here for the Mayfield fiftieth anniversary, where they're featuring luminaries like yourself, and we're talking about conversations around how the world's changing and the opportunities and the challenges can be met, and how you can share some of your best practices. Talk about what your role is at Citi Ventures and what your focus is. >> Sure, sure, and boy howdy, has it been changing. It's hard to keep up with. I've been at Citi Ventures about two years and one of the reasons I joined was to stand up an Emerging Technology practice. Citi Ventures does a lot of work in corporate venture investing. We tend to be strategic investors, for start up companies that are aligned with the strategy of Citi, as well as our client. We serve probably, eighty percent of the Fortune Five Hundred companies in the world. But we also are a really important part of the innovation ecosystem at Citi. Which is looking at how to drive culture change, broaden mindset, and really, enlist our employees to be part of the innovation process. So, we have an internal incubator, we have a Shark Tank-like process we call Discover Ten X. And what I really bring to the table with my team is monitoring, and learning about, and digesting technology that's not quite ready for commercialization but we think it might be disruptive in a good or challenging way for the bank or our clients. We try to educate and provide content that's helpful to our executives, and just the employee body at large. >> I want to get into a LinkedIn post you wrote, called the Tech Whisperer, which I love. >> Thank you. >> You're there to identify new things to help people understand what that is. But that's not what you've done. You've actually implemented technology. So, on the other side of the coin, in your career. Tell us about some of the things you've done in your career, because you've been a practitioner. >> Beth: Yeah. >> and now you're identifying trends and technologies, before you were on the other side of the table. >> That's right, and sometimes I'll tell you, I have that itch. I miss the operator role, sometimes. Yeah, you know, I feel so fortunate I sort of stumbled on computer science early when I was going to school. And, the first, I'd say twenty years of my career, were working in enterprise I.T, which at that time I couldn't even have made that distinction, like why do you have to say enterprise I.T. I was a software developer, and I was then a DBA, and I even did assembler language programing. So way back when, I think I was so fortunate to fall in to software engineering. It's like problem solving, or puzzle making, and you with your own brain and sort of typing can figure out these problems. Then over the years I became more of a manager and a leader, and sort of about a reputation for being somebody you could put on any hard problem and I'd figure a way out. You know tell me where we're trying to go it looks knotty, like not a fun project, and I would tackle that. And then I'd say, I had some experience working in lots of different industries. Which really gave me an appreciation, for you know, at the end of the day, we can all debate the role that technology plays in companies. But industries, whether it's health care or media, or financial services. There's a lot of the same challenges that we have. So I worked at Turner Broadcasting before it was acquired, you know by Time Warner and AOL. And I learned about media. And then I had a fantastic time working at Charles Schwab. That was my first big Financial Services role when it came back to the bay area. I worked at Art.Com, it was a need converse company, the first company I worked at where I was in charge of all the technology. We had no brick and mortar, and if the technology wasn't working, we weren't earning revenue, in fact, not only that, we were really making customers angry. I also had a role at a start up, where I was the third person to join the company, and we had a great CEO who had a vision, but it was on paper. And we hadn't really figured out how to build this. I was very proud to assemble a team, get an office, and have a product launch in a year. >> So you're a builder, you're a doer, an assembler, key coding, hexadecimal cord dumps back in the day. >> Way back when. We didn't even have monitors. I'll tell ya, it was a long time ago. >> Glory days, huh? Back when we didn't have shoes on. You know, technology. But what a change. >> Huge change. >> The variety of backgrounds you have, The LinkedIn, the Charles Schwab, I think was during the growth years. >> And the downturn, so we got both sides. >> Both sides of that coin, but again, the technologies were evolving. >> Yes. >> To serve that kind of high frequency customer base. >> Beth: That's right. >> With databases changing, internet getting faster. >> It has. >> Jeff: More people getting online. >> We were early adopters, I'll tell you. I still will tell people, Charles Schwab is one of the best experiences I have, even though at the end I was part of the layoff process. I was there almost seven years, and I watched, we had crazy times in the internet boom. Going in 98, 99, 2000, I can't even tell you some of the experiences we had. And we weren't a digital native. But we were one of the first companies to put trading online, and to build APIs so our customers could self service, and they could do that all online. We did mobile trading. I remember we had to test our software on like twenty different phone sets. Today, it's actually, so much easier. >> It's only three. Or two. Or one. Depending on how you look at it. >> That's right. We couldn't even test on all the phone sets that were out then. But that was such a great experience, and I still, that Schwab network, is still people I'm in touch with today. And we all sort of sprinkled out to different places. I think, I dunno, there's just something special about that company in terms of what we learned, and what we were able to accomplish. >> You have a fantastic background. Again the waves of innovation you have lived through, been apart of, tackling hard problems, taking it head on. Great ethos, great management discipline. Now more than ever, it seems to be needed, because we're living in an age of massive change. Cause you have the databases are changing, the networks changing, the coding paradigms changing. Dev ops, you've got the role of data. Obviously, mobile clearly is proliferated. And now the business models are evolving. Now you got business model action, technical changes, cultural people changes. All of those theaters are exploding with opportunity, but also challenges. What's your take on that as you look at that world? >> You know, I'm a change junkie, I think. I love when things are changing, when organizations are changing, when companies are coming apart and coming together. So for me, I feel like, I've been again, so fortunate I'm in the perfect place. But, one of the things that I really prided myself on early in my career, is being what I call the bridge, or the, the translator between the different lines of business folks that I work with. Whether it was head of marketing, or somebody in a sales or customer relationship, or service organization, and the technology teams I built and led. And I think I've had a natural curiosity about what makes a business tick, and not so much over indexing on the technology itself. So technology is going to come and go, there's going to be different flavors. But actually, how to really take advantage of that technology, to better engage your customers, which as you said, their needs and their demands are changing, their expectations are so high. They really set the pace now. Who would have though that ten years ago we'd live in an environment where industries and businesses are changing because consumers have sort of set the bar on the way we all want to interact, engage, communicate, buy, pay. So there's this huge impact on organizations, and you know, I have a lot of empathy for large established enterprises that are challenged to make it through this transformation, this change, that somehow, they have to make. And I always try to pay attention on which companies have done it. And I call out Microsoft as an example. I can still remember several years ago, being at a conference. I think it was Jeffrey Moore who was speaking, and he had on one slide... Here's all the companies in technology that have had really large success. Leading up to the internet boom days, there would be a recipe for the four companies that would come together. I think it was Sun, Oracle, and Microsoft. And then he said, and now here's the companies of today. And most young people coming out of college, or getting computer science degrees won't use any of these old technology companies. But Microsoft proved us all wrong, but they did it, focused on people, culture, being willing to say where they screwed up, and where they're not going to focus anymore, and part ways with those parts of their business. And really focus on who are their customers, what are their customer needs. I think there's something to be learned from those changes they made. And I think back to the Tech Whisperer, there's no excuse for an executive today, not to at least understand the fundamentals of technology. So many decisions have to be made around investment, capital, hiring, investment in your people. That without that understanding, you're sort of operating blind. >> And this is the thing that I think I love, and was impressed by that Tech Whisperer article. You know, a play on the Horse Whisperer, the movie. You're kind of whispering in the ears of leaders who won't admit that they're scared. But they're all scared! They're all scared. And so they need to get, maybe it's cognitive dissonance around decision making, or they might not trust their lead. Or they don't know what they're talking about So this certainly is there, I would agree with that. But there's dynamics at play, and I want to get your thoughts on this. I think this plays into the Tech Whisperer. The trend we're seeing is the old days was the engineers are out coding away, hey they're out there coding away, look at them coding away. Now with Cloud they're in the front lines. They're getting closer to the customer, the apps are in charge. They're dictating to the infrastructure what can be done. With data almost every solution can be customized. There's no more general purpose. These are the things we talk about, but this changes the personnel equation. Now you got engineering and product people talking to sales and marketing people, business people. >> And customers. >> They tend not to, they traditionally weren't going well. Now they have to work well, engineers want to work with the customers. This is kind of a new business practice, and now I'm a scared executive. Beth, what do I do? What's your thoughts on that dynamic? >> You know, I'm not sure I would have had insight in that if I hadn't had the oppurtunity to work at this little start up, which we were a digital native. And it was the first time I worked in an environment where we did true extreme programming, pair programming, we had really strong product leads, and engineers. So we didn't have project managers, business analysts, a lot of things that I think enterprise I.T tends to have. Because the folks, historically, at an enterprise, the folks that are specifying the need, the business need, are folks in the lines of business. And they're not product managers, and even product managers, I say in banking for example, they aren't software product managers. And so that change, if you really do want to embrace these new methods and dev ops, and a lot of the automation that's available to engineering and software development organizations today, you really do have to make that change. Otherwise it's just going to be a clumsy version of what you use to do, with a new name on it. The other thing though that I would say, is I don't want to discount for large enterprises is partnerships with start up companies or other tech partners. You don't need to build everything. There's so much great technology out there. You brought up the Cloud. Look at how rich these Cloud stacks are getting. You know, it's not just now, can you provision me some compute, and some storage, and help me connect to the internet. There's some pretty sophisticated capabilities in there around A.I and machine learning, and data management, and analysis. So, I think overtime, we'll see richer and richer Cloud stacks, that enables you know, every company to benefit from the technology and innovation that's going on right now. >> Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon Web Search, has always said whenever I've interviewed him, he always talks publicly now about it is, two pizza teams, and automate the undifferentiated heavy lifting. In tech we all know what that is, the boring, mundane, patching, provisioning, ugh. And deploying more creative research. Okay so, I believe that. I'm a big believer of that philosophy. But it opens up the role, the question of the roles of the people. That lonely DBA, that you once were, I did some DBA work myself. System admins, storage administrator, these were roles, network administrator, the sacred God of the network, they ran everything. They're evolving to be much more coding oriented, software driven changes. >> It's a huge change. And you know, one thing that I think is sad, is I run into folks often that are, I'll just say, technology professionals, just say, you know, we're at large. Who are out of work. You know, who sort of hang their head, they're not valued, or maybe there's some ageism involved, or they get marked as, oh that's old school, they're not going to change. So, I really do believe we're at a point, where there's not enough resources out there. And so how we invest in talent that's available today, and help people through this change, not everybody is going to make it. It starts with you, knowing yourself, and how open-minded you are. Are you willing to learn, are you willing to put some effort forth, and sort of figuring out some of these new operating models. Because that's just essential if you want to be part of the future. And I'll tell you, it's hard, and it's exhausting. So I don't say this lightly, I just think. You know about my career, how many changes and twists and turns their have been. Sometimes you're just like, okay I'm ready, I'm ready to just go hiking. (Beth laughs) >> It can be, there's a lot of institutional baggage, associated with the role you had, I've heard that before. Old guard, old school, we don't do that, you're way too old for that, we need more women so lets get women in. So there's like a big dynamic around that. And I want to get your thoughts on it because you mentioned ageism, and also women in tech has also grown. There's a need for that. So there's more opportunities now than ever. I mean you go to the cyber security job boards, there are more jobs for cyber security experts than any. >> Oh, I'll tell you, yesterday, we held an event at our office, in partnership with some different start ups. Because that's one of the things you do when you're in a corporate venture group, and it was all on the future of authentication. So it was really targeted at an audience of information security professionals and chief information security officers. And it was twenty men and one woman. And I thought, wow, you know I'm use to that from having been a CIO that a lot of the infrastructure roles in particular, like as you were saying, the rack and stack, the storage management, the network folks, just tend to be more male dominant, than I think the product managers, designers, even software engineers to some extent. But here you know, how many times can you go online and see how many openings there are for that type of role. So I personally, am not pursuing that type of role, so I don't know what all the steps would need to be, to get educated, to get certified, but boy is there a need. And that needs not going to go away. As more, if everything is digitized and everything is online. Then security is going to be a constant concern and sort of dynamic space. >> Well, we interview a lot of women in tech, great to have you on, you're a great leader. We also interview a lot of people that are older. I totally believe that there's an ageism issue out there. I've seen it first hand, maybe because I'm over fifty. And also women in tech, there's more coming but not enough. The numbers speak for themselves. There's also an opportunity, if you look at the leveling up. I talked to a person who was a network engineer, kind of the same thing as him, hanging his head down. And I said, do you realize that networking paradigm is very similar to how cyber works. So a lot of the old is coming back. So if you look at what was in the computer science programs in the eighties. It was a systems thinking. The systems thinking is coming back. So I see that as a great opportunity. But also the aperture of the field of computer science is changing. So it's not, there are some areas that frankly, women are better than men at in my opinion. In my opinion, might get some crap for that. But the point, I do believe that. And there are different roles. So I think it's not just, there's so much more here. >> Oh, that's what I try to tell people. It's not just coding, right. There's so many different types of roles. And unfortunately I think we don't market ourselves well. So I encourage everyone out there that knows somebody. (Beth laughs) Who's looking-- >> If someone was provisioned Sun micro-systems, or mini computers, or workstations, probably has a systems background that could be a Cloud administrator or a Cloud architect. Same concepts. So I want to get your thoughts on women in tech since you're here. What's your thoughts on the industry, how's it going, things you advise, other folks, men and women, that they could do differently. Any good signs? What's your thoughts in general? >> Yeah so, first of all, I'm just a big advocate for women in general. Young girls, and, young women, just getting into the work force, and always have been. Have to say again, very fortunate early in my career working for companies like a phone company, and Schwab, we had so many amazing female leaders. And I don't even think we had a program, it was just sort of part of the DNA of the company. And it's really only in the last couple of years I really seen we have a big problem. Whether it's reading about some of the cultures of some of the big tech companies, or even spending more time in the valley. I think there's no one answer, it's multifaceted. It's education, it's families, it's you know, each one of us could make a difference in how we hire, sort of checking in what our unintended biases are, I know at Citi right now, there's a huge program around diversity and inclusion. Gender, and otherwise. And one of the ways I think it's going to be impactful. They've set targets that I know are controversial, but it holds people accountable, to make decisions and invest in developing people, and making sure there's a pipeline of talent that can step up into even bigger roles with a more diverse leadership team. It will take time though, it will take time. >> But mind shares are critical. >> It absolutely is. Self-awareness, community awareness, very much so. >> What can men do differently, it's always about women in tech, but what can we, what can men do? >> I think it's a great question. I would say, women can do this too. I hate when I see a group together, and it's all women working on the women issue. Shame on us, for not inviting men into the organization. And then I think it's similar to the Tech Whisperer. Don't be nervous, don't be worried, just step in. Because, you know, men are fathers, men are leaders, men are colleagues. They're brothers, they're uncles. We have to work on this together. >> I had a great guest, and friend, I was interviewing. And she was amazing, and she said, John, it's not diversity and inclusion, it's inclusion and diversity. It's I-N-D not D-I. First of all, I've never heard of it, what's D-N-I? My point exactly. Inclusion is not just the diversity piece, inclusion first is inclusive in general, diversity is different. So people tend to blend them. >> Yes they do. >> Or even forget the inclusion part. >> Final question, since you're a change junkie, which I love that phrase, I'm kind of one myself. Change junkies are always chasing that next wave, and you love waves. Pat Gelsinger at VMWare, wave junkie, always love talking with him. And he's a great wave spotter, he sees them early. There's a big set of waves coming in now, pretty clear. Cloud has done it's thing. It's only going to change and get bigger, hybrid, private, multi Cloud. Data, AI, twenty year cycle coming. What waves are you most excited about? What's out there? What waves are obvious, what waves aren't, that you see? >> Yeah, oh, that's a tough one. Cause we try to track what those waves are. I think one of the things that I'm seeing is that as we all get, and I don't just mean people, I mean things. Everything is connected, and everything has some kind of smarts, some kind of small CPU senser. There's no way that our existing, sort of network, infrastructure and the way we connect and talk can support all of that. So I think we're going to see some kind of discontinuous change, where new models are going to, are going to absolutely be required cause we'll sort of hit the limit of how much traffic can go over the internet, and how many devices can we manage. How much automation can the people and an enterprise sort of oversee and monitor, and secure and protect. That's the thing that I feel like it's a tsunami about to hit us. And it's going to be one of these perfect storms. And luckily, I think there is innovation going on around 5G and edge computing, and different ways to think about securing the enterprise. That will help. But it couldn't come soon enough. >> And model also meaning not just technical business. >> Absolutely. Machine the machine. Like who's identity is on there that's taken an action on your behalf, or the companies behalf. You know, we see that already with RPA, these software robots. Who's making sure that they're doing what they're suppose to do. And they're so easy to create, now you have thousands of them. In my mind, it's just more software to manage. >> And a great contrary to Carl Eschenbach, former VMware CEO now at Sequoia, he's on the board of UIPath, they're on the front page of Forbes today, talking about bots. >> Yes, yes, yes, I've heard them speak. >> This is an issue, like is there a verification. Is there a fake bots coming. If there's fake news, fake bots are probably going to come too. >> Absolutely they will. >> This is a reality. >> And we're putting them in the hands of non-engineers to build these bots. Which there's good and bad, right. >> Regulation and policy are two different things, and they could work together. This is going to be a seminal issue for our industry. Is understanding the societal impact, tech for good. Shaping the technologies. This is what a Tech Whisperer has to do. You have a tough job ahead of you. >> But I love it. >> Jeff: Beth thank you for coming on. >> Thank you for having me. >> I'm Jeff Furrier for the People First Network here at Sand Hill Road at Mayfield as part of theCUBE and SiliconANGLE's co-creation with Mayfield Fund, thans for watching.

>> live from Boston, Massachusetts. It's the Cube covering A W s reinforce 2019 brought to you by Amazon Web service is and its ecosystem partners. >> Okay, welcome back. Everyone keeps live coverage here in Boston. Messages of AWS reinforce That's Amazon. Webster's his first inaugural commerce around cloud security on John Kerry with David Lantz. One of the top stories here, the announced being announced here reinforced is the VPC traffic nearing and we wanted to bring in alumni and friend Mike Banner was the VP of marketing at a Vectra who specializes in networking. Welcome to the Q. We go way back. HP networking got a hot start up here so wanted to really bring you in to help unpack this VPC traffic mirroring product is probably medias announcement of everything on stage. That other stuff was general availability of security have which is great great product, Absolutely. And guard guard duty. Well, all this other stuff have it. But the VPC traffic nearing is a killer feature for a lot of reasons, absolutely. But it brings some challenges and some opportunities that might be downstream. I don't get the thoughts on what is your take on the BBC traffic nearing >> a tte. The highest level brings a lot of value because it allows you get visibility and something that's really opaque, which is the traffic within the cloud. And in the past, the way people were solving this was they had to put an agent on the workload, and nobody wants that one. It's hard to manage. You don't want dozens to hundreds or thousands of agents, and also it's going to slow things down. On third, it could be subverted. You get the advanced attacker in there. He knows how to get below that level and operated on in a way where he can hide his communication and and his behavior isn't seen. With traffic nearing that, we're getting a copy of the packet from below. The hyper visor cannot be subverted, and so we're seeing everything, and we're also not slowing down the traffic in the virtual private cloud. So it allows us to extract just the right data for a security application, which is our case, metadata and enrich it with information that's necessary for detecting threats and also of performing an investigation. >> Yeah, it was definitely the announcement that everybody has been talking about has the buzz. So from a from a partner perspective, how do you guys tie into that? What do you do? Was the value that you bring to the customer, >> So the value that we're bringing really stems from what you can do with our platform. There's two things everybody is looking to do with him at the highest level, which is detect threats and respond to threats. On the detection side, we could take the metadata that we've extracted and we've enriched. We're running through machine learning algorithms, and from there we not only get a detection, but we can correlated to the workers we're seeing it on. And so we could present much more of an incident report rather than just a security alert, saying, Hey, something bad happened over there. It's not just something bad happened, but these four bad things happen and they happen in this time sequence over this period of time, and it involved these other work looks. We can give you a sense of what the attack campaign looks like. So you get a sense of like with cancer, such as you have bad cells in your liver, but they've metastasized to these other places. Way also will keep that metadata in something we call cognito recall, which is in AWS. And it has pre built analytics and save searches so that once you get that early warning signal from cognito detect, you know exactly where to start looking for. You can peel back all the unrelated metadata, and you can look specifically at what's happened during the time of that incident. In order, perform your threat investigation and respond rapidly to that threat. >> So you guys do have a lot of machine intelligence. OK, ay, ay chops. How close are we to be able to use that guy to really identify? Detect, but begin to automate responses? We there yet eyes. It's something that people want don't want. >> We're getting close to being there. It's answer your first question, and people are sure that they want it yet. And here's some of the rationale behind it. You know, like we generally say that Aria is pretty smart, but security operations people are still the brains of the operation. There's so much human intelligence, so much contextual knowledge that a security operations person can apply to the threats that we detect. They can look at something and say, Oh, yeah, I see the user account. The service is being turned on from, you know, this particular workload. I know exactly what's happening with that. They add so much value. So we look at what we're doing is augmenting the security operations team. We're reducing their workload by taking all the mundane work and automating that and putting the right details at their fingertips so they could take action. Now there's some things that are highly repeatable that they do like to use playbooks for So we partner with companies like Phantom, which got bought by spunk, and to Mr which Palazzo Networks acquired. They've built some really good playbooks for some of those well defying situations. And there was a couple presentations on the floor that talked about those use >> cases. Fan of fan was pretty good. Solid product was built in the security hub. Suit helps nice product, but I'll get back to the VPC traffic, not smearing. It makes so much sense. It's about time. Yes, Finally they got it done. This make any sense? It wasn't done before, but I gotta ask first with the analytics, you and you said on the Q. Before network doesn't lie, >> the network is no line >> they were doesn't lie with subversion pieces of key piece. It's better be the lowest level possible. That's a great spot for the data. So totally agree. Where do you guys create Valley? Because now that everyone's got available BBC traffic mirroring How do you guys take advantage of that? What's next for you guys is that Where's the differentiation come from? Where's the value go next? >> Yeah, there's really three things that I tend to focus on. One is we enrich the metadata that we're extracting with a lot of important data that makes it. It really accelerates the threat investigation. So things like directionality, things like building a notion of what's the identity of the workload or when you're running us on prem. The device, because I P addresses changed. There's dynamic things in there, so having a sense of of consistency over a period of time is extremely valuable for performing a threat investigation so that information gets put in tow. Recall for the metadata store. If people have a data leak that they wanna have ascended to, whether it's elastic or spawn, Kafka then that is included in what we send to them and Zeke formatting use. Others eat tooling so they're not wasting any money there. And in the second piece is around the way that we build analytics. There's always, ah, a pairing of somebody from security research with the data scientist. This is the security researcher explains the tools, the tactics, the techniques of the attacker. So that way, the data scientist isn't being completely random about what features do they want to find in the network traffic. They're being really specific to what features are gonna actually pair to that tool, tactic and technique. So that way, the efficacy of the algorithm is better. We've been doing this for five plus years, and history speaks for something because some of the learning we've had is all right. In the beginning, there were maybe a couple different supervised techniques to apply. Well, now we're applying those supervised techniques with some deep learning techniques. So that way, the performance of the algorithm is actually 90% more effective than it was five years ago. >> Appreciating with software. Get the data extract the data, which the metadata, Yes, you're doing. Anyway. Now, It's more efficient, correct, low speed, No, no problems with informants in the agents you mentioned earlier. Now it's better data impact the customers. What's the What's the revelation here For the end of the day, your customer and Amazons customers through you? What do they get out of it? What's the benefit to them? >> So it's all about reducing the time to detect in the time to respond. Way had one of our fortune to 50 customers present last week at the Gardener Security Summit. Still on stage. Gentlemen from Parker Hannifin talked about how they had an incident that they got an urgent alert from from Cognito. It told him about an attack campaign. He was immediately alerted the 45 different machines that were sending data to the cloud. He automatically knew about what were the patterns of data, the volume of data. They immediately know exactly what the service is that were being used with in the cloud. They were able to respond to this and get it all under control. Listen 24 hours, but it's because they had the right data at their fingertips to make rapid decisions before there was any risk. You know what they ended up finding was it was actually a new application, but somebody had actually not followed the procedures of the organization that keeps them compliant with so many of their end users. In the end, it's saved tremendous time and money, and if that was a real breach, it would have actually prevented them from losing proprietary information. >> Well, historically, it would take 250 days to even find out that there was a breach, right? And then by then who knows what What's been exfiltrate ID? >> Yeah, we had a couple. We had a couple of firms that run Red team exercises for a living come by and they said, I said to them, Do you know who we are? And they said, Of course we know where you are. There's one tool out there, then finds us. It's victory. That's >> a That's a kind of historical on Prem. So what do you do for on Pramuk? This is all running any ws. Is it cloud only? >> It's actually both, so we know that there's a lot of companies that come here that have never owned a server, and everything's been in AWS from day one and for I t. Exactly. And for them waken run everything. We have the sensor attached to the VPC traffic nearing in AWS. We could have the brain of the cognitive platform in eight of us, you know. So for them they don't need anything on prime. There's a lot of people that are in the lift and shift mode. It can be on Prem and in eight of us, eh? So they can choose where they want the brain. And they could have sensors in both places. And we have people that are coming to this event that their hybrid cloud, they've got I t infrastructure in Azure. But they have production in eight of us and they have stuff that's on Prem. And we could meet that need to because we work with the V Top from Azure and so that we're not religious about that. It's all about giving the right data right place, reducing the time to detective respond, >> Mike, Thanks for coming and sharing the insights on the VP. Your perspective on the vpc traffic mirror appreciated. Give a quick plug for the company. What you guys working on? What's the key focus? You hiring. Just got some big funding news. Take a minute to get the plug in for electric. >> Yeah, So we've gone through several years of consecutive more than doubling in. Not in a recurring revenue. I've been really fortunate to have to be earning a lot of customer business from the largest enterprises in the world. Recently had funding $100,000,000 led by T C V out of Menlo Park. Total capitalization is over to 22 right now on the path to continue that doubling. But, you know, we've been really focusing on moving where the you know already being where the puck is going to by working with Amazon. Advance on the traffic nearing. And, you know, we know that today people are using containers in the V M environment. We know that you know where they want to go. Is more serverless on, you know, leveraging containers more. You know, we're already going in that direction. So >> great to see congratulates we've known each other for many, many years is our 10th anniversary of the Q. You were on year one. Great to know you. And congratulations. Successive victor and great announcement. Amazon gives you a tailwind. >> Thanks a lot. It's great to see your growth as well. Congratulations. >> Thanks, Mike. Mike Banning unpacking the relevance of the VPC traffic mirroring feature. >> This is kind >> of conversation we're having here. Deep conversation around stuff that matters around security and cloud security. Of course, the cubes bring any coverage from the inaugural event it reinforced for me. Ws will be right back after this short break.

[Narrator] From the heart of Silicon Valley, it's the Cube. Covering Cloud Now seventh annual Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. (techno music) >> Hi, Lisa Martin on the ground with the Cube at Facebook headquarters at the seventh annual Cloud Now Top Women in Cloud Innovation Awards. We are here for our third time with the founder of Cloud Now, Jocelyn Degance Graham. Jocelyn, it is great to have you back. Great to be back here for your seventh annual Cloud Now. >> We are just so delighted to be here with you Lisa and the Cube and all of the support and wonderful help that you've given us through the years for this event. >> So you have a lot of firsts that I wanted to cover and I know we've just got a few minutes of your time. Seventh annual, as I mentioned. >> Jocelyn: That's right. >> Your Cloud Now community now boasts over 1500 members. There's over 300 attendees here tonight. >> Jocelyn: That's right. >> And tell us what was really unique about how easy it was to attract this audience. >> Well this, we've never had such a great response for this event Lisa. And some of that could just be the timing. It is finally an idea who's time has come, right? And so there just seems to be such a groundswell of understanding the importance of inclusion and diversity. And beyond that actually creating belonging, right? So more and more, I feel like there's such an actual enthusiasm that we hadn't seen before. So this year, we didn't actually publish tickets or let people know that tickets were available. Everything was essentially sold through word of mouth. And so, we never even published any tickets. And we sold out of the event. And that was definitely a first for us. >> Another first is being here. >> Yeah. >> Not only being here at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park California, but also having Sheryl Sandberg as one of the keynote speakers this evening. >> It is such an honor. You know she is one of the women who has just been so important in terms of the Seminole movement of women in tech. Like many women, I read her book, Lean In, years ago. And the fact that she's here with us tonight at the event, after having inspired an entire movement, is really significant and we're just thrilled. >> Another thing that's really interesting and a unique first for Cloud Now this year is you're recognizing 10 female tech entrepreneurs who are technical founders. >> Jocelyn: Technical founder, venture backed. >> Of venture backed businesses. >> Jocelyn: That's absolutely right. >> Tell us about how you've been able to achieve that because their backgrounds are diverse and the technologies that they're designing and driving are really incredible. >> This is one of the most, I think, exciting firsts about the event this year is in past events, we were recognizing women that had made major contributions in a technical field. And we were recognizing women regardless of the level or role or responsibility in the organization. Now we had largely done that because there were so few female founders of venture funded startups. This year was an absolute breakthrough year for many different reasons. There are organizations now like Allraise.org that are supported by women VC's. And there just seems to be an entire groundswell of female founders and we were able to, this year for the first time, align the criteria around female technical founders. And I'm really hoping that moving forward we'll be able to continue with that as more and more women realize that they should be starting businesses and they can get venture backing. >> And we're excited to talk to those winners tonight and ask how did you go about doing that? What were your inspirations and how do you kind of combat those fears and just the history of the challenge of getting funding there? Another thing that I noticed on the Cloud Now website is one of your taglines is together we can make a difference. In, you know, just the last minute or so give me some examples of how you're helping to make a difference that really resonate with you and that give you inspiration for your 2019 goals. >> That's such a great question. So for me, really one of the most heartening things about the organization is that the work we're doing together and through our scholarship program. So we're identifying the next generation of both female and minority leaders in tech and we're investing in them through our stem scholarship fund. This year, we have funders. Our funders include Google, Intel and Facebook. And we're really hoping to be able to expand that scope next year, Lisa, to increase the number of students we're helping. This year we're also, in addition to women, we are helping minority students as well. And for next year, we're wanting to expand those categories even further and being able to support people with disabilities. So we're really hoping that to create this kind of very strong fabric of the community coming together and really giving each other support. >> Jocelyn, thank you so much for having the Cube back for the third year in a row and congratulations on the groundswell that you're capitalizing on and that you're helping to create. We congratulate you and we appreciate your time. >> Lisa, it's always a pleasure. I love speaking with you. Thanks so much for coming. >> Likewise, we want to thank you for watching the Cube. Lisa Martin on the ground at Facebook headquarters at the Cloud Now Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. Thanks for watching. (techno music)

>> From the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering AT&T Spark. Now here's Jeff Frick. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at San Francisco, at the historic Palace of Fine Arts, it's a beautiful spot, it's redone, they moved Exploratorium out a couple years ago, so now it's in a really nice event space, and we're here for the AT&T Spark Event, and the conversation's all around 5G. But we're excited to have our first guest, and he's working on something that's a little bit tangential to 5G-related, but not absolutely connected, but really important work, it's Chris Sambar, he is the SVP of FirstNet at AT&T, Chris, great to see you. >> Thanks Jeff, great to be here, I appreciate it. >> Yeah, so you had a nice Keynote Presentation, talking about FirstNet. So for people I've missed, that aren't familiar, what is AT&T FirstNet? >> Sure, I'll give a quick background. As I was mentioning up there, tomorrow is the 17-year Anniversary of 9/11. So 17 years ago tomorrow, a big problem in New York City. Lots of first responders descended on the area. All of them were trying to communicate with each other, they were trying to use their radios, which they're you know, typically what you see a first responder using, the wireless networks in the area. Unfortunately challenges, it wasn't working. They were having trouble communicating with each other, their existing wireless networks were getting congested, and so the 9/11 Commission came out with a report years later, and they said we need a dedicated communications network, just for First Responders. So they spun all this up and they said, we're going to dedicate some Spectrum, 20 megahertz of D-Class Spectrum, which is really prime Spectrum. Seven billion dollars and we're going to set up this Federal entity, called the FirstNet Authority, and they're going to create a Public Safety Network across America. So FirstNet Authority spent a few years figuring out how to do it, and they landed on what we have today, which was a Public/Private Partnership, between AT&T, and Public Safety throughout America, and we're building them a terrific network across the country. It is literally a separate network so when I, I think of wireless in America, I think of four main commercial carriers, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint. This is the 5th carrier, this is Public Safety's Wireless Network just for them. >> So when you say an extra network, so it's a completely separate, obviously you're leveraging infrastructure, like towers and power and those types of things. But it's a completely separate network, than the existing four that you mentioned. >> Yeah, so if you walk into our data centers throughout the country, you're going to see separate hardware, physical infrastructure that is just for FirstNet, that's the core network just for this network. On the RAN, the Radio Access Network, we've got antennas that have Band 14 on them, that's Public Safety's Band, dedicated just for them when they need it. So yeah, it's literally a physically separate network. The SIM card that goes into a FirstNet device, is a different SIM card than our commercial users would use, because it's separate. >> So one of the really interesting things about 5G, and kind of the evolution of wireless is, is taking some of the load that has been taken by like WiFi, and other options for fast, always on connectivity. I would assume radio, and I don't know that much about radio frequencies that have been around forever with communications in, in First Responders. Is the vision that the 5G will eventually take over that type of communication as well? >> Yeah, absolutely. If you look at the evolution of First Responder, and Public Safety Communications, for many years now they've used radios. Relatively small, narrow Spectrum bands for Narrow Band Voice, right, just voice communications. It really doesn't do data, maybe a little bit, but really not much. Now they're going to expand to this Spectrum, the D-Class, the D-Block Spectrum, excuse me, which is 700 megahertz, it's a low-band Spectrum, that'll provide them with Dedicated Spectrum, and then the next step, as you say, is 5G, so take the load off as Public Safety comes into the, the new Public Safety Communications space, that they've really been wanting for years and years, they'll start to utilize 5G as well on our network. >> So where are you on the development of FirstNet, where are you on the rollout, what's the sequence of events? >> The first thing we did, the award was last year in March 2017. The first thing we did was we built out the core network. When I talked about all that physical infrastructure, that basically took a year to build out, and it was pretty extensive, and about a half a billion dollars so, that was the first thing we did, that completed earlier this year. >> Was that nationwide or major metro cities or how-- >> Nationwide, everywhere in the country. >> Nationwide, okay. >> So now what we're doing is, we are putting the Spectrum that we were given, or I should say we were leased for 25 years, we're putting that Spectrum up across our towers all over the country so, that will take five years, it's a five-year build-out, tens of thousands of towers across America, will get this Public Safety Spectrum, for Public Safety, and for their use. >> Right. Will you target by GEO, by Metro area, I mean, how's it going to actually happen? That's a huge global rollout, five years is a long time. How you kind of prioritize, how are you really going to market with this? >> The Band 14 Spectrum is being rolled out in the major, the major dense areas across the country. I will tell you that by the end of the rollout, five years from now, 99% of the population of America, will have Band 14 Spectrum, so the vast majority of the population. Other areas where we don't roll it out, rural areas for example, all of the features that Public Safety wants, we call them (mumbles) and priority, which is the features to allow them to always have access to the network whenever they need it. Those features will be on our regular commercial Spectrum. So if Band 14 isn't there, the network will function exactly as if it were there for them. >> Right. Then how do you roll it out to the agencies, all the First Responders, the Fire, the Police, the EMTs, et cetera? How do they start to take advantage of this opportunity? >> Sure, so we started that earlier this year. We really started in a March-April timeframe in earnest, signing up agencies, and the uptake's been phenomenal. It's over 2500 Public Safety Agencies across America, over 150,00, and that number grows by thousands every week. That's actually a pretty old number but, they are signing up in droves. In fact, one of the problems we were having initially is, handling the volume of First Responders that wanted to sign up, and the reason is they're seeing that, whether it's a fire out in Oregon, and they need connectivity in the middle of nowhere, in a forest where there's no wireless connectivity at all, we'll bring a vehicle out there, put up an antenna and provide them connectivity. Whether it's a Fourth of July show, or a parade, or an active shooter, wherever large groups of people, combined together and the network gets congested, they're seeing that wow, my device works no matter what. I can always send a text message, I can send a video, it just works. Where it didn't work before. So they love it, and they're really, they're really signing up in droves, it's great. >> It's really interesting because it's, it's interesting that this was triggered, as part of the post 9/11 activity to make things better, and make things safer. But there was a lot of buzz, especially out here in the West with, with First Responders in the news, who were running out of band width. As you said, the Firefighters, the fire's been burning out here, it seems like forever, and really nobody thinking about those, or obviously they're probably roaming on their traditional data plan, and they're probably out there, for weeks and weeks at a time, that wasn't part of their allocation, when they figured out what plan they should be. So the timing is pretty significant, and there's clearly a big demand for this. >> Absolutely. So that example that you sight is a really good one. Two weeks ago, there was a lot in the news about a fire agency in the West, that said they were throttled by their carrier. It was a commercial carrier, and commercial carriers have terms and conditions, that sometimes they need to throttle usage, if you get to a certain level. That's how commercial networks work. >> Right, right. >> FirstNet was built with not only different technology, hardware, software, but with different terms and conditions. Because we understand that, when a First Responder responds to your house, we don't want that to be the minute in time, when their network, their plan got maxed out, and now they're getting throttled. >> Right. >> So we don't have any throttling on the FirstNet Network. So it's not only the hardware, software, technical aspects of the network, but the terms and conditions are different. It's what you would expect that a First Responder would have and want on their device, and that's what we're providing for them. >> Right, and the other cool thing that you mentioned is, we see it all the time, we go to a lot of conferences. A lot of people probably experience it at, at big events right, is that still today, WiFi and traditional LTE, has hard times in super-dense environments, where there's just tons and tons and tons of bodies I imagine, absorbing all that signal, as much as anything else, so to have a separate Spectrum in those type of environments which are usually chaotic when you got First Responders, or some of these mass events that you outlined, is a pretty important feature, to not get just completely wiped out by everybody else happening to be there at the same time. >> Exactly. I'll give you two quick examples, that'll illustrate what you just said. The first one is, on the Fourth of July, in downtown Washington D.C. You can imagine that show. It's an awesome show, but there are hundreds of thousands of people that gather around that Washington Monument, to watch the show. And the expectation is at the peak of the show, when all those people are there, you're not really going to be sending text messages, or calling people, the network's probably just not going to work very well. That's, we've all gotten used to that. >> Right, right. >> This year, I had First Responders, who were there during the event, sending me videos of the fireworks going off. Something that never would've been possible before, and them saying oh my gosh. The actually works the way it's supposed to work, we can use our phones. Then the second example, which is a really sad example. There was a recent school shooting down in Florida. You had Sheriffs, Local Police, Ambulances. You even had some Federal Authorities that showed up. They couldn't communicate with each other, because they were on different radio networks. Imagine if they had that capability of FirstNet, where they could communicate with each other, and the network worked, even though there were thousands of people that were gathering around that scene, to see what was going on. So that's the capability we're bringing to Public Safety, and it's really good for all of us. >> Do you see that this is kind of the, the aggregator of the multi-disparate systems that exist now, as you mentioned in, in your Keynote, and again there's different agencies, they've got different frequencies, they've got Police, Fire, Ambulance, Federal Agencies, that now potentially this, as just kind of a unified First Responder network, becomes the defacto way, that I can get in touch with anyone regardless of of where they come from, or who they're associated with? >> That is exactly the vision of FirstNet. In major cities across America, Police, Fire, Emergency Medical typically, are on three different radio networks, and it's very difficult for them to communicate with each other. They may have a shared frequency or two between them, but it's very challenging for them. Our goal is to sign all of them up, put them on one LTE network, the FirstNet Network, customized for them, so they can all communicate with each other, regardless of how much congestion is on the network. So that's the vision of FirstNet. >> Then that's even before you get into the 5G impacts, which will be the data impacts, whereas I think again, you showed in some of your examples, the enhanced amount of data that they can bring to bear, on solving a problem, whether it's a layout of a building for the Fire Department or drone footage from up above. We talked to Menlo Park Fire, they're using drones more and more to give eyes over the fire to the guys down on the ground. So there's a lot of really interesting applications that you can get more better data, to drive more better applications through that network, to help these guys do their job. >> Yeah, you've got it, the smart city's cameras, don't you want that to be able to stream over the network, and give it to First Responders, so they know what they're going to encounter, when they show up to the scene of whatever issue's going on in the city, of course you do, and you need a really reliable, stable network to provide that on. >> Well Chris, this is not only an interesting work, but very noble, and an important work, so appreciate all of the efforts that you're putting in, and thanks for stopping by. >> I appreciate it Jeff, it's been great talking with you. >> Alright, he's Chris, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're in San Francisco at the Palace of Fine Arts, at AT&T Spark. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (bright music)

>> Announcer: From Milpitas, California, at the edge of Silicon Valley, it's the Cube, covering autonomous vehicles. Brought to you by Western Digital. >> Hey, welcome back here ready, Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We're at Western Digital's office in Milpitas, California at the Autotech Council Autonomous Vehicle event. About 300 people talking about all the various problems that have to be overcome to make this thing kind of reach the vision that we all have in mind and get beyond the cute. Way more cars driving around and actually get to production fleet, so a lot of problems, a lot of opportunity, a lot of startups, and we're excited to have our next guest. He's Dave Tokic, the VP of Marketing and Strategic Partnerships from Algolux. Dave, great to see you. >> Great, thank you very much, glad to be here. >> Absolutely, so you guys are really focused on a very specific area, and that's about imaging and all the processing of imaging and the intelligence out of imaging and getting so much more out of those cameras that we see around all these autonomous vehicles. So, give us a little bit of the background. >> Absolutely, so, Algolux, we're totally focused on driving safety and autonomous vision. It's really about addressing the limitations today in imaging and computer vision systems for perceiving much more effectively and robustly the surrounding environment and the objects as well as enabling cameras to see more clearly. >> Right, and we've all seen the demo in our twitter feeds of the chihuahua and the blueberry muffin, right? This is not a simple equation, and somebody like Google and those types of companies have the benefit of everybody uploading their images, and they can run massive amounts of modeling around that. How do you guys do it in an autonomous vehicle, it's a dynamic situation, it's changing all the time, there's lots of different streets, different situations. So, what are some of the unique challenges, and how are you guys addressing those? >> Great, so, today, for both 8S systems and autonomous driving, the companies out there are focusing on really the simpler problems of being able to properly recognize an object or an obstacle in good conditions, fair weather in Arizona, or Mountain View or Tel Aviv, et cetera. But really the, we would live in the real world. There's bad weather, there is low light, there's lens issues, lens dirty, and so on. Being able to address those difficult issues is not really being done well today. There's difficulties in today's system architectures to be able to do that. We take a very different, novel approach to how we process and learn through deep learning the ability to do that much more robustly and much more accurately than today's systems. >> How much of that's done kind of in the car, how much of it's done where you're building your algorithms offline and then feeding them back into the car, how does that loop kind of work? >> Great question, so the objective for this, we're deploying on, is the intent to deploy on systems that are in the car, embedded, right? We're not looking to the cloud-based system where it's going to be processed in the cloud and the latency issues and so on that are a problem. Right now, it's focused on the embedded platform in the car, and we do training of the datasets, but we take a novel approach with training as well. We don't need as much training data because we augmented it with very specific synthetic data that understands the camera itself as well as taking in the difficult critical cases like low light and so on. >> Do you have your own dedicated camera or is it more of a software solution that you can use for lots of different types of inbound sensors? >> Yeah, what we have today is, we call it, CANA. It is a full end-to-end stack that starts from the sensor output, so say, an imaging sensor or a path to fusion like LIDAR, radar, et cetera, all the way up to the perception output that would then be used by the car to make a decision like emergency braking or turning or so on. So, we provided that full stack. >> So perception is a really interesting word to use in the context of a car, car visioning and computer vision cause it really implies a much higher level of understanding as to what's going, it really implies context, so how do you help it get beyond just identifying to starting to get perception so that you can make some decisions about actions. >> Got it, so yeah, it's all about intelligent decisions and being able to do that robustly across all types of operating conditions is paramount, it's mission critical. We've seen recent cases, Uber and Tesla and others, where they did not recognize the problem. That's where we start first with is to make sure that the information that goes up into the stack is as robust and accurate as possible and from there, it's about learning and sharing that information upstream to the control stacks of the car. >> It's weird cause we all saw the video from the Uber accident with the fatality of the gal unfortunately, and what was weird to me on that video is she came into the visible light, at least on the video we saw, very, very late. But ya got to think, right, visible light is a human eye thing, that's not a computer, that's not, ya know, there are so many other types of sensors, so when you think of vision, is it just visible light, or you guys work within that whole spectrum? >> Fantastic question, really the challenge with camera-based systems today, starting with cameras, is that the way the images are processed is meant to create a nice displayed image for you to view. There are definite limitations to that. The processing chain removes noise, removes, does deblurring, things of that nature, which removes data from that incoming image stream. We actually do perception prior to that image processing. We actually learn how to process for the particular task like seeing a pedestrian or bicyclist et cetera, and so that's from a camera perspective. It gives up quite the advantage of being able to see more that couldn't be perceived before. We're also doing the same for other sensing modalities such as LIDAR or radar and other sensing modalities. That allows us to take in different disparate sort of sensor streams and be able to learn the proper way of processing and integrating that information for higher perception accuracy using those multiple systems for sensor fusion. >> Right, I want to follow up on kind of what is sensor fusion because we hear and we see all these startups with their self-driving cars running around Menlo Park and Palo Alto all the time, and some people say we've got LIDAR, LIDAR's great, LIDAR's expensive, we're trying to do it with just cameras, cameras have limitations, but at the end of the day, then there's also all this data that comes off the cars are pretty complex data receiving vehicles as well, so in pulling it all together that must give you tremendous advantages in terms of relying on one or two or a more singular-type of input system. >> Absolutely, I think cameras will be ubiquitous, right? We know that OEMs and Tier-1s are focused heavily on camera-based systems with a tremendous amount of focus on other sensing modalities such as LIDARs as an example. Being able to kit out a car in a production fashion effectively and commercially, economically, is a challenge, but that'll, with volume, will reduce over time, but doing that integration of that today is a very manually intensive process. Each sensing mode has its own way of processing information and stitching that together, integrating, fusing that together is very difficult, so taking an approach where you learn through deep learning how to do that is a way of much more quickly getting that capability into the car and also providing higher accuracy as the merged data is combined for the particular task that you're trying to do. >> But will you system, at some point, kind of check in kind of like the Teslas, they check in at night, get the download, so that you can leverage some of the offline capabilities to do more learning, better learning, aggregate from multiple sources, those types of things? >> Right, so for us, the type of data that would be most interesting is really the escapes. The things where the car did not detect something or told the driver to pay attention or take the wheel and so on. Those are the corner cases where the system failed. Being able to accumulate those particular, I'll call it, snips of information, send that back and integrate that into the overall training process will continue to improve robustness. There's definitely a deployed model that goes out that's much more robust than what we've seen in the market today, and then there's the ongoing learning to then continue to improve the accuracy and robustness of the system. >> I think people so underestimate the amount of data that these cars are collecting in terms of just the way streets operate, the way pedestrians operate, but whether there's a incident or not, they're still gathering all that data and making judgements and identifying pedestrians, identifying bicyclists and capturing what they do, so hopefully, the predictiveness will be significantly better down the road. >> That's the expectation, but like numerous studies have said, there's a lot of data that's collected that's just sort of redundant data, so it's really about those corner cases where there was a struggle by the system to actually understand what was going on. >> So, just give us kind of where you are with Algolux, state of the company, number of people, where are ya on your lifespan? >> Algolux is the startup based in Montreal with offices in Palo Alto and Munich. We have about 26 people worldwide, most of them in Montreal, very engineering heavy these days, and we will continue to do so. We have some interesting forthcoming news that please keep an eye out for of accelerating what we're doing. I'll just hint it that way. The intent really is to expand the team to continue to productize what we've built and start to scale out, to engage more of the automotive companies we're working with. We are engaged today at the Tier-2, Tier-1, and OEM levels in automotive, and the technology is scalable across other markets as well. >> Pretty exciting, we look forward to watching, and you're giving it the challenges of real weather unlike the Mountain View guys who we don't really deal with real weather here. (laughing) >> There ya go. (laughing) Fair enough. >> All right Dave, well, thanks for taking a few minutes out of your day, and we, again, look forward to watching the story unfold. >> Excellent, thank you, Jeff. >> All right. >> All right, appreciate it. >> He's Dave, I'm Jeff, you're watching the Cube. We're are Western Digital in Milpitas at Autotech Council Autonomous Vehicle event. Thanks for watching, we'll catch ya next time.