>> Live from San Francisco, It's theCUBE. Covering Google Cloud Next 2018. Brought to you by Google Cloud and it's Ecosystem partners. >> Hey, welcome back everyone. We are live in San Francisco, CUBE coverage for Google Cloud Next 18. I'm John Furrier, Jeff Frick. Our next guest is Carol Carpenter, Vice President of product marketing here at Google Cloud, and Navid Erfani-Ghadimimi, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you very much. >> Thanks for coming on. So data for good has been a topic we were just talking about here, day three What do you guys do? And what's your relationship with Google? Because big data for good is really, with cloud computing more relevant than ever before. Take a minute to explain your project. >> Sure, so in South Africa we are a social nonprofit organization. We try and connect young people that are not employed, never employed to opportunities. And we are hosted in Google Cloud, and we use GCP as our sole provider. And what we try and do is we use data to be able to understand young people, understand the facets that make a young person employable and match them to opportunities that we find. So we describe opportunities using different data points. So all those data points that we have, we store them in Cloud Sequel, and we store them in BigQuery. And then we run analytics and matching to be able to find how these young people can contribute to the economy. >> How's it going so far? >> So far it's been great. It's allowed us to think about the 10X strategies. When we were an on PRAM business, we very limited by what could provide, bricks and mortar, and now we're looking and saying, well how do we provide as much capacity and capability to these young people using cell service channels? So it really has just opened up a world of possibilities. And we're really looking at it. And we're very excited because we've taken on some initiatives in Rwanda as well. And so we're taking on a global and Africa-wide kind of strategy, which I think without Cloud we really wouldn't be able to do. >> I wonder if you could just drill down, because what are some of the data points that you look at and you measure? And is it identifying the data points and then finding the match? Or is it finding the critical ones that you really need to address as a priority to get kids to that position where they can get a job? >> I mean it's really interesting because what we talk about, we talk about proxies for competence. So if you think about when you go apply for a job, you kind of say hello, here I am and I've done this job for so many years, and that's your proxy for competence. So if you're a young person that just has a high school education and you're stepping in, we need to be able to describe you as a human, right? So for those things we look and say, what are your biographic information? What's your socialization? What kind of grit and energy do you bring to the job? So we try and measure those things and we have as many contact points as we can get to be able to understand, who is this individual, really? And use those data points, and we have about 155 aspects that we use right now, and then match them to different entry-level jobs. >> So you're the Enterprise Architect of Harambee Youth and Employment Accelerator. I love that term, accelerator. >> Yes, right. >> And I also love the term Enterprise Architect, because both are indeed of some clout. One of the themes is digital transformation, which is kind of a generic term, the analysts all talk about it. But really we're talking about the cloud mobile digital world and the power that can bring. Accelerator on the youth side, they need an app. So you're essentially providing a digital capability, not the old brick and mortar. >> That's right. >> How do you architect all of this? Because you got to assume there's an app at the edge, either a downloadable app or website, phone-- >> So we have actually quite an interesting problem to solve, because for our young people, they don't have access to apps. The majority of our young people are on feature phones, basic phones, not smart phones. And data in South Africa is very expensive. So for that young person, we need to provide as low a touch at a connection point, to our services, without making that cost them something, right? So we built a very basic Mobi site, no JavaScript, as blank as you can get. It's very boring if you look at it. >> So lightweight. >> Very lightweight. But it's the tip of an iceberg. So from there we collect certain information, but then we have an award-winning contact center that makes 35 thousand calls every month. And we engage with a young person in an up down poll for about 15 minutes. And it's that 15 minutes that we use to talk to this young person, understand about them, figure out who they are and what they are, and use that to gather our data points. We then have assessments that we run. So we run psychometric assessments, we have competence assessments, and we gather all those data points and we start understanding this young person in a way that we can go to an employer, because on that side for the employer, we need to be able to say you trust us that when we give you this young person, that we say this person will do well in your job. Well you have to have trust in us to be able to do that. So we need to provide that data to say well, this is how we came up with it. So we take quite a lot of effort in that. >> You're verifying in a way, putting your reputation on the line with the candidates. >> Yes. >> At the same time, you don't know when the inbound touch is going to happen, so you got to have all that material ready to go. >> That's right. >> That's where the big data kicks in. >> That's right. So the big data, the collection of that information, and the understanding of it... And we're on a journey to start figuring out, how can we use artificial intelligence, how can we use ML in a way that improves our accuracy, but at the same time, leaves out anything that may be biased toward these young people. So we're taking a very cautious approach to it. But it's a lot of big data. We're trying to consume it as best we can. Plus, we're trying to think about, how do we provision our services for the employers? Because again, it's a demand at business, so we want to find as many jobs as we can so we can take young people to those jobs. So extend our reach to the employers and-- >> The heavy lifting, so that they don't have to. >> Yeah, so they don't have to. >> Carol, talk about the dynamic with Google Cloud, because this is the theme we're hearing all week. You guys do the heavy lifting, and at the edge of the user experience, you take the toil out of it. The word toil has been-- >> It keeps coming up. >> It keeps coming up. Thinking of that toil, the hard work, friction out of it. In this case, the connectivity costs, being productive at that point of transaction... >> Exactly. >> They're doing the back end heavy lifting. This is kind of like a core theme across. >> That is what the promise of the Cloud is supposed to be, right? Which is to remove all that back end toil, I love that word too, the toil, the mundaneness of it all, so that folks like Harambee can actually focus on delivering great service to both potential employers and employees. So we're trying to automate as much of that infrastructure, that's what we announced a lot around serverless, around containers, this idea of you don't need to worry about it. You don't have to provision the server now. You don't have to worry about patches. You don't have to worry about security. We'll take care of that for you. >> I just love your phrase proxy for competence, and I can't help but think, I've got kids in college that you know, that's the whole objective of the application, right? We've got SATs and PSATs and they take a couple data sets, but relative to the number of data sets that you describe. And I would the intimacy of those data sets, versus an ACT an SAT and a transcript. You probably have a really interesting insight, and if you can correlate to the proxies of competency, this is something that has a much greater kind of opportunity than just helping these kids that you need to help and it's really important. But that's a really interesting take, to use a much bigger data set, sophistication, great tools and infrastructure to do that mapping of competency to that job. >> Absolutely, and we're very focused on understanding, how do we use this data to provision a network for our young people to be able to describe themselves in entry? So one of the things we found in South Africa, and I'm sure it's a fairly universal problem, is that if you are unemployed, one of the things that prevents you from finding employment is you cannot access a network in which people that have jobs or describe jobs, you don't have access to that network. And so the ability to stand up and say, hey, this is who I am, these people have said, this is my profile as an individual, and say Harambee, or whoever it is, says that I am competent in these things. That gives them an in, that gives them some way of entering that network. And for instance, we've done a certain study that said that if a young lady takes just a basic CV that has a stamp on it from Harambee with a description of who they are and what their competencies are, that improves their chances of finding a job by 30%, up to 30%, and that's significant, right? And this is not us finding the job for them, this is them going out and looking for a job, so it's describing and helping this person enter that network by providing, again, a proxy for competence. >> Talk about the relationship with Google. What is Google working with you guys on? And what's next for you guys? >> Google has helped us immensely. We receive those credits, and those credits allowed us to take that first step into the cloud. They gave us a little bit of breathing room, alright, so we could take that step. We also have access to some Googlers, that have helped talk to us a little bit about ML and they have been helping us out on that. In terms of the next steps, it's 10X time. It's time to grow, it's time to use this scale, it's time to use the opportunity that we have to make the real impact that we've been searching for. >> Connect those jobs to those folks. >> Absolutely, because this is not a small problem. We've got a big problem to solve and we're really excited to be able to do it. >> I'm glad you're doing that. >> Awesome. >> It's a great, great mission. Carol, I want to get your thoughts finally, just to kind of end this segment and kind of end our time here at Google Cloud. Good opportunity for someone who's been looking at the landscape of the products. What's been the vide of the show, from your standpoint? Obviously you've been planning this for months, it's showtime, it's coming to a close, we're day three, you heard, it's going to close in 30 minutes. Are you happy? >> Yeah, I mean we're thrilled. We're thrilled. We were just talking earlier, it's been a tremendous three days of just great interaction with fantastic customers, partners, developers, it's just the level of engagement... Google Cloud is about making the Cloud available for everyone. We wanted this to be a place for people to engage, to make things, to try things, to be hands-on, to be in sessions with people like Harambee, to actually understand what the Cloud can do. And we're super excited. We've seen that in spades. The feedback has been tremendous. I hope you heard that as well. We're really excited. We believe that the capabilities we have around what we're doing in data analytics, machine learning, on top of this incredibly robust infrastructure, we really believe that there are amazing problems we can solve together. >> We had a couple of our reporters here earlier saying people who think Google is far behind is not here at the event. I got to say, give you guys some props, you guys are bringing... We know you've got great technology, everyone kind of knows that, who knows google, certainly knows the size and the scope of the great technology. But you're making it consumable. And you're thinking about the enterprise, versus we're Google. Use our great stuff because we use it. You're like Google. People aren't like Google because no one has that many servers. (laughs) Right. So it's self-awareness. This has really been a great stride you guys have shown. And the customers on stage. >> Oh, they're fantastic. >> That's the proof in the pudding. At the end of the day-- >> They're fantastic. Showing how you can actually apply it, how you can apply AI, machine learning to actually solve real world problems, that's what we were most excited about. Like you said, lots of great technology. What we want to do is connect the dots. >> And Diane Greene I thought of, my favorite soundbite was security is number one, worry, AI is the number one opportunity. >> Absolutely. >> I think if you look at it from that lens, everything falls into place. >> Absolutely. >> Well thanks for coming on, thanks for having theCUBE this week, Google. And congratulations on your great venture, and good luck with your initiative. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you both. >> Alright that's theCUBE coverage here, live in San Francisco. I'm John Furrier, Jeff Frick, Dave Vellante went home last night. He's in our office taking care of some business. I want to thank everyone for watching. And that's a wrap here from San Francisco. Thanks for watching.

>> Live from San Francisco, It's the cube. Covering Google Cloud Next 2018. Brought to you by Google Cloud and it's Ecosystem partners. >> Hey, welcome back everyone. We are live in San Francisco, Cube coverage for Google Cloud Next 18. I'm John Furrier, Jeff Frick. Our next guest is Carol Carpenter, Vice President of product marketing here at Google Cloud, and Navid Erfani-Ghadimimi, welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you very much. >> Thanks for coming on. So data for good has been a topic we were just talking about here, day three What do you guys do? And what's your relationship with Google? Because big data for good is really, with cloud computing more relevant than ever before. Take a minute to explain your project. >> Sure, so in South Africa we are a social nonprofit organization. We try and connect young people that are not employed, never employed to opportunities. And we are hosted in Google Cloud, and we use GCP as our sole provider. And what we try and do is we use data to be able to understand young people, understand the facets that make a young person employable and match them to opportunities that we find. So we describe opportunities using different data points. So all those data points that we have, we store them in Cloud Sequel, and we store them in BigQuery. And then we run analytics and matching to be able to find how these young people can contribute to the economy. >> How's it going so far? >> So far it's been great. It's allowed us to think about the 10X strategies. When we were an on PRAM business, we very limited by what could provide, bricks and mortar, and now we're looking and saying, well how do we provide as much capacity and capability to these young people using cell service channels? So it really has just opened up a world of possibilities. And we're really looking at it. And we're very excited because we've taken on some initiatives in Rwanda as well. And so we're taking on a global and Africa-wide kind of strategy, which I think without Cloud we really wouldn't be able to do. >> I wonder if you could just drill down, because what are some of the data points that you look at and you measure? And is it identifying the data points and then finding the match? Or is it finding the critical ones that you really need to address as a priority to get kids to that position where they can get a job? >> I mean it's really interesting because what we talk about, we talk about proxies for competence. So if you think about when you go apply for a job, you kind of say hello, here I am and I've done this job for so many years, and that's your proxy for competence. So if you're a young person that just has a high school education and you're stepping in, we need to be able to describe you as a human, right? So for those things we look and say, what are your biographic information? What's your socialization? What kind of grit and energy do you bring to the job? So we try and measure those things and we have as many contact points as we can get to be able to understand, who is this individual, really? And use those data points, and we have about 155 aspects that we use right now, and then match them to different entry-level jobs. >> So you're the Enterprise Architect of Harambee Youth and Employment Accelerator. I love that term, accelerator. >> Yes, right. >> And I also love the term Enterprise Architect, because both are indeed of some clout. One of the themes is digital transformation, which is kind of a generic term, the analysts all talk about it. But really we're talking about the cloud mobile digital world and the power that can bring. Accelerator on the youth side, they need an app. So you're essentially providing a digital capability, not the old brick and mortar. >> That's right. >> How do you architect all of this? Because you got to assume there's an app at the edge, either a downloadable app or website, phone-- >> So we have actually quite an interesting problem to solve, because for our young people, they don't have access to apps. The majority of our young people are on feature phones, basic phones, not smart phones. And data in South Africa is very expensive. So for that young person, we need to provide as low a touch at a connection point, to our services, without making that cost them something, right? So we built a very basic Mobi site, no JavaScript, as blank as you can get. It's very boring if you look at it. >> So lightweight. >> Very lightweight. But it's the tip of an iceberg. So from there we collect certain information, but then we have an award-winning contact center that makes 35 thousand calls every month. And we engage with a young person in an up down poll for about 15 minutes. And it's that 15 minutes that we use to talk to this young person, understand about them, figure out who they are and what they are, and use that to gather our data points. We then have assessments that we run. So we run psychometric assessments, we have competence assessments, and we gather all those data points and we start understanding this young person in a way that we can go to an employer, because on that side for the employer, we need to be able to say you trust us that when we give you this young person, that we say this person will do well in your job. Well you have to have trust in us to be able to do that. So we need to provide that data to say well, this is how we came up with it. So we take quite a lot of effort in that. >> You're verifying in a way, putting your reputation on the line with the candidates. >> Yes. >> At the same time, you don't know when the inbound touch is going to happen, so you got to have all that material ready to go. >> That's right. >> That's where the big data kicks in. >> That's right. So the big data, the collection of that information, and the understanding of it... And we're on a journey to start figuring out, how can we use artificial intelligence, how can we use ML in a way that improves our accuracy, but at the same time, leaves out anything that may be biased toward these young people. So we're taking a very cautious approach to it. But it's a lot of big data. We're trying to consume it as best we can. Plus, we're trying to think about, how do we provision our services for the employers? Because again, it's a demand at business, so we want to find as many jobs as we can so we can take young people to those jobs. So extend our reach to the employers and-- >> The heavy lifting, so that they don't have to. >> Yeah, so they don't have to. >> Carol, talk about the dynamic with Google Cloud, because this is the theme we're hearing all week. You guys do the heavy lifting, and at the edge of the user experience, you take the toil out of it. The word toil has been-- >> It keeps coming up. >> It keeps coming up. Thinking of that toil, the hard work, friction out of it. In this case, the connectivity costs, being productive at that point of transaction... >> Exactly. >> They're doing the back end heavy lifting. This is kind of like a core theme across. >> That is what the promise of the Cloud is supposed to be, right? Which is to remove all that back end toil, I love that word too, the toil, the mundaneness of it all, so that folks like Harambee can actually focus on delivering great service to both potential employers and employees. So we're trying to automate as much of that infrastructure, that's what we announced a lot around serverless, around containers, this idea of you don't need to worry about it. You don't have to provision the server now. You don't have to worry about patches. You don't have to worry about security. We'll take care of that for you. >> I just love your phrase proxy for competence, and I can't help but think, I've got kids in college that you know, that's the whole objective of the application, right? We've got SATs and PSATs and they take a couple data sets, but relative to the number of data sets that you describe. And I would the intimacy of those data sets, versus an ACT an SAT and a transcript. You probably have a really interesting insight, and if you can correlate to the proxies of competency, this is something that has a much greater kind of opportunity than just helping these kids that you need to help and it's really important. But that's a really interesting take, to use a much bigger data set, sophistication, great tools and infrastructure to do that mapping of competency to that job. >> Absolutely, and we're very focused on understanding, how do we use this data to provision a network for our young people to be able to describe themselves in entry? So one of the things we found in South Africa, and I'm sure it's a fairly universal problem, is that if you are unemployed, one of the things that prevents you from finding employment is you cannot access a network in which people that have jobs or describe jobs, you don't have access to that network. And so the ability to stand up and say, hey, this is who I am, these people have said, this is my profile as an individual, and say Harambee, or whoever it is, says that I am competent in these things. That gives them an in, that gives them some way of entering that network. And for instance, we've done a certain study that said that if a young lady takes just a basic CV that has a stamp on it from Harambee with a description of who they are and what their competencies are, that improves their chances of finding a job by 30%, up to 30%, and that's significant, right? And this is not us finding the job for them, this is them going out and looking for a job, so it's describing and helping this person enter that network by providing, again, a proxy for competence. >> Talk about the relationship with Google. What is Google working with you guys on? And what's next for you guys? >> Google has helped us immensely. We receive those credits, and those credits allowed us to take that first step into the cloud. They gave us a little bit of breathing room, alright, so we could take that step. We also have access to some Googlers, that have helped talk to us a little bit about ML and they have been helping us out on that. In terms of the next steps, it's 10X time. It's time to grow, it's time to use this scale, it's time to use the opportunity that we have to make the real impact that we've been searching for. >> Connect those jobs to those folks. >> Absolutely, because this is not a small problem. We've got a big problem to solve and we're really excited to be able to do it. >> I'm glad you're doing that. >> Awesome. >> It's a great, great mission. Carol, I want to get your thoughts finally, just to kind of end this segment and kind of end our time here at Google Cloud. Good opportunity for someone who's been looking at the landscape of the products. What's been the vide of the show, from your standpoint? Obviously you've been planning this for months, it's showtime, it's coming to a close, we're day three, you heard, it's going to close in 30 minutes. Are you happy? >> Yeah, I mean we're thrilled. We're thrilled. We were just talking earlier, it's been a tremendous three days of just great interaction with fantastic customers, partners, developers, it's just the level of engagement... Google Cloud is about making the Cloud available for everyone. We wanted this to be a place for people to engage, to make things, to try things, to be hands-on, to be in sessions with people like Harambee, to actually understand what the Cloud can do. And we're super excited. We've seen that in spades. The feedback has been tremendous. I hope you heard that as well. We're really excited. We believe that the capabilities we have around what we're doing in data analytics, machine learning, on top of this incredibly robust infrastructure, we really believe that there are amazing problems we can solve together. >> We had a couple of our reporters here earlier saying people who think Google is far behind is not here at the event. I got to say, give you guys some props, you guys are bringing... We know you've got great technology, everyone kind of knows that, who knows google, certainly knows the size and the scope of the great technology. But you're making it consumable. And you're thinking about the enterprise, versus we're Google. Use our great stuff because we use it. You're like Google. People aren't like Google because no one has that many servers. (laughs) Right. So it's self-awareness. This has really been a great stride you guys have shown. And the customers on stage. >> Oh, they're fantastic. >> That's the proof in the pudding. At the end of the day-- >> They're fantastic. Showing how you can actually apply it, how you can apply AI, machine learning to actually solve real world problems, that's what we were most excited about. Like you said, lots of great technology. What we want to do is connect the dots. >> And Diane Greene I thought of, my favorite soundbite was security is number one, worry, AI is the number one opportunity. >> Absolutely. >> I think if you look at it from that lens, everything falls into place. >> Absolutely. >> Well thanks for coming on, thanks for having The Cube this week, Google. And congratulations on your great venture, and good luck with your initiative. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you both. >> Alright that's The Cube coverage here, live in San Francisco. I'm John Furrier, Jeff Frick, Dave Vellante went home last night. He's in our office taking care of some business. I want to thank everyone for watching. And that's a wrap here from San Francisco. Thanks for watching.

>> live from San Francisco, celebrating 10 years of high tech coverage. It's the Cube covering Veum, World 2019 brought to you by the M Wear and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to San Francisco. Day three of our coverage here on the Cube Of'em world 2019. I'm John Wall's Glad to have you here aboard for our continuing coverage here Day Volonte is also joining me, as is the sartorially resplendent Eric Herzog, cm of and vice president. Global storage channels that IBM storage. Eric, good to see you and love the shirt. Very >> nice. Thank you. Well, always have a wine shirts when I'm on the Cube >> I love in a long time Cuba to we might say, I'm sure he's got the record. Yeah, might pay. Well, >> you and pattern, neck and neck. We'll go to >> the vault. And well, >> since Pat used to be my boss, you know, couch out a path. >> Well, okay. Let the little show what IBM think. Maybe. Well, that's OK. Let's just start off a big picture. We're in all this, you know. Hybrid. Multilingual. This discussion went on this week. Obviously, just your thoughts about general trends and where the business is going now supposed to wear? Maybe we're 23 years ago. Well, the >> good thing is for IBM storage, and we actually came to your partner and titty wiki Bond when our new general manager, Ed Walsh, joined. And we came and we saw Dave and John at the old office are at your offices, and we did a pitch about hybrid multi cloud. Remember that gave us some feedback of how to create a new slide. So we created a slide based on Dave's input, and we were doing that two and 1/2 years ago. So we're running around telling the storage analyst Storage Press about hybrid multi cloud based on IBM storage. How weaken transparently move data, things we do with backup, Of course. An archive. You've got about 450 small and medium cloud providers. Their backup is a service engine. Is our spectrum protect? And so we talked about that. So Dave helped us craft the slide to make it better, because he said, we left a couple things >> out that Eric >> owes you. There were a few other analysts I'm sure you talked to and got input, but but us really were the first toe to combine those things in your in your marketing presentations. But >> let's I'd love to get >> an update on the business. Yes, help people understand the IBM storage organization. You guys created the storage business, you know, years and years and years ago. It's a it's a you know you've got your core business, which is column arms dealers. But there's a lot of Regent IBM, the Cloud Division. You've got the service's division, but so help us understand this sort of organizational structure. So >> the IBM story division's part of IBM Systems, which includes both the mainframe products Z and the Power Server entities. So it's a server in storage division. Um, the Easy guys in particular, have a lots of software that they sell and not just mainframe. So they have a very, very large software business, as do we. As you know, from looking at people that do the numbers, We're the second largest storage software company in the world, and the bulk of that software's not running on IBM gear. So, for example, spectrum protect will back up anyone's array spectrum scale and our IBM Cloud Object storage are sold this software only software defined as the spectrum virtualized. You could basically create a J. Bader Jabo after your favorite distributor or reseller and create your honor. Rates are software, but the all of the infrastructure would actually not be ours, not branded by us. And you call us for tech support for the software side. But if you had a bad power supplier fan, you'd have to call, you know, the reseller distributor said this very robust storage software business. Obviously you make sure that was compatible with the other server elements of IBM systems. But the bulk of our storage is actually sitting connect to some server that doesn't have an IBM logo on it. So that's the bulk of our business connected to Intel servers of all types that used to include, of course, IBM Intel Server division, which was sold off to Lenovo. So we still have a very robust business in the array space that has nothing to do with working on a power machine are working on a Z machine, although we clearly worked very heavily with them and have a number of things going with him, including something that's coming very shortly in the middle of September on some new high end products that we're going to dio >> went 90 Sea Counts All this stuff. Do they >> count to give IBM credit for all the storage that lives inside of the IBM Cloud? Do you get you get credit for that or >> not get credit for that? So when they count our number, it's only the systems that we sell and the storage software that we sell. So if you look at if we were a standalone company, which would include support service made everything, some of which we don't get credit for, right, the support and service is a different entity at IBM that does that, UM, the service's group, the tech support that all goes to someone else. We don't have a new credit >> so hypothetical I don't I don't think this is the case, but let's say hypothetically, if pure storage sold an array into IBM Cloud, they would get credit for it. But if you're array and I'm sure this happens is inside of the IBM, you don't get credit for it. >> That's true interesting, so it's somewhat undercounts. Part of that is the >> way we internally count because we're selling it to ourselves. >> But that's it. >> It's not. It's more of an accounting thing, but it's different when we sell the anybody else. So, for example, we sell the hundreds of cloud providers who in theory compete with the IBM Cloud Division >> to you Get credit for that. You get credit for your own away. That's way work. But if we were standing >> on coming for, say, government, we were Zog in store and I bought the company away, we would be about a $6.3 billion standalone storage software company. That's what we would be if we were all in because support service manes. If we were our own company with our own right legal entity, just like net app or the other guys, we'd be Stanley would be in that, you know, low $6 billion range, counting everything all in. When we do report publicly, we only report our storage system because we don't report our storage software business. And as you notice a few times, our CFO has made comments. If we did count, the storage software visit would be ex, and he's publicly stated that price at least two times. Since I've been an idea when he talks about the software on, but legally we only talk about IBM storage systems. When he publicly state our numbers out onto Wall Street, that's all >> we publicly report. So, um, you're like, you're like a walking sheet of knowledge here, but I wonder if you could take the audience through the portfolio. Oh, it's vast. How should we think about it? And the names have changed. You talk about, you know, 250 a raise, whatever it is the old sand volume control. And now it's a spectrum virtualized, >> right? So take us to the portfolio. What's the current? It's free straight for. >> We have really three elements in the portfolio, all built around, if you will, solution plays. But the three real elements in the portfolio our storage arrays, storage systems, we have entry mid range and high end, just like our competitors do. We lead with all flash, but we still sell hybrid and obviously, for backup, an archive. We still sell all hard drive right for those workloads. So and we have filed blocking object just like most other guys do, Um, for an array, then we have a business built around software, and we have two key elements. Their software defined storage, and we saw that software completely stand alone. It happens, too, by the way, be embedded on the arrays. So, for example, Dave, you mentioned Spectrum virtualized that ship's on flash systems and store wise. But if you don't want our raise, we will sell you just spectrum virtualized alone for block spectrum scale for Big Big Data A. I file Workloads and IBM caught object storage, which could all of them could be bought on an array. But they also could be bought. Itjust Standalone component. Yes, there's a software so part of the advantage we feel that delivers. It's some of the people that have software defined storage, that air raid guys. It's not the same software, so for us, it's easier for us to support and service. It's easier for a stack developing have leading it. Features is not running two different pieces of software running, one that happens to have a software on Lee version or an array embedded version. So we've got that, and then the third is around modern data protection, and that's really it. So a modern data protection portfolio built around spectrum, protect and Protect Plus and some other elements. A software to find storage where we sell the software only, and then arrays. That's it. It's really three things and not show. Now they're all kinds components underneath the hood. But what we really do is we sell. We don't really run around and talk about off last race. We talk about hybrid multi cloud. Now all of our flash raise and a lot of our software defined storage will automatically tear data out, too. Hybrid multi cloud configurations. We just So we lead with that same thing. We have one around cyber resiliency. Now, the one thing that spans the whole portfolio of cyber resiliency way have cyber rebellion see and a raise. We have some softer on the mainframe called Safeguarded Copy that creates immutable copies and has extra extra security for the management rights. You've got management control, and if you have a malware ransomware attack, you couldn't recover to these known good copies. So that's a piece of software that we sell on the mainframe on >> how much growth have you seen in that in? Because he's never reveals if you've got it resonating pervasive, right, Pervasive. So >> we've got, for example, malware and ransomware detection. Also, Inspector protect. So it's taken example. So I'm going to steal from the Cube and I'm gonna ask Dave and for you, I want a billion dollars and Dave's gonna laugh at me because he used a spectrum protect. He's gonna start laughing. But if I'm the ransomware guy, what do I do? I go after your snapshots, your replicas and your backup data sets. First, I make sure I've got those under control. And then when I tell you I'm holding you for ransom, you can't go back to a known good copy. So Ransomware goes after backup snaps and replicas first. Then it goes half your primary storage. So what we do, inspector protect, for example, is we know that at Weeki Bond and the Cube, you back up every night from 11 32 1 30 takes two hours to back you up every night. It's noon. There's tons of activity in the backup data sets. What the heck is going on? We send it out to the admin, So the admin for the Cube wicky bond takes a look and says, No server failure. So you can't be doing a lot of recovery because of a bad server. No storage failures. What the heck is going on? It could be a possible mount where ransomware attack. So that type of technology, we encrypt it, rest on all of our store to raise. We have both tape and tape and cloud air gapping. I'm gonna ask you about that. We've got both types of air gapped >> used to hate tape. Now he loves my love, right? No, I used to hate it, But now I love it because it's like the last resort, just in case. And you do air gapping when you do a WR gapping with customers, Do you kind of rotate the You know, it's like, uh, you know, the Yasser Arafat used to move every night. You sleep in a different place, right? You gonna rotate the >> weird analogy? You do >> some stuff. There's a whole strategy >> of how we outlined how you would do a tape air gap, you a cloud air gap. Of course you're replicating or snapping out to the cloud anyway, so they can't get to that. So if you have a failure, we haven't known good copy, depending on what time that is, right. And then you just recover. Cover back to that and even something simple. We have data rest, encryption. Okay. A lot of people don't use it or won't use it on storage because it's often software based, and so is permanent. Well, in our D s platform on the mainframe, we can encrypt with no performance hit on our flash system products we can encrypt with no performance it on our high end store. Wise, we have four models on the two high end stores models we could encrypt with no performance penalty. So why would you not encrypt all your debt? When there's a performance penalty, you have to sort of pick and choose. My God, I got to encrypt this valuable financial data, but, boy, I really wish it wasn't so slow with us. There is no performance it when you encrypt. So we have encryption at rest, encryption at flight malware and ran somewhere detection. We've got worm, which is important, obviously, doesn't mean I can't steal from wicked Bond Cube, but I certainly can't go change all your account numbers for all your vendors. For sake. of argument, right? So and there's obviously heavily regulated industries that still require worm technology, right? Immutable on the fine, by the way, you could always if it's wormed, you could encrypt it if you want to write. Because Worm just means it's immutable. It doesn't. It's not a different data type. It's just a mutable version of that data. >> So the cyber resiliency is interesting, and it leads me to another question I have around just are, indeed so A lot of companies in this industry do a lot of D developing next generation products. I think, you know, look a t m c when you were there, you know, this >> was a lot of there. Wasn't a ton, >> of course, are a lot of patents and stuff like that. IBM does corps are a lot of research and research facilities, brainiac scientists, I want if you could talk about how the storage division takes advantage of that, either specifically, is it relates to cyber resiliency. But generally, >> yes, so as you know, IBM has got, I think it's like 12 12 or 15 research on Lee sites that that's all they do, and everyone there is, in fact, my office had to be. Akiyama didn't labs, and there's two labs actually hear. The AMA didn't research lab and the Silicon Valley lab, which is very close about five miles away. Beautiful. Almost everything. There is research. There's a few product management guys I happen, Navid desk there every once. Well, see a sales guy or two. But essentially, they're all Richard with PhDs from the leading inverse now at Al Madden and many sites, all the divisions have their own research teams there. There's a heavy storage contingent at Al Midan as an example. Same thing in Zurich. So, for example, we just announced last week, as you know, stuff that will work with Quantum on the tape side. So you don't have to worry about because one of things, obviously, that people complain about quantum computing, whether it's us or anyone else, the quantum computing you can crack basically any encryption. Well, guess what? IBM research has developed tape that can be encrypted. So if using quantum computer, whether it be IBM or someone else's when you go with quantum computing, you can have secured data because the quantum computer can't actually cracked the encryption that we just put into that new tape that was done at IBM Research. How >> far away are we from From Quantum, actually being ableto be deployed and even minor use cases. >> Well, we've got available right now in ibm dot com for Betas. So we've got several 1000 people who have been accidents in it. And entities, we've been talking publicly in the 3 to 7 year timeframe for quantum computer crap out. Should it? Well, no, because if you do the right sort of security, you don't but the power. So if you're envisioning one of my favorite movies, I robot, right where she's doing her talking and that's that would really be quantum in all honesty. But at the same time, you know, the key thing IBM is all about ethics and all about how we do things, whether it be what we do with our diversity programs and hiring. And IBM is always, you know, at the forefront of doing and promoting ethical this and ethical. Then >> you do a customer data is huge. >> Yeah, and what we do with the customer data sets right, we do. GDP are, for example, all over the world were not required by law to do it really Only in Europe we do it everywhere. And so if you're not, if you're in California, if you happen to be in Zimbabwe or you're in Brazil, you get the same protection of GDP are even though we're not legally required to do it. And why are we doing that? Because they're always concerned about customers data, and we know they're paranoid about it. We want to make sure people feel comfortable with IBM. We do. Quantum computing will end up in that same vein. >> But you know, I don't worry about you guys. I were about the guys on the other side of the fence, the ones that I worry about, the same thing Capabilities knew that was >> on, of course. And you know, he talked about it in his speech, and he talked about action on the Cube yesterday about some of his comments on the point, and he mentioned that was based on Blockchain. What he said was Blockchain is a great technology. They've got Blockchain is no. IBM is a big believer in Blockchain. We promoted all over the place and in fact we've done all kinds of different Blockchain things we just did. One announced it last week with Australia with the Australian. I think it is with their equivalent of Wall Street. We've done some stuff with Merrick, the big shipping container thing, and it's a big consortium. That's all legal stuff that was really talking about someone using it the wrong way. And he's very specific point out that Blockchain is a great technology if used ethically, and IBM is all about how we do it. So we make sure whether be quantum computing, Blockchain, et cetera, that everything we do at IBM is about helping the end users, making sure that we're making, for example, open source. As you know. Well, the number one provider of open source technology pre read had acquisition is IBM. We submit Maur into the open community. Renounce Now are we able to make some money off of that? Sure we are, but we do it for a reason, because IBM believes as day point out in this core research. Open computing is court research, and we just join the Open Foundation last week as well. So we're really big on making sure that what we do ourselves is Ethel now We try to make sure that what happens in the hands of people who buy our technology, which we can always track, is also done ethically. And we go out of our way to join the right industry. Associations work with governments, work with whatever we need to do to help make sure that technology could really be iRobot. Anyone who thinks that's not true. If you talk to your grandparent's goto, go to the moon. What are you talking about? >> What Star Trek. It's always >> come to me. Oh, yeah, >> I mean, if you're your iPhone is basically the old community. Transport is the only thing I wish I could have the transfer. Aziz. You know, >> David has the same frame us up. I'm afraid of flying, and I I felt like two million miles on United and David. He's laughs about flowers, so I'm waiting for the transport. I know that's why anymore there's a cone over here. Go stand. Or maybe maybe with a little bit of like, I'm selling my Bitcoin. No, hang on, just hold on. There's always a comeback. Not always. There could be a comeback because Derek always enjoy it as always. Thanks for the good seeing you. All right, Back with more Veum. World 2019 The Cube live in San Francisco.

>> From Sand Hill Road, in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE, presenting the People First Network: Insights from Entrepreneurs and Tech Leaders. >> Hello everyone, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. We are here for a special conversations part of Mayfield's 50th anniversary People First Network. This is a series of interviews from fault leaders around entrepreneurship, and insights. Manish Chandra, who's the CEO, Co-Founder and CEO of Poshmark, a very successful company. A serial entrepreneur that I've known for many, many years, going back to his early startups. Great to see you, thanks for spending the time today. >> Thanks for having me, John. And it's great, we were just talking about our early days when you were doing your podcast, and me, I was doing a social shopping company back then, was it, 2006? 2005 timeframe, a long time back. >> Pioneers have arrows on their back, as they always say in entrepreneurship, but if you look at the time when we were doing startups, over 14 years ago, social sharing, democratization; these were the buzzwords. This was the wave that we were all trying to ride. When 2008 hit, it kind of took the water down a little bit. But still the game didn't change, a rise comes Facebook, Twitter, social, multiple channels. The consumer's expectations changed a lot in that timeframe, and I want to get your thoughts because you've had two successful companies, Kaboodle and now PoshMark, with almost 40 million users, billion dollar valuation, hundreds and hundreds of employees, got like a hundred openings in your company. You're ramping up and you're scaling. But the expectations of users has changed. What are some of those dynamics in your business that you're seeing? >> I think the biggest sort of, uh, culmination or ignition point for social platforms came with the advent of mobile. And uh, early days of mobile were crude days, but you know, if you look back at the advent of Poshmark, sort of the idea of Poshmark reignited in my mind in 2010, and iPhone 4 had just come out. It was a couple of months after Instagram had started. And SnapChat had not even started yet. And what, I think, mobile platform did, especially with the high quality platform like iPhone 4 was, it made the process of content creation, consumption, and sharing so fast, and you finally had the device that could produce it, that uh, it just kept accelerating. And now, in the days of, you know, iPhone Excess Max and what have you, it's just so easy. At the same time, the speed expectation, the transparency expectation, and the velocity of expectation has gone up, and so what we've seen in Poshmark is, day one, our users were spending somewhere between 20-25 minutes in the app. And here today, we have billions of users, and they're still doing that same thing, so that level of deep immersion that you see is sort of unique to the mobile paradigm. >> I want to dig into the user expectation and the experiences that you're delivering. But before we start, take a minute to explain Poshmark; what you guys are doing as a core business, how it's evolved. >> So Poshmark, very simply, is a simple way to buy and sell fashion and other sort of style-based paradigm, we call it a social commerce platform because it really brings together users in a unique way. But it really allows anybody to build a business starting with their closet all the way to opening up a full-brand, wholesale engine on the platform. We provide all of the infrastructure, you know, shipping, payments, technology, and you have to bring in your inventory, so we don't touch inventory, but everything else we handle for you. >> So you're really helping people, enabling them to be successful with the ease of use; heavy lifting. >> Heavy lifting. >> It's kind of like Amazon. You don't need to provision anything, just kind of get started. E-Commerce in the era now of Google, Amazon, and Cloud technology, you see the rise of all the scale. How are you riding that trend, because that's a tailwind for you? And what is that doing for the user's expectations, I mean, I have four kids, I see them all online, they never use their laptops, except for homework, but they're on the mobile device, they're doing new things, this is the new expectation; what are some of those expectations? >> In our business, which is the business of fashion and style, what it means for people is, number one is, if they see something. Whether they see something on Instagram, or something on SnapChat, it needs to be instantly shoppable, right? And that obviously benefits a platform like us, which makes easy access to all of the different brands and things that are developing. At the same time, what social media's also doing is making the obsoleting of your products very fast, because once you've used it, you've, you know, posted a picture, you want to be able to not consume it again. >> You've been seen wearing the same outfit, I can't wear it twice! >> Exactly! And so we make that easy as well. And then the third thing is, uh, everyone is a content creator, everyone is a seller, everyone is sort of participating in this economy; people are hosting AirBnB guests in their home, people are selling on Poshmark, and the reason is because phone, and sort of this new mindset of collaboration and social makes it very easy for people to participate, so they want to be able to sell, but they don't want any hassle in that process. And so the new consumer expectation is instantaneous, deeply immersive, and constantly changing, and if you can't satisfy all of those things, then it becomes harder for you to scale. So you have to use technology, the physical world, and sort of the emotion all in the right mixture. >> One of the things I know that you're passionate about, and we've had this conversation, we feel the same way, certainly, at theCUBE is, role of community. And I see a lot of companies these days, whether they're saying we're doing an ICO using tokens to, um, getting a big bag of money from venture capitalists, oh yeah, our key strategy is to build a community. You can't buy a community. You've got to really win the hearts and minds and provide value, and you really can't, and build trust. Talk about the role of community for you guys, especially in the stylist world, where you have all this, where style's involved, a very robust community. How did you do it? How did you foster a community, and how did you nurture it? And how has that played out for you guys? >> So community is a foundation of Poshmark. And community's our value, not just our customer, but also what we are, and uh, community is what I'm more passionate about, even more passionate than fashion; and that was sort of, in my previous company, the thing that was really highlighted for me. And so we did it very slowly, actually. During the first year of our company, we only had a hundred users, but these hundred users were immersed. And then we went from a hundred to a thousand. Then thousand to five thousand. But very deliberately and slowly. So the end of the first 18 months of our company's life, we had maybe ten thousand users, right? And then we went from ten thousand to 300,000 in the next seven months, then we went from 300,000 to 12 million in the next two years. And today we went from 12 million to 40 million in the next few years, because, once you have sort of figured out how the community is created, it can scale very fast, but the early days if you compromise in how the community is being created, it's very powerful. For example, in the first, probably, eight or nine months in the company, I answered every single customer service email. And today, I probably interact with 80-100 customers directly everyday. Really keeping the pulse in sort of servicing. And service and love are sort of two of our core values, and it is very important that's built into the system. The second thing is, the community has to be authentic. You cannot fake a community. Which means, there is conversations that will happen in the community, there is, which may be antithetical to what you think is your brand, but if you don't let that authenticity happen, then what ends up happening is the community sort of withers away, because people are not going to tolerate anything inauthentic. The third thing, as you mentioned, is trust. And so from day one, we created not just trust in the way platform was built, but also in the economics. So day one we said, hey, if you're going to be part of this platform, there's two things that you're going to pay for; one, is, as a buyer, you're going to pay for shipping, and as a seller, you're going to revenue share with us, and we're not going to charge you any other money. Nothing. And so we shared, started from day one, a 20-80 partnership with our sellers, and today, here we are six or seven years later, and we have the exact same partnership. On the buyers, we started by charging them $7 for shipping, today our shipping is $6.49, at that time our shipping was 3 pounds to 5 pounds. Everything was priority, today everything is priority. So in six to seven years, if you think of any other marketplace in the world, not just in the country, how many times have they raised their fees? How many times have they changed their paradigm, changed their shipping paradigm? For us, it was very important. In the early days, it felt, people were saying, why are you charging so heavily? I said, I don't want to charge anything different tomorrow that I'm charging today, and by the way, there's no additional fees we've ever imposed on the platform, so, we don't have any marketing fees, any promotion fees, any credit card fees, and so that trust that's created ultimately leads to a lot of loyalty. And so today, you see our consumers growing, our users growing, and every single cohort we have continues to grow in revenue more like SAAS businesses, as opposed to e-commerce businesses. And that, to me, is the power of community if you do it right. >> And that's an interesting point. There's a lot of things you said in there, I think, that are worth doubling down on. One, I just want to highlight it, if you're creating value, and you're certainly scaling, passing that down in cost savings, and reducing cost and adding value, that's a secret formula. You see, we know one company that does that really well: Amazon! And that's worked. And they recognize the value of keeping people in there engaged, and so I think that's almost a take away for anyone watching is that if you're not adding value and reducing the costs while you're scaling, you're probably doing your math right. >> Absolutely. >> The second thing I want to talk about, and get your reaction to is you know about community and slowing it down at first. That's almost counter-intuitive. The, almost the answer is put the pedal to the metal, let's get some numbers; you took a different approach. You decided to take your time. Was that to get a feeling for the community, build the trust, understand the dynamics? Talk about why you went slow at first. >> The key is that the first two, three years, you're perfecting a lot of things, right? You have to make sure things are getting right. And in the first year, it was all about getting the product right, right? Then we scaled. Then we quickly realized that that scaling was breaking everything, was breaking our shipping system, was breaking our technology's office; I actually, Mayfield, which was an early investor in Poshmark, was on the board, and I went to my board, and I said you know, I'm actually going to slow down growth by 60%. And if you can imagine a venture board hearing that from their CEO, in the early days, it's challenging. >> It's a tough conversation. >> Yes. But I think one of the things that I value about Mayfield and my early investors is their focus on partnership, at a people level, a human level, with me. And uh, trust, and so we actually cut down our marketing budget by 80%, filled out the systems, got the partnership with USPS where we created the country's first fashion shipping label called Poshpost, and built up our technology and infrastructure, built out our payment partnership with BrainTree and Paypal, and by sort of, early-to-mid 2014, we started scaling and have never stopped. And in fact, I had told my investors early on, that first two or three years of building this business will be challenging, so hopefully you are prepared to go on this journey with me; but once we build it, it will accelerate. And what you see with us is, the business continues to accelerate every quarter, and we are seeing hyper growth, six, seven years into the business, which is even faster than the growth we saw in the first few years. And part of it is that, network business, which are built around true sort of networks, continue accelerating and connects later on in the process, but if you haven't created the right foundation in the early days? They fall apart. >> I think that's a lesson that entrepreneurs can learn, because you got to go slow to go fast. In Cloud based businesses where you have network effects, if there's a crack in the foundation, it can come crumbling down. >> It can come completely crumbling down, and it did, I mean, there were times in 2013 when people were literally doing things and just, the data would get lost in other things. We had to fix many of those, the broken pieces. We had USPS come to our offices and say hey, either you pay us a multi-million dollar fine or we have the right to arrest you. We had to renegotiate our contract with them. There's a bunch of things that happen in that scaling, and you hear things like blitz scaling and stuff these days, and their great terms, but at the same time, if you don't fix what's broken, you can't build that super scalable business. >> You got to be ready to blitz scale. As you know, Reid Hoffmann's famous channel, Masters of Scale, points out, which, by the way, is a great program, but, if you're not ready, you can crash and burn big time. That's a good point. You know, I have conversations a lot with a lot of senior people, one of them Theresa Carlson, who runs Amazon Web Services Public Sector Cloud business, she talks about doing the hard work upfront. And, you know, she's using public sector, so you have to get those kind of certifications, it sounds like this is a lot of things that you had to do. How did that test your entrepreneurial spirit? I know you, and you're hard-charging, but you're pragmatic and we can see that. But taking the time to do the work can sometimes test the patience of the team and the entrepreneur themselves. What's your reaction to that? >> Um, I would say that, you know, when we started Poshmark, the mission was that can we serve a hundred million people. In the country, you know, not even around the world. In our way we have 40 million people. From day one what we saw was deep engagement in the platform, because of the level of usage we had, because of the level of, sort of, activation we had, we knew we were on to something. I'll share a small episode with you, which convinced us that we've touched a deep nerve within the community is, in May of 2012, we were barely, you know, six, seven months into our app being launched in the public space, and we had maybe five or ten thousand users. At that time, we were adjusting our shipping for the first time, and uh, literally we announced the, we had launched the product with a small discount on the shipping, we were going to take it back, and we just said, you know, we're going to take it back. We got 200 plus emails which ranged from, you know, you're going to take away my entire set of clothing, and my entire business and we barely thought we were even launched, and so we knew we were servicing something very deep. That commitment to servicing the community where you are, really helping people at a deep level, allowed us to ride through these crazy ups and downs. And there was a point of time we went along the valley, even though we had the initial funding, in the mid stages of it we got over 200 rejections in the paradigm; sometimes multiple by the same investors. And so, it was definitely not a smooth ride in the middle of building this company. But that sort of passion for community and what they were experiencing kept us going. >> Let's talk about People First and venture capital. And one of the things I'm impressed on with this program we're doing with Mayfield is, and theCUBE has newer effect as well in the community, it's a people-centric culture. We lived through the social media early days when social and democratization was happening. More than ever now, you're seeing the role of people, because we're all connected. So there's rapid communications, there's frictionless, for people to yell and/or raise their hand and give accolades as well. So you have now a social dynamic with the fabric around the world. People can transact and communicate, complain, you know, applaud. This is changing everything. How is that change your outlook on life, because you have to recruit people, they want to work for a company that's people-centric, they want to work for a mission-driven company. These are the new dynamics we're starting to see in this generation; how has People First impacted your core mission? >> So for me, life is all about people. This company's all about people. We serve people, people is one of our core values. And my connection with Mayfield, which is through Navid, started back, actually, in my previous company. At the very beginning of that journey, '04/'05, uh, and we tried to partner up but the timing was never right, so when we were starting Poshmark, Navin was the first one with a term sheet, even before he'd sort of seen the business idea. And to me, that was a huge belief in me and the team I could put together. And I have the same sort of feelings about the people we bring on into the company, where uh, many of my team members here, including two of my co-founders, were involved with me in Kaboodle. One of them was a co-founder in Kaboodle. The first 20, 30, 40 people, I think, in the company, are still here seven or eight years later. They were people who are now playing very senior roles in the company, where they've gone through their ups and downs and we are always behind, two or three people left and we recruited them back into the company. So I think at the end, life, anywhere, but particularly in today's world, is so much about people and relationships. And it's the same thing we did to our community. I mean, uh, we just finished our sixth annual user conference, which was six times bigger than our first one. What was amazing was, they were so many people who were there in the first conference who had been coming to all the six conferences, and they are now like mini-celebrities in the community. And so, it's just amazing to see how a focus on people can be both rewarding at a business level, but also very gratifying at a personal level. >> It's nice to see you hit that tipping point. Congratulations on your success, it's great to see. You're a great entrepreneur. I want to ask you the question around funding, because I know, we've both been through venture capital fundings, we've been through this point building this great company you run now, and you've actually hit massive growth to a whole other level, your challenge today and going forward. This is, given it's Mayfield's 50th anniversary, you've seen a lot of changes in venture capital. A rounds used to be A rounds, now there's B and pre-C, there's all kinds of nuance, and now you have alternative funding now and global landscape you're seeing block chain and cryptocurrency, although ICO's have taken a bath because of the regulatory issue. Issues around regulation, some scams out there, actually. But venture capital's been tried and true. What's changed in venture capital the past 25 years in your view? >> I think, two things, which have happened, particularly in the last seven or eight years is there's a lot of it. And secondly, it favors the mighty more than the weak. And so, those are sort of the two big changes that have happened in the venture capital business. I think you were just mentioning is the people I used to work with, a whole range of investors, are now investing in post-growth stage funds. I mean, the same company. So everyone is sort of leveled up and leveled up and then leveled up, you know? You see venture capitalists raising two, three, four billion dollar funds; I mean, that's not venture capital, there's no way you can deploy that at the venture stage. A company is staying private much longer at different scales, which I think is probably more sort of a sign of the times. And finally, I think, it is the metrics and the scale that your business can achieve, that these are obviously very aware of, is an order of magnitude bigger than it has ever been. In fact, sort of, in some ways, unicorn, being the unicorn is uh, as sometimes as people joke, sometimes an insult. You need to be a deca-unicorn these days. So the feeling of not being enough is constant. >> And that's challenging, too, for the venture industry, because, you know, there's still the classic building blocks of entrepreneurship and venture architecture, which is, you start with an idea and you get a prototype, and certainly it's easy to get on the Cloud computing certainly, a great win for the entrepreneur; so I can see maybe some acceleration. But at the end of the day, it's still the classic blocking and tackling with building your company. >> Yes. >> Building a durable company. >> Absolutely. And you and I have both seen the '98, '99, 2000 timeframe, you know, everyone believes nothing repeats, and, you know, we certainly see, maybe not exactly the same thing, maybe it's an order of magnitude less, but there's definitely some level of exuberance we see today. But if you're building a fundamentally good business, that has robust economics, that can scale, and is based on foundational principles, with a large sort of market, I don't think that we are wrong in terms of deploying massive amounts of capital up against it. But at the same time, um, I think it also creates certain socioeconomic, as well as responsibility challenges, that I don't think we are fully facing up to, as an economy, and as a Valley. >> You've raised over a hundred million plus, so you have done some funding. A lot of funding, you have a lot of cash you've raised. When you had to go through those exercises of looking at the fundraising, 'cos, you don't want it to die on the mind, you're building a durable business, you have to go through multiple rounds of fundings. What were the key decision points for you as you started to look at this fundraising process to build your business? >> See, in the early days it was literally just about survival, I mean, there were times where I ran the business on negative balance sheets, right? So it isn't that it's been easy. I was only, I would say, the last funding round was the one that was easy, where we got multiple term sheets proactively, and the first couple of them. In between--. >> When things are scaling things are great, you know? >> In the middle of it, every single round was effectively zero to one term sheets. Every single time. We were lucky to have Mayfield as a partner, and some of our early investors like Inventus and Menlo who sort of supported us through each of these pieces of the journey. Mayfield as an anchor point. But it was really, really hard. And part of it is that, what we were doing was challenging, so many things still are, that even to process our cohort data is hard. Do you think of it as used, do you think of it as buying, do you think of it as selling, what is it? It looks like a bird, but it moves like a plane, you know? What is it? It's Superman or Superwoman, right? So that being a challenge, uh, only in the last round did we have the freedom, we could raise no money, some money, all of the money, and um, most of the focus for us, for that capital, was really to have the deep pockets that would be required for global expansion. We had actually scaled the business, at that point in time, that we didn't need too much money for domestic expansion. And in fact, not only have we not touched any money from that round, we have not touched any money from the previous round, so far; most of the money from the previous round. And so, again, part of it is you need muscle to compete in a bigger world, but at the same time, if you build a fundamentally sound business, then over time you can scale with or without money. >> And you got SAAS, sellers and service, and network effects booming and great community. That's a great tailwind for you guys, for sure. >> It is a phenomenal tailwind, and in fact, um, I was just in my management team meeting this morning, and I said, you know, we are growing, but we can grow even faster at this point, because the level of network effect we are seeing in the community is an extraordinary effect, where there's sort of second order; our community is opening up Instagram accounts to promote Poshmark to sort of go out to YouTube, so there's sort of this wild, organic movement that's happening across the country, which is just bringing out a whole different level of growth that we've ever seen. >> Yeah, there's a whole new dynamic it seems. It's interesting, I'm seeing, and not a lot of people writing stories about it are documenting it, but Masters of Scale has a whole different perspective, but no one's really talking about something that you guys are touching upon, and we're seeing it in our business. Creating an environment that has network effects, and community, and good content in this case, product for your end. Um, creates a flywheel. And what's interesting is, in this new era of people who can create value, with the ability to capture it, is really a unique formula, and I think this is the new kind of management discussion. Certainly lower prices, increased value, that's an Amazon effect. That's a, lacking the words, good example, well-documented, you do that, you're good, you're doing it, but now you have the ability for people to create value. Who can then capture it. This is almost a whole 'nother big wave. Your reaction? >> I think the power of people today is at a very unique level, right? And it can go in the negative direction, but when you harness it from a positive perspective, it's phenomenal. And to me, you know, we've started added a fifth core value recently, is that at the end, the true happiness comes from service of others, right? And if you service everyone, in our job, you're servicing our community, who's then servicing other people, and that creates an amazing sort of paradigm. And if you remove the conversation of money, because it's taken care of, it's built into the platform, then it just keeps sort of circulating. And I think that's something that people underestimate. And one of the things that you, you know, you see is that, for example, open source software, right? You start by focusing on community and then it becomes all about money, and then you forget about the community and you see many of the larger open source companies slow down, because they forget the fact that what brought them there was the community. And to me, I think--. >> If they get greedy, the project's fail. >> Exactly, exactly. And so, the hardest thing at scale to balance is how do you make sure that you're still focused on the community? >> Great stuff! Final question for you. You know, these days, with venture capital, the question always is, where's the value at? Talk about your experiences with Mayfield, and what differentiates a value add versus a value subtract investor? When should an entrepreneur feel it? What's the tell signs of someone's got a value add, and partner is not? >> I think, I think Mayfield is so aligned in so many ways with our core values, which is focus on people and focus on service, that it's just been an amazing partnership with them. You know, even in our lowest moments, I knew that we would get funded; I didn't know how it is, because I knew that Navid and Mayfield would figure out a way, so I never sort of worried about the capital after I brought in Navid and saw him in action for a year and a half. And if you're a venture capitalist, you need to provide capital! And forget about any of the services, many VCs fail that one task, which is to provide capital when you most need it, right? But beyond that, it's been a great resource. I mean, I met my co-founder through Mayfield. Tracy and I were first introduced via Mayfield. Many of our recruiting of the top executives have come from Mayfield, but they're always available as a sounding board across the pieces, so I do think that they take their service paradigm to a whole new level. >> And they support you, too, right? The support's there? >> Support and they have an HR partner who's helped, I think, with some of the recruiting issues, hiring the recruiting partnerships, et cetera. PR, other areas as we needed it. Somebody that you could call on, too, even if it was just talking about searching for a general counsel, and Mayfield has been great, even in that. Help, at this late stage of a company, so it's fantastic. >> It's a great network; people, value, paying it forward. Manish, thanks for coming on, sharing your insights, here as part of theCUBE's 50th People Network with Mayfield. Thanks for sharing your experience. >> Thanks for having me! It's been a pleasure and joy to see you after so many years as well! >> This is theCUBE here on Sand Hill Road at Mayfield for their 50th Anniversary as a Venture Capital Firm, sharing insights and ideas from entrepreneurs, and tech executives. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching! (electronic music)

>> Hello and welcome to a special CUBE Conversation. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE on theCUBE. We're here in Sundance 2018 at the Intel Tech Lounge for a panel discussion with experts on the topic of The New Creative. We believe a new creative renaissance is coming in application development and also artistry. The role of craft and the role of technology and software coming together at the intersection. You're seeing results in the gaming industry. Virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality. A new wave is coming and it's really inspiring, but also there's a few thought leaders at the front end of this big wave setting the trends and they're here with us in this special panel for The New Creative. Here with us is Brooks Browne, Global Director of VR at Starbreeze Studios, a lot to share there, welcome to the panel. Lisa Watt, VR Marketing Strategist at Intel, Intel powering a lot of these VR games here. And Winslow Porter, co-founder and director of The New Reality Company. Many submissions at Sundance. Not this year, but a ton of experience talk about the role of Sundance and artistry. And then we have Gary Radburn who's a director of commercial VR and AR from media within Dell, Dell Technologies. Guys, welcome to this panel. Lisa, I want to start off with you at Intel. Obviously the Tech Lounge here, phenomenal location on Main Street in Sundance. Really drawing a massive crowd. Yesterday it was packed. This is a new generation here and you're seeing a younger demographic. You're seeing savvier consumers. They love tech, but interesting Sundance is turning into kind of an artistry tech show and the game is changing, your thoughts on this new creative. >> Yeah, it's been amazing to watch. I've been here for, this is my third year coming back with VR experiences. And it's really just been incredible to see. Sundance has been on the leading edge of exploring new technologies for a long time and I think this is, I feel like you know this feels like the break out year really. I mean, it's been successful the last few years, but something about this year feels a little bit different. And I think maybe it's the people are getting more familiar with the technology. I think the artists are getting more comfortable with how to push the boundaries. And then we certainly are getting a lot out of seeing what they're doing and how we can improve our products in the future. >> We were talking yesterday, Lisa, about the dynamic at Sundance. And you were mentioning that you see a few trends popping out. What is the most important story this year for the folks who couldn't make it, who might be watching this video that you see at Sundance? Obviously it's a great day today, it's snowing, it's a white day, it's beautiful powder, greatest snow on Earth. But there's some trends that are emerging. We had a march this morning, the Women's March. You're seeing interesting signals. What's your view? >> I think there's a lot less desire to put up with subpar experiences. I mean I think everyone is really starting to push the boundaries, I mean, we saw a lot of 360 video which we love for a linear narrative. But they're really breaking out and really exploring what does it mean to have autonomy especially in the virtual reality experiences, a lot more social is coming to the forefront. And then a lot more exploration of haptics and the new ways of extending into more 4D effects, etc. So I think it's very very exciting. We're really excited to see all the new innovations. >> Winslow, I want to ask you, if you can comment, you've been an active participant in the community with submissions here at Sundance. This year you're kind of chilling out, hanging out. You've been on the front lines, what is your take on the vibe? What's the sentiment out there? Because you're seeing the wave coming, we're feeling it. It feels early. I don't know how early it is, and the impact to people doing great creative work. What's that take? >> Well yeah, it's kind of like VR years are like dog years, you know. Like a lot can happen in a month in the VR space. So I had a piece here in 2014 called Clouds. It was an interactive documentary about Creative Code, but that was back when there was only two other VR pieces. It's interesting to see how the landscape has changed. Because CCP Games had a piece there. An early version of E Valkyrie. And unfortunately in the last three months, they had to close their VR wing. So, and then Chris Milk also had a Lincoln piece with Beck. Which was a multi camera 360, actually it was a flash video that they recorded to the DK1. And so that was, seeing that everyone was, saw the potential. The technology was still pretty rudimentary or crude even, we should say. Before any tracking cameras. But every year people learned from previous Sundances and other festivals. And we're seeing that Sundance kind of raises the bar every year. It's nice that it's in January because then there's all these other festivals that sort of follow through with either similar content, newer versions of content that's here, or people have just sort of learned from what is here. >> So I got to ask you. You know, obviously Sundance is known for pushing the boundaries. You see a lot of creative range. You see a lot of different stuff. And also you mentioned the VR. We've seen some failures, you've seen some successes, but that's growth. This market has to have some failures. Failures create opportunities to folks who are reiterating in that. What are some of the things that you can point to that are a positive? Things that have happened whether they're failures and/or successes, that folks can learn from? >> Well, I think that this year there's a lot more social VR. We're connecting people. Even though they're in the same space, they're able to be in this new virtual world together. There's something amazing about being able to interact with people in real life. But as soon as you have sort of a hyper reality where people are able to be experiencing a Sufi ritual together. Things that you wouldn't normally... That they're not possible in the real world. And also, I think that there's issues with lines too. Obviously every year, but the more that we can have larger experiences with multiple people, the more people we can get through. And then more impact we can make on the audience. It's really... We were in claim jumper last year. And we could only get one person in every 10 minutes. And that makes things pretty tricky. >> And what are you doing at Sundance this year? You've obviously got some stuff going on with some of the work you've done. What's your focus? >> So yeah we have a company called New Reality Company where we produce Giant and Tree. It's part of a trilogy where Breathe is going to be the third part. We're going to be completing that by the end of this year. And right now, I would say the best thing about Sundance is the projects, but also the people. Being able to come here, check in, meet new people, see partners that we've been working with in the past. Also new collaborations, everywhere you turn, there's amazing possibilities abound. >> I want to talk about empathy and social. I mentioned social's interesting in these trends. I want to go to Brooks Brown, who's got some really interesting work with Starbreeze and the Hero project. You know, being a pioneer, you've got to take a few arrows in your back, you've got to blow peoples' minds. You're doing some pretty amazing work. You're in the front lines as well. What's the experience that you're seeing? Talk about your project and its impact. >> Well for us, we set out with our partner's ink stories, Navid Khonsari, a wonderful creative, and his entire team to try to create that intensely personal experience kind of moving the opposite direction of these very much social things. The goal, ultimately being to try to put a person inside of an event rather than a game style situation where you have objective A, B, or C. Or a film that's a very, very hyper linear narrative. What is that sort of middle ground that VR itself has as unique medium? So we built out our entire piece. Deep 4D effects, everything is actually physically built out so you have that tactility as you walk around. Things react to you. We have smell, temperature, air movement, the audio provided by our partners at DTS is exceptional. And the goal is ultimately to see if we put you in a situation... I'm doing my best not to talk about what that situation is. It's pretty important to that. But to watch people react. And the core concept is would you be a hero? All over the world, every day people are going through horrific stuff. We're fortunate because we're the kind of people who, in order to experience, say a tragedy in Syria, we're fortunate that we have to go to Park City, Utah and go in virtual reality to experience something that is tragic, real, and deeply emotional. And so our goal is to put people through that and come out of it changed. Traumatized actually. So that way you have a little bit more empathy into the real world into the actual experiences they went through. >> And what's the goal? This is interesting because most of the some stuff you see, the sizzle out there is look at the beautiful vistas and the beaches and the peaks and you can almost be there. Now you're taking a different approach of putting people in situations that probe some emotional responses. >> Yeah. It's a big deal to us. The way Navid like to put it, and I'm going to steal this from him, is you see a great deal of people prototyping on hardware and all of these things, and it's great cause we need that. We need to be able to stand on the shoulders of those giants to be able to do these things. But you see very few people really prototyping what is the concept of story as per VR? We've been doing, at Starbreeze, we've been doing location based for some time now and I've been getting thousands upon thousands of pitches. And whenever you get a pitch, you can pretty much identify, oh you come from a film background, you come from a games background. There's very few people who come down that middle line and go, well this is what VR is supposed to be. This is that interesting thing that makes it very deeply unique. >> What's the confluence and what's the trend in your mind as this changes? Cause you mentioned that gamers have affinity towards VR. We were talking about that before we came on the panel. You know, pump someone in mainstream USA or around the world who does email, does work, may not be there, you're seeing this confluence. How is that culture shifting? How do you see that? Cause you're bringing a whole nother dimension. >> We're trying to go back to a little bit, something about this Sundance being a little bit different. I think in general in VR, you're seeing this sort of shift from a few years ago it was all potentiality. And I think a lot of us, the projects were great, but a lot of us who work in VR were like oh I see what they're trying to do. And people like my dad would be like I don't. I don't see what they're trying to do. But that is shifting. And you're seeing a larger shift into that actuality where we're not quite there yet where we can talk about the experiences every day Americans are going to have. What is the real ready player one that we're actually going to have existing. We're not there yet, but we're much closer every time. And we're starting to see a lot of these things that are pushing towards that. Final question before I go to some of the speeds and feeds questions I want to get with Intel and Dell on is what is the biggest impact that you're seeing with your project and VR in general that will have the most important consequences for societal impact? >> Well, we were fortunate yesterday we had a number of people come through Hero. And a number of them simply actually couldn't handle it. Had to come out. We had to pull people out. The moment we took the headset off, they were, tears were streaming down their face. There's a level of emotional impact VR is extremely able to cut through. It's not that you're playing a character. It's not that you're in a separate world. You are you inside of that space. And that is a dangerous but very promising ability of VR. >> Winslow, could you take a stab at that, I'd like to get your reaction to that because people are trying to figure out the societal impact in a positive way and potentially negative. >> Yeah I mean, so with that, whenever you traumatize somebody else or have the ability to possibly re-traumatize somebody... In Giant, we made sure that we gave them a trigger warning because yeah these things can be intensely intimate or personal for somebody who already has that sort of baggage with them or could be living in a similar experience. In Giant, we witnessed the last moments of a family. As they're convincing their daughter that the approaching bomb blast is a giant that actually wants to play with her. And so we put haptics in the chair so the audience was also surprised. But we let them know that it was going to be taking place in a conflict zone. So if that was something that they didn't want to participate in, that they could opt out. But again, like we didn't know... We had to go and buy tissues like right off the bat because people were crying in the headset. And that's kind of a... It's an interesting problem to have for the sake of what are sort of the rules around that? But also it makes it more difficult to get people through the experience in a timely fashion as well. But yeah, but we're seeing that as things become more real then there's also a chance to possibly impact people. It's the... >> So it's social for you? You see it as a social impact? >> Well, I mean if everyone's experiencing the same thing that can be social, but again if it's a one on one experience, it's sort of like up to the filmmaker to make sure that they have the scruples that they are playing by the rules. Cause there's right now most every piece of content is being released through Oculus, Steam, or Viveport. But there will be... It's heavily regulated right now, but as soon as there's other means of distributing the content, it could take a different sort of face. >> Certainly some exciting things to grab on, great stuff. I want to get to the commercial angle. Then we're going to talk more about the craft and the role of artistry in the creating side of it. Gary, you're the commercial VR expert at Dell. You're commercializing this. You're making the faster machines. We want faster everything. I mean everyone... Anyone who's in VR knows that all the graphics cards. They know the speeds and feeds. They're totally hardware nerds. What's going on? Where's the action? >> Okay, that's such a large question. I mean we've had some great stuff here that I also want to comment on as well. But inside the commercial side, then yeah everybody wants bigger, stronger, better, faster. And to Winslow's comment about the dog years, that really puts the pressure on us to continue that innovation and working with partners like Intel to get those faster processors in there. Get faster graphics cards in there so that we can get people more emotionally bought in. We can do better textures, we can get more immersion inside the content itself. We're working a lot around VR in terms of opening peoples' eyes for societal impact. So VR for good for instance. Where we're taking people to far flung corners of the Earth. We work with Nat Geo explorer Mike Libecki to show the plight of polar bears in Greenland and how they're gradually becoming extinct for an edutainment and a learning tool. The boundaries are really being pushed in entertainment and film. That's always been the case. Consumer has always really pushed that technology. Commercial's always been a bit of a lagger. They want stability in what's going on. But the creation that's going on here is absolutely fantastic. It's taken what is essentially a prosumer headset and then taking it into that commercial world and lit it up. 360 video, its very inception, people are using it for training inside of their businesses and so that's now going out into businesses now. We're starting to see advances in 360 video with more compute power needed. Where, to the point about immersion and getting people emotionally bought in. Then you can start doing volumetric, getting them in there. And then we're also working with people like Dr. Skip Rizzo who was on our panel yesterday where we're starting to go into, okay, we can treat PTSD. Help people with autism, through the medium of VR. So again, that buys into... >> These are disruptive use cases that are legit? >> Yeah. >> These are big time, market moving, helping people... >> Absolutely. And that where it becomes really, really powerful. Yes, we want our companies to embrace it. Companies are embracing it for training. But when you start seeing the healthcare implications and people crying inside of headsets. That's effecting you deeply, emotionally. If you can make that for good, and change somebody's trigger points inside of PTSD, and the autism side of helping somebody in interview techniques to be able to be more self sufficient, it's absolutely awesome. >> This is the new creative. So what's your take on the new creative? What's your definition? Cause you're talking about a big range of use cases beyond just film making and digital artistry. >> Yeah, absolutely so the new creative is like with all the great work that's here, people are looking at film and entertainment. Now the world really is the oyster for all the creatives out there. People are clamoring out for modelers, artists, story tellers, story experiencers to be able to use that inside their commercial environments to make their businesses more effective. But they're not going to have a 360 video production company inside of their commercial organization. And it's then leveraging all of the creative here and all of the great stuff here. Which is really going to help the whole world a lot. >> Lisa, I want to get your thoughts on this cause you guys at Intel here at the Tech Lounge have a variety of demos, but there's a range of pro and entry level tools that can get someone up and running quickly to pro. And so there's a creative range not only just for digital artistry, but also business we're hearing. So what's the... Cause AI's involved in a lot of this too though. It's not just AI, it's a lot of these things. What's the Intel take on this. >> Well I think it's really an interesting time for us at Intel because one of the things that we have that I think probably nobody else has. We have this amazing slate of products that really cover the end to end process. Both from the creation side of the house all the way to the consumption side. And we talk a lot about our processors. We worked on an amazing project, a couple of huge scenes inside of the Sansar environment. Which is a great tool for really democratizing the creation of spaces. It's a cloud hosted service but it utilizes this amazing client-server architecture. We created four huge spaces in a matter of eight weeks to launch at CES. And some of the technologies that Gary was referring to just in pure processing power like two generations old processors were taking three hours to render just a small portion of a model where our newest generation Core i9s with our opting technology took that time to 15 minutes. So when we think about what we can do now, and those technologies are going to be available in even portable laptop form factors. We've got the piece where we were working here SPHERES. They were able to actually make some corrections and some tweaks basically immediately without having to send them off to some render farm. They were able to do those things. And I know Winslow has talked about that as well. What does it mean to you to be able to react real time. And be able to do your creative craft where you are and then be able to share that so readily. And then you know... I just think that's kind of an amazing equalizer. It's really democratizing the creation process. >> Okay the next question that begs for everyone to address is where are we in this progression? Early? What work needs to get done? Where are we holding back? Is it speeds and feeds? Is it the software? Is it the routines, libraries, art? Where's the bottleneck? Why isn't it going faster? Or is it going faster? >> I would, and I'm sure the team would agree here, I would say that one of the key things is the creator tools themselves, right. They are still somewhat cumbersome. We were talking to another filmmaker. He was like I can't even, I have to play the whole piece from the beginning, I can't just go in and edit, you know change control, being able to collaborate on these pieces with other people. I mean, if you can collaborate in a real world space, you should be able to also collaborate in VR and have change control and all those sorts of things that are necessary to the iteration of a project. So we're trying to work with our software partners. They're all doing a really great job of trying to iterate that, but it's going to take some time. I mean I think that's probably the bigger thing that's holding everything back. We're going to be right there with the processing power and the other technologies that we bring to the table. OEM partners are going to be right there with the best devices. I really think it's something we've all got to push for as far as those tools getting better. >> Brooks, comment on anything? You're in the... >> So for me, the thing that's holding back VR in general is actually the art form itself. One of the great challenges, if you look back, at say the history of film... We're at Sundance, so it's probably fairly apropo. Very early on in the early movies, aside from penny arcade machines that you'd actually stare at, they were 10 minute almost like plays that people would go to almost a playhouse and they'd watch this thing. There were not cuts, there were no angles. It was a single wide shot. Great Train Robbery came around and there was this crazy thing they did called an edit. Where they spliced film together. And if you go back and you read, and they did these dolly shots. People will have no idea what they're watching. There's no way people will be able to follow that. Like people were not happy with it at the time. Now it's stuff that children do on their iMacs at home. They do iMacs all the time, they do it on their iPhones, on their Android devices. These are normal languages of film that we have. VR doesn't have that yet. And there's not a great deal of effort being made in that direction. There's people here doing that. So I'm kind of speaking in the middle of the group, but outside of these people, there's only a handful who are really doing that and it's a significant challenge. When people who are the mainstream consumer put on a VR headset, it needs to be more than just a magic trick where they go oh that's cool. And that tends to be the vast majority of experiences. So what is the thing that is going to make someone go oh I get why we have VR as a medium. And we're not there yet. We're in the direction, but that's >> So you mentioned earlier the point where you can tell if someone's from film or gaming or whatever when you talk to them about VR. Who is the future VR developer? Is it a filmmaker? Is it a gamer? Is it a digital artist? What is this evolving? >> It's a kid in his basement who no one knows and is screwing around with it and is going to do something that everyone thinks is stupid. Like, it's going to be that. Basically every major leap in gaming is kind of the same thing. It's when we understand how ludonarrative dissonance works inside of telling how people move around a space. It's about how we do Dutch angle suddenly in film. And these things get invented. It's going to be some kid who's just screwing around who doesn't have the baggage of the language of film. A lot of the people I know in VR have been fortunate to work in film, in games and interactive or web dev. So you come from a lot of places but someone's going to come along who has none of that baggage. And they're going to be... >> Well you guys are pioneers and you're doing it. So for the first person out there that's in their basement, that inspirational soundbite or comment. How can you guys talk to that person or that group? Because this is the democratization, this is what's happening. It's not the gatekeepers. It's real creatives out there that could come from anywhere. YouTube generation, Twitch generation, gaming. What would you say to that person to motivate them and to give them that passion? >> Well it's only going to get easier, faster, cheaper, all these things are happening. But again, yeah I totally agree with what Brooks said. It's really about the culture and about educating the audience and getting them up to speed. There are some VR experiences that as soon as they put on the headset, like somebody who's never done it before, immediately will take it off cause they'll get nauseated. And then there's people, like kids who are like jet fighters. They've seen everything. You could throw like a 30 frames per second experience at them and that doesn't even phase them. They can be, all of a sudden their worlds are changing and they're like bring it because they're ready for that. So I think it's sort of about raising the bar for what the audience is comfortable with, familiar with, educating the community. There's a lot of tools right now, you know with Unreal and Unity that allow people who have very little... They don't need to know C# or C++, they can get started in a lot of like visual. What you see is what you get. Being able to drag things into a virtual room. And the windows headsets that are out. They refer to them as mixed reality, but just even having the ability to flip up the screen and transition from the virtual world to the real world in milliseconds, it allows you to be able to create things more at the speed of thought instead of coming up with an idea, coding it, and making sure it works, and then eventually putting on the headset. The sooner that we can actually be ideating inside this virtual environment is when things will get really interesting. >> So the next question is to take to the next level is what's the playbook? How does someone get involved? How does someone ingratiate into a community? If I'm an artist, I want to get, and I'm proficient with technology, or maybe not, how do they get involved? Is it community driven? Is it social? You guys mentioned seeing social's a big trend here. How do people get involved? What's the track? >> Well yeah you don't just need to go to a grad school or... There's a lot of programs out there that are popping up. Almost every single major state school has like an interactive art program now. And that wasn't the case like two or three years ago. So we're seeing that that's a big shift in the culture. But again, VR is still... It's expensive and it's you know, like VR, I refer to it's in the stage of it's almost like in the neo geo phase, maybe a little before that. But it's the really expensive thing that your friend's neighbor has. Or his older brother or something. You get to play it a little bit, you're like that's great but there's no way in hell I'm going to... You know, I can't afford that or like that just doesn't really work with my lifestyle right now so it needs to incorporate itself into our everyday, our habits. And it needs to be something that... If we're all doing it then it makes sense for us to do it together not just somebody in their basement doing it by themselves. >> Yeah feel free to comment, this is a good topic. >> Oh yeah, absolutely. So what we're doing is sort of about democratization and accessibility. So for people to get into the then they're going to need a rig, they're going to need a headset and previously it's actually been quite expensive to actually take that first plunge into it. So now by democratizing and bringing price points down, it makes it more accessible. That helps content creators because there's now more of an audience that can now consume that content. And the people that can then play with the medium and consume it now have a better reason to do it. So we're working on that. We're also working on the education pieces like Key. It's actually going out there to schools and actually letting them experience VR and play with VR. Because it is a whole new different medium. We've seen film directors and filmmakers go into the VR space and things that worked in 2D film like fast pans and whatever else so the points have already been made don't really translate into VR without somebody losing their lunch. So it is going to be somebody who's coming up who hasn't got the baggage of previous skill sets inside of 2D doing it inside of VR. So we're going to see that. And in terms of the technology, everybody's wanting things to progress. That shows the level of excitement out there. And everybody wants to get into it. Everybody wants to see it go further. And I'm reminded of the mobile phone. Mobile phone, 30 years ago? Two suitcases for batteries, a large brick on the ear and a car antennae. Okay, so where we are now, if you had a time machine and you went back in time to talk to the inventor of the mobile phone, well, I'd be a lot richer because I know sports results and all, but that aside, but you go back and talk to them and you said do you know in 30 years time, everybody is going to be carrying that device? Everybody's going to be dependent on that device? They're going to get social anxiety and separation anxiety if they lose it. And they will probably laugh in your face. >> Alright so since you brought up the phone analogy, since I love that example, are we in the Blackberry moment of VR and no one yet has built the iPhone? Because the iPhone was the seminal moment for smartphones. And you see what happened there. Is VR needing that kind of break? Or is it there? >> I think we're on the cusp. Where we are at the moment with technology, we've had the headsets, which I say have been more in the consumer space, they've been designed to hit a certain price point. We had CES the other week where we've had advancements now in the resolutions of headset that are now coming out. One of the issues was well I can't see texts, I can't read texts. So from a working environment, if you're actually using tools that you would normally use on a 2D screen, you can now translate that and read that text. However, in terms of the tools that people use, why are we trying to put 2D screens into a VR headset? We've got a whole new way of interacting with data. We've got a whole new way of doing things that are going to be more intuitive than the mouse and keyboard interaction that we're used to. Why just translate that. Let's push that envelope and those are the developments that we're pushing our partners and our ISVs to really embrace. >> So it's an evoution. >> It's absolutely an evolution. >> You guys have any thoughts on that comment. That we have that inflection point, are we hitting that, will we see it soon, is it here? >> Well I think it's a very interesting symbiotic relationship between multiple factors. So you know, we hear the cost factor, we hear the technology factor, then we have the content factor. You know I saw an interesting evolution at CES we had created this virtual booth experience so that you could still come to the CES Intel booth without actually having to be there. And I met a guy in there and I was like hey where are you? He goes I've been in here like all week. (laughter) And I was like oh yeah, where do you live? He goes oh I'm in my basement in Nebraska. But he had just, this was Friday when I met him. He'd been in there all week, but in 2D mode. And he had gone out the night before and bought a headset just so he could come back and go in VR mode. And I think, yes, all these factors have to kind of line up, but I do think that content, those experiences that are going to keep people coming back for more. Like these guys literally kept coming back to our booth. Right, to see... >> Content gain. >> To see who was there. And to them at that point, it wasn't really a barrier of cost. It was like there is something that I want to consume therefore I am going to go get what I need to consume it. And I use the analogy of HDTV, right. When we kind of moved over that hump where there was enough content people didn't really care how much that television cost. >> Sports was great. Sports really highlighted HD. >> Yeah. >> But this is a good point. This is a good question to ask. Brooks, I'd love to get your thoughts. Content drives experiences, amazing experiences, but we're building the scaffolding of everything at the same time. So where are we, what's your opinion? >> So here on the Starbreeze side, we're fortunate because we have our own headset. We have the StarVR headset we've been building with Acer. 5K all of that stuff and we're upgrading it over the next year. Our focus has been, we skipped the consumer market very much. We went straight to location based and enterprise. And the reason we did that is because there's a promise of VR at a basic, I don't want to say technology stand point, but from an experience perspective, when it comes to that resolution, when it comes to that field of view, when it comes to these things people expect. Average consumers who go to a movie and they see these giant screens. They want that translated. They don't have the understanding like we do of well, LED panels are actually a pain in the ass to build and it takes a little bit and they flip at their own speeds. Time to photon is not a thing my dad will ever see in his life. But there's a reality that people have a need for that. And it is extremely expensive. It's again the reason we went straight to LBE. But for us it's about marrying the two and consistently trying to match what's happening. So when we're talking about, as I mentioned earlier the technology and how we're standing on the shoulders of giants very very quickly, someone who's doing technology is going to see what we're doing content wise and go well I can do that better technology wise. And then we're just going to keep leap frogging. And it's very similar to the phone in the same way that we're not at the final stage of the phone. Like we're at our stage of the phone and no doubt in 30 years people will laugh at us for carrying anything. The same way we laugh about the briefcases and the giant batteries in the cars we had to pull with us. So it's one of those things that's continually transitional. And VR's in an odd, amazing place. >> Well you know, it was a lot of waves that we've all seen. You mentioned the mobile phone, that's a good one to point to. It feels like the PC revolution to me because the same culture of entrepreneurs and pioneers come from a bunch of different backgrounds. So I'd like to get Brooks perspective and Winslow's perspective on this because I think there's an entrepreneurial culture out there right now that's just emerging very fast. It's not like your classic entrepreneur software developer. So in this movement, in this wave, the entrepreneur is the filmmaker, it could be the kid in the basement, could be the gamer. Those entrepreneurs are trying to find a path. >> Yeah, it's a weird mix. VR is at this odd point where not only is it the people who are wanting to be cutting edge in terms of content or technology, but also that first mover strategy from the business side of things. And so everyone wants to be those guys who are charging ahead because in reality, if you look at the financials around all of this, VR is one of those things that you don't want to finance. It's not nearly as safe as say Marvel Avengers or the next Call of Duty. >> You've got to be, you've got to hustle. >> Yeah you've got to hustle. You've got to make... >> What's your advice? >> Start doing it. That's really it. It's the same advice I used to give to game makers when people would be like well I want to learn how to make games. It's like go to YouTube, download a thing and go do it. There's literally no reason why you can't. >> Are there meetups or like the Homebrew Computer Club that spawned the Mac. >> There are, there are infinite groups of VR people who are more than happy to give you all the terrible and wonderful opinions that come with that. There's no shortage of people. There's no shortage and it's an amazingly helpful group. Because everyone wants someone else to figure out something so they can steal that and then figure out something else. >> Winslow, your advice to entrepreneurs out there that are young and/or 14 to 50, what should they do? Jump right in obviously is a good one. >> Well yeah, experiment, break things, that's really the only way to learn. I would say watch as much VR as you can because sometimes bad VR is the best VR. Because you can learn don't do that. And if you learn, if you put all that together, you can really... It's like this lexicon that you can really follow. Also, I think we... As people in tech, we kind of get obsessed with things like resolution, frame rate, and these are very important, but it's also good to remember, or at least for me, I watch some of the best experiences from storytelling when I was a kid, eight years old on a 12 inch screen that was 640 by 480. You know, like scan lines on the VHS. But for me the story still resonated and it's important to think of story first, but obviously it's a dance between the story and the technology. They kind of have to both organically work together. And if they don't, one thing in the story that doesn't work because the tech isn't supporting it, can throw you out of the experience. >> Other concern entrepreneurs might have is financing. How do I get someone to help me build it? And then doing relationships. Finding relationships that could... One plus one equals more than two, right. So how do you? >> You have to get really creative when it comes to funding right now. Unless you're doing location based, which also requires a certain amount of investment to get it up to a bar where you want to be showing it to people with all the haptic effects when it's heat, smell, vibration, stuff like that. You know, it's not cheap to develop. But as far as like working with film foundations, we're fortunate enough to be sponsored by Fledgling Fund and Chicken and Egg. But we also were able to get partnerships with people like Intel and NVidia. And also work with people who come from a traditional film background. There's not one way to successfully fund a project. There's a million. And that's why it's interesting that the technology's innovating, but also the market place is as well. >> One of the things I want to ask is as any new industry gets building, is cultures form early. DNA forms in the entrepreneurs, in the pioneers. And one of the big hottest topics in the creative world is inclusion and diversity. So what's the makeup of the culture of this new generation? Because democratization means everyone can participate, everyone's involved. What's the state of the community vis a vis diversity, inclusion, and the role of the actors in the community. >> Well I think it's important to understand that VR has a profound ability to place you in somebody else's shoes. The trick though is to make sure that those feel like they're your shoes. But I think that we're learning a lot more about story telling techniques and we're able to empower people that their voices you know were previously not heard. The tricky thing is being able to yeah, educate all different groups of people how to use the technology, but once they're enabled and empowered to do it, it's amazing what you can experience inside the headset. >> So VR can be an enabler for education, outreach, a variety of things? >> Yes, I mean the term empathy, empathy machine gets thrown around a lot. You could do a drinking game around it. For panels when people are talking about it. But it's important to know there is a truth to that. And it's, yeah the perspective shift from looking at a screen, a 16 by 9 screen where you can look away, then dissolving the screen and becoming that person. Becoming the director, the actor, the camera person, the editor. When you're in the first person perspective, there's so much more... It feels more personal and that's a really interesting angle that we're going to continue to explore. >> So you could walk in someone's shoes, literally? >> Yes, you literally can. You just have to make sure that you got a... The tracking system's proper or else you'll look like there's... It can be come a horror movie pretty quickly if your leg is behind your head. >> Lisa, your thoughts on this, I know it's important to you. >> Yeah, I mean I think it's fascinating because I've been in tech for a really long time. And seen many, many trends. I mean the first job I had at Intel I was a PC tech and as you can imagine as a female, I think there was one other tech female in the department at the time and I would get funny looks when I would show up with my bag. They were like hi can I help you? I'm like I'm not here to deliver coffee, I'm here to fix your computer, you know. So I've seen a lot of trends and it's super exciting to me to see so much diversity cross culture, cross country, I mean we're having... We had guys come in from all over the world. From even war torn, they've escaped their country just several years ago and they're coming and they're bringing all that creativity to the market. We're seeing very, very strong female contingent from the filmmaker perspective so it's this wonderful, wonderful just primordial soup of people that I think are growing their own voice and their own power. They're breaking molds as far as how you actually get content produced. Distribution is kind of crazy right now. I mean, how do you get it distributed? There's like so many different ways. But all of those things are so important to the evolutionary and biological process of this. Yes, we need to let it go and sometimes we're frustrated. We're like where's the standards? Where's the one ring to rule them all? Where there's not going to be one. And it's good for us that there's not right now. It's frustrating from a business perspective sometimes. You're like, I can't peanut butter myself around all of these places, but I think it's just a very unique time where so many people are... The technology is accessible, that means that so many creators can now bring their fresh voice to this space and it's just going to be fascinating to continue to watch. >> That's awesome. Well two more questions and I'll give you some time to think about the last one which is your perspective on Sundance, what's happening this year, your personal view of what you think's happening, what might happen during this year. But the question I have for you now is to go down the line. We'll start with Brooks here, and talk about the coolest thing that you're involved in right now. >> It actually has to be Hero. We're debuting it here at Sundance. We've been working on it and not talking about it for about nine months. And it's been very difficult. Again it's sacrosanct to the experience that you don't know literally what you're getting in to. And the emotional response has been essentially our goal, trying to find out how far can we take that. You actually being in a space, moving around, having that interactivity, doing what you would do. But it being your story and how deeply we can absolutely effect a human being. And again, watching people come out, it's one of those things, I've been doing game development, I've worked on films, I've done all kinds of stuff. And you usually get a chance when someone experiences something you've made, you walk up to them and you go so what'd you think? And that's not at all what we can do with ours. >> How has it impacted you, that reaction? >> Well, I personally suffer significant PTSD and I've had some traumas in my life. And so it's been incredibly powerful to be able to share these things with people. Share this emotion in a deeply profound, yet amazingly personal way. Which I'm amazingly fortunate to be able to be a part of it. >> Alright thanks for sharing. Coolest thing that's going on with you right now here at Sundance. >> Just the fact that I'm here at all. I mean, it's incredible right? Personally was able to be an advisor on the SPHERES project that is premiering here with Eliza McNitt. She's someone who was an Intel Science Fair winner back in high school and kind of came back to us. So just to see the evolution of an artist really from the beginning to the point where they've been able to come here to Sundance. I'm also very passionate about the work that we're doing with Sansar. I kind of consider myself one of the chief storytellers at Intel around Virtual reality and this new move into social where people are like well what's this game. I'm like, it's not a game. It's you are the game, you are the interactivity. You become the person that makes the space interesting. We're just really setting the scene for you. And there's so many... You know there's a lot of different people kind of chasing this be togetherness. But what we've been able to produce there. And just to be able to explore some of my own personal ideas has just been such a gift. Then to be working with guys like these on the panels and see what they're doing and just be in touch is really just an exciting time. >> John: Awesome. >> Probably what, other than the people on the projects, or the projects that are being shown here, we're working on our new project, which we would have loved to premiere here, but we did... Basically when you get in, you have two months to create a piece, so you have a demo and you have to finish it, so we're taking a little bit more time. This one's going to be about a year development cycle. It's called Breathe where we take you from where Giant left off, where, in Giant, the ceiling collapses on a family. They're in front of you. In this experience, we use a breathing apparatus to basically bring yourself back to life. And then you realize you're trapped under rubble and you remove the... We actually want to have physical objects on top of you that are going to be tracked. So you're moving rubble from you and you realize that you're a six year old girl. You're the survivor from Giant. And you get to witness what it's like to be a future refugee sort of in different key moments of her life that use breath. Whether it's a flirtatious moment, blowing a dandelion, seeing your own breath in snow as a drone shows you a message that your parents pre-recorded on your 18th birthday. This is all in the future, obviously, but every time you walk around an object, you actually grow 10 to 15 years older in the experience. As you get older, the world becomes smaller. And then we witness what's like for her last breath. From being six years old to being 90 years old. But it's a profound personal experience. >> John: That sounds cool, cool. Gary, coolest thing that you're involved in right now at Sundance. >> Wow. I could say it's all cool that would be a bit trite. They say if you enjoy what you do, is it really a job? And I'm lucky enough to be in that position. Because working with all these guys here and like people around the place, they're doing such great things that every day I wake up and I'm astounded of where the industry's going. In terms of what we're doing here at Sundance, then we're really starting to push those envelopes as well. I've been lucky enough to be involved with Dunkirk and Spider-Man: Homecoming. Like last year, so some great pieces there. And moving out into this year, we've got some other developments which I can't mention at this point, but we're showing things like AR and VR mashup. So we haven't talked much about augmented reality here. It's an evolutionary, it's not a replacement. Both can be used and we've started to really start to blend those two technologies now. So you can still see the outside world. Just touching on the commercial side, and health care's very big for me. That's where I think the really cool stuff is happening. Entertainment is great and that's really pushing the envelope and allowing us to then take it for the good of human kind. >> It happens everywhere, it's not just entertainment. >> Yeah absolutely. You start looking at MRI scans inside of VR or AR. Talking a patient through it so they can actually see exactly what you're talking about. You're now no longer pointing at flat things on a screen. You're now actually taking them through it. If you're using AR, you can actually judge the responses of the patient as for how they're reacting to the news. And effectively, inside of the VR, and what's really cool for me is seeing people's reaction to that content and to the entertainment content. >> That's awesome. Okay final question. This is a little bit of self serving because I'd like you to help me do my job at SiliconANGLE. If you were a reporter and you were going to report the most important stories happening this year at Sundance or really kind of what's really happening versus what's kind of being billed to be happening here. What's the story? What is the story this year at Sundance 2018 in your personal perspective? We'll go down the line and share your observations. >> Well, mine here, I'm a Sundance newbie. This is my first year of being here. I'm absolutely astounded by the community spirit that's around. I go to a lot of technical trade shows and technical presentations. People coming here with a willingness to learn. Wanting to learn from other people. It's been touched on already. It's the pool of knowledge that's available inside of Sundance that everybody that comes here can actually tap into to create better content, to learn not what to do as well as learn what to do. And I just think that's brilliant because in that community spirit, that's really going to help enable this industry quickly. >> John: Winslow, you've got some experience, what's your thoughts? >> Obviously, this Intel house, just a little plug for you Lisa. (laughter) Tech Lounge. We got that? Okay good. I mean, yeah, the people that's here. Every year we come here and see where the high water mark is. All these people are... Some of these teams first started with two people and then they grew to six and then by the end of it, there's 100 people working around the clock, pulling all-nighters to be able to give the latest and greatest of what's available with these current tools. So it's amazing because the work itself doesn't really mean anything until people get to experience it. So that's nice that they make a big splash. The people here are very attentive to it. It's a very nice audience and this will continue the momentum for future festivals throughout the year, but also will excite people that have never done VR before. People who have never been to Sundance before. We're seeing that there's a lot of new people. And that will continue to influence many years to come. >> John: So you think VR is the top story here being told? >> As far as like just to generalize, I would say last year kind of the big VR year. This is kind of the big AR year. Next year's going to be the AI year. Then after that we're going to start putting them all together. >> John: Great, great feedback. >> I think it's just exciting for Intel just to be back here. I think Intel hasn't been here in quite some time. Dell coming in here probably one of the breakout years for us to come back and really talk to creators what we're doing from the Intel Studios all the way through to the stuff you can take home and do at home. And I think coming in, we're coming back here with a purpose really, not just to be here to be seen. We're really here with real things and want to have real conversations on how tech can enable what people are doing. Not just from a brand perspective, but from a real hands on point of view. >> John: Yeah, some great demos too, phenomenal tech. >> Really just, yeah everything from the AI stuff we have to the social to the great new pieces that have been submitted here like we mentioned with SPHERES. So I think, yeah, it doesn't feel gratuitous to me you know that Dell or Intel is here this year. We've really come with a purpose. >> You guys are moving the needle, it's really awesome. We need more horsepower. >> Brooks, your thoughts on Sundance this year. Observation, the vibe, what would you tell your friend back home when you get back? >> If, for me, I think it's almost the non-story. It's like the opposite of a story. It's just the deep integration of VR into the normal Sundance flow I think has been interesting. Some people have been here for a few years. And back in the day when it was one or two, it was a lot of oh, you do VR? What's that then? Whereas now, you see a lot more people who are crossing over. Going to see documentaries, then they come to see a VR piece and it's just a part of the normal flow. And the team at New Frontier has done exceptional work to kind of make sure that they have this ridiculous high level of broad content for all kinds of people. All kinds of experiences, all high end things. But it's not that VR's here. Oh good, we have a VR section. It's a lot more of an integrated set up. And it's been really encouraging to see. >> Well you guys have been great. It's been very inspirational. Great information. You guys are reimagining the future and building it at the same time so entrepreneurially and also with content and technology. So thanks so much for sharing on this panel The New Creative. This is SiliconANGLE's coverage of Sundance 2018 here at the Intel Tech Lounge at the Sundance Film Festival. I'm John Furrier thanks for watching. (upbeat music)