(techno music) >> Narrator: Live from Chicago, Illinois, its theCUBE. Covering LeMon 2018. Brought to you by VeeAM. >> Welcome back to the windy city everybody. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events. We track the signal, extract the signal from the noise. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm here with co-host Stu Miniman. This is our second year here at VeeAMON. Hashtag Veeamon, simple enough. Kate Hutchison is here, she's the CMO of VeeAm. >> Yes, thank you very much for having me. Its a pleasure to be here. >> You're very welcome, thanks so much for taking time out of your busy schedule, great show. You've painted the town in green. >> We certainly have. (laughs) >> So VeeAM obviously didn't need your expert help in creating awareness in places like this. >> Kate: Yes. >> And having a persona around around the green team. Awesome. Your background, Riverbed, Polycom, VMware, Citrix, BEA, some rockstar companies. You've got a lot of experience there. Why did you come to Veeam, and why now? >> Yes, so I was attracted to VeeAM for many reasons. We have some, as you know, some stellar attributes as a company. We've been talking about our net promoter score of 73, which is three and half times the industry average. And of course the executive team themselves, and meeting them and really wanting to be a part of that team. So that was a huge reason for me joining, but as it relates to my career and my background and what I thought I could bring to VeeAM. Very much about enterprise marketing. So I've spent about the last 20 years in the industry, as you mentioned the company names. Really helping those companies build the powerhouse brand, and so I just love being a company who is known for one thing, but is very successful that being known for something that's even broader and more strategic. And that's why I wanted to join the company. >> You mentioned the phrase powerhouse brand. What is a powerhouse brand, and how do you go about building it? >> Well everybody probably has a different definition of a powerhouse brand, but having spent a good 15 years in the Bay area, Silicon Valley, when you're walking around Silicon Valley and you say who you work for and everyone recognizes it, you're working for a powerhouse brand. That hasn't been the case with VeeAM. Now we're very strong, we do our research. We come out pretty strong it Europe, but in terms of our brand awareness in North America we have a ways to go there. Again, and I think because when it comes to building a brand and a powerhouse brand, enterprises really rely on customers to do that. To really leverage the voice of customers, to get the word out and to get the customers to go on record to talk about the power and value of VeeAM. Because when customers go on to talk about it, there really is no better marketing that you can do. >> Ya Kate, one of the things I saw. VeeAM started out with the geeks, and I say that in the most loving terms. People that did virtualization. >> Kate: Yes. >> VeeAM solved a problem, simple, huge adoption in that market, but as we've been talking about all day here, data protection is going up the stack. >> Kate: It is. >> It's hitting the seed sweep more, so. >> Kate: Yes. >> Maybe you could explain to a lot of our audience are the techies and they're like I don't understand this brand in marketing things. >> Kate: Sure. >> We just want the next little containers and things there. >> Kate: Absolutely. >> So why the brand elevation? >> So, first and foremost, we're known for one thing in the industry, as it relates to our product. It just works, and we're not leaving that behind, and certainly the enterprise cares a lot about the product, but as we go into the enterprise space, there's some things that an enterprise customer is going to look for, that an SMB may not. Enterprise is one of the assured company that they're doing business with, has long term viability. They want to make sure that there's plenty of addressable market and headroom for them to go far and above, beyond their sights of, a billion in our case. The other thing is, enterprise customers have a different way of engaging with that company, as it relates to the selling motion. So whether it's our partners, our alliance partners, our resellers, our sales teams directly, they want to be able to work with them as trusted advisors, and they want our folks to be able to anticipate their needs, well ahead of when they actually encounter them. So, we're talking a lot about a journey for our customers. We've been talking about intelligent data management, and the five stages of getting to that. So its really, its building on our core. Which has been SMB and commercial, but also now, up leveling the story, and by the way, the technologists at all companies of all sizes, want to be doing more to influence the outcomes, the business outcomes. So we're telling a story that we think will resonate with them and there's always plenty of click downs into the technology if you want it. (laughs) >> So you guys are putting a lot of emphasis on the up leveling. As Stu mentioned, CXO is becoming more aware of the data protection problem. >> Kate: Yes. >> Its becoming a board level topic. >> Kate: Yes. >> So I think I get the why now. >> Kate: Yes. >> My question is, why VeeAM? And what is the brand promise that you're going to bring to that enterprise? >> So I think, traditionally, VeeAM has been thought of as more of an S&B and commercial play. So the why now is that we have a much broader portfolio then we had a few years ago, and yet we're thought of as just back up and replication. Now, we're building on what our reputation is and back up and replication, but we want to take customers to where we know the puck is going. So for example, as enterprise customers want to take advantage of public clouds, of manage clouds, of SAS applications, they need to be able to get control of all their data. That's the one thing we hear over and over. I don't know where all my data is. Right? So they need to have a platform that can give them that visibility and that aggregated view, that single paint of glass. Then they're going to eventually want to take advantage of being able to move workloads into places where it makes more sense to have them. In cases where there needs to be tighter protection, or in the case of archive data, that they don't need to spend a lot of money on primary storage. It just depends on what our customers want to do. And, ultimately, to be able to move to more of a behavior based way of managing that data. For example, if we see malware crossing that network we can immediately respond and make sure that those workloads are secure. It could also happen as it relates to weather systems and being able to have the data be smart enough to sense and respond where it needs to move to. >> We saw some slides this morning that Peter McKay was showing, like off the platform slide, and I tweeted out that we learned years ago, working with Eric Brinyawlson and Andy McAfee that platforms beat products. >> Kate: Yes. >> So, talk about the importance of platforms through the enterprise. >> Yes, so first of all you cannot be a platform provider without an ecosystem that's embracing and extending the value, and we're working with our ecosystem through the API's, the application programming interfaces, that we make available to them so that they can integrate with our products, and actually allow our platform to be able to be the most complete platform for intelligent data management. That is not all coming from VeeAm, we are very heavily dependent on our ecosystem. >> Dave: Right. >> So that's really the crux of how important a platform is because customers have a lot of technology already in their environments. They want to make sure that if I'm buying something from you, that it'll integrate into my existing environment so I don't have to do a complete rip and replace. That's a very expensive proposition. So, we have been investing and we have thousands of technology partners that are embracing our API's and again, extending the value of our platform. >> I don't want to jump in but, I was going to ask you how you add value to those partners, and it's not just the product and the features, and doing what you say you're going to do from a product standpoint, it's having that platform that makes it easy to integrate, >> Kate: That's right. >> And creating that scale effect, that flyaway effect. >> Absolutely, and a solution that is better together. So, customers really like buying solutions that are already packaged and integrated as it might relate to Cysco and VeeAM or HPE and VeeAM or NetApp and VeeAM. That's what we've been doing with those partners in particular and really going to market together, and that is a preferred way for many customers to buy. >> Or IBM and VeeAM, or Microsoft and VeeAM, >> Yes >> Botanics and VeeAM. VMware and Veeam, we don't want to leave anybody out. >> Kate: We don't want to leave anyone out. Those three that I mentioned, we're on their price list and we are reselling. >> So that's the difference. >> Yes. That's the difference >> Okay, that's really the point. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> So my question is, as you go up the stack a bit, talk about platforms and things like orchestration, >> Kate: yes >> the swim lanes get a little bit muddy, because if you talk about those same partners, the VMware, Microsoft, the Newtanics of the world. >> Kate: Yes. >> They want to own a lot of those pieces in the multi cloud world. >> Kate: Yes. >> Maybe you can help explain that. >> I think we're all probably saying some of the same words, but defining them a little differently. So when we talk about orchestration, it's very much about allowing workloads to move seamlessly across multi-clouds. To do that while the data is secure and protected, and eventually introduce, we have partnerships today that allow us to leverage artificial intelligence. So that those workloads can move seamlessly without any disruption to the business as they're moving to the right location. So yes, I think you hear a lot of the terms, but as you drill down into it and you double click on what does that mean for, in your environment, it's a little different. >> So when VeeAM decided to expand deeper into the enterprise, it's putting its money where its mouth is. I mean Robby brought in Peter McKay, he brought in a number of folks on the sale side with enterprise, now yourself. >> Kate: Yes. >> We saw Dave Russel up on stage today. >> Kate: Yes. >> He's got some enterprise jobs. >> I'm looking forward to working with him. >> You're not just talking to talk, you're walking to walk. Which is great to see, and thinking about the total available market, its a TAM expansion move, can you address that at all? >> Kate: Yes. >> I know you guys are very research oriented, as a company. >> Kate: Yes. >> You have relationships with all the big research houses. What do you see from a taman standpoint. >> Yes, so, remember that our proposition is to have the most complete platform for intelligent data management. By virtue of saying that, it really means we have to look at adjacent markets for additional capabilities to put into our platform, to ensure that we remain ahead of the competition as it relates to intelligent data management. We're looking at various adjacent markets. Whether that be through a build buyer partner strategy. So one of the largest market opportunities in an adjacency is the cloud infrastructure as a service market. It's huge. Its about 90 billion. It's got a very fast clip in terms of its compounded annual growth rate, and we've already made some pretty great progress there, both organically, as well as through the acquisition of N2WS. When we move into fast growing market segments like that, and we have many others that are adjacent as well, it's creating an addressable market of about 30 billion for us as we look out into 2022. So we're pretty excited about that, and again, that gets back to making those investments so that an enterprise customer feels confident betting their business on us. We have that scale ability. We have that addressable market, and we are increasingly helping our folks on the front lines become trusted advisors to our customers. >> In your estimation, I know some of this is hard when you're doing the analysis >> Kate: Yes. >> I used to do that for a living so I know. In your estimation is that sort of an approximation of spend, or does it include what we look at, as the money that's left on the table by the global 2000 because they have inadequate data protection. Presume it does not include that. >> Kate: Yeah. >> Because if it did, it would probably be a trillion. >> Kate: Right >> But I wonder if you can add some color to it. >> Well I think as we get into an era of compliance, we have GDPR coming down this month, I think companies are taking a new look at what does it really mean to ensure that I know where all my data is, that I ensure it's protected, that I'm sure that it's secure, and that it's in compliance. I think you're seeing more attention, more money. You mentioned earlier that this is becoming more of a sea level issue, and I think in an era of compliance and regulations that are coming down, you're going to see that only increase. >> One of the interesting things that we saw about VeeAM when we were looking at the show here, you're almost, how do I say it, a tweener. You're still kind of a startup, but you're one of the bigger companies in the space. There's a lot of buzz and energy, and customer interest >> Yes. >> In this all market thing. How do you look at yourself compared to some of the legacy giants, >> Yeah. >> And some of the new startups? >> So we are a very fast growing company. We posted 40 percent growth in Q4. We were at 36% year over year. I mean off the very big numbers. I haven't seen these numbers since I was at VMware. So that is a rapid growth company that grows up quickly when it's growing at that clip, so I think there's a part of us that's extremely paranoid about the competition and looking at some of the new entrance to make sure that we are really staying ahead and innovating, continuing to innovate. Then we look at some being legacy companies that have been in this space, and we see in some cases, a downward trend in their revenue and in their investments in this era, in this area. Again, I think it's a healthy balance of innovative and paranoid, and recognizing that customers want the solution that VeeAM offers, and they do want to be able to migrate off of the legacy systems that are out there. We are seeing that time and again. We just showed, this morning in the general session, we showed a Royal Caribbean video and that was a case where they abandoned their legacy system to go with VeeAM. >> Well that's quite a story. Nearly a billion dollars, growing at 35 plus percent a year. You got to look to companies like Service Now, Work Day. >> Kate: Yes. >> You're in that rare-ified air. Well Kate thanks so much for coming. >> Absolutely. >> Congratulations on the new role. >> Thank you. >> Really excited to see you sort of take VeeAM up into that new stratosphere. >> I'm very excited to be here. >> It's great to be part of VeeAMON 2018. Thanks for watching everybody. We'll be right back with our next guess, right after this short break. (techno music)

(upbeat music) >> Hello and welcome to theCUBE Conversation. I'm John Furrier here in the Palo Alto Studios, with two great guests, Tara Chklovski, who's the founder and CEO of Iridescent, and Anar Simpson, Global Ambassador of Technovation. Thanks for coming in today. Appreciate moving your schedules around to come in. Thanks for coming to our studio. >> You bet, yeah. >> So Sundar Pichai was at your event. That's the big story this past week. There's has been a Google memo from a low level employee who wrote some things that got the whole world sharking around gender biases, role of women in tech. We do a lot of women in tech as you know in theCUBE, hundreds and hundreds of women over the years, friends, and also smart people. This seem a pretty big moment for you guys. You had an event at Google. Sundar canceled his on-hands meeting to address this, under fear of retaliation and safety, but came to your event on Google Campus, surprising to many. It's written up on Recode and The Verge. Pretty notable. So tell us about what happened. >> So, yeah, this was the 2017 Technovation World Pitch Competition and the awards ceremony. And Sundar came and he talked to a lot of the girls who were presenting their ideas to solve problems in their community, and then he had a little bit of a one-on-one conversation to learn a little bit more about the kinds of problems, their interest in technology entrepreneurship, and then he addressed the crowd of 900 plus supporters, and really emphasized that there's a place for women in technology, and more importantly, for him and Google, that there's a place for these girls at Google. >> Great timing for you guys too. And I want to drill more into what happened but I want to just point out this was a scheduled stop for Sundar in terms of it. You guys have a program called Technovation which was a 2017 World Pitch, folks around, you're the Global Ambassador, take a minute to talk about what Technovation is. Why was it on Google's Campuses? What was it all about? What does Global Ambassador mean? Talk about your mission. >> Right, so Technovation's mission is to empower girls to become technology entrepreneurs and it's much more than just learning how to code. It's really about seeing girls and telling girls that if there's a problem in their community, technology can help them have a very powerful voice. We've been running for eight years and Anar is our Global Ambassador who's helped us grow to more than a hundred countries. Technovation's relationship with Google is eight years long. Google has supported Technovation, was the very first technology company to support Technovation way before any other company saw the potential. And since then, since 2010, Google has provided funding, mentors, spaces, not just across the US but globally. And so this year, it was a year long worth of relationship made with code which is their arm focusing on gender equality. They basically provided funding but made this event possible at Google headquarters. >> Anar talk about the Global Ambassador role you have, and kind of comes down to the question for Tara as well, is it beyond entrepreneurship and beyond coding? I mean talk about specifically what you guys are bringing to folks outside the Silicon Valley. >> Oh sure, so my role as the Global Ambassador for Technovation is really getting to girls all over the world and saying to them you need to be engaged in technology. And what we found, as Tara mentioned, we've been doing this now, I've been doing this now for five years, is that we're building a movement. We're bringing in girls, we're bringing in mentors, we're bringing in companies and governments together to make this a reality for girls in tech careers in their own countries. And I want to go back and address Google's relationship with Technovation a little bit more because this is more of an anecdote. I got into Technovation not willingly. Six years ago I had a start-up, it was called Parallel Earth, and I was working hard at it. And I was using the offices at Mozilla because they allow people to do that, you know people like me to work there. And one day somebody sent me a note, it just came on the internal email system, and they said, "You're a woman, you're in tech, "there's an event going on at Andreessen Horowitz "where the luminaries of the Valley are going to be talking." And so the luminaries were Mary Samayo who was at Google at that time, Freada Kapor Klein, Padma Ashriwurier , and I think that there was two other people. And so we went to this event and we sat in a packed room at Andreessen Horowitz. And these women, the luminaries at the Valley at that time, each one of them stood up and told us their story, and afterwards they fed us hors d'oeuvres and offered us wine. And then they said before you go, we have one to ask of you which is could you sign up to be a mentor for Technovation. And I thought to myself, no, I am like over my head in my own company. I don't even have time for myself. And they asked, be a mentor, it's just two hours a week for 12 weeks. And I thought to myself, oh God, man, I drank their wine, I ate their hors d'oeuvres, I listened to them and now how can I say no? And so I signed up. And it was a stretch for me because what happened at that time, the curriculum was still being delivered by a person. And so I've been assigned to the Google Campus in Mountainview. And somebody in engineering at Google had been able to get a room, a very small conference room. And so for 12 weeks I met this team of girls from Mountainview, and there were other mentors like me, and then there was a whole bunch of girls from Sequoia High School. And John, in that 12 weeks, I was a changed woman. Those five girls, they blossomed under me. When I met them, I said to them, "I'm here, I am a type A, this is a competition." >> "I signed up for the Andreessen Horowitz--" >> Exactly, exactly. "Listen, I got my own star, "but we're going to win, this is a competition." So they just rolled their eyes at me, like, who the heck she is, we don't even want to be here. >> John: They draw the short straw on this one. >> Exactly. But those 12 weeks changed my life. >> John: In what way, what way did it change your life? >> I have a degree in Computer Science. I have a Master's in Communication. I went to Stanford for innovation and entrepreneurship. So I've been in the field for a very long time. And what I saw in terms of the curriculum, what I saw in terms of the mentorship, what I learned about design thinking and being able to create an app, I never had that. When people like me, we go in to a university, and doing computer, we never had that kind of stuff. And I thought, oh my God, if I'd had that, I would be, like, soaring the skies right now. And to have girls who really came to this table with nothing, and you see them becoming graphic designers because they had a little bit of access to Microsoft Paint, someone who has the ability to do PowerPoint, one girl, in my team of five, almost never showed up, she was late, she never came, and then two sessions before the Pitch, she showed up and she realized, have we've gone so far without her. So here's what she did, she took that little graphic that that woman who'd done it in Paint, and she got her mom and they went to some t-shirt shop, and they got that graphic printed. And the next time she came, there were five t-shirts that said the name of our team which was Intoxication Station, and one for me. And then it turns out she's a really good speaker. Who knew? So she almost never came, brought these shirts, was the speaker for the group, and we won the local competition and then the next one, then we placed second in the finals. >> She came in, contributed with a t-shirt, and graced you the back end, won the trust of the group, ended up being the speaker and winning the award. >> Yes, they grew, they literally, you know if you take a time lapse and you see a flower blossom, that's exactly what happened. >> Tara talk about your credentials 'coz you have a Ph.D. >> So I have a, yeah, Bachelor's in Physics, and Master's in Aerospace, and I was in the Ph.D. program in Aerospace but I dropped out because I wanted to start Iridescent. >> That's good. Dropping out of Ph.D. has a good track record. A lot of folks who dropped out of Stanford includes some of the big names we now know. What's some examples during your life when you had those kind of changed moments? >> I think, Iridescent, we are now in our 12th year. Every couple of months it's a changed moment because it's a test of grit. And just believing in yourself because I mean, I started with just an idea and grew it to be an organization that's all over the world. And it doesn't come with just full-hearted focus. A lot of courage is what I've seen. I have also seen how much you are passionate about an idea really swings how the other person is thinking. And so the idea only matters so much, I think, of course, I mean, the track record and everything has to be there, but I think a lot of it depends on your own passion for it, and I've come to realize that passion is maybe proportional to the complexity and the impact of the problem you're trying to solve. So if you're only trying to solve a small problem, you lose interest in two years, right, and maybe that's why, I'm always curious, why do so many start-ups fail after two or three years? It's because maybe you came in not thinking that you're going to change the world, maybe you came in because you wanted to make quick money, or et cetera, whatever. And so I think for me this is my life's work. And if you want to bring more and to represent the communities into innovation. And so it's not something that's going to be solved easily. >> Start-up success and then people working on teams, really is about inclusion and letting things bloom and being ready for anything. That's the greatest feat. Let's get back to the Sundar event that you guys were having. Now this is a good conversation to have because one of the things that came out of the aha that became that memo, really was a conversation publicly. And now it's been polarizing. There's just some kind of a hate, hate kind of mindset with it most of the time. Plenty of stuff in the internet to go read there, but what actually are some good conversations in the industry? What was the conversation like during the event? Because this was in full conversation mode while you guys were having your 2017 World Pitch competition of which he presided over and had a speech to the entrepreneurs. What was it like? What are some of the conversations that were taking place? >> I think the most powerful piece of the whole evening was really the girls walking in and seeing the incredible diversity that we have in this world, right. So we had girls, and mentors, and supporters, from over 30 countries and just them coming and waving the flags, and different faces, and different cultures, all trying to make the world a better place. I mean, it's rare that you see that, using technology. And I think it's very fitting that Silicon Valley is the center of this. But I think there was not one dry eye in the group because you realized the conversation is so much bigger than one company, one country. It is something that affects us as all human beings, and you believing in human potential. So I think seeing these young girls, some of them 10 years old, there was this, I think, maybe the crowd's favorite was these 10-year-old girls from Cambodia who want to improve sort of the lives of these people working in cottage industries, right. And they created an app, like, say, Etsy or something, but focused on Cambodian products, and the courage of these little girls, I think everybody walks away feeling okay there's hope even in the midst of all of this discussion. >> It creates a lightning rod in some ways that hopefully will move on to the substantive conversations. How do you guys feel about what happened as you take this mission forward? You guys are doing some amazing work. And we'll do a segment on that in a minute, but given the landscape now, how do you view this? How are you talking with friends and colleagues and family members around it? Because I certainly had conversations with my friends certainly in the east coast, like, "No, no, that's not the way Silicon Valley is." Google actually is a very cool company. It's not what you think it is. They're very open. They support a lot of great initiatives. And they're candid. And then I go on and explain. It's like a university. So me and Larry have this little ecosystem that they've kind of built the university culture if you will. But it's open and there's things that happened that get misrepresented. That was my take for the folks who don't know Silicon Valley. But what's your take? What do you think about what's happened? >> So this is really, really good that you brought up the university campus, environment of it. So I have two girls, they're both millennials, and they're both in a tech world. And we had this discussion. And here is the perfect answer, right. So one of my daughters, Kat, she said that when she read that, she thought it was basically a gathering of his thoughts. And it was a gathering of his thoughts because he was probably asked to adhere to I&D stuff that's going on, in every company right now, right. And so he was like a little bit of a, wait a second, he wants to sort of, respond to his being asked to go to I&D stuff. And then Katya said, "But you know mom, "it was just a gathering of his thoughts. "And if this is an essay, and it was a poorly written one, "and if I was grading it, I would give him a C minus." Then my older daughter said-- >> John: Oh, she'll give him an F on that one. >> Right. >> John: C minus, she's generous. >> No, because he did. He tried to make it very professional and very academic. And she said but it was a first draft. He didn't proceed to toughen it up, solidify it, find more evidence, have it critic. It was just a gathering of his thoughts and he hasn't gone through the process. Both these girls graduated from Berkeley and so I think they would know what a C paper look like versus an A paper. And then my older daughter said, "And the other thing is, "it's not like "I&D efforts "are actually bad, "but what we're trying to do is "we're trying to condense the time "in which we're trying to get women "at equal peering in the tech world." Now women have never been at equal peering in many professions. There were not enough doctors, lawyers, accountants, you name it, right? Main street, Wall Street has never had equality. And now we're looking at technology and the reason everything just flares up in technology is because we live in today's world, where news and information is available all the time. So there's two things going on. Information is readily available. People can come in to the conversation very quickly. And whenever anything happens in Silicon Valley, the effect is massive because all eyes are on Silicon Valley all the time. So it's a bit of a distorted view. But we have gone through this. It took a long time for women to become astronauts. It took a long time for women to become neurosurgeons. It took a long time for women to become lawyers and dentists. It will take a little bit of time for women to become top technologists. But we're hoping that it'll shorten and things happen quickly in the Valley and we're trying to get that quicker. And so we're seeing a little bit of friction. This is responses from millennials. So for me it was like-- >> John: Interesting perspective. >> Yes, great perspective. And when Sundar said these things at the World Pitch, I was sitting in the second row and every time he said something I would clap really loud. And Todd said, "Why are you being so good?" And I said, "I need to hear that. "I need to her him say that because--" >> John: What did he say that moved you? >> Oh, he just said you have a place in technology. And I said yes. We needed to hear you say that right away, all the time, and especially to these girls, these two 18-year-old girls, and all of the ones that come from a hundred countries that weren't at Google but were listening to the live pitch. And I needed to hear it. I'm a veteran but I needed to hear it because-- >> It's interesting too the narrative that the millennials and certainly the younger kids hear is an echo of what comes down. And, interesting, my son who is 15, at dinner last night said, "Dad, I'm a white male. "What does that mean?" >> Poor guy. >> Then I'm like, oh my God, he's a kid. So, again, things are shifting, they're out of context. Tara your thoughts on how this all evolves and the positive things that folks can do. What's your perspective? >> Yeah, I mean, I think, I had a lot of discussion with my husband yesterday on this because he's a white male, right? And, but also we have two daughters, right. And so there's this whole he for she campaign, right. And that I think like our conversation earlier, the discussion has to be very inclusive and you cannot polarize. And I think I have to be careful because, I mean, my passion is what drives the work because the work is hard, but I have to also remind that, okay, there's a whole another segment of the population that cares, right, and, so I think it's just constantly remembering these kinds of things. I think in terms of what the industry can do, I think the normal thing is that people are doing which is really well, investing lower in the pipeline, investing in young girls, and all of that kind of stuff, and also sort of the inclusion and diversity stuff in the workforce. But I think there are some other segments, other industries that we can learn from, and I think one very unique place is actually the aviation industry. But the experimental aircraft, so we're just aviation enthusiasts, right. And so they have this gathering, yearly annual gathering, and 600,000 people come from all over the world, the thing that makes it unique and there's almost equal representation, there are two things that make it very unique. First is the family affair. And I think the tech industry has done a very good job, sort of convening these developer conferences but they are closed and most of them are 100% male, right? I think there could be something there where the, again much more than a company, that the industry has to do. And to make it maybe not commercial but do it as a fun family gathering and not in Silicon Valley. And then I think the second would be to actually lean on the veterans of the industry to share their passion with the young ones. And I think one of the problems of technology is that it's moved so fast that it has become very abstract. And nothing is very hands on. If you open up something, you will not understand anything. And so what the aviation industry had done really well is to showcase the core fundamental principles of how these things work using the old airplanes, old engines, combustion engines. But you can see how things work, right, and so-- >> John: It's like kindergarten. >> Exactly, exactly, start that way and then you can go into the more complex. But I think there's a role for the veterans of the tech world to play here. And I think it's not just sort of gender but it's also maybe age and making it much more about the family, rather than just the developer in the family. >> Tara and Anar, you guys are inspiration. Thanks for taking the time. And I've had the, my age, luxury of spending nine years at Hewlett Packard company before, maybe these early 90s when Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were around. And one of the things that really influenced me, and I think this is something that I see a positive light coming in this industry, to your point, about so much changes, is that we seem to be going back to a crowd that wants to see respect for the individuals, citizenship. These were company values at Hewlett Packard when I was there that I always remembered was unique. Hey, you can have differences but if you have respect for the individual, and you have the citizenship mindset, that seems to have been lost in tech, and with this whole movement you're seeing, win at all cost, being an asshole, what you going to do to be a CEO, or flip it fast, or programs. So it became a very selfish environment. It seems to be shifting that way with this conversation. Your thoughts? >> So I have to say doing a start-up is not easy. Getting successful in this word is not easy. Shaking the status quo is not easy. So I have to say that the same people and we're not going to name names, but the same people who are very arrogant and have little respect for the laws and rules, they have given us products that are changing people's lives. There is no question about it. With that, they're a provider. With that, they're sort of "I don't care, I'm just going to go over you "if you don't comply with me." A lot of ride sharing, wouldn't even have happened. And to me when you provide employment, when you provide alternative services, when you provide something that takes away the way things were, I see that as a plus, okay. I think what we're seeing is that's needed to a certain extent, and then you realized, okay, now we have to get back to growing it and working it. And if you keep going in that mode, you probably won't succeed. >> So being tough and determined and having grit is what you need to breakthrough those walls as a start-up. You don't need to be necessarily a jerk. But your point is if you're creating value. >> If you're creating value, and that sometimes you actually have to be a jerk because there are a very few brave, non-jerk people who have gone against big unions and big monopolies, right. I would not be able to go against the taxi commission. You need somebody who's a complete a-hole to do that. And he did that and it made a difference. He doesn't have to continue to do that and that's-- >> There was a meme going around the internet, "If you want to make friends, sell ice cream." >> Exactly. >> So you can't always win friends when you're pioneering. >> Right, right. There is a balance and maybe we've fostered the fact that you need to be that attitude for everything and that's not true. The pendulum shifted a bit too much. But I think that we shouldn't scorn them because really they have made a difference. Let everybody get back to-- >> It's a tough world out there to survive. And you have to have that kind of sharp elbows to make things happen. But it's the value your providing, it's how you do it. >> Exactly. >> Well thanks so much guys for coming up. Appreciate to spend the time to talk about your awesome event at 2017 World Pitch as part of Technovation where Sundar represented Google in your great program with young girls go over some tech books. Thanks for sharing. This is CUBE conversation here at Palo Alto. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: Live from Austin, Texas, it's the Cube covering South by Southwest 2017. Brought to you by Intel. Now, here's John Furrier. >> Hey, welcome back everyone. We're live here in the Cube coverage of South by Southwest. We're at the Intel AI Lounge, hashtag Intel AI. And the theme is AI for social good. So if you really support that, go in Twitter and use the hashtag Intel AI and support our cause. I'm John Furrier with Silicon Angle, I'm here with Robert Scoble, @Scobalizer. Just announcing this week the new formation of his new company, the Transformation Group. I've known Robert for over 12 years now. Influencer, futurist. You've been out and about with the virtual reality, augmented reality, you're wearing the products. >> Yup. >> You've been all over the world, you were just at Mobile World Con, we've been following you. You are the canary in the coalmine poking at all the new technology. >> Well, the next five years, you're going to see some mind blowing things. In fact, just the next year, I predict that this thing is going to turn into a three ounce pair of glasses that's going to put virtual stuff on top of the world. So think about coming back to South by Southwest, you're wearing a couple pairs of glasses, and you are going to see blue lines on the floor taking you to your next meeting or TV screens up here so I can watch the Cube while I walk around the streets here. It's going to be a lot of crazy stuff. >> So, we've been on our opening segment, we talked about it, we just had a segment on social good around volunteering, but what the theme is coming out is this counter culture where there's now this humanization aspect they called the consumerization of IT in the past. But in the global world, the human involvement now has these emersion experiences with technology, and now is colliding with impacting lives. >> Well, absolutely true. >> This is a Microsoft HoloLens first of all. And HoloLens puts virtual stuff on top of the real world. But at home, I have an HTC Vibe, and I have an Oculus Rift for VR, and VR is that immersive media. This is augmented reality or what we call mixed reality, where the images are put on top of the world. So I can see something pop off of you. In fact, last year at South by, I met a guy who started a company called iFluence, he showed me a pair of glasses and you look at a bottle like this and a little menu pops off the side of a bottle, tells you how much it is, tells you what's in the bottle, and lets you buy new versions of this bottle, like a case of it and have it shipped to my house all with my eyes. That's coming out from Google next year. >> So the big thing on the immersion the AR, you look at what's going on at societal impact. What are the things that you see? Obviously, we've been seeing at Mobile World Congress before Peelers came out, autonomous vehicles is game changing, smart cities, median entertainment, the world that we know close to our world, and then smart home. >> Oh yeah. >> Smart home's been around for years, but autonomous vehicles truly is a societal change. >> Yes. >> The car is a data center now. It's got experiences. And there's three new startups you should pay attention to, in the new cars that are coming in the next 18 months. Quanergy is one. They make a new kind of light R, a new sensor. In fact, there's sensors here that are sensing the world as I walk around and seeing all the surfaces. The car works the same way. It has to see ahead to know that there's a kid in front of your car, the car needs to stop, right. And Quanergy is making a focusable semiconductor light R, that's going to be one to watch. And then there's a new kind of brain, a new kind AI coming, and DeepScale is the one that I'm watching. The DeepScale brain uses a new third company called Luminar Technologies, which is making a new kind of 3D map of the world. So think about going down the street. This new map is going to know every pot hole, every piece of paint, every bridge on the street, and it's going to, the brain, the AI, is going to compare the virtual map to the real map, to the real world and see if there's anything new, like a kid crossing across the street. Then the car needs to do something and make a new decision. So 3D startups are going to really change the car. But the reason I'm so focused on mixed reality, is mixed reality is the user interface for the self-driving car, for the smart city, for the internet of things, the fields in your farm or what not, and for your robot, and for your drone. You're going to have drones that are going to know this space, and you can fly it right, I've seen drones already in the R & D labs at Intel. You can fly them straight at the wall, it'll stop an inch from the wall because it knows where the wall is. >> 'Cause it's got the software, it's got the sensors, the internet of things. We are putting out a new research report at Wikibound called IOT and P, Internet Things and People. And this is the key point. I want to get your thoughts on this because you nailed a bunch of things, and I want you to define for the folks watching what you mean by mixed reality because this is not augmented reality. >> Well it is. >> John: You're talking about mixed reality. >> It is augmented reality, it's just-- >> John: But why mixed reality? >> We came up with the new term called mixed reality because on our, we have augmented reality on phones. But the augmented reality you have on phones like the Pokemon's we've been talking about. They're not locked to the world. So when I'm wearing this, there's actually a shark right here on this table, and it's locked on the table, and I can walk around that shark. And it seems like it's sitting here just like this bottle of water is sitting on the table. This is mind blowing. And now we can actually change the table itself and make it something else. Because every pixel in this space is going to be mapped by these new sensors on it. >> So, let's take that to the next level. You had mentioned earlier in your talk just now about user interface to cars. You didn't say in user interface to cars, you didn't say just smart, you kind of implied, I think you meant it's interface to all the environments. >> Robert: Yes. >> Can you expand on what your thoughts on that? >> You're going to be wearing glasses that look like yours in about a year, much smaller than this. This is too dorky and too big for an average consumer to wear around right, but if they're three ounces and they look something like what you're wearing right now. >> Some nice Ray Bans, yup. >> And they're coming. I've seen them in the R & D labs. They're coming from a variety of different companies. Google, Facebook, Loomis, Magic Leap, all sorts of different companies are coming with these lightweight small glasses. You're going to wear them around and it's going to lay interface elements on everything. So think about my watch. Why if I do this gesture, why do I have to look at a little tiny screen right here? Why isn't the whole screen of my calendar pop up right here? They could do that, that's a gesture. This computer in here can sense that I'm doing a gesture and can put a new user interface on top of that. Now, I've seen tractors that have sensors in them. Now, using a glass like this, it shows me what the pumps are doing in the tractor on the glasses. I can walk around a factory floor and see the sensors in the pipes on the factory floor and see the sensors in my electric motors on the factory. All with a one pair of glasses. >> So this is why the Intel AI thing interests me, this whole theme. Because what you just described requires data. So one, you need to have the data available. >> Robert: Yes. >> The data's got to be a frictionless, it can't be locked in some schema as they say in the database world. It's got to be free to be addressed by software. >> Yes. >> You need software that understands what that is. And then you need horsepower, compute power, chips to make it all happen. >> Yeah, think about a new kind of TV that's coming soon. I'm going to look at TV like this one, a physical TV. But it's too small and it's in the wrong angle. So I can just grab the image off the TV and virtually move it over here. And I'll see it, nobody else will see it. But I can put that TV screen right here, so I can watch my TV the way I want to watch it. >> Alright so this is all sci-fi great stuff, which actually-- >> It's not sci-fi, it's here already. You just don't have it. I have it (laughs). >> Well, you can see it's kind of dorky, but I'm not going to say you're a dork 'cause I know you. To mainstream America, mainstream world, it's a bit sci-fi but people are grokking this now. Certainly the younger generation that are digital native all are coming in post-9/11, they understand that this is a native world to them, and they take to it like a fish to water. >> Yes. >> Us old guys, but we are the software guys, we're the tech guys. So continue to the mainstream America, what has to happen in your mind to mainstream this stuff? Obviously self driving cars is coming. It's in fleets first, and then cars. >> We have to take people on a journey away from computing like this or computing like this to computing on glasses. So how do we do that? Well, you have to show deep utility. And these glasses show that. Wearing a HoloLens, I see aliens coming out of the walls. Blowing holes in this physical wall. >> John: Like right now? >> Yeah. >> What are you smoking (laughs)? >> Nothing yet. And then I can shoot them with my fingers because the virtual things are mixing with the real world. It's a mind blowing experience. >> So do you see this being programmed by users or being a library of stuff? >> Some are going to be programmed by users like Minecraft is today on a phone or on a tablet. Most of it is going to be built by developers. So there's a huge opportunity coming for developers. >> Talk about the developer angle, because that's huge. We're seeing massive changes in the developer ecosystems. Certainly, open source is going to be around for awhile. But which friends do you see in open source, I mean, I'm sorry, in the developer community, with this new overlay of 5G connectivity, all this amazing cloud technology? >> There's a new 3D mapping and it's a slam based map. So think about this space, this physical space. These sensors that are on the front of these new kinds of glasses that are coming out are going to sense the world in a new way and put it into a new kind of database, one that we can put programmatic information into. So think about me walking around a shopping mall. I walk in the front door of a shopping mall, I cross geo fence in that shopping mall. And the glasses then show me information about the shopping mall 'cause it knows it's in the shopping mall. And then I say, hey Intel, can you show me, or Siri, or Alexa, or Cortana, or whoever you're talking to. >> Mostly powered by Intel (laughs). >> Most of it is powered by Intel 'cause Intel's in all the data centers and all these glasses. In fact, Intel is the manufacturer of the new kind of controller that's inside this new HoloLens. And when I ask it, I can say, hey, where's the blue jeans in this shopping mall? And all of a sudden, three new pairs of blue jeans will appear in the air, virtual blue jeans, and it'll say this one's a Guess, this one's a Levi's, this one's a whatever. And I'll say, oh I want the Levi's 501, and I'll click on it, and a blue line will appear on the floor taking me right to the product. You know, the shopping mall companies already have the data. They already know where the jeans are in the shopping mall and these glasses are going to take you right to it. >> Robert, so AI is the theme, it's hot, but AI, I mean I love AI, don't get me wrong. AI is a mental model in my mind for people to kind of figure out that this futuristic world's here and it's moving fast. But machine learning is a big part of what AI is becoming. >> Yes. >> So machine learning is becoming automated. >> Well it's becoming a lot faster. >> Faster and available. >> Because it use to take 70,000 images of something like a bottle to train the system that this is a bottle versus a can, bottle versus can. And the scientists have figured out how to make it two images now. So all I need is two images of something new to train the system that we have a bottle versus a can. >> And also the fact that computes available. There's more and more faster processors that this stuff can get crunched, the data can be crunched. >> Absolutely, but it's the data that trains these things. So let's talk about the bleeding edge of AI. I've seen AIs coming out of Israel that are just mind blowing. They take a 3D image of this table, they separate everything into an object. So this is an object. It's separate from the table that it's on. And it then lets me do AI look-ups on the object. So this is a Roxanne bottle of water. The 3D sensor can see the logo in this bottle of water, can look to the cloud, find all sorts of information about the manufacturer here, what the product is, all sorts of stuff. It might even pull down a CAD drawing like the computer that you're on. Pull down a CAD drawing, overlay it on top of the real product, and now we can put videos on the back of your Macintosh or something like that. You can do mind blowing stuff coming soon. That's one angle. Let's talk about medical. In Israel, I went to the AI manufacturers. They're training the MRI machines to recognize cancers. So you're going to be lying in an MRI machine and it's going to tell the people around the machine whether you have cancer or not and which cancer. And it's already faster than the doctor, cheaper than the doctor, and obviously doesn't need a doctor. And that's going to lead into a whole discussion-- >> The Christopher thing. These are societal problems by the way. The policy is the issue, not the technology. How do you deal with the ethical issues around gene sequencing and gene editing? >> That's a whole other thing. I'm just recognizing whether you have cancer on this example. But now we need to talk about jobs. How do we make new jobs in massive quantities. Because we're going to decimate a lot of peoples' jobs with these new technologies, so we need to talk about that, probably on a future Cube. But I think mixed reality is going to create millions of jobs because think about this bottle. In the future, I'm going to be wearing a pair of glasses and Skrillex is going to jump out of the bottle, on to the table, and give a performance, and then jump back into the bottle. That's only four years away according to the guy who's running a new startup called 8i. He's making a new volumetric camera, it's a camera 40 or 50 cameras around-- >> If you don't like Skrillex, Martin Garrix can come on. >> Whatever you want. Remember, this media's going to be personalized to your liking. Spotify is already doing that. Do you listen to Spotify? >> John: Yeah, of course. >> Do you listen to the discovery weekly feature on that? >> No. >> You should. It's magical. It brings you the best music based on what you've already listened and it's personalized. So your discovery weekly on your phone is different than the discovery weekly on my phone. And that's run by AI. >> So these are new collaborative filters. This is all about software? >> Yeah. Software and a little bit of hardware. Because you still need to sense the world in a new way. You're going to get new watches this year that have many more sensors that are looking in your veins for whether you have high blood pressure, whether you're a in shape for running. By the way, you're going to have an artificial coach when you go running in the morning, running next to you, just like when you see Mark Zuckerberg. He can afford to pay a real coach, I can't. So he has a real coach running with him every morning and saying hey, we're going to do some interval training today, we're going to do some sprints to get your cardio up. Well, now the glasses are going to do that for you. It's going to say, let's do some intervals today and you're going to wear the watch that's going to sense your blood pressure and your heart rate and the artificial coach running next you. And that's only two years away. >> Of course, great stuff. Robert Scoble, we have to close the segment. Quickly, how has South by changed in ten years? >> Well, 20, I've been coming for 20 years. I've been coming since it was 500 people and now it's 50,000, 70,000 people, it's crazy. >> How has it changed this year? What's going on this year? >> This is the VR year. Every year we have a year right. There was the Twitter year, there was the Foursquare year. This is the VR year, so if you're over at Capital Factory, you're going to see dozens of VR experiences. In fact, my co-author's playing the Mummy right now. I had to come on your show, I got the short straw (laughs). Sit in the sun instead of playing some cool stuff. But there's VR all over the place. Next year is going to be the mixed reality year, and this is a predictor of the next year that's coming. >> Alright, Robert Scoble, futurist right here on the Cube. Also, congratulations on your new company. You're going out on your own, Transformation Group. >> Yeah, we're helping out brands figure out this mixed reality world. >> Congratulations of course. As always, it is a transformational time in the history of our world and certainly the computer industry is going to a whole other level that we haven't seen before. And this is going to be exciting. Thanks for spending the time with us. It's the Cube here live at South by Southwest special Cube coverage, sponsored by Intel. And the hashtag is Intel AI. If you like it, tweet us at Twitter. We'll be happy to talk to you online. I'm John Furrier. More after this short break. (electronic music)