>> Narrator: From the CUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world this is theCUBE Conversation. >> Hi everybody, This is Dave Vellante and welcome to this CUBE Conversation. We've been following a company called Actifio for quite some time. Now they've really popularized the concept of copy data management. Really innovative Boston based Waltham based company. And with me Brian Regan who's the chief marketing officer and Paul Forte who's the newly minted chief revenue officer of Actifio. Guys great to see you. I wish we were face to face at your June event but this will have to do. >> You're welcome. >> Thanks Dave. >> You bet Dave. >> Yeah, so Brian you've been on theCUBE a bunch. I'm going to start with Paul if that's okay. Paul, let's talk a little bit about your background. You've done a number of stints at a variety of companies. Big companies like IBM and others as well. What attracted you to Actifio? >> Yes Dave I would say in all honesty, I've been a software guy and candidly a data specific leader for many many years. And so IT infrastructure particularly associated around data has always been sort of my forte for on and onwards there. And so Actifio was just smack dab in the middle of that. And so when I was looking for my next adventure I had an opportunity to meet with Ash our CEO and founder and describe and discuss kind of what Actifio was all about. And candidly, the number of connections that we had that were the same. There are a lot of OEM relationships with people that I actually worked with and for some that work for me historically. So it was almost this perfect world. And I'm a Boston guy so it is in my old backyard. And yeah it was a perfect match for what I was looking for. Which was really a small growth company that was trying to get to the next level that had compelling technology in a space that I was super familiar with and could understand and articulate the value proposition. >> Well as we say in Boston, Paulie we got to get you back here. (laughs) >> I know (mumbles) so I'll pack my car. >> (laughs) Yeah. So Brian... >> For 25 years, I still got it. >> let's talk about the climate right now. I mean nobody expected this of course. And it's funny I saw Ash at an event in Boston last fall. We were talking like "Hey, what are you expecting for next year?" "Yeah a little bit of softening" but nobody expected this sort of black swan. But you guys I just got your press release. You put it out. You had a good quarter. You had a record first quarter. What's going on in the marketplace. How are you guys doing? >> Yeah, well I think that today more than ever businesses are realizing that data is what is actually going to carry them through this crisis. And that data whether it's changing the nature of how companies interact with their customers, how they manage through their supply chain and frankly how they take care of their employees, is all very data centric. And so businesses that are protecting that data that are helping businesses get faster access to that data and ultimately give them choice as to where they manage that data. On premises, in the cloud and hybrid configuration. Those are the businesses that are really going to be top of a CIO's mind. I think RQ1 is a demonstration that customers voted with their wallets and they are confident in Actifio as an important part of their data supply chain. >> Paul I want to come back to you. First of all I want to let people know you're an Ex-Army Ranger. So thank you for your service, that's awesome. >> You're welcome (mumbles). >> I was talking to Frank Slootman, I interviewed in the other day and he was sharing with me sort of how he manages and he says "Yeah I manage by a playbook". He's a situational manager and that's something that he learned in the military. Well it's weird. This is a situation. (Paul laughs) And that really is kind of how you're trained. And of course we've never seen anything like this but you're trained to deal with things that you've never seen before. So how you seeing organizations generally, Actifio specifically kind of manage through this crisis. What are some of the moves that you'are advising, recommending? Give us some insight there. >> Yeah, so it's really interesting. It's funny that you mentioned my military background. So I was just having this discussion with one of my leaders the other day. That one of the things that they trained for in the military, is the eventuality of chaos. So when you do an exercise we will literally tap the leader on the shoulder and say okay you are now dead. And without that person being allowed to speak they take a knee and the (mumbles) unit has to go on. And so what happens is you learn by muscle memory like how to react in times of crisis and you know this is a classic example of leadership in crisis. And so it's just interesting. So to me you have a playbook. I think everybody needs to start with a playbook and then start with the plan. I can't remember if it was Mike Tyson but one of my famous quotes was "Plan is good until somebody punches you in the face". (Dave laughs) >> That's the reality of what just happened to business across the globe. This is just a punch in the face. And so you've got a playbook that you rely on and then you have to remain nimble and creative and candidly opportunistic. And from a leadership perspective, I think you can't lose your confidence. Right, so I've watched some of my friends and I've watched some other businesses cripple in the midst of this pandemic because they're afraid instead of looking at this. In my first commentary in our first staff meeting Brian, if I remember it was this, okay so what makes Actifio great in this environment? Not why is it not great? And so we didn't get scared. We jumped right into it. We adjusted our playbook a little bit and candidly we just had a record quarter. And we took down deals. Honestly Dave we took down deals in every single geography around the globe to include Italy. It was insane, it was really fun. >> Okay, so this wasn't just one monster deal that gave you that record quarter. It was really a broad based demand. >> Yeah, so if you dug underneath the covers you would see that we had the largest number of transactions ever in the first quarter. We had the largest average selling price in the first quarter ever. We had the largest contribution from our nano partners and our OEM partners ever. And we had the highest number ever. And so it was really a nice truly balanced performance across the globe and across the size of deal sets and candidly across industries. >> Interesting, you used the term opportunistic and I get right on. You obviously don't want to be chasing ambulances. At the same time, we've talked to a lot of CEOs and essentially what they're doing and I'd like to get your feedback on this Brian. You're kind of reassessing the ideal profile of a customer. You're reassessing your value proposition in the context of the current pandemic. And I noticed that you guys in your press release talked about cyber resiliency. You talked about digital initiatives, data center, transformations etc. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that, Brian. Did you do those things, how did you do those things? What kind of pace were you guys at? How did you do it remotely with everybody working from home? Give us some color on that. >> Sure, and if Ash, if he were here he would probably remind us that Actifio was born in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis. So we have essentially been book ended by two black swans over the last decade. The lessons we learned in 2008 are every bit is as relevant today. Everything starts with cost containment and cost reduction. Hence in protection of the business and so CIOs in the midst of this shock to the system. I think we're very much looking at what are the absolutely vital and critical initiatives and what is a "nice to have" and I'm going to hit pause on nice to have and invest entirely in the critical initiative. And the critical initiatives tended to be around getting people safely working remotely. Getting people safe access to their systems and their applications and their data. And then ultimately it also became about protecting the systems from malicious individuals in the state actors. Unfortunately as we've seen in other times of crisis this is when crime and cyber crime particularly tends to spike, particularly against industries that don't have the strong safeguards in place to really ensure the resiliency in their applications. So we very much went a little bit back to the 2008 playbook around helping people get control of their costs, helping people continue to do the things they need to do at a much more infrastructural light manner. But also really emphasized the fact that if you are under attack or if you are concerned that you're infected but you don't know when, instant access to data and a time machine that can take you back and forth to those points in time is something that is something that is incredibly valuable. >> So let's dig into cyber resiliency. So specifically what is Actifio doing for its customers from a product standpoint, capabilities, maybe it's part of the 10C announcement as well but can you give us some specifics on where you fit in. Let's take that use case, cyber resiliency? >> Yeah, absolutely. So I think there's a stack of capabilities when it comes to cyber resiliency. At the lowest level, you need a time machine because most people don't know when they're infected. And so the ability to go back in time, test the recoverability of data, test the validity of the data is step one. Step two is once you found the clean point, being able to resume operations, being able to resume the applications operation instantly or very rapidly is the next phase. And that's something that Actifio was founded on this notion of instant access to data. And then the third phase and this is really where our partnerships really shine is you probably want to go back and mitigate that risk. You want to go back and clean that system. You want to go back and find the infection and eliminate it. And that's where our partnership with IBM for example, resiliency services and their cyber incident recovery solutions which takes the Actifio platform and then wrappers in a complete manage services around it. So they can help the customer not only get their systems and applications back on their feet but clean the systems and allow them to resume operations normally on a much safer and more stable ground. >> Okay, so that's interesting. So Paul was it kind of new adoptions? Was it increases from existing customers combination? Can you talk to that? >> Yeah, totally. So ironically to really come clean the metrics that we had in the first quarter were very similar to do with the metrics that we see historically. So the mix with mean our existing customer base and then our new customer acquisition were very similar to our historical metrics which candidly we were a little surprised by. We anticipated that the majority of our business would come from that safe harbor of your existing customer base. But candidly we had a really nice split which was great which meant that our value proposition was resonating not only with our existing customer base where you would expect it but also in any of our new customers as well who had been evaluating us that either accelerate it or just continue down the path of adoption during the timeframe of COVID-19. Across industries I would say that again there were some industries I would say that pushed pause. And so the ones that you can imagine that accelerated during this past period were the ones you would think of, right? So financial institutions primarily as well as some of the medical. So some of those transactions, healthcare and medical they accelerated along with financial institutions. And then I would say that we did have some industries that pushed pause. You can probably guess what some of those are. Among the majority of those were the ones that were dealing with the small and midsize businesses or consumer-facing businesses, things like retail and stuff like that. Well we typically do have a pretty nice resonance and a really nice value proposition but there were definitely some transactions that we saw basically just pause. Like we're going to come back. But overall yeah the feedback was just in general. It felt like any other quarter and it felt like just pretty normal. As strange as that sounds. 'Cause I know speaking to a lot of my friends in peer companies, peer software companies, they didn't have that experience but we did pretty well. >> That's interesting, you're right. Certain industries, airlines, I'm interviewing a CIO of a major resort next week. Really interested to hear how they're dealing with this but those are obviously depressed and they've dialed everything down. But we were one of the first to report that work from home pivot, it didn't, it didn't buffer the decline in IT spending that were expected to be down maybe as much as 5% this year but it definitely offset it. What about Cloud? We're seeing elevated levels in Cloud demand. Guys have offerings there. What are you seeing in Cloud guys? >> Do you want to take it Brian? >> Yeah, I'll start and then Paul please weigh in. I think that the move to the cloud that we've been witnessing and the acceleration of the move to cloud that we've been we've been witnessing over the past several years probably ramped up in intensity over the last two months. The projects that might have been on the 18 to 24 month roadmap have of all of a sudden been accelerated into maybe this year of our roadmap. But in terms of the wholesale everything moves to Cloud and I abandoned my on-premises estate. I don't think we've seen that quite yet. I think that the world is still hybrid when it comes to Cloud. Although I do think that the beneficiaries of this are probably the non-number one and number two Cloud providers but the rest of the hyper-scalers who are fighting for market shares because now they have an opportunity to perhaps, Google for example, a strategic partner of ours has a huge offering when it comes to enabling work from home and the remote work. So leveraging that as a platform and then extending into their enterprise offerings, I think it gives them a wedge that the Amazon might not have for example. So it's an acceleration of interest but I think it's just a continuation of the trend that we've been seeing for years. >> Yeah, and I would add a little bit Dave. The IBM held their Think Conferences past week. I don't know if you had an opportunity to participate. They're one of our OEM partners and... >> Dave: Oh Yeah, we covered it. >> When our CEO presented his opening his opening remarks it was really about digital transformation and he really put it down to two things and said any business that's trying to transform is either talking about hybrid Clouds or they're talking about AI and machine learning. And that's kind of it, right? And so every digital business is talking in one of those categories. And when I look to Q1 it's interesting that we really didn't see anything other than as Brian talked about all of the cloud business which is some version of an acceleration. But outside of that the customers that are in those industries that are in position to accelerate and double down during this opportunity did so and those that did not just peeled back a little bit. But overall I would agree with IBM's assessment of the market that those are kind of the two hotspots and hybrid Cloud is hot and the good news is, we've got a nice value prop right in the middle of it. >> Yeah, Alvin Chris has talked about, and he has it, maybe not a thing but he talked earlier in his remarks on the earnings call just in public statements that IBM must win the battle the architectural battle, the hybrid Cloud. And also that he wants to lead with a more technical sell essentially, which is to mean those two things are great news for you guys, obviously Red Hat is the linchpin of that. I want to ask you guys about your conference, Data-Driven. So we were there last year it was a really great intimate event. Of course you can't have the physical events anymore. So you've pushed to September or you're going all digital? Give us the update on that Brian. >> We're eager to have theCube participate in our September event. So I'm sure we'll be talking more about that in the coming weeks, but also >> Dave: Awesome, love it. (Brian laughs) >> Exactly, so you can tell Frank to put that in there. So we've been participating in some of the other conferences most notably last week learning a lot and really trying to cherry pick the best ideas and the best tactics we're putting on the digital event. I think that as we look to September and as we look to put on a really rich digital event one of the things that is first and foremost in our minds is we want to actually produce more on demand digital content particularly from a technology standpoint. Our technology sessions last year were oversubscribed. The digital format allows people to stream whenever they can and frankly as many sessions as they might want. So I think we can be far more efficient in terms of delivering technical content for the users of our technology. And then we're also eager to have as we've done with data driven in years past, our customers tell the story of how they're using data. And this year certainly I think we're going to hear a lot of stories about in particular how they use data during this incredible crisis and hopefully renewal from the crisis. >> Well one of my favorite interviews last year at your show was the guy from DraftKings. So hopefully they'll be back on and we'll have some football to talk about, well let's hope. >> Amen. >> I Want to end with just sort of this notion of we've been so tactical the last eight weeks. Right? You guys too I'm sure. Just making sure you're there for customers, making sure your employees are okay. But as we start to think about coming out of this into a Post-COVID Era and it looks like it's going to be with us for a while but we getting back to Quaseye opening. So I'm hearing hybrid is here to stay. We agree for sure. Cyber resiliency is very interesting. I think one of the things we've said is that companies may sub-optimize near term profitability to make sure that they've got the flexibility and business resiliency in place. That's obviously something that is I think good news for you guys but I'll start with Paul and then maybe Brian you can bring us home. How do you see this sort of emergence from this lockdown and into the Post-COVID Era? >> Yeah, this is a really interesting topic for me. In fact I've had many discussions over the last couple of weeks with some of our investors as well as with our executive staff. And so my personal belief is that the way buying and selling has occured, for IT specifically at the enterprise level, it's about to go through a transformation, no different than we watched the transformation of SAS businesses when you basically replaced a cold calling sales person with an inside and inbound marketing kind of effort followed up with SDR and BDR. Because what we're finding is that our clients now are able to meet more frequently because we don't have the friction of airplane ride or physical building to go through. And so that whole thing has been removed from the sales process. So it's interesting to me that one of the things that I'm starting to see is that the amount of activity that our sales organization is doing and the amount of physical calls that were going on, they happen to be online. However, way higher than what we can (mumbles), you coupled that with the cost savings of not traveling around the globe and not being in offices. And I really think that those companies that embrace this new model, are going to find ways to penetrate more customers in a less expensive way. And I do believe that the professional sales enterprise sales person of tomorrow is going to look different than it looks today. And so I'm super excited to be in a company that is smack dab in the middle of selling to enterprise clients and watching us learn together how we're going to buy, sell and market to each other in this post-COVID way. 'Cause the only thing I really do know it's just not going to be the way it used to be. What is it going to look like? I think all of us are placing bets and I don't think anybody has the answer yet. But it's going to look different for sure. >> They're very, very thoughtful comments. And so Brian, you know our thinking is the differentiation in the war. Gets one in digital. How is that affecting your marketing and your things around that? >> We fortunately decided coming into 2020, our fiscal 21, that we were actually going to overweigh digital anyway. We felt that, it was far more effective, we were seeing far better conversion rates. We saw way better ROI in terms of very targeted additive digital campaigns or general purpose ABM type of efforts. So our strategy had essentially been set and what this provided us is the opportunity to essentially redirect all of the other funds into digital. So we have essentially a two pronged marketing attack, right now, which is digital creating inbounds and BDRs that are calling on those inbounds that are created digitally. And so it's going to be a really interesting transition back when physical events if and when they do actually back and spawn, how much we decide to actually go back into that. To some extent we've talked about this in the past Dave. The physical events and the sheer spectacle and the sheer audacity of having to spend a million dollars just to break through that was an unsustainable model. (laughs) And so I think this is hastening perhaps the decline or demise of really silly marketing expense and getting back to telling customers what they need to know to help and assist their buying journey and their investigation journey into new technology. >> There in the IT world is hybrid. And I think the events world is also going to be hybrid. Intimate, they're going to live on but they're also going to have a major digital component to them. I'm very excited that there's a lot of learnings now in digital especially around events and by September, a lot of the bugs are going to be worked out. You know we've been going, feels like 24/7, but really excited to have you guys on. Thanks so much, really looking forward to working with you in September at Data-Driven. So guys thanks a lot for coming on theCUBE. >> Oh my gosh, thank you Dave. So nice to be here, Thank you. >> All right, stay safe. >> Thanks Dave, always a pleasure. You too. >> Thank you everybody, thank you. And thanks for watching. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE and we'll see you next time. (gentle music)

from the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world this is a cube conversation [Music] hi buddy this is Dave Volante and welcome to this cute conversation you know the we've been following a company called Activia for quite some time now they they've really popularized the concept of copy data management really innovative Boston based Waltham based company and with me Brian Regan who's the chief marketing officer and all 40 who's the newly minted chief revenue officer of actifi Oh guys great to see you I wish we were face to face that you're you're you're June event but this will have to do yeah you bet yeah so you know Brian you've been on the cube a bunch I'm gonna start with Paul if that's okay Paul you know just let's talk a little bit about your your background you've you've done a number of stance at a variety of companies you know big companies like IBM and others as well what attracted you to Activia in all honesty I've been a software guy and candidly a data specific leader for many many years and so IT infrastructure particularly associated around data has always been sort of my forte for fun on words there and and so Activia was just smack dab in the middle of that right and so when I was looking for my next adventure you know I had an opportunity to to meet with a shower CEO and Founder and describe and discuss kind of what activity was all about and candidly the the number of connections that we had that were the same a lot of our OEM relationships with people that I actually worked with and for and some that worked for me historically so it was almost this perfect world right and I'm a Boston guy so it was in my in my old backyard and it was just a perfect yeah it was a perfect match for what I was looking for which was really a small growth company that was trying to you know get to the next level that had compelling technology in a space that I was super familiar with and understanding and articulate the value proposition well as we're saying in Boston Paulie we got to get you back here I know I pack my cock let's talk about the let's talk about the climate right now I mean nobody expected this of course I mean it's funny I was I saw ash and an event in in Boston last fall we were talking like hey what do you expected for next year yeah a little bit of softening but you know nobody expected this sort of Black Swan but you guys I just got your press release you put out you had a good you had a good quarter you had a record first quarter um what's going on in the marketplace how you guys doing yeah well I think that today more than than ever businesses are realizing that data is what is actually going to carry them through this crisis and that data whether it's changing the nature of how companies interact with their customers how they manage through their supply chain and in frankly how they take care of their employees is all very data-centric and so businesses that are protecting that data that are helping businesses get faster access to that data and ultimately give them choice as to where they manage that data on-premises in the cloud and hybrid configuration those are the businesses that are really going to be top of a CIOs mind I think our q1 is a demonstration that customers voted with their wallets in their confidence in ectopy Oh has an important part of their data supplied nopal I want to come back to you first of all your your other people know you're next you're next Army Ranger so thank you for your service that's awesome you know I was talking to Frank's lute man we interviewed me other day and he was sharing with me sort of how he manages and and he says the other managed by a playbook he's a situational manager and that's something that he learned in the military well this is weird this is a situation okay and that really is kind of how you're trained and and of course we've never seen anything like this but you're trained to deal with things that you've never seen before so how are you seeing organizations generally actifi Oh specifically going to manage through this process what are some of the moves that you're advising recommending give us some insight there yeah so I'm it's really interesting it's a it's funny that you mentioned my military background I was just having this discussion with one of my leaders the other day that you know one of the things that they trained for in the military is the eventualities of chaos right and so when you when you do an exercise they we will literally tap the leader on the shoulder and say okay you're now dead and without that person being allowed to speak they take a knee and the unit has to go on and so what happens is you you learn by muscle memory like how to react in time suffice it or and you know this is a classic example of leadership and crisis and so um so it's just it's just interesting like so to me you have a playbook I think everybody needs to start with a playbook and then start with a plan I can't remember if it was Mike Tyson but one of them one of my famous quotes was you know let you know plan is good until somebody punches you in the face that's the reality of what just happened the business across the globe is it just got punched in the face and so you got a playbook that you rely on and then you have to remain nimble and creative and candidly opportunistic and from a leadership perspective I think you can't lose your confidence right so I've watched some of my friends and of what some other businesses crippled in the midst of this and I'm because they're afraid instead of instead of looking at this in my first commentary that our first staff meeting Brian if I remember it was this okay so what makes active feel great in disembark like not why is it not great right and so we didn't get scared we jumped right into it we you know we adjusted our playbook a little bit and candidly we just had a record quarter and we just down here the honestly date we took down deals in every single geography around the globe to include Italy I mean so it was insane it was really fun okay so this wasn't just one monster deal that gave you that record Porter is really a broad-based the demand yeah so if you you know if you dug underneath the covers you would see that we had the largest number of transactions ever in the first quarter we had the largest average selling price in the first quarter ever we had the largest contribution from our panel partners and our OEM partners ever and we had the highest number ever and so it was a it was really a nice truly balanced performance across the globe and across the size of deal sets and candidly across industries interesting I mean you use the term opportunistic and and I think you're right on I mean you obviously you don't want to be chasing ambulances at the same time you know we've talked to a lot of CEOs and essentially what they're doing and I'd like to get your feedback on this Brian you you you're kind of reassessing the ideal profile of a customer you're reassessing your value proposition in the context of the current pandemic and and I noticed that you guys in your press release talked about cyber resiliency you talked about digital initiatives you know data center transformations etc so maybe you could talk a little bit about that Brian did you do those things how did you do those things what kind of pace were you guys at how did you do it remotely with everybody working from home give us some color on that sure and you know Ashley if you were here you would probably remind us that Activia was born in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis so we we have essentially been bookended by two black swans over the last decade the and the lessons we learned in 2008 are every bit as as relevant today everything starts with cost containment in hospital and in protection of the business and so cio is in the midst of this shock to the system I think we're very much looking at what are the absolutely vital critical initiatives and what is a nice to have and I'm going to pause on my step and invest entirely in the critical mission and the critical initiatives tended to be around getting people safely working for remotely getting people safe access to their systems and their applications in their data and then ultimately it also became about protecting the systems from malicious individuals and state actors up unfortunately as we've seen in other times of crisis this is when crime and cyber crime particularly tends to spike particularly against industries that don't have the strong safeguards in place to to really ensure the resiliency their applications so we very much went a little bit back to the 2008 playbook around helping people get control of their costs helping people continue to do the things they need to do at a much more infrastructure light manner but also really emphasize the fact that if you are under attack or if you are concerned that you're infected but you don't know when you know instant access to data and a time machine that can take you back and forth to those points in time is something that is incredibly valuable so so let's >> cyber resiliency so specifically what is aekta video doing for its customers from a product standpoint capabilities maybe it's part of the the 10 see announcement as well but but can you can you give us some specifics on where you fit in let's take that use case cyber resiliency yeah absolutely so I think there's there's a staff of capabilities when it comes to cyber resiliency at the lowest level you need a time machine because most people don't know when they're in fact and so the ability to go back in time test the recoverability of data test the validity of the data is step one step two is once you've found the clean point being able to resume operations being able to resume the applications operation instantly or very rapidly is the next phase and that's something that Activia was founded on this notion of instant access to data and then the third phase and this is really where our partnerships really shine is you probably want to go back and mitigate that risk you want to go back and clean that system you want to go back and find the infection and eliminate it and that's where our partnership with IBM freezing resiliency services and their cyber incident recovery solution which takes the activity of platform and then rappers and a complete managed services around it so they can help the customer not only get their their systems and applications back on their feet but clean the systems and allow them to resume operations normally on a much safer and more stable okay so so that's interesting so Paul Paul was it kind of new adoptions was it was it increases from existing customers kind of a combination and you talk to that yeah totally so like ironically to really come clean we are the metrics that we had in the first quarter were very similar through the metrics that we see historically so the mix need our existing customer base and then our new customer acquisition were very similar to our historical metrics which candidly we were a little surprised by we anticipated um that the majority of our business would come from that safe harbor of your existing customer base but candidly we had a really nice split which was great which meant that you know a value proposition was resonating not only with our existing customer base where you would expect it but also in in any of our new customers as well who had been evaluating us that either accelerated or or just continue down the path of adoption during the time frame of Koba 19 across industries I would say that again um there was there were there were some industries I would say that pushed pause and so the ones that you can imagine that accelerated during during this past period were the ones you would think of right so financial institutions primarily as well as some some of the medical so some of those transactions healthcare and medical they accelerated along with financial institutions and then I would say that that we did have some industries that push pause and you can probably guess what some of those are a majority of those were the ones that we're dealing with the small and mid-sized businesses or consumer facing businesses things like retail stuff like that where we typically do have a pretty nice residence in a really nice value proposition but there were there were definitely some transactions that we saw basically just pause like we're going to come back but overall the yeah the feedback was just in general it felt like any other quarter and it felt like just pretty normal as strange as that sounds because I know speaking to a lot of my friends and gear companies your software companies they didn't have that experience but we did pretty well that's interesting I mean you're right I mean certain industries Airlines I'm interviewing a cio of major resort next week you know really interested to hear how they're you know dealing with this but those those are obviously depressed and they've dialed everything down but but we've we were one of the first to report that work from home pivot it didn't it didn't you know buffer the decline in IT spending that were expecting to be down you know maybe as much as 5% this year but it definitely offset it what about cloud we're seeing elevated levels in cloud demand guys you know have offerings there what are you seeing in cloud guys you want that yeah I'll start and then fall please please weigh in I think that'd be the move to the cloud that we've been witnessing and the acceleration of the MOOC table that we've been whipped over the past several years probably ramped up in intensity over the last two months The Improv been on the you know 18 to 24 month road map have all of a sudden been accelerated into maybe this year but in terms of the wholesale you know everything moves to cloud and I abandoned my on-premises estate I I don't think we've seen that quite yet I think the the world is still hybrid when it comes to cloud although I do think that the beneficiaries of this are probably the the non number one or number two cloud providers but the rest of the hyper scalers who are fighting for market share because now they have an opportunity to perhaps google for example a strategic partner of ours has a you know a huge offering when it comes to enabling work home and remote work so leveraging that as a platform and then extending into their enterprise offerings I think gives them a wedge that the you know Amazon might not have so this it's an acceleration of interest but I think it's just a continuation of the trend of seeing four years yeah and I would add a little bit if the you know IBM held their think conference this past week I don't know if you had an opportunity to participate there one of our OEM partners and oh yeah because you know when our the CEO presented his kind of opening his opening remarks it was really about digital transformation and he really he really kind of put it down to two things and said you know any business that's trying to transform is either talking about hybrid cloud but they're talking about AI and machine learning and that's kind of it right and so every digital business is talking in one of those categories and so when I look 2q1 it's interesting that we really didn't see anything other than as brian talked about all the cloud business which is some version of an acceleration but outside of that the customers that are in those industries that are in position to accelerate and double down during this opportunity didn't so and those that did not you know kind of just peeled back a little bit but overall I still I would agree with with ibm's assessment of the market that you know those are kind of the two hot spots and have a cloud is hot and the good news is we've got a nice guy operating Molloy yeah Arvind Krista talked about the the in and it has it maybe not I think but he talked earlier in his remarks on the earnings call just in Publix Davis that IBM must win the battle the architectural battle the hybrid cloud and also that he wants to lead with a more technical sell essentially which is submitted to me those those two things are great news for you guys obviously you know Red Hat is the linchpin of that I want to ask you guys about your your conference data-driven so we were there last year it was a great really great intimate event of course you know you hand up the physical events anymore so you've pushed to September you're going all digital would give us the update on on that program we're um we're eager to have the cube participate in our September event so I'm sure we'll be talking more about that in the coming weeks but awesome we love it we exactly so you can tell Frank to put that so we we've been participating in some of the other conferences I think most notably last week learning a lot and and really trying to cherry pick the best ideas and the best tactics for putting on a digital event I think that as we look to September and as we look to put on a really rich digital event one of the things that is I think first and foremost in our minds is we want to actually produce more on-demand digital content particularly from a technology standpoint our technology sessions last year were oversubscribed the digital format allows people to stream whenever they can and frankly as many sessions as they as they might so I think we can be far more efficient in terms of delivering technical content or the users of our technology and then we're also eager to have as we've done with data driven in the years past our customers tell the story of how they're using data and this year certainly I think we're going to hear a lot of stories about in particular how they use data during this incredible you know crisis and and hopefully renewal from crisis well one of my favorite interviews last year your show is the the guys from draft King so hopefully they'll be back on it will have some football to talk about let's hope I mean I want it I want to end with just sort of this notion of you know we've been so tactical the last eight weeks right I'm you guys too I'm sure just making sure you're there for customers making sure your employees are ok but as we start to think about coming out of this you know into a post probe Adaro it looks like it's gonna be with us for a while but we're getting back the you know quasi opening so I'm hearing you know hybrid is here to stay we agree for sure cyber resiliency is very interesting I think you know one of the things we've said is that that companies may sub optimize near-term profitability to make sure that they've got the flexibility and resilience business resiliency in place you know that's obviously something that is I think good news for you guys but but I'll start with Paul and then maybe Brian you can bring us home how do you see this sort of emergence from this lockdown and into the post ghovat era yeah so this is a really interesting topic for me in fact I've had many discussions over the last couple weeks with some of our investors as well as our executive staff and so my personal belief is that the way buying and selling has occurred for IT specifically at the enterprise level is about to go through a transformation no different than we watched the transformation of SAS businesses when you basically replace the cold-calling salesperson with an inside and you know inbound marketing kind of effort followed up with SDR and vdr because what we're finding is that our clients now are able to meet more frequently because we don't have the friction of airplane ride or or physical building to go through and so like that that whole thing has been removed from the sales process and so it's interesting to me that one of the things that I'm starting to see is that the amount of activity that our sales organization is doing and the amount of physical calls that were going on they happen to be online however you couple that with the cost savings of not traveling around the globe and not being in offices and and I really think that those companies that embrace this new model are gonna find ways to penetrate more customers in a less expensive way and I do believe that the professional sales enterprise salesperson of tomorrow is gonna look at then it looks today and so I'm super excited to be in a company that is smack dab in the middle of selling to enterprise clients and and watching us learn together how we're gonna buy sell and market to each other in this post public way because I I'm the only thing I really do know it's just not gonna be the way it used to be what is it gonna look like I think all of us are placing bets and I don't think anybody has the answer yet but it's gonna look different for sure they're very very thoughtful comments and so Brian you know our thinking is the differentiation and the war yes it gets one in digital how is that affecting you know sort of your marketing and your thing around that we we fortunately decided coming into 2020 our fiscal 21 that we were actually going to overweight digital anyway we felt that it was far more effective we were seeing far better conversion rates we saw you know way better ROI in terms of very targeted tentative digital campaigns or general-purpose ABM type of efforts so our strategy had essentially been set and and what this provided us is the opportunity to essentially redirect all of the other funds individually so you know we have essentially a two-pronged marketing you know attack Frank now which is you know digital creating inbounds and B DRS that are calling on those in bounds that are created digital and so it's a you know it's going to be a really interesting transition back when physical events if and when they do actually come back into form you know how much we decide to actually go back into that that been I think that you know to someone to some extent we've talked about this in the past II you know the physical events and the the sheer spectacle and this year you know audacity of having to spend a million dollars just to break through that was an unsustainable model and so I think this is this is hastening perhaps the decline or demise of really silly marketing expense and getting back to telling telling customers what they need to know to help their an assist their buying journey in their investigation journey into a new technology I mean the IT world is hybrid and I think the events world is also going to be hybrid to me nice intimate events you know they're gonna live on but they're also gonna have a major digital component to them I'm very excited that you know we're a lot of learnings now in digital especially around events and by September the a lot of the the bugs are gonna be worked out you know we've been going to it so it feels like 24/7 but really excited to have you guys on thanks so much really looking forward to working with you in in September it's data-driven so guys thanks a lot for coming on the cube oh my gosh thank you Dave so nice it's so nice to be here thank you alright pleasure you did thank you everybody thank you and thanks for watching this is Dave Volante for the cube and we'll see you next time [Music]

(upbeat music) >> Welcome to this special Cube Conversation. We're here in Palo Alto, California with a special guest. Dialing in remotely Paul Martino, the founder of Bullpen Capital and also the producer of an upcoming film called The Inside Game. It's a story about a true story about an NBA betting scandal. It's really, it's got everything you want to know. It's got sports, it's got gambling, it's got fixing of games. Paul Martino, known for being a serial entrepreneur and then an investor, investing in some great growth companies, and now running his own firm called Bullpen Capital, which bets on high-growth companies and takes them to the next level. Paul, great to see you. Thanks for spending the time. Good to see you again. >> John, always good to see you. Thanks for having me on the show. >> So, you're a unique individual. You're a computer science whiz, investor, entrepreneur, now film producer. This story kind of crosses over your interests. Obviously in Philly, you're kind of like me, kind of a blue collar kind of guy. You know hot starters when you see it. You also were an investor in a lot of the sports, gambling, betting, kind of online games, we've talked about in the past. But now you're crossing over into filming movies. Which is, seems like very cool and obviously we're living in a date of digital media where code is software, code is content, obviously we believe that. What's this movie all about? All the buzz is out there, Inside Game. You get it on sports radio all the time. Give us the scoop. Why Inside Game? What's it about? Give us the 411. >> Yeah, so John, I mean, this is a story that picked me. My producing partner in this is a guy named Michael Pierce who made a bunch of great movies, including The Cooler, one of the best gambling movies, with William H Macy. And he says sometimes the movie picks you and sometimes you pick the movie. And I wasn't sitting around one day going wow I want to be a movie producer, it was just much more that my cousin is the principal in the story. My cousin was the go-between between the gambler and the referee. The three of them were friends ever since they were kids. And when they all got out of jail Tommy called me, Tommy Martino. He said hey Paulie, you're about the only legitimate business guy I know. Could you help me with my life rights? And that's how this started almost six years ago. >> And what progressed next? You sat down, had a couple cocktails, beers, said okay here's how we're going to structure it. Was it more brainstorming and then it kind of went from there? Take us through that progression. >> It was a pure intellectual property exercise, and this is where being a startup guy was helpful. I was like, Tommy, I'll buy your life rights. Maybe we'll get a script written, we'll put it on the shelf, so that if anybody ever wants to make this story they have to go through us. Almost like a blocking patent or a copyright. And he's like okay cool. And so I said I have no delusions of ever making this movie. I actually don't know that, I don't know anybody to make a movie. This is not my skill set. But if anybody ever wants to make the movie, they're going to have to come deal with us. And then the lucky break happens, like anything in a startup. I have this random meeting with a guy named Michael Pierce, who was at a firm called WPS Challenger out of London. And we're down in Hillstone in Santa Monica, and I say to him, I say I've got this script written about this NBA betting scandal, would you do me a favor? He literally laughs in my face. He goes a venture guy from Silicon Valley is going to hand me a script. What a bad, anyway, I was like look dude, I'm a good guy to have owe you a favor so just read this dang thing. About 8 hours later my phone rings, he says who the hell is Andy Callahan? This is the best script I've ever read in my entire life. Let's go make a movie. Andy Callahan was a friend of a friend from high school who wrote the script. He actually once beat Kobe Bryant when he was a center at Haverford when Kobe Bryant played at Lower Merion here in the Philly suburbs. So, it's kind of this local Philly story. I'm a local Philly blue collar guy, we put the pieces together, and I'll be danged and now six years later the film is in the can and you're probably going to see it during the NBA finals this year in June. >> All right, so there's some news out there it's on the cover on ESPN Magazine, the site is now launched. I've been hearing buzz all morning on this in the sports radio world. A lot of buzz, a lot of organic virality around it. Reminds of the Crazy, Rich Asians, which kind of started organically, similar kind of community behind it. This has really got some legs to it. Give us some taste of what's some of the latest organic growth here around the buzz. >> Yeah so, think about this. This happened in, primarily '06 and '07. They were sentenced in 2010 and were in jail in 2011. It is 2019 and the front page story on ESPN is What Tim, Tommy, and Jimmy Battista Did. Those were the three guys, the gambler, the ref, and the go-between. And this is a front page story on ESPN all these years later. So we know this story has tremendous legs. We know this movie has a tremendous built-in audience. And so now it's just our job to leverage all those marketing channels, places we pioneered, like Zynga and FanDuel to get people who care about the story into the theaters. And we're hoping we can really show people how to do a modern way to market a film using those channels we've pioneered at places like FanDuel and Zynga. >> You and I have had many conversations privately and here on the Cube in the past around startups disruption, and it's the same pattern right? No one thinks it's a great idea, you get the rights to it, and you kind of got to find that inflection point, that magical moment which comes through networking and just hard work and hustle. And then you've got everything comes together. And then it comes together. And then it grows. As the world changes, you're seeing digital completely change the game on Hollywood. For instance, Netflix, you've got Prime, you've got Hulu. This is, essentially, a democratization, I'm not saying, well first of all you've made some money so you had some dough to put into it, but here's a script from a friend. You guys put it together. This is now the new startup model going to Hollywood. Talk about that dynamic, what's your vision there? Because this, I think, is an important signal in how digital content, whether it's guys in the Cube doing stuff or Cube Studios, which we'll, we have a vision for. This is something that's real. Talk about the dynamic. How do you see the entrepeneurial vision around how movies are made, how content's made, and then, ultimately, how they're merchandised in the future. >> Right, there's a whole, there's a whole bunch of buckets. There's the intellectual property bucket of the story, the script, etc. Then there's the bucket of getting the movie made. You know, that's the on the set and that's the director and that's post-production, and then there's the marketing. And what was really interesting is even though I'd never made a movie, two of those three buckets I knew a tremendous amount about from my experience as a startup investor. The marketing and the IP side I understood almost completely, even though I'd never made a film. And so all of the disruptive technologies that we learn for doing disruptive things like marketing a new thing called Daily Fantasy Sports, we were able to bring to bear to this film. Now, I had fun on the set and meeting all the actors, etc. But I had no delusion that I knew about the making of the movie part. So I plead ignorance there, but of the three buckets that you need to go make something in the media space 66% of what I knew as a startup guy overlapped and I think this is what the future of the media is. Because guys like me and you, John, we actually know a lot about this because we're startup people as opposed to we have to learn about it in terms of how to market and how to get an audience. I mean, my last company Aggregate Knowledge designs custom audiences for ad targeting. So we know how to find gamblers to go see this movie. That's literally the company I started. And so that's a thing that I'm very, very comfortable with and it's exciting to then work with the producer who did the creative and the director and I say hey guys, I've got this marketing thing under control, I know how to do it, oh by the way, the old Head of Marketing from FanDuel, he's a consultant to the project. Right, so, we got that. >> You got that, and the movie's being made. That's also again, back to entrepreneurship, risk. You got to take risks, right? This is all about risk management at the end of the day and you know, navigating as the lead entrepreneur, getting it done, there's heavy lifting and costs involved in making the movie, >> Right >> How did you, that's like production, right? You got to build a product. That is ultimately the product when it has to get to market. How did that go, what's your thoughts on your first time running a movie like this, from a production standpoint, learnings, observations? >> I learned a tremendous amount. I must admit, I was along for the ride on that piece of the puddle, puzzle. The product development piece of this was all new to me. But then again, I mean think about it, John, I started four companies, a social network, an ad targeting company, a game company, and a security company. I didn't know anything about those four companies when I started them either in terms of what the product needed to do. So learning a new product called make a movie was kind of par for the course, even though I didn't really know anything about it. You know, if you're going to be a startup person you got to have no fear. That's the real attribute you need to have in these kinds of situations. >> So I got to >> And so, witnessed that first-hand and, you know what, now, if I ever make a movie again I kind of know how to make that product. >> Yeah, well looking forward. You've got great instincts as an entrepreneur. I love hanging out with you. I got to ask you a question. I talk to a lot of young people, my son and his friends and I see people coming out of business school, all this stuff. You know, every college has an entrepreneurial program. Music, film, you know, whatever, they all have kind of bolted on entrepreneurship. You're essentially breaking down that kind of dogma of that you have to have a discipline. Anyone can do this, right? So talk about the folks that are out there, trying to be entrepreneurial, whether you're a musician. This is direct to consumer. If you have skills as an entrepreneur it translates. Talk about what it takes to be an entrepreneur, if you're a musician or someone who has, say, content rights or has content story. What do they do? What's your advice? >> We have lived through, perhaps the most awesome period of the last five to 10 years, where it got cheap to do a startup. You know, when we're doing our first startups 20 years ago, it cost 5 million bucks to go get a license from Oracle and go hire a DBA and do all that stuff. You know what, for 5 grand you can get your website up, you can build, you can use your iPhone, you can film your movie. That's all happened in the last five to 10 years. And what it's done is exactly the word you used. It's democratized who can become an entrepreneur. Now people who never thought entrepreneurship was for them, are able to do it. One of our great examples of this is Ipsy, our cosmetics company. You know, Michelle Phan was a cocktail waitress working in Florida, but she had this YouTube following around watching her videos of her putting her makeup on. And you know when we met her, we're like you know what? You're the next generation of what entrepreneurs look like. Because no, she didn't go to Stanford. She didn't have a PhD in computer science, but she knew what this next generation of content marketing was going to look like. She knew what it was to be a celebrity influencer. You know, that company Ipsy makes hundreds of millions of dollars every year now, and I don't think most people on Sand Hill would've necessarily given Michelle the chance because she didn't look like what the traditional entrepreneur looked like. So it's so cool we live in a time where you don't need to look like what you think an entrepreneur needs to look like or went to the school you had to think you'd go to to become an entrepreneur. It's open to everybody now. >> And the key to success, you know, again, we've talked about those privately all the time when we meet, but I want to get your comment on the record here. But I mean, there's some basic blocking and tackling that's independent of where you went to school that's being creative, networking, networking, networking, you know, and being, good hustle. And being, obviously good judgment and being smart. Do your thoughts on the keys to success for as those folks saying hey you know I didn't have to go to these big, fancy schools. I want to go out there. I want to test my idea. I want to go push the envelope. I want to go for it. What's the tried and true formula from your perspective? >> So when you're in the early stage of hustling and you want to figure out if you're good at being an entrepreneur, I tell entrepreneurs this all the time. Every meeting is a job interview. Now, you might not think it's a job interview, but you want to think about every meeting, this might be the next person I start my company with. This might be the person I end up hiring to go run something at my company. This might be the person I end up getting money for, from to start my company. And so show up, have some skills, have some passion, have a vision, and impress the person on the other side of the table. Every once in a while I get invited to a college and they're like well Paul, life's easy for you, you started a company with Mark Pinkus and you're friend with Reid Hoffman and this... Well how the hell do you think I met those people? I did the same thing I'm telling you to do. When I was nobody coming out of school, I went and did stuff for these guys. I helped them with a business plan. I wrote the code of Tribe, and then now all of the sudden we've got a whole network of people you can go to. Well, that didn't happen by accident. You had to show up and have some skills, talent, and passion and then impress the person on the other side of the table. >> Yeah >> And guess what? If you do that enough times in a row, you're going to end up having your own network. And then you're going to have kids come in and say, wow, how can I impress you? >> Be authentic, be genuine, hustle, do networking, do the job interview, great stuff. All right, back to final point I want to get your thoughts on because I think this is your success and getting this movie out of the gate. Everyone, first, everyone should go see Inside Game. Insidegamemovie.com is the URL. The site just went up. This should be a great movie. I'm looking forward to it, and knowing the work that went in, I followed your journey on this. It should be great. I'm looking forward to seeing it. Uh, digital media, um, your thoughts because we're seeing a direct to consumer model. You've got the big companies, YouTube, Amazon, others. There's kind of a, a huge distribution of those guys. The classic Web 2.0 search kind of paradigm and portal. But now you've got a whole 'nother set of distribution or network effects. Your thoughts, because you were involved in, again, social networking before it became the monster that it is now. How is digital media changing? What's your vision of how that's happening and how does someone jump on that wave and be successful? >> Yeah, we're in the midst of disruption. I mean, I'm in the discussions and final negotiations right now on how we're going to end up ultimately doing the film distribution. And I am very disappointed with the quality of the thinking of the people on the other side of the table. Because they come from very traditional backgrounds. And I'm talking to them about, I want to do a site takeover across Zynga. I want to do a digital download on FanDuel of a 20 minute clip of the film. And they're like what's FanDuel? Who's Zynga? And I'm sitting there, I'm like guys, this is the new media. Oh, by the way, there's a sports app called Wave and Wave is where the local influencers in the markets who want to write the stories are, and we want to do a deal with those guys. And oh, by the way, the CEO of that company is a buddy of mine I met years ago, right? One of those kids I gave advice to, and now I'm going to ask him for a favor from, right, that's how it works. But, it's amazing when you have these conversations with traditional old line media companies. They don't understand any of the words coming out of your mouth. They're like Paul, here's how much I'll give you for your film. Thank you, we'll go market it. I'm like, really? Seriously? I got the former CMO of FanDuel going to help out on this. You don't want to talk to him? >> Yeah >> And so this is where the industry is really ripe for disruption. Because the people from the startup world have already disrupted the apple cart and now we've just got to demonstrate that this model is going to continue to work for the future and be ready when the next new kind of digital transmedia thing comes along and embrace that, as opposed to be scared to death of it or not even know how to talk the language of the people on it. >> Well, you're doing some amazing venturing in your, kind of, unique venture capital model on Bullpen Capital. Certainly isn't your classic venture capital thing, so I'm sure people are going to be talking to you about oh, Paul, are all VCs going to be doing movies? I'm sure that's a narrative that's out there. But you're not just a normal venture capital. You certainly invest. So, venture capitals have reputation issues right now. People talk about, well, you know, they're group think. You know, they only invest in who they see themselves. You mentioned that comment there. The world's changing in venture. Your thoughts on that, how you guys started your firm, and your evolution of venture capital. And is this a sign that you'll see venture capitalists go into movies? >> Well, I don't know about that part. There have been a couple venture people who have done movies. But the part I will talk about is the you got to know somebody, it's an inside game, ha ha, we'll play double entendre on Inside Game here. You know, 20% of the deal we've done at Bullpen, we've done over 100. 20% of them were cold emails on something like LinkedIn or business plans at bullpen.com. 20%, now there's this old trope in venture if you don't get a warm intro I won't even talk to you. Well 20% of our deals came in and we had no idea who the person on the other side was. That's how we run the firm. And so if you're out there going I'm one of those entrepreneurs in the Midwest and no one, I don't know anyone. I'm not in a network, send me a plan. I'm someone who's going to look at it. It doesn't mean I'm going to be an investor, but you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to give you a shot. And I don't care where you're from or what school you went to or what social clique you're in or what your political persuasion is. Matter of fact, I literally don't care. I'm going to give you a shot. Come into my office and that, I think, is what was missing in a lot of firms, where it's a we only do security and we only look at companies that spun out of Berkeley and Stanford. And yeah, there can be an old boys network in that. But you know what, we like to talk to everybody. And the more blue collar the CEO is, the more we love them at Bullpen. >> That's awesome. Talk about the movie real quick on terms of how Hollywood's handling it. Um, expectations, in terms of reaction, was it positive, is it positive, what's the vibe going on in Hollywood, is this going to be a grassroots kind of thing around the FanDuels and your channels? What's your plan for that and what's the reaction of Hollywood? >> So it's going to be a lot of all of the above. But PR is going to be a huge component, I mean, part of the reason we're on today is there's a huge front page story on ESPN about Tim Donaghy and the NBA betting scandal of 2007. And so the earned media is going to be a huge component of this. And I think this is where the Hollywood people do understand the language we're speaking. We're like, look, we have a huge built-in audience that we know how to market to. We have a story. Actually, in the early days, you asked about risk? Back when I was thinking about if I would do this project I would do the following little market research. I'd walk into a sports bar, it didn't matter what town I was in. I could be in Dallas, I could be in Houston, I could be in Boston. I would literally walk up to the bar and say, hey, uh, six of you at the bar, ever hear of Tim Donaghy? It'd be amazing. About seven out of 10 people would go yeah he was the referee, crooked referee in the NBA. I'm like, this is amazing. Seven out of 10 people I meet in a bar know about the story I want to go tell. That sounds like a good chance to make a movie, as opposed to a movie that has no built-in audience. And so, a built-in audience with PR channels that we know work, I think we can really show Hollywood how to do this in a different way if this all works. >> And this comes back to my point around built-in audiences. You know, YouTube has got a million subscribers. That's kind of an old metric. That means they, like an RSS feed kind of model. That's a million people that are, could be, amplifying their network connections. It is a massive built-in audience. The iteration, the DevOps kind of mindset, we talk about cloud computing, can be applied to movies. It's agile movie making. That's what you're talking about. >> Yeah, and by the way, so we have a social network of all the actors and people in the film. So when it's ready, let's go activate our network of all the actors that are in the film. Each of them have a couple million followers. So let's go be smart. Let's, two weeks before the movie, let's send some screenshots. A week before the movie let's show some exclusive videos. Two days before the film, go see it, it's now out in the theaters. You know what, that's pretty, that's 101. We've got actors. We've got producers. Like, let's go use the influencer network we built that actually got the movie made. Let's go on Sports Talk, talk about the movie. Let's go on places like this and talk about how a venture guy made a movie. This is the confluence of all of the pieces all coming together at once. And I just don't think enough people in the film business or in the media business think big enough about going after these audiences. It's oh, we're going to take ads out on TV and I'm going to see my trailer and we're going to do this and that's how we do it. There's so many better ways to get your audience now. >> And this is going to change, just while I've got you here, it's just awesome, awesome conversation. Bringing it back to kind of the CMO in big companies, whether it's consumer or B to B or whatever, movies, the old model of here's our channels. There's certainly this earned media kind of formula and it's not your classic we've got a website, we're going to do all this instrumentation, it's a whole 'nother mechanism. So talk about, in your opinion, the importance of earned media, vis a vis the old other buckets. Owned media, paid media, well-defined Web 1.0, Web 2.0 tactics, earned media is not just how good is our PR? It's actually infrastructure channels, it's networks, a new kind of way to do things. How relevant and how important will this be going forward? Because there's no more website. It's a, you're basically building a media company for this movie. >> That is exactly right. We're building an ad hoc media business. I think this is what the next generation of digital agencies are going to look like. And there are some agencies that we've talked to that really understand all of what you've just said. They are few and far between, unfortunately. >> Yeah, well, Paul, this was theCube. We love talking to people, making it happen. Again, our model's the same as yours. We're open to anyone who's got signal, and you certainly are doing a great job and great to know you and follow your entrepreneur journey, your investment journey, and now your film making journey. Paul Martino, General Pen on Bullpen Capital, with the hot film Inside Game. I'm definitely going to see it. It should be really strong and it's going to be one of those movies like Crazy, Rich Asians, where not looking, not really well produced, I mean not predicted to be great and then goes game buster so I think this is going to be one of those examples. Paul, thanks for coming on. >> Love it, thank you! >> This Cube Conversation, I'm John Furrier here in Palo Alto, California, bringing ya all the action. Venture capitalist turned film maker Paul Martino with the movie Inside Game. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (triumphant music)