>> Narrator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE we're in our Palo Alto studio, it's still 2020, we're still gettin' through the COVID crisis and we're still reaching out to our community really to talk to leaders who have lead through difficult times, led through transitions, and really go out to the experts and get some advice from people who have been around the block a few times, and I'm really, really excited to have one of my all time favorite business executives joining us, I haven't talked to him in years and years and almost decades, David Pottruck is joining us, he is formerly the CEO of Schwab, how he kind of made his name, now he's an author, he's teaching at the Wharton School, he's a New York Times best selling author and he's also the chairman of Red Eagle Ventures, David, great to see you. >> Thanks, Jeff, it's good to be with you today. >> Absolutely, so before we get in, just to check in, how are you doing, how are you gettin' through 2020, I can't believe we're already on the backside of this crazy year. >> Well, it's been a pretty challenging year as you know, and we've seen companies learn to operate in a virtual world. Zoom has been one of the huge beneficiaries, but technology companies in general, the whole FAANG group of Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and such, they've all benefited from people getting more virtual, and one of the non profits I'm involved with sends out videos to schools on social and emotional learning and that's seen a big uptick. So, the world is changing, and changing in very substantial ways, and I don't think we'll ever go back to the way it was in total, we will go back to having face to face meetings, of course, but I do think that operating virtually and doing more things remotely, remote business meetings over zoom are going to be a fixed part of the future, >> Right, right. >> At least in my opinion. >> So, the reason I wanted to reach out to you is you've managed through some crazy transitions and some crazy disruptions back in the day and for a lot of the young people that don't remember, there was a time before we did everything online. There was a time where you had a broker and you called him on the phone and you paid a pretty big price based on a percentage of the transactions. You were at Schwab in the late 90s when this new thing called the internet came along, and these new things called internet only businesses to compete with you, I wonder if you can kind of take us back as you started to see some of these new kinds of threats, coming not necessarily from people that you recognize from up and down the street, but people who are coming over horizons that you've never ever seen before. And how did you start to get a feel for hmm, the landscapes a changin'. >> You know it's really funny to look back that there actually was a day when something called the internet didn't exist. And, there was no connectivity, there was no internet. We were, of course, at that time a telephone based brokerage firm, what used to be called discount brokers. We don't use that phrase very much anymore at Schwab, but, we were a telephone based discount broker, and the internet popped up and started becoming commercialized, and some online only brokerage firms popped up. And these firms didn't have call centers, they didn't have branch offices, if you wanted to do a trade you did it over your computer, online, and the pricing was dramatically less. To give you some idea, to buy 100 shares of IBM, Merrill Lynch would have charged you $250, for that one trade, Schwab would have charged you $80 and E-Trade would have charged you $25. So, we were much cheaper than Merrill Lynch, but E-Trade was much cheaper than us. So, we were, at the time, we were worried about is there enough security on the internet, can we do trades. We have a reputation to protect, a brand new company they don't have a reputation to protect, we have customer security, we have a reputation to protect. Well, we started doing online trades, and the way we did it was we gave all of our customers a 20% discount on our normal pricing, so instead of charging 80-something dollars, you paid something like $60. So, it was a nice discount, customers liked it, they were doing online trades, and we're seeing that is just taking off, it's getting huge, and we're getting great press, the analysts love it, Wall Street loves it, we're a public company and it's going great, but of course at the same time I'm getting, a basket full of letters and emails from our customers saying "why can't you do trades for $25 like E-Trade? Why are they able to do an online trade for $25 and you're charging $65? I thought you stood for value, I thought you guys wanted to be the best value for the money." So, I'm in this dilemma where Wall Street doesn't see these letters, they don't get reported, I see them, and there dozens and then hundreds, and then thousands. >> Wow. >> We had millions of customers, so to get a thousand letters or emails in a month that's very possible. And so I go to Chuck with this and I said you know, I think we need to make a change because no great company was built on the back of unhappy customers. >> Right, right. But you know, it's so funny, not funny, I'm sure it was a huge challenge in the moment, but you know, Clayton Christensen's another one of my favorite business leaders and why I like him so much, and rest in peace he passed earlier this year, is his very simple statement in "The Innovator's Dilemma" that smart people making sound business decisions based on their customer feedback will always miss discontinuous change. You were right in the middle of this thing and you had to get discontinuous change and it's funny, you've mentioned quite a bit in some of your other conversations about looking for faint signals, well this was not a faint signal, this was pretty much, sounds like came up and banged you over the head. So, how do you make and convince the rest of the people of the team that this is kind of a short-term pain but it's a long-term gain, really thinking about this long-term relationship with our customers, even though it's going to cost us on a per transaction basis in the short-term. >> Well, I had our financial staff run some models, and show me what would be the impact if we reduced our pricing from 60 something dollars a trade to $29 a trade, and the assumption of more and more trades moving to the internet. We also had a model into that the fact that people trade a little more when prices go down, costs go down cause I don't have the cost of someone answering the telephone, so there were some benefits, and I had to run the math to understand how long would it take us to go through the trough to get to the other side. A big important part of this is modeling the numbers. You don't just make this decision as a public company and just hope for the best >> Jeff: Right. >> You need to model it out, you need to run math and say how long will it take, what do we have to assume, what do we need to do, what costs do we need to cut, how are we going to protect ourselves as best as we can? And we knew that the math said that our profitability will go down 25% when we make this change of internet pricing, and we expected that Wall Street would be so upset, because they didn't see this coming, no analyst saw this coming cause they don't know about complaint letters I'm getting, so, analysts would be upset and the stock would go down 40%, going to your board and telling them you want approval for a 25% reduction in profits and a 40% reduction in your stock price is not what you want to do as a CEO, you don't want to go to your board with that and when they ask you, well how sure are you that we're going to climb out of this, you say it's going to take 18 months, what if it takes three years, you know, I was, I didn't see the choice we had, honestly, in my heart, you don't build a great company with an increasing number of unhappy customers. I didn't think we had a choice, and Clayton Christensen was one of the consultants that I used to help me think all this through because it was really hard to make this change, Jeff, because we were doing so well. >> Right. >> Ostensibly, we were killing it. >> Right, so it's interesting, I wonder if you could contrast it to what's happening say now with COVID, right, it was this, didn't sneak up on anyone, it was a really kind of a light switch moment in mid-March where suddenly everyone has to work from home, all your digital transformation initiatives are now put on fast forward, but we still have this situation where there's a variety of potential outcomes and timing that's really hard to gauge, so when you're thinking about managing through change within perfect information and you almost have kind of will we go back to normal, will we stay where we are or some spectrum in between, how do you help people think about how they should come up with contingency plans and think about managing through a number of options with imperfect information and really kind of no clear line, you said you had an 18 month ROI that the analytics point to, we're not really sure how long this thing is going to go and what it's going to look like when we get to the other side. >> Well, I think there's two issues there, one of them is how we get through this pandemic period. Until we get to, there's three things we need, we need inexpensive testing that is not done by a professional that we can do at home to see if we're safe. That's number one. Number two, we need a treatment that helps us get through this and get to the other side without dying, we need the fatality rate to even drop further. And number three we need a vaccine. So those are the three things that we need, that the world is working on all three of those, and my guess is that in the first half of 2021 we will have all three of those, we'll have all three of those and this will be a thing, basically, a thing of the past. >> Jeff: Right. >> So, but I don't think the world goes back, to exactly the way it was. People have learned they can have very effective meetings without everybody flying to Chicago, or New York, or Las Angeles, they can do it over Zoom, that doesn't mean meetings go away, but I think they're going to go down in numbers and more online things are going to happen. More people are going to be working from home at least part of the week. It's going to be different. >> Yeah. >> Those CEO's who sit in a somewhat of an ivory tower and get numbers fed to them from their financial staff, and they're not out talking to customers directly, people look at that as anecdotal information, I think it's more important than that, I think you need to see the passion behind the voice and the eyeballs of some of your best customers to understand what's going on with them, and a lot of CEO's don't actually do that. >> Right. You've made a really interesting comment in another interview that you did earlier, and you talked about the high gain questions. And one of the challenges of all CEO's is nobody wants to be the one that tells his CEO bad news, whether that be someone on your staff, whether that be some lower level person who's on the front lines and really knows there's some broken things, or whether it's a good customer as you said and kind of a social setting, how you doin', oh we love you, blah blah blah. But as a CEO you really have stressed that that is really some important hard to find, and hard to filter information up to the executive suite, so what were some of the tips and tricks you used to make sure that people either A. weren't afraid to tell you bad news, and B. that you could kind of go out and sniff it out a little bit more creatively than just kind of waiting for it to come through in the weekly reports. >> Well, obviously, you know, I think all kinds of executives get out and they talk to their customers on a regular basis, they're out and they're talking to them, the problem with those kind of discussions are no one wants to be disrespectful, people want to be nice in those meetings by and large, and you ask questions "how are we doing" "oh you guys are doing great", meanwhile the guy who tells you you're doing great is also looking at some newer technology that might replace you. (laughs) So that kind of question doesn't get you very far. So what we used to do, to be quite specific, is that we used to do a monthly luncheon where I had 12 of my mostly top executives but some people a level or two down, 12 Schwab people with 24 customers. And so they were tables of six, two of us, four customers, and we had a theme that we would talk through and the themes were always around things of, if you had to pick out three things we don't do well, what would they be? Give the customer permission to be comfortable being critical. What are the three things that you've heard about our customers, our competitors doing, that are better than us? What are the things that we need to change to make you even more delighted? You need to ask those kinds of high gain questions where there's no polite answer, the customer is permitted and given the opportunity to answer in a truthful and critical fashion. >> That's a great lesson, as you said give them permission and give them the format and the forum to say some of those things so that you get some of that information. Another great leadership principle that you shared many times, I want to dig into a little bit is kind of motivation verses inspiration. And that those are often confused, but very different concepts in the way that you lead people. I wonder if you can dig in a little bit on your philosophy on those two things. >> Sure, you know it's funny, those terms motivation and inspiration are used almost interchangeably as if they're the same thing. And they're not. Motivation is fundamental in business, and it's the exchange of behaviors for rewards. I was a psychology major in college, this was one of the things we learned about the exchange of behaviors for rewards and that's motivation. Inspiration on the other hand, is the effort to make people want to do something for, not for rewards that are tangible, but to be part of something great. We want you to be part of a movement, we want you to be part of something special, something that's going to change the world for the better and trying to get your employees to buy into this notion that we are on a mission and that mission is to make the world a somewhat better place, it doesn't mean we don't make money, of course we make money, but we're also out for more than a financial bottom line, we're out for a bottom line that's great for customers and maybe pretty great for employees as well. >> So it's interesting, cause you've seen 'em right, you've been in finance for ever, it's always about the shareholders, you've talked about the stock price a number of times in terms of a measure, but it seems more purposed led or purpose forward organizations now are more appealing to the younger generation, I think the search for a little bit more meaning in our day to day job and what that company is all about seems to have elevated over the last several years and taken a higher role in what they used to call triple line accounting, is it not only your shareholders who always are at the top of the list and have been traditionally, but your customers, your employee, and more and more your community and even the environment. Have you seen the swing towards, it's not just about shareholder value? >> Well, not on Wall Street. (laughs) I think, Wall Street is about money, and the people who go to work on Wall Street, and the way Wall Street operates, it's measured in dollars and cents and share price and profits and distributions to private equity partners and so forth, it's a numbers game and it is a profit game on Wall Street, we should be honest about that, it is what it is. >> Jeff: Sure. >> And, I have yet to see the Wall Street firm that is talking about triple bottom lines cause that just doesn't happen very much on Wall Street, it doesn't happen from my perspective, it almost doesn't happen at all. But there are other companies where they do talk about a more triple bottom line, and I think as a leader if you want to be that kind of company and you want to be that kind of leader you have to be comfortable talking about that, and not feel embarrassed by it, not feel that oh, that's too airy fairy, that's too goody two shoes. If you really believe that our goal is to have a triple bottom line, profitability, great for employees, and great for customers and the world at large, then as a leader you need to talk about that. You need to be willing to stand up and have those kinds of conversations and let yourself be challenged by perhaps the press, employees, shareholders, who think that that's not a good strategy. I believe that in many cases that's a great strategy because on a long-term basis you don't want every employee in your company, and all of your senior executives to basically be up for sale, that if a bigger job comes in with a bigger compensation, they're out the door. You're looking for loyalty, you're looking for buy in, for participation, for wanting to give every bit of themselves for the mission of the company. And as the CEO, if you want to take that path, you got to be willing to put yourself out there and talk about it and suffer the slings and arrows from those who don't believe that that's the best path for the company. >> Right, right. Well and that's another thing that you've talked about quite often, is really that the company feeds off the passion of the CEO, and the CEO has to have that passion because they're lookin', they're watchin', they're lookin' at your moves, they're lookin' at what you say, they're lookin' at your body language, they're lookin' at everything that you do. And I think within the context of these transitions and these difficult times, you have another great line that you've used a number of times, which is: "You need to have a perception of momentum." I love that line, so everyone needs to think that we're on the right path, we're not there yet, I feel it, he looks like he feels it, he looks like he's confident, so now I'm confident and I'm going to jump in and help be part of this change process. You've seen that time and time. >> Well, momentum is a tricky thing, you can have momentum and not have the perception of momentum. Because if you're doing a turn around, what often happens is in the early stages of the turn around, the numbers start to change but they're small, and you really haven't seen, it's not as steep. The turn around doesn't go steep, the turn around goes and builds slowly. And, what you need to be measuring in the beginning, are kind of the inputs and behaviors rather than the outputs, sales and profits. Those take longer. But you need to build belief, you need to build buy in, because it can take a long time before things start getting better and you don't want your best people to wonder whether this is the right move, should I be looking for another job, so, you have to build the perception of momentum even as you're building the reality of momentum. >> Right, right. So another thing we cover a lot of tech conferences, obviously, Cloud and AI, machine learning are hot things. But, you know, it always goes back to the big three. It's the technology, okay, but it's also people, and more importantly I think that gets left out is process. So, when you're thinking about, you know you're management is, and again, especially through a transition or a difficult time or some unknown and choppy waters, how do you think about those three, prioritizing those three and organizing those three between people, process and technology? >> Okay, well, you know always looking for technology that can be implemented to give you productivity, better customer service, you need to be monitoring what you're competitors are doing, and be looking out, sometimes at the bleeding edge, where you don't need to implement those kinds of changes right away, but you need to know where you want to go down the road, so you have some sense of that. As far as process goes, your processes are both a strength and a weakness because the strength of how well you run your processes today is also how hard they're going to be to change tomorrow. You know, companies are built for predictability, reliability, risk minimization, and all of your processes are built for those things. But those are also the things that are the opposite of big breakthrough changes. So you need to be thinking about, all right, are we strengthening our processes but also, if we have a change coming that's going to require a change of some of those processes, how is that going to get in our way and how are we going to get past that? >> Jeff: Right. >> I've left people for the last because to me that's the heart and soul of a successful executive. One person never gets everything done, it's all about the quality of your team. You've got to be a recruiter, you've got to be always on the look out for new talent that can help your company, and you've got to be thinking about how you're going to recruit that talent. You have to be a magnet for talent. When I sit on boards and I talk to the CEOs, I ask them, what are you doing to be a magnet for talent? What does that mean? What are you doing for great people to want to work for you? For you, and your company, what are you doing, how are you reinvesting in people, how are you putting time and energy in their professional development, in their growth? How are you getting to know them? How are you understanding their ambitions, their hopes and desires for the future? How much time and effort do you spend on that? And that's all part of having people not leave, everyone, in a way you can look at the world and think everyone is for sale. But you want people that are not for sale, that are committed to you and committed to the mission and in today's world where everything seems so fluid, I know my ideas about this probably seem very old and perhaps out of date, but I still believe in them with all my heart, that you want people that are committed to you and what we are accomplishing together. And you have to be reinforcing that with your words, and even more importantly with your actions. >> Yeah, I think it goes back to your inspiration, people are much more motivated by inspiration than just collecting a paycheck or getting a compensation back for what they're doing, which is a great segue to the last topic I wanted to cover with you, and I remember this, we had dinner, I think it was 1996 at the Wharton's Zweig Series, and you were such a phenomenal speaker, and I remember asking you the question and I remember your answer, and I've repeated it ad nauseam for the last 20 years. I said, "David, you're such a great speaker, why, how?" And you were so matter of fact in that you just said "hey, it's an important part of my job, I treat it as a skill, I hired a coach, I practiced like I would do any other skill", and why that's such a powerful story is you clearly are in a position of power, you could clearly have a crazy ego that got in the way of such a matter of fact accomplishment of these tasks and all the PR people I talk to and they hear this story "oh my gosh, we got to get him talking to my executives" because so many people let ego get in the way of what is really an important task for a CEO and a leader which is communication and you recognize that early on and really went after it to make sure that you were very good at this very important task. >> Well, what happened to me, I got lucky, I got lucky. When I got promoted to be the CEO of Schwab, I knew I was going to have to do a lot more public speaking and I already thought I was pretty good at being a public speaker, but I thought I needed to fine tune my messaging, I needed to get it better. So, I looked around and I got some referrals and I hired a guy that I thought was going to be a speech writer for me, that would help craft the message. And, we had our first meeting, and we're talking about an upcoming speech and he says to me things like, "Well, Dave, I want to know more about your life. Tell me how you grew up, tell me what you're proudest moments were, I want to learn about you." And I said to him, "Terry, I'm not looking for a biographer, I want a speech writer, I need a guy that can help me craft my message." And he said, "Well, Dave, that's not how I do things. I need to know who you are, I need to know what your passions are and where they come from so that we can give a message that has more than just words it has meaning, it has your passion built into it, that's what we need to do." And that's what Terry taught me, was that it's not just the words, it's also the passion, energy, and meaning and connection behind the words. And I want to mention one other thing that I think is very important. When people talk about being really good communicators, they often talk about speaking. They don't focus on listening. And listening is a tremendously important skill. So for example, you give a speech, you're the CEO or Senior Executive, you give a speech, do you stay there and do you do a Q+A session? The Q+A session can even be more important than the speech sometimes, because all the employees know that the speech is something that was pre-arranged, it's not on the cuff, it's something that's been thought about and prepared. But the questions and answers are authentic and in the moment. People are clamoring for authentic leadership. That Q+A session, where you're listening for the question and maybe the question behind the question. So you're not just trying to get through them as fast as you can, but you're trying to really answer and listen for the question and the question behind the question. And then answer those from the heart with passion, and that's how you will score the most points with your audience. >> That's great. And then who knows what comes from it, in getting ready for this I came across your blog post talking about Gopi Kallayil a mutual friend at Wharton who reached out to you after that same dinner, and you were happy enough, or you were kind enough to respond and grow a friendship and a relationship that again is lasted for decades. So that's such an important message to listen, as somebody said right, "God gave you two ears and one mouth should try to use them in that ratio." (laughs) Well David, thank you so much for taking some time, again I think these are really trying times in leadership, I think it's really an opportunity for great leaders to shine and those that don't there's really no place to hide. So I really appreciate you sharing your insight and taking a few minutes with us. >> Thanks, Jeff, I hope all the people that follow you and listen to your broadcasts learn something today and come away with some benefit from this time we've spent together. >> Undoubtedly, undoubtedly. Well, thanks again. All right, he's Dave Pottruck, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE, thanks for watching and we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick with theCUBE. We're in our Palo Alto Studios on this kind of continuing leadership series that we've put together. Reaching out to the community for tips and tricks on kind of getting through what is, this kind of ongoing COVID crisis and situation as it continues to go weeks and weeks and weeks. And I'm really excited to have one of my favorite members of our community, is Nick Mehta, the CEO of Gainsight. Had the real pleasure of interviewing him a couple times and had to get him on. So Nick, thanks for taking some time out of your very busy day to join us. >> Jeff, honored to be here, thank you. >> Pleasure, so let's just jump into it. One of the reasons I wanted to get you on, is that Gainsight has been a distributed company from the beginning, and so I think the COVID, suddenly everyone got this work from home order, there was no prep, there was no planning, it's like this light switch digital transformation moment. So love to hear from someone who's been doing it for awhile. What are some of the lessons? How should people think about running a distributed company? >> Yeah, it's really interesting, Jeff, 'cause we are just by happenstance, from the beginning, distributed where we have, our first two offices were St. Louis and Hyderabad, India. So two places you cannot get there through one flight. So, you have to figure out how to collaborate asynchronously and then over time, we have offices in the Bay Area. We have tons of people that work from home. And so we try to tell people we don't have a headquarters. The headquarters is wherever you are, wherever you live and wherever you want to work. And so we've always been super flexible about come in to the office if you want, don't come in, et cetera. So different than some companies in that respect. And because of that, pre-COVID, we always a very heavy video culture, lots of video conferencing. Even if some people were in an office, there's always somebody else dialing in. One benefit we got from that is you never had to miss your kids' stuff or your family things. I would go to my daughter's performance in the middle of the day and know I can just dial into a call on the way there. And so we always had that. But what's amazing is now we're all on a level playing field, there's nobody in our office. And I got to say, this is, in some ways, even better 'cause I feel like when you're the person dialed in, and a lot of people are in a room, you probably had that experience, and it feels like you're kind of not on the same playing field, right? Hard to hear the jokes or the comments and you might not feel like you're totally in crowd, so to speak, right? But now everyone's just at their computer, sitting there in a chair all day doing these Zooms and it does feel like it's equalizing a little bit. And what it's caused us to do is say, hey, what are ways we can all recreate that community from home? So as an example, every 7:45 a.m. every day, we have a Zoom call that's just pure joy and fun. Trivia, pets, kids. The employees' kids announce people's birthdays and the weather. And so these ways we've been able to integrate our home and our work that we never could before, it's really powerful. It's a tough situation overall, and we feel for all the people affected. But even in tough situations, there are silver linings, and we're finding 'em. >> Yeah, it's funny, we just had Darren Murph on the other day. I don't know if you know Darren. He is the head of Remote Work at GitLab, and he-- >> Oh, yeah. >> And he talked about kind of the social norms. And one of the instances that he brought up was, back in the day when you had some people in the office, some people joining via remote, that it is this kind of disharmony because they're very different situations. So one of his suggestions was have everybody join via their laptop, even if they're sitting at their desk, right? So, as you said, you get kind of this level playing field. And the other thing which dovetails off what you just said is he always wanted executives to have a forcing function to work from home for an extended period of time, so they got to understand what it's all about. And it's not only looking through a little laptop or this or that, but it's also the distractions of the kids and the dogs and whatever else is happening around the house. So it is wild how this forcing function has really driven it. And his kind of takeaway is, as we, like say, move from can we get it into cloud to cloud first? And does it work on mobile to mobile first? >> Now it's really-- >> Yeah. >> It's really remote first. And if you-- >> Remote first. >> A remote first attitude about it and kind of turn it on it's head, it's why shouldn't it be remote versus can it be remote? It really changes the conversation and the dynamic of the whole situation. >> I love that. And just, GitLab, by the way, has been a true inspiration 'cause they are the most remote, remote company. And they share so much, I love what you said. As just two examples of reacting to what you said, pre-COVID, we always wanted to keep a level playing field. So we actually moved our all-hands meetings to be instead of being broadcast from one room, and you're kind of seeing this small screen with all these people, we all just were at computers presenting. And so everyone's on a level playing field. So I thought what GitLab said is great. And then the other point, I think post-COVID we have learned is the kids and the dogs aren't distractions, they're part of our life. And so embracing those and saying, hey, I see that kid in the background, bring them onto the screen. Even during work meetings, even customer meetings, you know? And I'm seeing, I'm on a customer meeting and the customer's bringing their kids onto the screen and it's kind of breaking this artificial wall between who we are at home and who we are at work 'cause we're human beings all throughout. At Gainsight, we talk about a human first approach to business and we've never been more human as a world than we are right now. >> Love it, love it. So another, get your thoughts on, is this whole idea of measurement and productivity at home. And it's really, I have to say, disturbing to see some of the new product announcements that are coming out in terms of people basically snoopin' on people. Whether it's trackin' how many hours of Zoom calls they're on, or how often are they in the VPN, or having their camera flip on every so many minutes or something. We had Marten Mickos on, who's now the CEO of HackerOne. He was CEO at MySQL years ago before it went to Sun and he had the great line, he said, it's so easy to fake it at the office, but when you're at home and you're only output is your deliverable, it makes it a lot easier. So I wonder if you can share some of your thoughts in terms of kind of managing output, setting expectations, to get people to get their work done. And then, as you see some of these new tools for people that are just entering this thing, it's just not right (chuckles). >> Yeah, I agree with you and Marten. I'm a huge fan of Marten, as well, I totally agree with both of it. And I think there's an older approach to work, which is more like a factory. It's like you got to see how many widgets you're processing and you got to micromanage and you got to monitoring and inspecting. Look, I don't run a factory, so maybe there are places where that model makes sense. So I'm not going to speak for every leader, but I could say if you're in a world where your job is information, services, software, where the value is the people and their knowledge, managing them that way is a losing battle. I go back to, some folks probably know, this famous TED Talk by Dan Pink on basically what motivates people. And in these knowledge worker jobs, it's autonomy, mastery and purpose. So autonomy, we have the freedom to do what we want. Mastery, we feel like we're getting better at jobs. And purpose, which is I have a why behind what I do. And I think, take that time you spend on your micromanagement and your Zoom, analyzing the Zoom sessions, and spend it on inspiring your team, on the purpose. Spend it on enabling your team in terms of mastery. Spend it on taking away barriers so they have more autonomy. I think you'll get way more out of your team. >> Yeah, I agree. I think it's, as Darren said, again, he's like, well, would you trust your people if you're on the fourth floor and they're on the sixth? So just-- >> Yeah, exactly. >> If you don't trust your people, you got to bigger issue than worrying about how many hours they're on Zoom, which is not the most productive use of time. >> People waste so much time in the office, and getting to the office. And by the way, I'm not saying that it's wrong, it's fine too. But it's not like the office is just unfettered productivity all the time, that's a total myth. >> Yes, so let's shift gears a little bit and talk about events. So, obviously, the CUBE's in the event business. We've had to flip completely 'cause all the events are, well, they're all going digital for sure, and/or postponing it or canceling. So we've had to flip and do all dial-ins and there's a whole lot of stuff about asynchronous. But for you, I think it's interesting because as a distributed company, you had Gainsight Pulse as that moment to bring people together physically. You're in the same boat as everybody else, physical is not an option this year. So how are you approaching Gainsight Pulse, both because it's a switch from what you've done in the past, but you at least had the benefit of being in a distributed world? So you probably have a lot of advantages over people that have never done this before. >> Yeah, that's a really interesting, insightful observation. So just for a context, Pulse is an event we do every year to bring together the customer success community. 'Cause, as you observed, there is value in coming together. And so this is not just for our employees, this is for all the customer success people, and actually increasingly product management people out there, coming together around this common goal of driving success for your customers. And it started in 2013 with 300 people, and last year, we had 5,000 people at our event in San Francisco. We had similar events in London and Sydney. And so it's a big deal. And there's a lot of value to coming together physically. But obviously, that's not possible now, nor is it advisable. And we said, okay, how do we convert this and not lose what's special about Pulse? And leverage, like you said, Jeff, the fact that we're good at distributed stuff in general. And so we created what we call Pulse Everywhere. We didn't want to call it Pulse Virtual or something like that, Pulse Webinar, because we didn't want to set the bar as just like, oh, my virtual event, my webinar. This is something different. And we called it Everywhere, 'cause it's Pulse wherever you are. And we joke, it's in your house, it's in your backyard, it's on the peloton, it's walking the dog. You could be wherever you are and join Pulse this year, May 13th and 14th. And what's amazing is last year we had 5,000 people in person, this year we already have 13,000 people registered as of the end of April. And so we'll probably have more than three times the number of people at Pulse Everywhere. And we're really bringing that physical event concept into the virtual, literally with, instead of a puppy pit, where you're in a physical event, you'll bring puppies often, we have a puppy cam where you can see the puppies. We're not giving up on all of our silly music videos and jokes and we actually ship cameras and high-end equipment to all the speakers' houses. So they're going to have a very nice digital experience, our attendees are. It's not going to be like watching a video conference call. It's going to be like watching a TV show, one much like what you try to do here, right? And so we have this amazing experience for all of our presenters and then for the audience. And we're really trying to say how do we make it so it feels like you're in this really connected community? You just happen to not be able to shake people's hands. So it's coming up in a few weeks. It's a big experiment, but we're excited about it. >> There's so many conversations, and we jumped in right away, when this was all going down, what defines a digital event? And like you, I don't like the word virtual. There's nothing fake or virtual. To me, virtual's second to life. And kind of-- >> Yeah. >> Video game world. And like you, we did, it can't be a webinar, right? And so, if you really kind of get into the attributes of what is a webinar? It's generally a one-way communication for a significant portion of the allocated time and you kind of get your questions in and hopefully they take 'em, right? It's not a truly kind of engaged process. That said, as you said, to have the opportunity to separate creation, distribution and consumption of the content, now opens up all types of opportunity. And that's before you get into the benefits of the democratization, as you said, we're seeing that with a lot of the clients we work with. Their registration numbers are giant. >> Totally. >> Because-- >> You're not traveling to spend money, yeah. >> It'll be curious to see what the conversion is and I don't know we have a lot of data there. But, such a democratizing opportunity. And then, you have people that are trying to force, as Ben Nelson said on, you know Ben from Minerva, right? A car is not a mechanical horse, they're trying to force this new thing into this old paradigm and have people sit for, I saw one today, 24 hours, in front of their laptop. It's like a challenge. And it's like, no, no, no. Have your rally moment, have your fun stuff, have your kind of your one-to-many, but really there's so much opportunity for many-to-many. >> Many-to-many. >> Make all the content out there, yeah. >> We've created this concept in this Pulse Everywhere event called Tribes. And the idea is that when you go to an event, the goal is actually partially content, but a lot of times it's connection. And so in any given big event, there's lots of little communities out there and you want to meet people "like you". Might be people in a similar phase of their career, a similar type of company, in our case, it could be companies in certain industry. And so these Tribes in our kind of Pulse Everywhere experience, let people break out into their own tribes, and then kind of basically chat with each other throughout the event. And so it's not the exact same thing as having a drink with people, but at least a little bit more of that serendipitous conversation. >> Right, no, it's different and I think that's really the message, right? It's different, it's not the same. But there's a lot of stuff you can do that you can't do in the physical way, so quit focusing on what you can't do and embrace what you can. So that's great. And good luck on the event. Again, give the plug for it. >> Yeah, it's May 13th and 14th. If you go to gainsightpulse.com you can sign up, and it's basically anything related to driving better success for your customers, better retention, less churn, and better product experience. It's a great event to learn. >> Awesome, so I want to shift gears one more time and really talk about leadership. That's really kind of the focus of this series that we've been doing. And tough times call for great leadership. And it's really an opportunity for great leaders to show their stuff and let the rest of us learn. You have a really fantastic style. You know I'm a huge fan, we're social media buddies. But you're very personable and you're very, kind of human, I guess, is really the best word, in your communications. You've got ton of frequency, ton of variety. But really, most of it has kind of this human thread. I wonder if you can share kind of your philosophy behind social, 'cause I think a lot of leaders are afraid of it. I think they're afraid that there is reward for saying something stupid is not worth the benefit of saying okay things. And I think also a lot of leaders are afraid of showing some frailty, showing some emotion. Maybe you're a little bit scared, maybe we don't have all the answers. And yet you've really, you're not afraid at all. And I think it's really shines in the leadership activities and behaviors and things you do day in and day out. So how do you think about it? What's your strategy? >> Yeah, it's really interesting you ask, Jeff, because I'm in a group of CEOs that get together on a regular basis, and I'm going to be leading a session on social media for CEOs. And honestly, when I was putting it together, I was like, it's 2020, does that still need to exist? But somehow, there is this barrier. And I'll talk more about it, but I think the barrier isn't just about social media, it's just about how a CEO wants to present herself or himself into the world. And I think, to me, the three things to ask yourself are, first of all, why? Why do you want to be on social media? Why do you want to communicate to the outside? You should have a why. Hopefully you enjoy it, but also you're connecting from a business perspective with your customers. And for us, it's been a huge benefit to really be able to connect with our customers. And then, who are you targeting? So, I actually think an important thing to think about is it's okay to have a micro-audience. I don't have millions of Twitter followers like Lady Gaga, but within the world of SaaS and customer success and retention, I probably have a decent number. And that means I can really connect with my own specific audience. And then, what. So, the what is really interesting 'cause I think there's a lot of non-obvious things about, it's not just about your business. So I can tweet about customer success or retention and I do, but also the, what, about you as an individual, what's happening in your family? What's happening in the broader industry, in my case of SaaS? What's happening in the world of leading through COVID-19? All the questions you've asked, Jeff, are in this lens. And then that gets you to the final which is the, how. And I think the, how, is the most important. It's basically whether you can embrace the idea of being vulnerable. There's a famous TED Talk by Brene Brown. She talks about vulnerability is the greatest superpower for leaders. I think the reason a lot of people have a hard time on social media, is they have a hard time really being vulnerable. And just saying, look, I'm just a human being just like all of you. I'm a privileged human being. I have a lot of things that luckily kind of came my way, but I'm just a human being. I get scared, I get anxious, I get lonely, all those things. Just like all of you, you know. And really being able to take off your armor of, oh, I'm a CEO. And then when you do that, you are more human. And it's like, this goes back to this concept of human first business. There's no work persona and home persona, there's just you. And I think it's surprising when you start doing it, and I started maybe seven, eight, nine years ago, it's like, wow, the world wants more human leaders. They want you to just be yourself, to talk about your challenges. I had the kids, when we got to 13,000 registrations for Pulse Everywhere, they pied me in the face. And the world wants to see CEOs being pied in the face. Probably that one, for sure, that's a guaranteed crowd pleaser. CEOs being pied in the face. But they want to see what you're into outside of work and the pop culture you're into. And they want to see the silly things that you're doing. They want you to be human. And so I think if you're willing to be vulnerable, which takes some bravery, it can really, really pay off for your business, but I think also for you as a person. >> Yeah, yeah. I think it's so insightful. And I think people are afraid of it for the wrong reasons, 'cause it is actually going to help people, it's going to help your own employees, as well, get to know you better. >> Totally, they love it. >> And you touched on another concept that I think is so important that I think a lot of people miss as we go from kind of the old broadcast world to more narrow casting, which is touching your audience and developing your relationship with your audience. So we have a concept here at theCUBE that one is greater than 1% of 100. Why go with the old broadcast model and just spray and you hope you have these really ridiculously low conversion rates to get to that person that you're trying to get to, versus just identifying that person and reaching out directly to those people, and having a direct engagement and a relative conversation within the people that care. And it's not everybody, but, as you said, within the population that cares about it it's meaningful and they get some value out of it. So it's a really kind of different strategy. So-- >> I love that. >> You're always get a lot of stuff out, but you are super prolific. So you got a bunch of projects that are just hitting today. So as we're getting ready to sit down, I see you just have a book came out. So tell us a little bit about the book that just came out. >> Sure, yeah, it's funny. I need to get my physical copy too at my home. I've got so a few, just for context. Five years ago, we released this first book on "Customer Success" which you can kind of see here. It's surprising really, really popular in this world of SaaS and customer success and it ties, Jeff, to what you just said which is, you don't need to be the book that everyone in the world reads, you need to be the book that everyone in your world reads. And so this book turned out to be that. Thousands of company management teams and CEOs in software and SaaS read it. And so, originally when this came out, it was just kind of an introduction to what we call customer success. Basically, how do you retain your customers for the long-term? How do you get them more value? And how do you get them to use more of what they've bought and eventually spend more money with you? And that's a mega-trend that's happening. We decided that we needed an update. So this second book is called "Customer Success Economy." It just came out, literally today. And it's available on Amazon. And it's about the idea that customer success started in tech companies, but it's now gone into many, many industries, like healthcare, manufacturing, services. And it started with a specific team called the customer success management team. But now it's affecting how companies build products, how they sell, how they market. So it's sort of this book is kind of a handbook for management teams on how to apply customer success to your whole business and we call it "Customer Success Economy" 'cause we do think the future of the economy isn't about marketing and selling transactional products, but it's about making sure what your customers are buying is actually delivering value for them, right? That's better for the world, but it's also just necessary 'cause your customers have the power now. You and I have the power to decide how to transport ourselves, whether it's buying a car or rideshare, in the old world when we could leave our house. And we have the power to decide how we're going to stay in a city, whether it's a hotel or Airbnb or whatever. And so customers have the power now, and if you're not driving success, you're not going to be able to keep those customers. And so "Customer Success Economy" is all about that. >> Yeah, and for people that aren't familiar with Gainsight, obviously, there's lots of resources that they can go. They should go to the show in a couple weeks, but also, I think, the interview that we did at PagerDuty, I think you really laid out kind of a great definition of what customer success is. And it's not CRM, it has nothing to do with CRM. CRM is tracking leads and tracking ops. It's not customer success. So, people can also check that. But I want to shift gears again a little bit because one, you also have your blog, MehtaPhysical, that came out. And you just came out again recently with a new post. I don't know when you, you must have a army of helper writers, but you talk about something that is really top of mind right now. And everyone that we get on theCUBE, especially big companies that have the benefit of a balance sheet with a few bucks in it, say we want to help our customers, we want to help our people be safe, obviously, that's first. But we also want to help our customers. But nobody ever really says what exactly does that mean? And it's pretty interesting. You lay out a bunch of things that are happening in the SaaS world, but I jumped on, I think it's number 10 of your list, which is how to think about helping your customers. And you give some real specific kind of guidance and guidelines and definitions, if you will, of how do you help our customers through these tough times. >> Yeah, so I'll summarize for the folks listening. One of the things we observed is, in this terrible tough times right now, your customers are in very different situations. And for simplicity, we thought about three categories. So the companies that we call category one, which are unfortunately, adversely affected by this terrible crisis, but also by the shutdown itself, and that's hotels, restaurants, airlines, and you can put other folks in that example. What do those customers need? Well, they probably need some financial relief. And you have to figure out what you're going to do there and that's a hard decision. And they also just need empathy. It's not easy and the stress level they have is massive. Then you've got, on the other extremes, a small number of your customers might be doing great despite this crisis or maybe even because of it, because they make video conferencing technology or remote work technology, or they make stuff for virtual or telemedicine. And those folks actually are likely to be super busy because they're just trying to keep up with the demand. So what they need from you is time and help. And then you got the people in between. Most companies, right, where there may be a mix of some things going well, some don't. And so what we recommended is think about your strategy, not just inside out, what you want, but outside in, what those clients need. And so as an example, you might think about in that first category, financial relief. The second category, the companies in the middle, they may need, they may not be willing to spend more money, but they may want to do more stuff. So maybe you unlock your product, make it available, so they can use everything in your suite for a while. And maybe in that third category, they're wiling to spend money, but they're just really busy. So maybe you offer services for them or things to help them as they scale. >> Yeah, so before I let you go, I just want to get your reaction to one more great leader. And as you can tell, I love great leaders and studying great leaders. Back when I was in business school we had Dave Pottruck, who at that time was the CEO of Schwab, come and speak and he's a phenomenal speaker and if you ever get a chance to see him speak. And at that point in time, Schwab had to reinvent their business with online trading and basically kill their call-in brokerage for online brokerage, and I think that they had a fixed price of 19.99, whatever it was. This was back in the late 90s. But he was a phenomenal speaker. And we finished and he had a small dinner with a group of people, and we just said, David, you are a phenomenal speaker, why, how, why're you so good? And he goes, you know, it's really pretty simple. As a CEO, I have one job. It's to communicate. And I have three constituencies. I kind of have the street and the market, I have my internal people, and then I have my customers and my ecosystem. And so he said, I, and he's a wrestler, he said, you know I treated it like wrestling. I hired a coach, I practiced my moves, I did it over and over, and I embraced it as a skill and it just showed so brightly. And it's such a contrast to people that get wrapped around the axle with their ego, or whatever. And I think you're such a shiny example of someone who over communicates, arguably, in terms of getting the message out, getting people on board, and letting people know what you're all about, what the priorities are, and where you're going. And it's such a sheer, or such a bright contrast to the people that don't do that that I think is so refreshing. And you do it in a fun and novel and in your own personal way. >> That's awesome to hear that story. He's a inspirational leader, and I've studied him, for sure. But I hadn't heard this specific story, and I totally agree with you. Communication is not something you're born with. Honestly, you might know this, Jeff, or not, as a kid, I was super lonely. I didn't really have any friends and I was one of those kids who just didn't fit in. So I was not the one they would pick to be on stage in front of thousands of people or anything else. But you just do it over and over again and you try to get better and you find, I think a big thing is finding your own voice, your own style. I'm not a super formal style, I try to be very human and authentic. And so finding your style that works for you, I agree, it's completely learnable. >> Yeah, well, Nick, thank you. Thanks for taking a few minutes. I'm sure you're super, super busy getting ready for the show in a couple weeks. But it's always great to catch up and really appreciate you taking some time to share your thoughts and insights with us. >> Thank you, Jeff, it's an honor. >> All right, he's Nick Mehta, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (soft music)

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

>> Narrator: Live from Orlando, Florida. It's theCUBE. Covering Accelerate 19. Brought to you by Fortinet. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. We are live in Orlando, Florida for Fortinet Accelerate 2019. I'm Lisa Martin with my co-host for the day Peter Burroughs. Peter and I are pleased to welcome back to theCUBE Patrice Perche, the senior executive vice president of world wide sales and support from Fortinet. Patrice, it's a pleasure to have you, fresh from the Keynote Stage, here on theCUBE program. >> Yeah, well thank you for inviting me here. It's a great opportunity. >> So lots of people this morning and an energy infused keynote starting from all this loud music that I loved and helped wake me up, so thanks to your events team for that. About 4000 attendees, >> Patrice: Yeah. >> From 40 countries. You have a ton of partners here. You can hear a lot of the noise behind us. I'd like you to share with our audience the connection that you made in your keynote about what you guys shared last Accelerate 2018 and the connection to the world economic forum from just a few months ago. >> Okay well, the last year we definitely in fact exposed our strategy in term of the product, in term of the go to market and of course how we can increase in fact the value proposition to our customer, it was all about the fabric and the eco-system that we build around the fabric. So we have been of course since now 12 months working hard on expanding and growing what I call the Phase two of the fabric and when Cain went to Davos which the World Economic Forum is held early in January. And when we got all this, I would say a vision from Klaus Schwab which is the Chairman and Founder of the World Economic Forum. Explaining that the false revolution that we are all going through. The Cyber Security its a massive, I would say problem for them and it will be a key point for the future because they will enable, in fact, most of those take technology and use it that we will go for this revolution, so >> Peter: It's intrinsic. >> It's intrinsic, they call it guardian. So it really is something that if we can't, fix this problem, it's all about digital trust. So none of the user, you, myself we will not trust maybe voting system, or you cannot trust. We know that everything is going digital. And they expressed the need for of course the education, because you need to educate and you need to, increase the skilled people especially with cyber-security as we have a huge shortfall about 1.5million, some say even two million for next year. They need also need to work as an eco-system. So, for them the eco-system is really to see public, private collaboration but also Government, technologies, companies like us. And that's in fact the purpose of Davos. To bring all this different, in fact groups and be able to talk and share and define some line for the future. And for us of-course, the concept of the eco-system is all about building around in fact this major problem that we are facing, has all the traits. In fact, a collective approach where everybody can add value. We as a vendor we build technology, we build a lot of value but we can't be with each of the customers. So and we want to build a partnership not only with the partner but also with the customer because cyber security is a real time problem. So when something happen, you need to jump, and you need to make sure that all the line is set and then everybody can work together to fix the problem. So this eco-system really resonates value well for us after we was talking last year at the Accelerate. And the last I will say pillar for the Economic Forum is about of course Education and clearly I was mentioning one of the Engineers from the SERP which is nuclear agency in Europe Januity she said that 3D, of course the problem is that with these robots we will have a lot of jobs that will be omitted. So they talk about 800 million. So it's a massive number but it sees more than an opportunity to up-skill people. So the education is really helping of course especially the young generation to go and to up-skill it and especially on the cyber security. Because, as everything is going digital, we have to secure everything so it's really, these pieces will grow much beyond that what we think today. Those three pillars are the Education, the Eco-system and of course the Technology. And the good news is that Ken was representing in fact cyber security at the Davos, so it was also a great moment for us to see in fact pushing 14 at that stage of level of discussion so. Those three pillars: Education, Technology and Eco-system of course fit very well with our strategy that we build and that's why I decided to share a bit this morning. It's not everybody going to such a place. And what really resonate well in term of the strategy and the vision we are in fact pursuing so that's what we are doing. >> So I want to build on something that you said to do so I want to paraphrase. Peter who is much smarter than I am, Peter Drucker who observed many years ago there's a difference in strategies between what he called: value in exchange was his presumption that what I am selling is valuable. And value in utility which is a presumption that the value stems from how the something is used. And that notion of partnership that Fortinet has put in place with its customers so they can get value in utility is so crucially important. And you talked a bit this morning about you know the different levels of customization, and how you are going to allow customers to engage you and apply technology to suit their business. Could you take a bit about that especially based on your experience in the field? >> Yeah so as I mention I think we, it has been also our sales strategy from day one. So we always consider that in order to succeed, we need to work through the partners and through the people that are very close to our customer. And as technology evolves of course it's a real challenge to keep them at the level. Even for us, internally, we used to understand and be always at the top level about the new technology that we are putting in place. We imagine that, just for the employees, it's a challenge so we do a lot of training. But then for the partner it's another challenge. So, I think we have been always trying to help them to of course evolving on this expertise, but we don't see that the cloud of course there is a certain I will say a trend about Okay lets go Direct because we don't. The cloud can allow to sell direct to the customer so you don't need those channels. So there's no value for them. We don't see that in the cyber security because it's a much more complex environment and I think that is why we have been successful. We even see some of our competitor, they tempted to go on this direction. I think it's maybe one of the challenges we'll face in the future. So for us they key message I was trying to give this morning to the partner is really that we count on them, it's a partnership, it's very important and of course when we adapt our partner program we want to learn from them to make sure that the three pillars of this program will fit well with their, in fact, view because of course we are from a vendor in certain perspective, they have of course a different perspective on their side. What I was mentioning the goal to market because we see that some are very specialized on the cloud, some are specialized on the premise. We have to define what is the go to market here. What kind of expertise there are in fact having because as you can see we have very broad product of frame cover, you know from almost everything, so from OT, IT, even imbedded. So, we are working with partners that are, as an example, on the connected car. That's for maybe the next two years where we will secure those car. They are not the typical or traditional partner that you see on the networking business so, we try to adapt in fact our engagement with them and make sure that in fact we build a value proposition that can fit in fact for the customer requirement. So it's really about be very close and try to have a bit of a-la-carte kind of approach. And not try to enforce a very historical view that we had in fact, to be honest. But okay, you have like three tiers, depending of level of business and then you sign. So it's really moving away from that. >> I want to stay in this notion of partners because I think it's so crucially important. You talked about the skills that they have the capabilities that they have, but your partners in general are amongst the companies that have to learn the most about cyber security. Because they are the ones that are trying to match technology to the outcomes the customers have. That leads to a question about your education programs. I got to believe that there is, that even as you're trying to educate your enterprise customers, you're also really investing in your enterprise, in upgrading and up scaling your partnership. Talk a bit about the relationship of education and Eco-system from a very practical standpoint. >> Yeah so it's a very good point because of course we need to help them to evolve and as an example we have seen traditional IT partner, interested to evolve on this OT security but they didn't have too much skill so it was new for them. So we see the purpose of building this NSC training vocation course which we have eight level, which started in 2015 and we have about now almost 200 000 certified engineers. A very large portion of those Engineers come from partners. So, on this program, in fact the origin of the program, depending on where you want to play. If it's cloud, you will have to go for NSC4. If you want to go beyond a OT, it can be NSC5. We build in fact this expertise and we ask them also to of course follow those course so the engagement with us, the requirement will be also that they have the right certified Engineer. Depending on level of engagement they want to work with us. So we build this course which is a lot of work and we have a lot of, a big team to make this happen. We have to refresh constantly because it's evolving almost every day. But as for this, the great value, you may have seen it pass on the networking sites. Cisco made a bit similar approach, which was very successful. I think we went like three years ago on thinking about this and that's what we are achieving right now and we are in fact the most I will say advanced in such a report and I think it's all NSC certification is becoming a bit stand out in the market. Both from end-user but the partner. And even going as we was mentioning, we are also working with the Academics to build in fact and train in fact new Engineers that will come in the market in the next two to three years. So we help them on, it's not pure about product, it's really about cyber security expertise that we have and of course we help them on understanding a bit how the Fortinet value can deploy on the customer, so that aspect and we try to target of course young I will say people going for university but also veterans who we had program to bring those veterans because they're also looking we are talking about up skilling. That's a perfect example on bringing a change to them. And I think it's high level, maybe it's a bit, you know think that we have a high potential. But we want of course to help on resolving the overall challenge to be unemployed. I can tell you that if you invest time and you get a certification on cyber security you will never have any problems with a job. So that's a bit the overall idea we have behind this education and certification. And truly the partner, I will say, evolution in terms of their expertise, it's based about this NSC. >> Alright Patrice as we kind of get towards the end here, let's talk about outcomes. Peter mentioned that word, I know that when I was looking at my notes here that in Q4 of 2018, service providers, and managed security service providers represented 11 of the top 25 deals. You guys also closed a massive seven figure deal in Europe. Let's talk about outcomes that Fortinet and your partner eco-system are helping businesses achieve at the business level. Not just in terms of obviously improving security but are you helping businesses generate new revenue streams, skip to new products on market faster, identify attacks and become pro active? What is one of those really key outcomes that you are proud of? >> I think the, and I was part of the presentation last year. We all, I would say on this digital transformation journey. Whole company, even us. We're evolving with much more tools, much automation. So I think every sector, whether it's public or private company, has to go for this evolution. The biggest challenge is all about digital so again the blocking point is about security. So last year we explained about how we can help with positioning our platform in the security fabric to run to this obstacle and that was the purpose of the security transformation that we was talking last year. And I know it's some, even complete as relayed a message, it was interesting that it was part of all. So I think it was really trying to unlock this digital transformation that add business benefit because at the end this whole, those company will evolve in the future, generate more profit, be more efficient, leverage, I would say, the data that they are collecting from almost everywhere. From customer but also the sensor, and transform this to a more business intelligence and then I will say generate in fact future revenue and future dollars from that. That has been a bit the idea behind. So we definitely help on evolving and going through this digital transformation journey. I think we had few example of course as one of our customers, they deploying world wide on their gas-station. A better customer journey. Typically of course you calm, you try to make your gas and you want to be connected. And they try to increase of course by upselling a lot of things. So of course you have your go for the coffee machine, you can even buy many goods. We have been deploying you know, with secure access so they have secure access they go for the internet so that's where we play with segmentation. But our wireless which is fully connected also to the Fortigate and the analytic tools allow them to do business intelligence in term of where people are moving inside you know the shops. And then, you know, redesign and rethink about okay, how they move here. So that's, that allow them to accelerate even more business or decide that maybe this spot doesn't work well, so they push that to the side and they evolve. That's depicted the value of all this intelligence and we can grasp from the data that we collect to transform to a business value. >> So I want to make one comment before we close here and that is that I don't know the degree to which people really understand the relationship between secure networking and digital business. Data is an interesting asset. It could be shared, it could be copied, it could be easily corrupted. In many respects over the next five years we believe that people will recognize that network security is the basis for privatizing data. It is what you do to turn data into an asset. I don't think people have made that connection, to the degree that they need to. >> No I agree, I agree because maybe the mindset they think about network, they think about wired. In fact we are talking about 5G, we are talking about Wireless so the data is that what we want to protect because we don't want that people stole your personal information or even company. >> It's more than protect. You want to create the asset. >> Yes, we integrate the asset. And then of course when we talk about network it's no longer wires, of course it's much more virtual I would say networks. And that's the misinterpretation and why they feel okay the network is moving away. No, it's even more in the future. And as Cain mentioned early this morning: I think the edge will become much more important in future because the compute power that we are having now on every device and even. That will in fact allow to of course generate much more data. Yeah and you need to protect. You notice when you need to go and to consolidate this into the cloud. So it's really, the age will become a very important aspect. But this will be a hybrid and that's what we feel as Fortinet we've been building in fact the very comprehensive offer and to the partner and to our customer. We just want, in fact to give them the time to move at their pace. But they have everything ready for today. That's a bit the concept. >> Well if only we had more time Patrice, we could keep going and going. Thank you so much for sharing some time on the program today talking about your GTM, what you are doing to educate partners and customers and this tremendous potential that Fortinet is attacking. We appreciate your time. >> Thank you very much, I appreciate it too. >> We want to thank you for watching for Peter Burroughs, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

(futuristic music) >> Welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're having a CUBE conversation in our Palo Alto studios, we're waiting for the crazy madness of the second half conference season to begin but before that it's nice to get a little bit of a break in the action and we can have people into our studio in Palo Alto. We're really excited to have our next guest really adding to this journey that we've been kind of watching over a course of many years with Informatica, she's Tracey Newell she's the newly announced President, global field operations from Informatica, Tracey great to meet you. >> Yeah nice to meet you. >> Absolutely. So we've following Informatica for a long time, I think our first visit to Informatica world was 2015 back when it was still a public company, I think it was Info which still has this legacy, that's the hashtag for this show. >> It certainly does. >> Which is kind of funny cause it's not really a stock ticker anymore. So it's been quite a journey and really well timed with kind of the big data revolution. You joined the board a couple years ago. >> I did in 2016. >> But you just decided to leave Mahogany Row and take off the board outfit and jump in and get on the field and get dirty. So why did you decide to get into the nitty gritty? >> Yeah so I joined the board because I really believed in the mission so. Digital transformation is something that's real, it's a boardroom discussion. Every enterprise and government around the world's trying to figure this out and so I wanted to be part of that and I've had a front row seat for a couple of years. >> Right right. >> I'm not one to sit on the sidelines for very long and I thought this is just too much fun and I want to get in the game so I asked to step down and I've recently joined as a president of Global Field ops. >> Great so your background is a little bit of confusion due to history, a lot of sales, you've been running sales for lot different companies, been in the valley for a while. But sales is really under you so you haven't really left your sales hat, that's just part of now a bigger role that you're going to be doing with Informatica. >> Yeah that's right, it's a bigger and broader role, but my favorite thing is running sales organizations. So I've done other things too, I've run operations, and customer success, but I was thrilled to join and also run professional services as well cause that's so important to the delivery and for our customers. >> So you'll write the digital transformation, it's the hop topic, it's what everybody is talking about, and it's true and as Informatica is in the middle of it, data is such a big piece of the digital transformation as everybody, we used to joke, there are no companies except software companies. I think we're taking it to the next step, now there are no software companies, really everybody should be a data company, and Informatica is sitting right in the middle of that world. No that's right, yeah data is the new currency, it's become of the most important assets for enterprises, everyone's trying to transform, they're trying to disrupt, they're trying to take on the leader or they're trying to keep their lead. And they need all their information throughout their organization in order to do that and so you know one of the stories hat I really like, Graham Thompson's our CIO and he talks to lots of CIOs and he'll use this analogy in that you know he'll say does your CFO have good containment strategy around their most important asset, and that's revenue. Does your CFO, does he or she know what the data is and inevitably the CIO will say of course. Well that's great does he know or she know how they're spending the money and who's spending the money? Do they have controls and compliance and security around that and of course the answer is yes yes yes and yes. And it inevitably turns to the CIO to say well if data is your most important asset, if that truly is the currency in your organization, do you know where all of your data is? And the answers always no. And there's lots of reasons for that, it's most enterprises have hundreds if not thousands of databases and shadow IT projects everywhere. But if the answers no then how do take advantage and leverage that information to the companies advantage? How do you control it, how do you have compliance and that's where we come in. >> So what's the Informatica special sauce? What's the secret sauce that you guys can bring to the party that nobody else can? >> Yeah so I think inevitably that it would be the platform so our intelligent data platform is really important to the enterprise. The CIOs that I've been meeting with for the last decade have said you know I can't have ten widgets that are all solving a similar problem cause it's just too expensive. I need the bet with the leader in the space and so what we're doing to provide that for enterprises is really important and yet at the same time, you've got to be the best at what you do, you can't just be comprehensive but you have to have best debris technology. We're spending 17 cents of every dollar in r&d and we're so focused on just this one thing, our mission is to lead in digital transformation for the large enterprise and we've been doing this for 25 years so we've spent billions of dollars at making sure our customers are invested in us and that we protect that investment. >> Right. So what is your charge is as you're starting your new role I think the press release just came out a couple days ago. You know what does O'Neil say to you, you know we want you, here's where we want you to go take down that next mountain, what are some of your short term priorities, what are some of your longer term priorities? >> Yeah so we have a great opportunity in front of us. So stating the obvious I'm here to drive growth and expansion both in market share opportunities, we have over nine thousand customers globally and yet we all know that there's a tremendous opportunity to continue direct market shares. This is a global phenomena and yet our largest customers we have 85 of the Fortune 100, they certainly need a lot of support and we're here to help provide that leadership. And we do a lot of best practice sharing, we do a lot around helping customers on their journeys cause we see these themes given that we do work with the largest companies around the world. >> And I'm sure you're going to be getting on a plane and meeting with a whole bunch of customers over the next, over the next several weeks and months but was there something from your board position that you could see was a consistent pattern that you really see an opportunity for growth, kind of an unexploited opportunity as people are going through this digital transformation cause we talk all the time, it's how do I get started and you know I have small projects to give me early success and kind of those types of conversations but clearly we're kind of beyond the beginning and we should be starting to move down the field a little bit. >> Yeah certainly. So we work with all the global SIs and we won't ever try to take their place you know Insentrum, Delite, Capgemeni, Cottonsmith, they're tremendous at what they do and we partner with them very well. But we've absolutely seen consistent themes as we work with these big enterprises, I mean we've seen Coca Cola work on delivering new packaging for the World Cup where they drove exponential sales and they wanted to use the power of all of their data. The data in the Cloud, the data that they have on premise, the data in all the SAS applications and that's where we come in and really help them, helping them to leverage all of their information and to do that in an intelligent way and so we've seen several patterns emerge how customers can get started and we've created a series of workshops and summits and specialists that we we can sell on a pro forma basis in helping customers figure out where those quick fixes are. There's a couple of key big buckets, we see most large enterprise moving from on premise to Cloud and they're trying to figure out a a migration strategy so we help a lot there. Most customers are trying to figure out how to get closer to their customers so we do a lot of work around customer intimacy. Intimacy could be driving the top line, cross sale, up sale, or even customer retention. B&P Paraboss did a lot of work with us there around getting closer to you know in their wealth practice. And then we do quite a bit around governance as you would expect. That's a hot topic with GDPR again if you can't say you know where all your data is well then how can you be compliant? >> Right how can you delete me? >> How can you delete me if you don't know where your data is. There's a number of practices that we've set up and we'll do some not for fee consulting work to help customers try and figure this out. >> Yeah clearly when we first met Informatica in 2015, you know the Cloud was moving, the public Cloud, but it wasn't near what it is today. And I guess you guys just had a recent announcement, Google Cloud Next is coming up in a couple of weeks and so you guys are now doing some stuff with Google Cloud? We are yeah so we're pretty good listeners I think that's important if you're going to be a business partner to your clients you got to know what they want and one of the things that clients have said to us is we need you to partner with our partners. You know the days of proprietary and sole source, you know we're going to be everything to you without working with anyone you know those days are over. And so the key Cloud partners our customers have asked us to work with include Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Azure, so you're right last week we did make an announcement that we've done deep integration and we're spending our r&d dollars for customers that are investing with Google to make those investments more valuable and we announced API management and integration with Google make that easy for customers so. Informatica world we announced native integration in our Ipass platform for Microsoft so over and over again you'll hear us continue to do more with the the partners that our customers want us to and that's a win win for everybody. >> Its just so funny too because when people talk about a company like say Coca Cola which you brought up they talk about it like it's a company. No it's like not a company, it's many many companies, many many projects, many many challenges you know it's not just one entity that has a relationship with one other entity. >> That's right. >> But the other thing I think is interesting times and Coke's a good example or Ford or pick many old line industrial companies that used to have distribution right and what was the purpose of distribution is to break bulk is to communicate information and to get the product close to the customer. But the manufacturer never knew what happened once they shipped that stuff off into their distribution. Now it's a whole different world, they have a direct connection with their in customer, they're collecting data from their in customer, and so they have a relationship and an opportunity and a challenge with that they never had before. They just sent it off to the distributor and off it went and hopefully it doesn't come back for repair. (laughing) >> No that's right but you're exactly right, and that's the challenge that customers are facing. I don't care if it's a customer in the mid market or it's a customer in large enterprise or if it's a government organization. They need to know all aspects of their customer partner supplier information and how to communicate globally if they're going to drive disruption. And one of the CIOs of a Fortune 500 made a comment that we decided that we were going to disrupt ourselves before someone else disrupted us. And that's, that's my comment on why this is a board level discussion, it's super important, and we can help solve those problems. >> It's funny Dave Potrick one of my favorite executives used to be the number two guy at Charles Schwab and I remember him speaking when they went to fix price trading back in the day, I'm aging myself unfortunately but you know he said the same thing, we have to disrupt ourselves before somebody else disrupts us. And if you're not thinking that way you're going to get disrupted so better it be you than someone that you don't even see and usually it's not your side competitor, it's the one coming from a completely different direction that you weren't even paying attention to. >> That's right. And we see that over and over again and you made the right comment in that it's not always easy, some of these Fortune 500s through consolidation, even the Global 2000. They've done all these acquisitions and so you've got hundreds of BUs that don't have any systems tied together and how do you start to create a common connection in so that you can build your brand and you can try differentiation and that's the key, that's back to the intelligent data platform. >> Right and as you said and there's not single systems and now we got API economy, things are all connected so you don't necessarily even have that much direct control over a lot of these opportunities and you said that first I think it's just like okay where's your data? Can you start with the very simple question and a lot of people aren't really sure and can't even start from there. >> That's right. >> So good opportunities. >> Absolutely, there's no question. >> Alright Tracey, well thank you for stopping by, congratulations on your, on your new position and moving from Mahogany Row down into, down into the trenches. >> Down on the field. >> I'm sure they're going to be happy to have you down there on the field. >> Yeah no thanks Jeff I'm happy to be here and thanks for the time today. >> Thank you and we'll see you in Informatica world if not sooner. >> That's right. >> Alright she's Tracey Newell I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCube from Palo Alto, thanks for watching. (futuristic music)

>> Narrator: From Berlin, Germany, it's theCUBE, covering DataWorks Summit Europe 2018, brought to you by Hortonworks. >> Well, hello, and welcome to the Cube. I'm James Kobielus. I'm the lead analyst for Big Data Analytics with the Wikibon team within SiliconANGLE Media. We are here at the DataWorks Summit 2018 in Berlin, Germany. And I have a special guest, we have a special guest, Bernard Marr, one of the most influential, thought leaders in the big data analytics arena. And it's not just me saying that. You look at anybody's rankings, Bernard's usually in the top two or three of influentials. He publishes a lot. He's a great consultant. He keynoted this morning on the main stage at Dataworks Summit. It was a very fascinating discussion, Bernard. And I'm a little bit star struck 'cause I assumed you were this mythical beast who just kept putting out these great books and articles and so forth. And I'm glad to have you. So, Bernard, I'd like for you to stand back, we are here in Berlin, in Europe. This is April of 2018, in five weeks time, the general data protection, feels global 'cause it sort of is. >> It is. >> The general data protection regulation will take full force, which means that companies that do business in Europe, in the EU, must under the law protect the personal data they collect on EU citizens ensuring the right to privacy, the right to be forgotten, ensuring user's, people's ability to withhold consent to process and profile and so forth. So that mandate is coming down very fast and so forth. What is your thoughts on GDPR? Is it a good thing, Bernard, is it high time? Is it a burden? Give us your thoughts on GDPR currently. >> Okay, first, let me return all the compliments. It's really great to be here. I think GDPR can be both. And for me it will come down very much to the way it gets implemented. So, in principle for me, it is a good thing because what I've always made companies do and advise them to do is to be completely transparent in the way they're collecting data and using data. I believe that the big data world can't thrive if we don't develop this trust and have this transparency. So in principle, it's a great thing. For me will come down to the implementation of all of this. I had an interesting chat just minutes ago with the event photographer saying that once GDPR kicks in he can't actually publish any photographs without getting written consent for everyone in the photograph. That's a massive challenge and he was saying he can't afford to lose 4% of his global revenue. So I think it will be very interesting to see how this will-- >> How it'll be affecting face recognition, I'm sorry go ahead. >> Bernard: Yeah maybe. >> Well maybe that's a bad thing, maybe it's a good thing. >> Maybe it is, yeah, maybe. So for me, in principle a very good thing. In practice, I'm intrigued to see how this will get implemented. >> Of the clients you consult, what percentage in the EU, without giving away names, what percentage do you think are really ready right now or at least will be by May 25th to comply with the letter of the law? Is it more than 50%? Is it more than 80%? Or will there be a lot of catching up to do in a short period of time? >> My sense is that there's a lot of catching up to do. I think people are scrambling to get ready at the moment. But the thing is nobody really knows what being ready really means. I think there are lots of different interpretations. I've been talking to a few lawyers recently. And everyone has a slightly different interpretation of how far they can push the boundaries, so, again, I'm intrigued to see what will actually happen. And I very much hope that common sense prevails and it will be seen as a good force and something that is actually good for everyone in the field of big data. >> So slightly changing track, in the introduction of you this morning, I think it was John Christ of Hortonworks said that you made a prediction about this year that AI will be used to automate more things than people realize and it'll come along fairly fast. Can you give us a sense for how automation, AI is enabling greater automation, and whether, you know, this is the hot button topic, AI will put lots of people out of work fairly quickly by automating everything that white collar workers and so forth are doing, what are your thoughts there? Is it cause for concern? >> Yes, and it's probably one of the questions I get asked the most and I wish I had a very good answer for it. If we look back at the other, I believe that we are experiencing a new industrial revolution at the moment, and if you look at what the World Economic Forums CEO and founder, Klaus Schwab, is preaching about, it is that we are experiencing this new industrial revolution that will truly transform the workplace and our lives. In history, all of the other three previous industrial revolutions have somehow made our lives better. And we have always found something to do for us. And they have changed the jobs. Again, there was a recent report that looked at some of the key AI trends and what they found is that actually AI produces more new jobs than it destroys. >> Will we all become data scientists under, as AI becomes predominant? Or what's going on here? >> No I don't, and this is, I wish I had the answer to this. For me is the advice I give my own children now is to focus on the really human element of it and probably the more strategic element. The problem is five, six years ago this was a lot easier. I could talk about emotional, intelligence, creativity, with advances in machine learning, this advice is no longer true. And lots of jobs, even some of the things I do, I write for Forbes on a regular basis. I also know that AIs write for Forbes. A lot of the analyst reports are now machine generated. >> Natural language generation, a huge use case for AI that people don't realize. >> Bernard: Absolutely. >> Yeah. >> So, for me I see it, as an optimist I see it positively. I also question whether we as human beings should be going to work eight hours a day doing lots of stuff we quite often don't enjoy. So for me, the challenge is adjusting our economic model to this new reality, and I see that there will be significant disruption over the next 20 years that with all the technology coming in and really challenging our jobs. >> Will AI put you and me out of a job. In other words, will it put the analysts and the consultants out of work and allow people to get expert advice on how to manage technology without having to go through somebody like a you or a me? >> Absolutely, and for me, my favorite example is looking at medicine. If you look at doctors, traditionally you send a doctor to medical school for seven years. You then hope that they retain 10% of what they've learned if you're lucky. Then they gain some experience. You then turn up in the practice with your conditions. Again, if you're super lucky, they might have skim read some of your previous conditions, and then diagnose you. And unless you have something that's very common, the chance that they get this right is very low. So compare this with your old stomping ground IBMs Watson, so they are able to feed all medical knowledge into that cognitive computing platform. They can update this continuously, and you think, and could then talk to Watson eight hours a day if I wanted to about my symptoms. >> But can you trust that advice? Why should you trust the advice that's coming from a bot? Yeah, that's one of the key issues. >> Absolutely, and I think at the moment maybe not quite because there's still a human element that a doctor can bring because they can read your emotions, they can understand your tone of voice. This is going to change with affective computing and the ability for machines to do more of this, too. >> Well science fiction authors run amok of course, because they imagine the end state of perfection of all the capabilities like you're describing. So we perfect robotics. We perfect emotion analytics and so forth. We use machine learning to drive conversational UIs. Clearly a lot of people imagine that the technology, all those technologies are perfected or close to it, so, you know. But clearly you and I know that it's a lot of work to do to get them-- >> And we both have been in the technology space long enough to know that there are promises and there's lots of hype, and then there's a lot of disappointment, and it usually takes longer than most people predict. So what I'm seeing is that every industry I work in, and this is what my prediction is, automation is happening across every industry I work in. More things, even things I thought five years ago couldn't be automated. But to get to a state where it really transforms our world, I think we are still a few years away from that. >> Bernard, in terms of the hype factor for AI, it's out of sight. What do you think is the most hyped technology or application under the big umbrella of AI right now in terms of the hype far exceeds the utility. I don't want to put words in your mouth. I've got some ideas. Your thoughts? >> Lots of them. I think that the two areas I write a lot about and talk to companies a lot about is deep learning, machine learning, and blockchain technology. >> James: Blockchain. >> So they are, for me, they have huge potential, some amazing use cases, at the same time the hype is far ahead of reality. >> And there's sort of an intersection between AI and blockchain right now, but it's kind of tentative. Hey, Bernard, we are at the end of this segment. It's been so great. We could just keep going on and on and on. >> I know we could just be... >> Yeah, there's a lot I've been wanting to ask you for a long time. I want to thank you for coming to theCUBE. >> Pleasure. >> This has been Bernard Marr. I'm James Kobielus on theCUBE from DataWorks Summit in Berlin, and we'll be back with another guest in just a little while. Thank you very much.

>> Narrator: Live, from San Francisco, it's the Cube, covering Informatica World 2017. Brought to you by Informatica. (techno music) >> Hey, welcome back, everyone. Live here in San Francisco, this is the Cube's exclusive coverage of Informatica World 2017, our third year covering Informatica, and more to come. I'm John Furrier with Silicon Angle, the Cube. My co-host, Peter Burris, Head of Research for Silicon Angle Media, as well as General Manager of Wikibon.com, check out the great research at Wikibon. Some great stuff there on IOT, cloud ping data, great stuff. Of course, go to SiliconAngle.com for all the coverage YouTube.com/SiliconAngle for all the Cube videos. Our next guest is Bruce Chizen, board member of a lot of private companies, also Special Advisor at Informatica. You're on the board of Informatica, no? >> Executive Chair. >> John: Executive Chair of Informatica. Not only as Special Advisor, Executive Chair. Welcome back, good to see you. >> Great to be here. >> You were on last year, great to have you back. What a popular video. Jerry Held was on yesterday. Let's get some Board insights, so first question, when are you going public? (laughing) >> Good one. >> John: Warmed you up, and then, no. I mean the performance is doing well. Give us a quick update. >> Company's doing well. Q4 was a good quarter, Q1 was a good quarter. I think we will be positioned to do something late 2018, early 2019. A lot depends on how the company continues to do. A lot depends on the market. The private equity investors are in no hurry. >> John: Yeah. >> But it's always nice to have that option. >> So it's one of the things we, yeah, great option. Doing well. We heard that also from some of the management. We got O'Neil coming on, we'll press him on some of the performance side, but always had good products out, we talked about it last year. But the industry's going through a massive transformation. You've seen many waves over the years. The waves are hitting. What's your perspective right now? I mean, it's a pretty big wave. You got to get the surfboard out there, there's a set coming in. What's the big wave right now? >> So, data is driving every transformation within every organization. Any company that is not using and taking advantage of data will be left behind. You look at how companies like Amazon and Google and now a lot of our customers like Schwab and Tesla and others, the way they're using data, that will allow them to continue to either be successful in the case of a Schwab, or be a disruptor, like somebody like Tesla. Fortunately for us at Informatica, we are helping to drive that digital transformation. >> One of the things that I always observe, younger than you are, I've only seen a few waves in my day, but in the waves that were the most impactful in terms of creating wealth, and opportunity, and innovation, has had a cool and relevant factor. Meaning, if you go back to the PC days, it was cool and relevant. If you go back to mini computer, cool and relevant. And it goes on and on and on. And certainly internet, cool and relevant. But now, the, you mention Tesla. I'm testing driving one on Friday. My kids are like "Don't buy the Audi, buy the Tesla." This is my kids. So it's a cooler, it's a spaceship, it's cooler than the other cars. >> Bruce: Or an iPhone on wheels. >> Peter: (laughs) Exactly. A computer on wheels. >> So cool and relevant, talk about what is the cool and relevant thing right now. You talk about user experience, that's one. Data's changing it. So how is data being the cool and relevant trend? Point to some things that... >> If you look at what's happening from the chip on up, everything, everything will be intelligent. And I hate to use the term "internet of things," but the reality is everything will have intelligence. And that intelligent information will be able to be taken advantage of because of the scale of the cloud. Which means that any company will be able to take information, data, analyze it on the cloud, and then use it to do something with. And it's happening now. Fortunately, Informatica sits right in the middle of that, because they're the ones who could rationalize that data on behalf of their customers. 'Cause there's going to be a lot of it and somebody needs to govern it, secure it, homogenize it. >> John: You consider them an enabling platform? >> Absolutely, absolutely. I was joking, we just went through a rebranding exercise. And it's kind of cute, new logo, and it's kind of bold and sleek and it shows we'll have a leader, but it's a logo. But there's really around the messaging, we are finally getting across that we are the ones unleashing the power of data. That's what Informatica does. We'd just never really told anybody about it. We're very product focused, not really helping customers understand how uniquely positioned the company was. >> And it's also, you guys have done some things. Let's just go back and look at going private. Brought a new management team, have product chops again, we've talked about that in previous years. Last year in particular. So, okay, you have the wind at your back. Now you got Sally as a CMO, now you got to start being a humble braggart about the cool stuff you're doing. So which is marketing, basically. >> That's correct. >> John: But now, it's digital. >> Yeah. >> So, what's the Board conversation like, you say "Go, go build the brand!" >> So first of all, being private is great. (laughing) Because we get to do things you couldn't do as a public company. We're, a lot of our customers what to buy the products and solutions via subscription, that has huge impact to the P&L, especially in the short term. Cash flow's fine. So the PE guys are going okay, it's great, because we'll come out of this as a better company, and our customers like it because that's the way they want to buy products. So, that helps a lot. The conversation at the Board level has been, "Wow, we're number one in every category in which "we participate in. "Everything from big data to cloud integration "to traditional on-premise, to real-time streaming, "and, and, and data security." >> You're only one of three vendors in the Google general availabilities banner which went out yesterday. We covered that on Silicon Angle. >> We're number one there, we had AWS speak at our conference, we had Azure speak at our conference. All of the cloud guys love Informatica because we are the ones who are uniquely positioned to deal with all this data on behalf of their customers. As a private company, we're able to take advantage of that, spend some extra money on marketing. You know a lot of our customers know about us, but a lot more should know about us. So, part of coming out, having a new logo, having a new digital campaign, changing the website, that costs money. But as a private company, we get to do that. Because the fruits of those efforts will end up occurring a couple of years down the road, which is fine. >> So let me see if I can weave those two thoughts together in what I thought was an interesting way. Given that increasingly a lot of data's going to be in the cloud, and that's where the longer analysis is going to be required, that means a lot of the tools are going to have to be in the cloud. Amazon Marketplace is going to be a place where a lot of tools are going to be chosen. People are going to go into the Amazon Marketplace and see a lot of different options, including some that are free. They may not work as well, but they're free. You guys, what happens with marketing, and what's happening with that kind of a trend, is you need to buy, as customers, to choose tools that are actually going to work to serve or to solve the problem, to do the work that you need them to perform. And so what Sally Jenkins, the CMO, has done, with this new branding, is introduce the process of how do you buy us more customers to choose the right tool to do the right job? Does that make sense to you? >> It makes absolute sense, free is good. But be careful what you ask for. Sometimes you get what you pay for. You're talking about enterprise data. You want it to be governed, you want it to be secure. You want it to be accurate. >> John: Now there's laws coming out where you have to do it. >> You look at GTB... >> Peter: GDBPR. >> GDBPR in Europe, the privacy issues. You look at what's happening with Facebook, or what was reported today with France and how they're not happy with Facebook's privacy behaviors. It's an issue. It's an issue for anybody who does business anywhere, especially if you're a global company and you do business in Europe. You have to worry about corporate governance. Data security, data governance, data security. That's Informatica. The other thing is, while there will be some customers who will say "I'm going to AWS," there will be more customers who will either say "I have some legacy "systems that I'm going to leave on-premise, "and new projects will be in the cloud." Or they're going to say "I'm moving everything to "the cloud, but I don't want to be held hostage "by one cloud provider." And they're going to go with Amazon and Azure and Google and maybe Oracle, and, and, and. And again, because Informatica is Swiss, we're able to provide them with a solution that allows them to accomplish their data needs. >> Well, congratulations on the performance, I want to get that out of the way. But I want to ask a specific question on the historical, holistic picture of Informatica. Going back, what were the key bets that you guys made? 'Cause you guys sit around, and you got the private equity now coming to the table, they have expectations, but at the end of the day you've got to build a business. What were the key bets that is yielding the fruit that we're seeing? >> The number one bet was that the company had great products and a great R&D organization. We believed that, and fortunately, we got it right. Because if you don't have great products and passionate R&D organizations around the world, you can't make up for that. It doesn't make a difference how much you spend on marketing. At least not in the business that we're in. So that was number one bet, and that proved to play out well. The second thing was, this was a company that had done so well for so long that they never needed to change their business processes to behave like a billion, two billion, three billion, four billion dollar company. Many of their business processes were like that of a 200 million dollar company. And that's easier to fix. So things around back end, IT, legal, finance, go-to-market, marketing, sales. >> John: Less of a risk from an investment standpoint. >> That's correct. So that's what we believed, we were right And where we've been spending most of our energy and effort is helping the company, through the new management team, improve their business processes and their go-to-market. >> So we had a critical analysis yesterday during our wrap up session, and one of the comments I made, I want to get your reaction to this, was although impressive, your number one and all these Gartner Magic Quadrant categories, but that's an old scoreboard. If we're really living in digital transformation, those shouldn't really be a tell sign for what the performance of the new KBIs or the new metrics are. And so we were pontificating and analyzing what that would be, still unknown, we're going to see it. But Peter had a good point, he said "At the end "of the day, customer wins." >> Yeah, that was my reaction. It's like at the end of the day, all that matters do the customers.... >> What's the scoreboard look for customer wins? I know you were at the executive summit they had yesterday at the Intercontinental right around the corner. I had a chance to meet some of them at that dinner, some conversation. But I want to get your perspective. What is the vibe of the customers, what are those customer wins, and how does that translate into future growth for Informatica? >> Any customer who is looking at data, data management, strategically, is going with Informatica. >> Mmm hmm. >> There are a number of competitors that we have who try to compete with Informatica at the product level, and they end up doing okay through pricing, through better sales tactics, but when we have the opportunity to speak to the Chief Data Officer, the CIO, the CEO, they go with Informatica. It's the reason why Tesla went with Informatica on their project where they're trying to tie together the auto business with the solar business. Because if they get to know both sets of customers and are able to sync that up, one plus one will be greater than two for them, and that's why they did that deal. Or it's why Amazon has chosen our MDM solution for their sales operations. So you look at leading companies who are able to look at the enterprise level, at the strategic level, they are going with Informatica. That's why we know we're winning. >> So Bruce, give us three sentences, what is strategic data management? >> Strategic data management is being able to take reams and reams of data from all different platforms, traditional legacy, big data, real-time solutions, and data from the cloud and be able to look at it intelligently. Use artificial intelligence and machine learning to be able to analyze that data in a more intelligent way, and then act on it. >> So two questions on that point, I was going to ask about the AI washing going on in the industry. Every event now is like, "Oh my god, AI, we've got AI," but that's not really AI. What is AI, we call it augmented intelligence because you're really augmenting with the data, but even Google IO's got a little neural net throwback to the 80s, but what's your thoughts on how customers should look through the lens of b.s. to say, "Wow, that's the real AI, or the real "augmented intelligence." >> Does it do anything? That's ultimately the question that a Chief Data Officer or CIO or CEO...is something changing because of the artificial intelligence being applied? In the case of Informatica, we announced an AI platform called Clair, "clairvoyant," so artificial intelligence. What is Clair? It allows you to develop solutions like our enterprise information catalog, where an organization has thousands and thousands of databases, it's able to look at the metadata within those databases and then over time keep disclosing more and more data appropriate to the information that you're looking for. So then, if I'm an analyst or a businessperson, a marketing person, a sales person, I can take action on the right set of data. That's true artificial intelligence. >> Bruce, I want to get to one final point as we are winding down here. Again, you've seen many waves. But I want to talk about the companies that are trying to get through the transition of this transformation, Informatica certainly cleared the runway, they've got some things to work on, certainly brand-building. I see that as their air cover in many rising tide will float a lot of boats in the ecosystem. But there are companies where they have been in the infrastructure business and the cloud is one big infrastructure, selling boxes and whatnot. Other companies have traditional software models, download, whatever you want to call it, on-prem licenses, not subscriptions. They're working hard. Your advice to them if you are on their Board, or as a friend, what do you say to them, what do they got to do to get through this? And how should customers look at who's winning and who's losing, in terms of progress? >> The world of enterprise computing is moving to the cloud. Legacy systems will remain for a while. They need to figure out how to take their legacy solutions and make them relevant to the world of cloud computing. And if they can't do that, they should sell their company or get out of business. (laughing) >> And certainly data is the oil, it's the gold, it's the lifeblood of an organization. >> Of any organization. Even at Informatica, internally, we're using our own intelligent data platform to do our own marketing. Sally Jenkins is working closely with our CIO Graeme Thompson on working on solutions where we could help better understand what our customers want and need, so we can provide them with the right solution, leveraging our intelligent data leg. >> Bruce, thanks for coming on the Cube. Really appreciate your insight. Again, you've seen a lot of waves, you've been in the industry a long time, you have great Board presence, as well as other companies. Thanks for sharing the insight, and the data here on the Cube. A lot of insights and analytics being extracted here and sharing it with you. Certainly we're not legacy, we don't need to sell our business, we're doing great. If you haven't, make the transition. Good advice, thanks so much. >> Bruce: Great to be here. >> Bruce Chizen inside the Cube here. I'm John Furrier with Peter Burris. Stay with us for more coverage after this short break. (techno music)

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE! Covering AWS Summit 2017. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. We thank you so much for hanging out with us today. We've had an amazing day, Jeff Frick, George Gilbert with me, Lisa Martin. I think guys, first impressions or overall impressions of the day, it started with Werner Vogels very energetic, very passionate keynote. It was almost what can't Amazon do. The amount of services that they're offering, the amount of customer logos validating, presumably, and substantiating all of these services. It was really quite eye opening. >> Yeah. >> I think for me. But also some of the use cases that they've shared were, those that were on main stage, those that were in breakout sessions or here with us, really shows that the culture that they're building, or have built over the last 11 years now at AWS, is really one of experimentation, failure is okay, let's keep moving. Speed, speed, speed and undulate. >> So many, so many great things. I just want to touch on some of the culture, pivot off the cuture. For instance, Andy Jassy and his keynote. And I think the culture is so, so important. But one of the things he talked about is they banned PowerPoint. He said because it wasn't interactive, wasted a lot of time, no one was prepared for a deep dive 'cause they just put the slides together. And they went to this thing he called the six page narrative, which I thought was pretty interesting. And everyone reads the narrative at the beginning of the meeting. So, you know, everyone's busy. >> Before the meeting. >> Yeah. >> Oh. >> But I think at the beginning of the meeting. So everyone's had a common point >> Right. >> 'Cause let's face it, everyone's busy, no one really preps as much as they should before the meeting. So now, they force it with a 20 minute read the narrative. And so everyone is at the same kind of depth of knowledge. I thought that was really powerful. And then, to write the press release and the FAQs- >> That was phenomenal! >> Before you write the line of codes. >> Yes! >> So what are the issues that people are going to raise and what's the really exciting value that you're delivering to the market that you defined in a press release. >> Yeah. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> You know, I think it's great stuff. >> That was as interesting, I thought, as any of the product releases. >> I agree, yeah. >> 'Cause it almost told us how they keep the wheel spinning so fast. >> Right >> Exactly! But that is really culturally different than I think a lot of the companies that we talked to who, when you get to a six dot one dot two press release. >> Yeah. Is it really that interesting? >> Right, right. >> So that was really, really revolutionary. And I think speaks to your point, you know, how have they been able to build this dominance this quickly and not let their competitors gain on what they project as a six or seven year advantage. >> Like he said though, 'cause they don't look at the competitors. They just keep movin', right. And they didn't have the kind of the legacy thing holding them back. You know, Clayton Christensen, innovator's dilemma. They just kept moving forward. But I thought the other really insightful thing that came out of his fireside chat was the conversation around third-party sales when they were still just Amazon. And do they let other people sell on their platform. And he said "You can't fight gravity". So, it goes back, it reminds me of like when Schwab went to $19 trades. Dave Pottruck tells the story of online trading. And they were giving up these expensive commissions but he basically said "If I don't kill my own business, somebody else is going to do it for me. So I better be the one that kills it and at least try to take advantage of that next wave". Really powerful concepts. >> But there's an analog to the "fulfilled by Amazon", which is where the third-parties went. Where they sort of, essentially, took the eBay model and said "We're going to essentially make our fulfillment platform, and commerce platform, stronger because we're going to take all of those other third-parties". And then what they did with Amazon, AWS, was take the whole commerce platform. >> Right. >> And open it up for other people 'cause that made it more powerful for them. And there's still more to come. What they really didn't talk about. They talked a lot about AI, and mostly at the framework and tools levels. And where framework levels would be for, you know, world-class scientists and the tools would be for data scientists. But when they talked about the image recognition, the voice recognition, and text-to-speech, things like that, they were saying then they're leveraging the Amazon data and training those models so that mere mortal developers can do that. What he didn't say, and when we had their product marketing guy here, what he didn't want to say was there's whole lot of other areas where Amazon the commerce company, the retail company, has data that no other cloud has that they can offer. Not to think about really the machine learning as tools again, but as semi-finished applications. >> Right. >> And I think that's going to be pretty profound differentiated versus other clouds. >> Right. And just the basic scale, right. The slide that Werner showed, not only with all the customers and partners of this, but just the breadth of services and the way they keep adding more based on whatever your special function is. I need High I/O, I need ML, I need really cheap cold storage, I need whatever. They can apply the scale to all those kind of sub-segments and offer a breadth at scale that, you know, pretty tough to compete against. >> Absolutely! And they continue to innovate. And Andy's fireside chat, he was really kind of talking about why and how they're able to do that. Being customer focused, not having to look at the competition, is a major advantage. And one of the themes I also heard and felt today was you think back 11 years ago to their genesis, they were very much focused on the start-up community, the developers, really won long ago the hearts and the minds of those developers. Because they were the ones that would try and innovate, and fail, and try again. >> Right. >> But as the code becomes, in I think Werner's words this morning, "the new normal", they've done a very good job of continuing to foster and enable developers within start-ups and those entrepreneurs who want to start SaaS companies. >> Right. >> All the way up to the enterprise. As we see the dynamic and buying software change dramatically, thinking about the Amazon marketplace as a great example, we are now seeing the C-suite being mandated sometimes by the board. You've got to move more applications into the cloud. Well how do I do that? >> Right. >> So it's developers, it's lines of business like the marketing folks, or the sales folks that Shadow IT say "We need to do this. You can help us move fast enough". All the way up to the C-suite and the board. And they've done a great job of expanding the conversation. >> Jeff: Right. >> Expanding the services to really target multiple audiences and meet a lot of pain points. >> You know, there was a press briefing, pre-brief for the announcement of the marketplace expansion yesterday. And what came out really interesting was, you know, when you go to the Amazon marketplace homepage and there's dozens of categories and about, I think it's 35 hundred actual products from third-parties and 12 hundred vendors. And, you know, you can't go to an enterprise, you can't go to JP Morgan and say "here, you know, go to town". But what IBM does with sort of their own rich library of stuff is they have their global business services and their industry solutions development groups. They take the piece parts and put solutions together for their customers. But what Amazon is now in a position to do is they have solution architects working either for them, who are billing out at maybe two- or three-hundred thousand a year, or who are working for VARS who turned into manage service providers who configure these solutions. And so, what looks like a self-service marketplace now can serve, you know, a bank with a hundred billion in assets or a trillion in assets because there's now the IBM equivalent of a system integrator who can put the pieces together. And who can run them for you if you don't want to. >> Right, and have the aggregated data of everybody else runnin' those services. So for best practices and stuff, you're leveraging the whole ecosystem, not a single instance at a single company. And that is so big! >> And that was actually, that was one of the themes of our last guest. From Datadog. Which is, they can watch so much of what's going on. Not just a customer's workload, but maybe they're not doing it now but they will be able to do it in the future, where they can look across workloads and identify best practices in configurations and things like that. >> Right. >> And then you send that back to the customer and they pay for that advice. >> Right. It's just interesting, you know, three years ago the conversation was all about security around public cloud and, you know, we're done with that conversation. Especially since most security breeches are people lose their laptops, right. It's an employee, or a disgruntled employee. But the thing that's interesting to me on this start-up and rent versus own is, again, the answer to every question in a Cube interview. Why do you want to do the undifferentiated heavy lifting of managing infrastructure? Those guys, ThinkLogic, still like 14 people and a couple of dozen developers that are attacking the IOT space. They would never even get an approved vendor status at somebody like Boeing or GE. They would never even get to the procurement issue. But now, as part of this marketplace, you know, they can come in either as a partner, part of a solution, an adjunct, part of an SI, or as a standalone app that you still buy through your approved vendor process with AWS. Why would you go anywhere else? >> Right. That was a great point that you brought up a number of times today. Showing, not only how Amazon is innovating internally and to enable the start-ups to the enterprises from a public cloud perspective, but they're also enabling businesses to be born that would never have gotten off the ground. >> Jeff: Right, right. And, to your point, it's very valid about even becoming an approved vendor for a company the size of ThinkLogics, they would never have been able to do that. So, it's really exciting I think overall, I think we'd all summarize the day as a very positive, very enlightening. I think, for me, I was really excited to hear what was going to be going on for IOT and Hybrid. Heard some interesting things there today, so I think that's just a dot dot dot to be continued. >> Yes. >> I think overall, really strong announcements from them. The passion was there. Culturally, I think they really reap what they sow and I think that was reflected in the conversations that we were able to have today. >> One thing I want to ask you about, George, you're a smart guy. Speed of light's too damn slow. >> So you think so. (laughter) >> The speed of light's too damn slow. >> Right. >> Jeff: Hear it over and over and over again. >> Yes! >> And still, cloud-based, soft underbelly of cloud, you got to be connected. Do you think that the speed of light issues with Edge and shifting resources, co-locating storage compute in the data. You see any really big hurdles that are just really scary? >> Like, following on the "dot dot dot", computing always follows a pendulum. Centralization, decentralization. No side ever goes away, it's just a change in emphasis. And we're going to see some analysis have to move to the edge because for the speed of light, you know, your smart car, you know, it doesn't have time to say "That looks like an old lady who's actually in the crosswalk, you know, I'm going to go back to the cloud and ask whether I should plow through her or, you know, the car next to me". You know, that needs a low-latency analytic. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> But at the same time, and one of our guests was talking about it, if you're looking at the pressure at valve at, you know, a thousand-mile pipeline, you probably don't need to react instantaneously. You send that back to the cloud and it'll look at it over, you know, a period of time and say "This one's looking like it's going to leak". >> Right. Anomalies. >> So, different scenarios. >> Okay. >> And, unfortunately, we are going to have to say "dot dot dot". We talked all day about this! Jeff Frig, thank you so much! George Gilbert, what a fantastic day we've had here at the AWS Summit in San Francisco. We thank you for joining! You can follow all of the replays here on siliconangle.tv. And Jeff, what do we got comin' up next week? We're at several events. NAB next week. >> NAB, Oracal, Modern Customer Experience, and you're doing a red carpet, I guess a green carpet award show. >> A green carpet award show at the Computer History Museum next week. So stay tuned, stick around on siliconangle.tv to find out all the things we're doing. It's going to be a exciting spring. Again, thanks for joining. See you next time. (light, upbeat music)

>> Hey, welcome everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE, We are in downtown San Francisco Moscone West at the Professional Businesswomen of California's conference. It's the 28th year they've been doing this conference, over 6,000 women, pretty wide range, about 5%, of guys made the trip, and we are excited, it's about diversity and inclusion, and we wanted to come check it out and bring you some of the thought leaders. So, we're really excited to have our first guest, he's Greg Jones, he's a Chief Diversity Officer for United Airlines. Welcome, Greg. >> Good to be here, Jeff. >> Absolutely, so you've been doing this diversity thing for a while, took a look at your LinkedIn, you know, you've been in healthcare, excuse me, insurance, and financial services, now with United. Are we making progress on this front? >> We are making some progress, but given the time that I think we have been doing this in the country, I would say it's not enough yet. >> Jeff: Right. And so, there is still a ways to go, it's a journey. We take two steps forward, sometimes a step back, sometimes a half a step back. But we're moving forward. >> Right, and certainly a lot of positive momentum here, and we cover the Grace Hopper show, and, you know, a lot of the women in tech stuff, but again, you're not only looking at sex or race, but things like veterans with disabilities, I saw >> Absolutely >> you're doing some efforts, >> Absolutely >> so really a broad breaststroke. >> Yeah, it is, and when you think about it, it makes sense, because, especially in the corporate space, we're talking about, how do you actually get the most out of all the people that you have working for you at every level, and if people are afraid to fully commit themselves to work, your productivity is just not what it could be or what it should be. >> Jeff: Right. >> You know, I have a theory, I'm sorry, Jeff, >> Jeff: No. >> that corporate America is probably operating at about 60% capacity, because people can't fully pull the trigger on their skills and talents. So, what inclusion is all about is getting the most out of all of the folks that you have by creating an environment in which they're comfortable in. >> We hear that time and time again, and there's a lot of studies about, you know, diversity of opinion leads to better outcomes, >> Greg: That's true >> This is not the right thing to do, I mean it is the right thing to do, but it's also a great business decision. >> Greg: Right. Do business leaders get that? Do they see that by having a different set of opinions, and all of us bring our own biases, to decision making and processes, that the outcomes are actually better? >> I think it's starting to happen more and more, I think, if you think about the history of this work, diversity and inclusion, since the sixties or whatever, it's migrated from affirmative action and all that that meant and the emotion that that provoked, to, wait a minute, the country is changing, the world has gotten smaller, this is starting to really make sense from a business perspective. So we migrated from almost completely the right thing to do, to wow, wait a minute, this is a business play. >> Right. So what are the things you see that are really concrete for people that, you know, or companies, they want to get involved they want to do a better job, what are some of the low hanging fruit that you suggest since you've been on this journey? >> Greg: Well, I think about, organizations like this, and conferences like this, are very important, and I would say it's a very important tool that companies can use to actually begin to develop the mindset that they need to start to shift gears. Also, organizations should begin to think about their systems. It turns out that there are biases in certain systems in terms of performance ratings, how people are promoted, how people are rewarded, and you know there is a look of leadership, unfortunately, that is based on history. >> Jeff: Right. >> So I think companies can start to really examine their processes, their views of their leadership model, their ways that they promote people, because it turns out that great talent and leadership comes in all kinds of packages. >> Right, and it's tough to fight, I mean, one of the keynote speakers this morning talked about, they've actually published their unbiased, or their unconscious bias class online for anyone to take. I can't remember if it was Schwab or Intel, which is pretty interesting, because we all have bias. >> Greg: We do. >> It's not about not having bias, it's about being aware of your bias and really trying to overcompensate for when you know it's doing things that you know you're not necessarily keeping track of. >> And it turns out that it's one of these things, and I talk about this a lot, it turns out that if you step out into this world, in places in which you're not comfortable, leading people and engaging with people, that you may initially not be comfortable with, what happens over time is you wind up developing a skill set, you know, whether it's leading women, whether it's leading people of color, or whether it's engaging with people with disabilities, once you do it and you find out it doesn't kill you, >> Jeff: Right, right. >> It turns out that by defintion, it makes you a better leader. So we have these biases, >> Right >> We do, were human. >> Jeff: Right. >> But it turns out, when you explore beyond your comfort zone, to use a cliche, you grow as a person, you grow as a leader. >> That's such a great point right, because birds of a feather is always the easiest path. >> It's easy! >> So easy. >> Yes. >> And it's just familiar, whether that familiar, that's cause that's the person that did it for you yesterday, or they're the same race, background, color, they look the same, but it's so easy to go birds of a father, but to your point I think that's a great point that doesn't come up enough, it's when you challenge yourself with something new, it let's you get back on a little steep learning curve, but that's when you grow and you know you feel so much better when you do get a little growth in your personal development. >> Absolutely, and it turns out that that in and of itself is a skill. Once you do it a few times and you find out that you're capable of doing it, you're looking for that next thing that is sort of outside the lines that you used to be comfortable with, and you grow. >> Jeff: That's great. So, I wonder, you got to have an analogy for Jazz. I know you're a Jazz fan, doin' a little homework before you came on. The great musical that just won all the Academy Awards talked about kind of the Jazz groove, and there's a little bit of conflict and harmony but at the end of the day, they make beautiful music together. Do you see some of that kind of analogy in what you're trying to accomplish? >> I actually do. I think that once you begin to master your instrument, I talk about job descriptions and systems as sort of the sheet music. You know, the basic tune that you have. But once you really master your instrument you can take it in all kinds of places, I mean, "Mary Had a Little Lamb" played by Louis Armstrong, is very different than the basic music, right? I would say that as we think about ourselves as leaders, there are the basic things we have, our technical education, our personalities, but once you really master that and you lose your fear of stepping out there, you can improvise all day long with all kinds of people in all kinds of ways and all kinds of systems. I believe that to be true. >> Well, and you're doing it every day. >> That's right! >> Alright Greg, well I was going to say do you have the last word, but I don't know that we could do much better than the Jazz analogy so I think we'll leave it right there. >> There ya go, let's stop right there. >> Alright. Well thanks for taking a few minutes out of your day, and I look forward to continued success in your journey. >> Thank you so much, Jeff, very nice to meet you. >> Pleasure >> Absolutely. >> Alright, he's Greg Jones, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE, we'll be back after this short break, thanks for watchin'. (tech music)

>> From Phoenix, Arizona, The Cube at Catalyst Conference. Here's your host, Jeff Frick. (upbeat techno music) >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with The Cube. We are in Phoenix, Arizona at the Girl's in Tech Catalyst Conference on the fourth year of the conference, about 400 people here, wanted to come down, get a feel for what's going on. Seems to be something about Phoenix and women in tech, because we were here two years ago at the Grace Hopper Conference, the first time we ever covered that event with Telle Whitney and Marie Klawe, et cetera. So, we're excited to be back, and with our next guest, Scarlett Spring, president and chief commercial officer of VisionGate. Welcome, Scarlett. >> Thank you, and welcome back to Phoenix. >> Absolutely, thank you. So for those that aren't familiar with VisionGate, give us a little 411 on the company. >> Absolutely, so VisionGate is a medical device company, launching an in-vitro diagnostic tool for noninvasive, early detection of lung cancer, and, as of this year, January, we now have licensed in a drug which could treat even the pre-cancerous condition before you would get lung cancer, called dysplasia of the lung. >> Okay, so you said a whole lot there. >> Exactly. >> A lot of words. So let's go through that sentence one more time, a little bit slower, so it's-- >> It's a medical-- >> It's noninvasive. >> Yeah, so we're a medical device company, so there's a hardware component to the company. There's a software component to the company, because we're in-vitro diagnostic, meaning we have an assay, and that's a noninvasive test for lung cancer, so it's a sputum test. >> What does that mean, a sputum test? >> If you give us a deep cough, from the cells of your lungs, not saliva which would come from your oral cavity but a deep cough from your lung, our device can look at those cells and make a determination whether there are abnormal cells, thus leading to think that there would be cancer cells. >> And how would that process of trying to determine whether you have cancer or not happen without your technology? >> There isn't a test, today. >> There's no test? >> Right. Sputum has been looked at manually by putting your deep cough on a glass slide since the 1930s, and there's so much variation in data, because it's like finding a needle in the haystack, because when you give a cough, you cough up about four million cells, give or take a million. So for a human to do that, exactly that's it. It's extremely laborious, it's not cost effective, and, once again, you're looking for a handful of cells which would be diagnostic, because most of what's coming out of your lungs is saliva and white cells, because obviously it's trying to kill anything that's in there. >> Right, so in terms of the way the technology works, so is it kind of advanced, kind of pattern recognition? What is trying to do-- >> Perfect. That is a perfect question. It is exactly. Our innovation is we use machine recognition technology, and we look at the morphology of a cell. What does that mean? That means the cellular features, because cell features of a cancer cell look very different from a normal cell, and you can train a computer through a series of algorithms to recognize those differences, very similar to what a human being does. So in essence, we put a pathologist in a box, and we have trained thousands and thousands, like 250,000 cells has gone into training this classifier, and some of the world's best pathologists and cytopathologists have actually trained our machine. >> And the fact that you chose to go after lung cancer, it sounds like this would work, because you're basically looking for anomalies. >> That's exactly right. >> It sounds like that would work for lots-- >> It does. >> Of different things. >> You're exactly right. Once we can train this algorithm to actually look at other cancer types, so we're still in our kind of late stage startup phase, but we already have proof of concept work that is looking in urine for bladder cancer, looking at blood for circulating tumor cells, adenocarcinoma of the esophagus by being able to get some of the cells extracted. What we're trying to do is look at noninvasive ways, because today you want to make sure that you're being cost-effective, so that's the easiest way that you could get a cell, but you could use more invasive techniques to get a cell. For instance, like a pancreatic cancer. That would kind of be a real opportunity. Some conversations that we're having with clinical collaborators, that would inquire at least an upper GI where you would go into the stomach, poke the wall to try to get a specimen. What I tell individuals is if you get us a cell, we can create the classifier to ascertain whether it's normal or abnormal. >> And, the end goal is to just come up with more kind of regular routine with your checkup process that you're testing for these cancers to get out ahead of the curve. >> Jeff, it is all about early detection. Unfortunately, most of our cost today happen toward the end of the disease cycle. If we could invert that and actually have better early detection tools, not only would we save lives, but downstream it would be a tremendous cost saving just to the healthcare system. >> Right, very interesting work. >> Thank you. >> And have you always been involved in-- >> Well, it's interesting, I have 19 years of big pharma experience, so I actually started with Merck which became AstraMerck, AstraZeneca. So I had 19 years of continuous service, and I launched Prilosec in 1989 and then had the pleasure of continuing my pharma career with some terrific products, you know, Nexium, the oncology division there at AstraZeneca. So, oncology did grab me, and I've been very passionate about that since the late 1990s, early 2000s. >> Does it ever just crush you though that it's oncology, that it's cancer? I always think of the saints that are in these wards that are dealing with this everyday. >> You're right, particularly at AstraZeneca, we had breast cancer, prostate cancer and lung cancer products, and one of the things that every October during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I would get out in the field and go and be with our sales representatives, and it never got far from me that at the end there was a patient that was receiving therapy and the tremendous impact that your body goes through. So, we can never forget that at the end of all that we're doing is. there's a patient. We're trying to save a life, and the work matters. >> Yeah, and it's a person, right not only-- >> That's a person. >> A patient, but it's a person. >> It's a person. >> A mom, a sister. >> I don't think any of probably even watching this today has not been somehow impacted by cancer. >> Yeah, crazy, so let's shift gears. Get off the cancer for a minute. You had a presentation here at the-- >> I did. >> Conference. How to fly in the face of adversity. So for the folks unfortunately that couldn't make it to Phoenix today, what's it all about? >> Well, flying in the face of adversity, my workshop is going to talk about three layers. Raising money for a startup that has a big idea, and I think just by the brief introduction I gave you to VisionGate, it's a game changing kind of idea. Secondly, how do you go from startup to scale up? And lastly, how are you as a leader, thinking about your brand and how it aligns with the mission of your company? And there isn't any given week and maybe even any give day that I don't balance those three things, whether I'm trying to raise money, because we're still not revenue generating yet, whether I'm scaling the company, because we've grown just 40% since, call it Thanksgiving of last year, to thinking about what's my responsibility being here today, because the girls that are here are just starting their careers in technology, and by them, they will be the leaders of tomorrow. So, I think it's going to be a great topic. I'm actually going to allow the audience to do some prioritization, which one of these do you want to talk about, and we're going to walk through some exercises of doing that. >> It's interesting, many moons ago, I was involved in a speaker series at Wharton, and we had David Pottruck on. He's the former CEO of Schwab, Schwab's right hand guy, really articulate speaker, phenomenal speaker, and we had dinner with him afterwards. I asked him, I said why are you such a good speaker, and he goes, you know, I practice a lot. As a senior executive of a company, all you do is communicate. You communicate to your investors. You communicate to your employees. You communicate to your customers. That's pretty much what your job is, and so I took it as a serious thing, and I hired coaches, and I practiced. And now I'm pretty good at it, so it's interesting that you tie that back that building your own personal brand and getting that out there and how important that is to really helping the development, and the movement and the success of your company. >> It's true, and if you think about your brand, if you do it from being a self-centered or trying to have it being inward focused, you're going to probably end up in the wrong place, but if you do it thinking about how you would market a brand, what are the traits, the attributes that I have, that I want to be known for, and then that I want to try to nurture. And what it really comes down to is helping someone tap into their authenticity and their reputational power. What do you want to be known for? >> That's interesting I was just thinking as you were talking to get someone the nuggets, but that is a great nugget. What do you want to be known for? And to put the consciously out front. And I do think too that the world has shifted, in kind of the sharing world that we live in. It used to be power was in retention, holding. You had your stack of business cards. You'd never let those things out of your sight. You change companies, you take your Rolodex with you. Now, it's very different. The power comes, actually, from sharing. The more you share, the more you help others, actually the more influence and power that you get. >> And that's actually some of the very things that we'll be talking about is whether you are just starting your career, whether you are looking to get a promotion and move up within your own company, whether you are toward the end of your career and looking to transition to boards or advisory boards or be more connected to something that you're passionate about. In that, what are the things that you're known for that make you valuable? Is it that you're going to take on extra projects at work and kind of get known for someone who brings solutions to the table or is the person who's going to have the uncomfortable conversation, you know, the conversation that needs to be had in the room, but you're able to do it in a way that isn't polarizing, but brings everybody in to go, oh my gosh, you just articulated what needed to be said, and that created some sort of positive change. I want to get at those things today in our workshop, and it should be fun. >> That's just phenomenal, the way you summed that up so succinctly. You know, there's a lot of places that you can add value in the way that you work and the tasks that you chose to add on and to be known for doing some of the dirty work, doing some of the ugly stuff and helping the whole organization get over that hurdle. Scarlett, sounds like it's going to be a great session. Unfortunately, we'll be here doing more interviews, which is not unfortunately. We love being here to do interviews, but sounds like you're going to have a lot of fun. Good luck with it. >> I appreciate it. Thank you so much for the time. >> Absolutely and-- >> Come back to Phoenix again! >> Good luck with VisionGate. >> Absolutely. >> So when is your next hurdle with VisionGate? When's your next kind of trial? I know these medical ones take a while. >> It is true, so we've got a couple things that are going on right now. Hopefully, there'll be a screening opportunity coming to you soon, and we're getting our drug into phase three trials. >> All right, Scarlett, again thanks for stopping by. >> Thank you, appreciate it. >> Absolutely, I'm Jeff Frick. It's Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. You're watching The Cube. Thanks for watching. (upbeat techno music)