Soni Jiandani, Pensando | Future Proof Your Enterprise 2020
>>from the Cube >>Studios in Palo Alto and Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cube conversation. >>I am stupid, man. And welcome to a cube conversation. Really? Please welcome back to the program. One of our Cube alumni, Sony, Ge and Donnie. She is a co founder and also the business off of pensando. Tony, thanks so much for joining us. >>I thank you for having me here. >>All right. So, Sonny, we've had you on the program a few times. You know, those that have watched the program or followed your career? You've had a story career. You know, I've worked with you as a partner back through some of the spinning disk. You're one of the mpls group. And now, of course, Pensando we helped launch towards the end of 2019. I just want to take a step back and, you know, understand, You know, how did you find yourself in the startup world? >>You know, I got involved with startup ventures as part of the Mpls team. This is going back now. Gosh, 20 years ago, in calendar year 2000 my first venture was with Andy ammo. It was a very unique situation that Mario look up on myself or part of a set up on a startup venture. But all four of us, the Mpls group, did not have any equity in it. Look, and I basically what asked to operate within the with that venture to ensure its ultimate success from a product execution on the go to market perspective? Ah, lot of those elements did not exist from a go to market perspective in Cisco at that time, and it was basically a ground up effort for look and me to not have any financial association with the outcome off the Andy, um, a venture, but at the same time, take on the responsibility from the execution perspective and building up the whole go to market. >>Yeah, so, you know, talking about that these startups, you've been apart of two things. First of all, you were part of and, ya know, you ova in CNI. So did you need to learn Italian to be part of these projects? But more importantly, how did how did you work on that? You know, product customer fit, understanding what the build and, you know, you talk about right How do you make some things that festival? It is super challenging. >>Yeah, well, first and foremost, I think I've been fortunate in that the group that we're all part off it is definitely Italian Indian. And some folks, like from Indiana, for example, like Randy Pond, who is part of this venture with us at Pensando. If I if I would go back and take a look at the simple formula, I mean Mario look, and from, ah, they're veterans in this industry. And they typically focused on the conceiving off the idea and the brought up, uh, and starting with a clean slate approach. Of course, I participate from a market validation development, competitive landscape on a business on all related aspects, bringing the product to market on how that maps into customers and partners what we have consistently focused on market disruption. Particularly for the last two decades, the biggest focus has been on what are the market transitions occurring both from a business and a technology perspective on that is ultimately what creates the opportunity to emerge on and drive these concepts into reality and what yourself, in a market leadership position, is to capture the transition at the right time. >>Yeah, I think back. You know, some of your previous ventures and understand, you know, some of the waves of technologies coming together sometimes the maturity of a technology or being able to take advantage of something new to talk specifically about. Pensando what are you know, those waves of change and the technology coming together that makes the opportunity that you're in today? >>Well, I mean, if you go back and you take a look at really what has been exciting about this pensando opportunity has been to look at the unique ability that have been coming upon us. You know, with this market transition where the cloud is moving to the edge, what is ultimately driving this movement to the edge has been the application. Uh, the applications is is you know, whether it's driven by technology trends like five G, for example. Ah, and and the fact that bulk off what the customer's data is being driven is going to be at the edge. That when when you look at the cloud moving to the edge and evolving that with the transitions occurring, ah, this will require deep innovation. Deep innovation in the areas of distributed network processing security, like encryption, full observe ability while you have turned on encryption, traffic engineering and doing it at very low, predictable agency at the speeds of 100 gig and above all, doing it on a small footprint. We were really the only guys and gals who could do this. And we have done it, >>Yeah, so certainly some really big challenges that they laid out there bring >>us inside >>a little bit. You know, customers. You know, I think about, you know, when I've been watching edge computing for the last three or four years. Uh, you know, it's still relatively early days for customers, but there's a lot of technical challenges there, So help us understand how much you know it was you had technology that could help solve something and how much it is driven by some of the customers that you've been talking to over the years >>Now. One of the key things that we learned and this was going back to the early days of Cisco is that everything we were doing, we had the customer at the center off and at the heart off what innovation we were building from an engineering perspective. You want to build things that can have the most impact in the marketplace and within your customer base. So, uh, one of the early times we went back, who do getting our customers involved in the innovations we were bringing to bear. I still have recollections off a blueprint that we had iterated upon, uh, and sitting in a room, whether it was with the likes of Josh Matthew at Goldman Sachs all whether it was with some of our early cloud customers like the Oracle Cloud, to better understand with these innovation and these blueprints, what were their burning problems? What were they used, cases that we could really go and tackle? So it is one thing to think about market destructions. It's another to bring it to life and having customers engaged with you during the early phases. Off as you are incubating, something is a very important item because it helps you focus your biggest energy on the areas so that you can put your arms around what problems are worth solving. And how can you bring that to life with with customers? Use case. And this is something we have done time and over again. So this is a constant refinement off what we have been doing now for now, to over two decades. As I said, >>Yeah, it's, you know, fascinating here. And when you've got the chief business officer idle, Sony, You know, one of the biggest changes, obviously, is if I look back in the spin ins, you kind of understood how to go to market was what was involved the, you know, the Cisco execution machine that the sales process that they had in plug in a product, that they would help. All right, what you're doing now, you've got some, you know, feel, William partnerships. You have relationship with customers, help us understand a little bit. You know the update on the go to market, how you have. I have a solution that fits for not only the end users, but through multiple different, uh, you know, go to market partners. >>So I think it's, you know, it's very important that as a startup we stay very close to our customers and apart, not just men. We are thinking about what the innovation is and how can it solve their problems. But I think in a world where the way we want to go solve for what? The customer where we want the customer, where our customers want us to be our partnerships is a core part of it. I mean, if you look at from the early days we secured successfully funding from our customers and our strategic partners and it is these customers and strategic partners that are shaping the roadmap on are shaping the routes to market on. What we're doing is we're successfully not only delivering the product, so these strategic customers and partners, but we're also then replicating it across the verticals. If you think about in the enterprise space, our focus has been the focus on regulated market markets where security is essential. Real time, observe ability that can increase your security posture is a very important element. So taking the blueprints that we're taking into global financial services customers, the healthcare industry, the the education market on the federal market, then those are the industries that really care about, and I in regulated markets where we can take the blueprint that we have already built on an amplify across those customers. So there again includes alignment and a partnership with HP. We're working very closely that, while recognizing that we will be doing strategic elements only with partners like HP, we're also on boarding and getting certifications done with Dell because most enterprises have at least dual source vendors from a server, so that that is one aspect. The other aspect is working in a high touch model with the cloud customers and having the opportunity to deliver to them Ah, and onboard them from a production worthy perspective while taking that same blueprint and applying it to other cloud customers and other service provider edge providers that can take advantage of the similar capability. >>Yeah, um, I'm curious. Sony, you know, obviously, the cloud is a space that has been going through a lot of change and accelerating. You know, I'd say much faster than traditional networking did. So you know, curious what you see what you're hearing from customers when they talk about you know, their needs for your solution, what they're doing with multi cloud environment. What is that? That landscape you. And I guess we would love to hear a little bit about how you would compare and contrast yourself. The other solutions out there the one that comes to mind, of course, is you know, eight of us what they're doing with the Annapurna chip in there nitro offering as part of their out. >>You know, as I mentioned earlier, I think the cloud is pushing to the edge. There's a high demand for a lot of packet processing needs with these New Age applications. Customers want to build on and give the you know, we want to be in a position to provide through the democratization and open availability off our products to multiple cloud providers, our technology and as they are experiencing tremendous growth, they're seeking to build cloud with more capacity, with greater degree off security and services functionality. And the ability to process a lot of data at the edge is with millions of simultaneous connections happening at a very small footprint. And that's where we come in. The value that we are essentially providing who not only the existing cloud strategic partners but additional cloud customers we're taking into production this year is that we are enabling them to leapfrog the nitro technology on multiple, whether it is the ability to ah have predictably low latency on and consistently low jitter in the nanoseconds. That is the eight times superior than what a nitro can do today, or the ability to pack their toe process up to nine times more backend processes in the millions of on the ability to do it in a power footprint, which is almost 1/3 that of what you would need on AWS nitro, where they need five times more nitro elements than then we can with a single device, Um, or whether it is the ability now to handle not just power and latency, but millions off flows that can run simultaneously on maintaining the state of all of those and the power of the end, the ability to run multiple services. Uh, with security turned on at the same time are all elements that really differentiate us on. This technology is now readily available to all of us. >>All right, so I understand some of the technical issue items that you're stating there. What I'm curious about is when I look at out both, most customers don't really think about the night. It's that Amazon's providing an extension of their solution into my environment, and they manage everything and so you know, you can't talk about multi cloud environment without talking about Amazon is every customer almost everything right? More than one cloud in one of them is almost always Amazon, though. How does your solution fit into that whole discussion? And then? >>So I think that, you know, one of the things that becomes very important is that if I put my customer enterprise customer hat on, I want to be an enabling my private cloud the private cloud that I build. You have the ability to not just have the option to the port and Amazon cloud, but I typically already and minimal child and barn. So while Outpost and Nitro Nitrogen really enabling, are supposed to deliver those services on our customer's premises, it's only allowing that customer to be locked into one way off dealing with one public cloud company. But if I had to go and think about as I build out my hybrid cloud strategy as an enterprise customer, I want to have the same building blocks on the same policy models that are consistent with all the with the entire dress off cloud vendors that I'm dealing with. The bulk of our customers are essentially telling us I don't want to be locked into a single public cloud company from a hybrid strategy. I want to have the ability to drive a public, private cloud architect that is cloud like from a policy delivery perspective. But at the same time, I want to have the flexibility off deploying a multi cloud and BART, and what we would provide them is the consistency off that same policy model that you would only find in a public cloud with the freedom to not have to buy themselves or lock themselves up into a single public cloud costs. >>So your team, you said, over two decades of experience, there have been some global impacts that have happened during that you got together in 2000. 2001 was right there in front of you that the 2008 you know, down in there, though you're in 2020 obviously the global endemic, as you know, broad financial ripples. How's this impacting Dondo? How's that impacting your discussions with your partners and your customers? >>Well, you know, honestly, I would say that we, like everyone else, have been affected by the pandemic, and we pray that everyone recovers soon with minimum lost to themselves and their families. And this is something very personal. This is here. I feel very passionate about hoping that everybody comes through with this on and their families are all OK. That's all the most important thing in my mind now for us, from a pandemic perspective. What this has done is it has made us more resolute to continue to execute remotely to the best of our ability to meet our customers. Expectations. The advice that I would give to other startups is Keep your head down. Focus on the 80 20 rule, execute on 20% of the things that need to be done, that we'll have 80% of the impact to your business, including undeterred product execution. Stay close to your customers and your partners. Spend your cash judiciously. You know, be very careful on where you're spending your money to make it last. As long as you can ride this pandemic out and double down on being close to your partners and customers. Fortify your sales plans. Meet your customers where they are not where you thought they were, but where they really are and partner with them on this journey and partner with your supply chain. You're going to need that. So this is your time to really be a partner to them, as opposed to see how can you change them? No, no. The really partner with your supply chain Because you're gonna need that. >>Yeah, that's a very sound advice there, Sony. While we're talking advice that, you know, you're very successful career, I'm wondering what advice you would give the other women look at pursuing careers. In fact, specifically, if you know they wanted, you know, start a startup, be a founder, whether that in Silicon Valley or outside, what advice would >>you know? My advice would be to have an undeterred focus. Focus is extremely important. Look, I used to always remind me, Sony, when you're focused on two things, you're d focus. So focus on data. Focus, be driven. Believe in the vision that you have set out for yourself and your team on and keep your eye on the customer. I think in customers successful on your success. That's the message I would give. I would give that same message. My female and the male colleagues. >>Alright, well, we know that you and your team. Sony are very focused, so I'll give you the final word. Gives a little look forward if we go forward. You know, 18 to 24 months. What should we be expecting to see from PENSANDO and your solution? >>Well, in the next 18 to 24 months, we would like to meet and hopefully also exceed our customer's expectation in terms of product execution and the ramp off course. Profitability will be a very important aspect that we're going to keep a very close eye. I think it's too early to be thinking of an ideal, and our focus remains to be on customer success. We have been in the market for a little over. I was a little less than six months. Ah, with the product, September 2019 October 2019 is really when we launched the company on and, uh, the customer always is at the center of everything we do. So that's where we're gonna be focusing on product execution and ramp ramp off product, ramp off estimates. >>Well, so needy. And Dani, it's a pleasure to catch up with you. Thank you so much in the state. >>Thank you. You too. >>Alright. Be sure to check out the cube dot net for all the interviews, you can go see the launch videos that did at go back office in New York City from 2019. If you go to the cube dot net and many more interviews from Sony and her team, I'm stew Minimum. And thank you for watching you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Studios in Palo Alto and Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world. She is a co founder and also the business off of pensando. I just want to take a step back and, you know, understand, You know, how did you find yourself in the startup You know, I got involved with startup ventures as part of the Mpls team. the build and, you know, you talk about right How do you make some things that festival? bringing the product to market on how that maps into customers and partners what Pensando what are you know, those waves of change and the technology Uh, the applications is is you know, whether it's driven by technology trends You know, I think about, you know, when I've been watching edge computing for the last three It's another to bring it to life and having customers engaged with you during You know the update on the go to market, how you have. So I think it's, you know, it's very important that as a startup we stay very close to our And I guess we would love to hear a little bit about how you would compare the ability to do it in a power footprint, which is almost 1/3 that of what you would need on into my environment, and they manage everything and so you know, So I think that, you know, one of the things that becomes very important is that if I the 2008 you know, down in there, though you're in 2020 obviously the global endemic, of the things that need to be done, that we'll have 80% of the impact to your business, you know, you're very successful career, I'm wondering what advice you Believe in the vision that you have set out for yourself and Alright, well, we know that you and your team. Well, in the next 18 to 24 months, we would like to meet and hopefully also exceed our customer's And Dani, it's a pleasure to catch up with you. You too. Be sure to check out the cube dot net for all the interviews, you can go see the launch
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Sunil Dhaliwal, Amplify Partners | CUBEConversations, August 2019
>> from our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California. It is a cute conversation. >> Levan, Welcome to this Cube conversation. I'm John for a host of the Cube here in our Cube Studios in Palo Alto, California. Harder Silicon Valley world startups are happening on the venture capitalists air. Here we have with us. O'Neill, Deli Wall, Who is the general partner Amplify Partners and Founder co found with Mike Dauber. You guys have a very successful firm. I've known you since the beginning. When you started this firm. You guys were very successful on your third fund. Congratulations. Thank you. Great to see you. Thanks for coming in. It's always fun >> to be back. Yours? First time we're doing it in person. >> Local as it posted out of the conference. Yeah. Got our studio here. We're kicking off two days a week. Soon to be five days or weeks. Folks watching studio will be open for a lot more. Start up coverage. So great to have you in. And congrats on 10 years for you guys. 10 years of the Cube. 10th year of'em world would do in a big special. So nice we're excited. Well, for another great 10 years have been a lot of fun. A lot of interesting things happen those 10 years and again, you've been on the track to foot during that time. Yeah, on, by the way, Congratulations, fastly when public, thank you very much. And you also investing early investor in Data Dog, which you probably can't comment on, but they look like they're gonna go public. It's a great business >> and it's moving the right direction. And I think they got a lot of happy users. So there's more good stuff in the future for them. >> So you guys came out early, Made big bets. They're paying off two of them. Certainly one. Did another one come around the bikemore. Take it. Give us update on Amplify Partners Current fund. Third Fund gives the numbers. How much? What do you guys investing in with some of the thesis? What's the vision? >> Yeah, the vision is really simple. So amplify has been around from the beginning to work with technical founders. And really, if you wanted to stop there, you could you know, we're the people that engineers, academics, practitioners, operators that they go to get their first capital when they are thinking about starting a company or have a niche that they just feel the need to scratch. We tend to be first call for those folks a lot of times before they even know that they're going to start something. And so we've been doing that. Investing at seeding Siri's A with those people in these really technical enterprise markets now for seven years. Third fund most recent funds a $200,000,000 fund and that has us doing everything from crazy pie in the sky. First check into, ah, somebody with wild vision to now bigger Siri's a lead Rounds, which we're doing a lot more of two. >> So on the business model, just to get a clear personal congratulations Really good venturing by the way. That's what venture capital should be First money in, You know, people not doing the big round. So that's a congratulated, successful thank you now that you have 200,000,000 Plus, are you file doing follow on rounds? Are you getting in on the pro rat eyes? Are you guys following on? Because he's Sonny's big head, sir. Pretty, pretty big. >> Yeah, we've been doing that from the beginning and I think we've always wanted to be people who will start early and go along. We've invested in every round that fastly did we invested in every round that data dog did. So yeah, we're long term supporters and we can go along with the company's. But our differentiation isn't showing up and being the guys who were gonna lead your Siri's g round at a $3,000,000,000 valuation, which might as well be your AIPO were really there to help people figure out how to recruit a Kick ass team and figure out how to find product market fit and get that engine working >> and also help be a friend of the on the same side of the tables and rather than being the potentially out of the side. So the question is, I know you guys do step away and don't go on board. Sometimes you do. Sometimes you don't. Was there a formula there? Do you go on the boards as further in the round? You happy the relief? It's a >> mix of, uh, you know, we talked about a couple of these cos fastly. I've been on the board since Day zero and data dog. I was never on the board. And you know what we do tend to be those pretty active. So people come work with us when they go. I've got this vision. I know where I want to go. But when I think about the hard things I've got to do over the 1st 2 to 3 years of a company's life, you know who I want by my side and not the person who wants to be my boss or tell me what to do or tell me why they need to own 1/3 of my company or control four seeds on my board. But who kind of what's it wants to sit shoulder to shoulder with me and probably has a long list of companies that look just like mine. Uh, that tell me that they're going to decent partner. >> We've had a lot of fun together. You and Mike the team and fly. Great party. Great networking. You gotta do that. >> Thank you. Great. Great party. Should hopefully my >> tombstone. Well, you gotta have the networking, and that's always good. Catalyst. That lubricant, if they say, is to get people going. But you guys were hanging out with us and the big data space that had Duke World. We saw Cloudera got to activist board members. That's not looking good there. It's unfortunate big friend of Amer Awadallah, but what ended up happening was cloud Right Cloud kind of changed the game a little bit, didn't change big data as an industry was seeing eye machine learning booming. So, you know, big data had duped change certainly cloud our speculation. But looking back over those 10 years, you saw the rise of the cloud really become Maur of a force than some people thought that most people thought Dev Ops really became the cultural shift. If I had to point to anything over the 10 years, it's Dev Ops, which is implies day to talk about your reaction to that because certainly independent on enabler, but also change the game a bit. >> It has its exploded. There's a couple things in there, so I think there's been a lot of innovation that's coming in the cloud platforms. There's a lot of innovation that cloud platforms have sucked up. We look at that. A lot of guys who back startups, one of things we always say is Hey, is this a primitive? Is this an infrastructure primitive? Because if it is, it's probably gonna be best delivered by a big platform unless you're able to deliver a very compelling and differentiated solution or service around it. And that's different. You know, it's it's different than having a solely a a p I accessible primitive that, you know you would swap out with the next thing if it was, you know, two cents cheaper or 2% faster. So when I think about what's been happening in the cloud, this kind of cloud to, oh, phenomena starts coming up, which is a lot of hell that excited very early on. It was about storage and compute and the real basic building blocks. But now you see people building really compelling experiences for developers, for database engineers for application developed owners all the way up and down this stack that yeah, there cloud companies, but they look a heck of a lot like more like solutions. And, you know, we've mentioned a couple companies in our portfolio that air going great. But there there's a ton of companies that we admire. You know, I look at what the folks that at Hashi Corp have done and what they continue to do. You know what a great business in in security and in giving people automation and configuration that that hasn't been there before. That's a phenomenal I >> mean, monitoring you mentioned is a monitoring to point out going on, he said. Pager duty Got a dining trace. These companies public this year, both public, and you got more coming around the corner, you got analytics is turning. That's calling it mean monitoring has been around for a long time. Observe ability. Now it's observe ability is the monitoring two point. Oh, and that's taking advantage of this Dev Ops Growth. Yeah, this is really the big deal. >> Yeah, well, it's if you're really getting into. And what a lot of this comes down to is velocity, right? A lot of people are trying to deliver software faster, deliver it more reliably, take away the bottlenecks that air between the vision that a product person has the fingers on the keyboard and the delightful experience that a user gets and that has a lot of gates. And I think one of the things that Dev Ops is really enabled is how do you shrink that time? And when you're trying to shrink that time and you're trying to say, Hey, if someone's can code it, we can push it well, that's a great way to do things except if you don't know what you've pushed and things were failing. So as velocity increases, the need to have an understanding of what's going on is going right alongside of it. >> So I want to get your thoughts on enterprise scale because cloud 2.0, it really is about enterprise. You guys have invested in pure cloud native startups. You've invested a networking invested in open sores. You guys house will have, ah, struggle. You are. But I have a strong view on Dev, Ops and Cloud to point out. But the enterprise is now experiencing that, and you guys also done a lot of enterprise deals. What's the intersection of the enterprise as it comes in with cloud two point? Oh, you're seeing Intelligent Edge being discussed Hybrid multi cloud, these air kind of the structural big kind of battle grounds with the changes. How do you guys look at that? How do you invest in that? How do you look for startups in that area? >> Yeah, well, I think we invest in it by starting from the perspective of the customer. What's the problem? And the problem is, a lot of times people know their security. There's compliance. And a lot of cases. There's a legacy infrastructure, right? But the it's not a green field environment is nowhere more applicable than in the enterprise. And so when you think about customers that are gonna need to accommodate the investments the last five and 10 years as well as this beautiful new vision of what the future is, you know you're talking basically talking about every enterprise CEOs problems. So we think a lot about companies that can solve those riel clear enterprise pain points security. One of them, um, we've had a bunch of successful cloud security companies that have been acquired already. We've got great stuff in compliance and data management and awesome company like Integris. That's up in Seattle and in really making sure that projects and software works well with legacy and more traditional enterprise environments, companies like replicated down in L. A. Um, you know, those folks have really figured out what it means to deliver modern on premise software and modern on premise really is, you know, in your V p c in your own environment in your own cloud. But that's on Prem Now that is what on Prem really looks like no one's rack and stack and servers in the closet. It's cloud operations. But if you're going to do that and you're gonna integrate all those legacy investments you've made in an audit, Maxis control et cetera, and you wanna put that together with modern cloud applications, your sass vendors, et cetera. You know you can't really do that in the native cloud unless you can really make it work for the enterprise. >> What is some of the market basket sectors that you see? Where the market second half of our market sectors that have a market basket of companies forming around it? You mentioned drivability. Obviously, that's one we're seeing. Clear map of a landscape developed there. Yeah, okay. Is there other areas just seeing a landscape around this cloud to point out that that are either knew or reconfigurations of other markets? Machine learning What's what. The buckets? What the market's out there that people are clustering around with some of the big >> high level. Well, I think one of things you're gonna see talking about new markets and people people. There's a bunch of It'll tell you what's already happening in history today. But if you want to talk about what's coming, that isn't really on people's radar screen, I think there's a lot that's happening in machine learning and data science infrastructure. And if you're a cloud vendor in the public cloud today, you are really ramping up quickly to understand what the suite of offerings are that you're gonna offer to both ML developers as well as traditional, you know, non machine learning natives to help them incorporate. You know what is really a powerful set of tools into their applications, and that could be model optimization. It could be, um, helping manage cost and scalability. It could be working on explain ability. It could be working on, um, optimizing performance with the introduction of different acceleration techniques. All of that stack is really knew. You know, people gobbled up tensorflow from Google, and that was a great example of what you could do if you turned on ml specific. You know, tooling for for developers. But I think there's a lot more coming there, and we're just starting to see the beginning. >> It's interesting you bring this up because I've been thinking about this and I really haven't been talking about a publicly other than the cloud to point. It was kind of a generic area, but you're kind of pointing out the benefits of what cloud does. I mean, the idea of not having to provision something or invest a lot of cash to just get something up and running fast with this machine learning tooling that's the big problem was stacking everything up and getting it all built >> right goes back. The velocity were talking about earlier, right? >> So velocity is the key to success. Could be any category to be video. It could be, um, you know, some anything. So we're >> also seeing another. The other side of it is, is another form of velocity is we're going to Seymour that's happening and things that look like low code or no code, so lowering the barriers for someone doesn't have to be a true native or an expert in domain, but can get all the benefits of working with, Let's say, ml tooling, right? How do you make this stuff more accessible? So you don't need a phD from Berkeley or Stanford to go figure it out right? That's a huge market. That's just stop happening. We've got a ah phenomenal come way company in New York called Runway ML that has huge adoption. Their platform and their magic is Hey, here's how we're gonna bring ML to the creative class. If you're creative and you want to take advantage of ML techniques and the videos you're working on, the content that you're creating, maybe there's something you can do here at the Cube. You know, these guys were figure out how to do that and saying, Look, we know you're not a machine learning native. Here's some simple, primitive >> Well, this screen, you know, doesn't talk about video, but serious. We have a video cloud of people have seen it out there, demo ing, seeing highlights going around. But you bring up a good point. If we want to incorporate State machine learning into that, I can just connect to a service. I mean slack, I think, is the poster child for how they grew a service that's very traditional a message board put a great you around it. But the A P I integrations were critical for that. They've created a great way to do that. So this is the whole service is game. Yeah, this is the velocity and adding functionality through service is >> Yeah, And this is this this idea that, um the workflow is what matters. I think it has not traditionally been a thing that we talked a lot about an enterprise infrastructure. It was. Here's your tool. It's better than the previous two or three years ago. Throat the new ones by this one. And now people are saying, Well, I don't want to be wed to the tool. What I really want to understand is a process in a workflow. How should I do this? Right? And if I If I do that right, then you're not gonna be opinionated as to whether I'm using Jiro for you know, you're for managing issues or something else or if it's this monitoring the other. >> So I got to get the VC perspective on this because what you just said, she pointed out, is what we've been talking about as the new I p. The workflow is the I P. That translates to an application which then could be codified and scaled up with infrastructure, cloud and other things that becomes the I P. How do you guys identify that? Is that do you first? Do you agree with that? And then, too, how do you invest into that? Because it's not your traditional few of things. If that's the case, do you agree with it? And if you do, how do you invest in? >> I've modified slightly. It's the marriage of understanding that work flow with the ability to actually innovate and do something different. That's the magic. And so I'll give you a popular problem that we see amongst a lot of start ups that come see us. Uh, I am the best, and I'll pick on machine learning for a second. I've you know, I've got the best natural language processing team in this market. We're going to go out and solve the medical coding and transcription and building problem. Hey, sounds awesome. You got some great tech. What do you know about medical transcription and building? Uh, we gotta go hire that person. Do you know how doctors work? Do you know how insurance companies work. That's kind of Byzantine. How? You know, payers and providers, we're gonna work together. We'll get back to you that companies not gonna be that successful in the marriage of that work. >> Full knowledge. Good idea. Yeah, expertise in the work edge of the workflow. >> Well, traditionally, you get excited about the expertise in attack and what you realize in a lot of these areas. If you care about work full, you care about solutions. It's about the marriage of the two. So when you look across our portfolio in applied A I and machine learning, we've actually got shockingly nine companies now that are at the intersection of, um, machine intelligence and health care, both pre clinical and clinical. And people are like, Wow, that's really surprising for, ah, for an infrastructure firm or an enterprise focus firm, like amplifying we're going. No, you know, there's there's groundbreaking ML technology, but we're also finding that people know there's really high value verticals and you put domain experts in there who really understand the solutions, give them powerful tools, and we're seeing customers just adopted >> and that, unlike the whole full stack kind of integration if you're gonna have domain experts in the edge of that work flow, you have the data gathered. It's a data machine learning. I can see the connection. They're very smart, very clever. So I want to get your thoughts on two areas around this cloud to point. I think that come up a lot. Certainly machine learning. You mentioned one of them, but these other ones come up all the time as 2.0, Problems and opportunities. Cloud one. Dato storage, Computing storage. No problem. Easy coat away. Cloud two point. Oh, Networking Insecurity. Yeah, So as the cloud as everyone went to the cloud and cloud one dato there now the clouds coming out of the cloud on premise. So you got edge of the network. So intelligent edge security if you're gonna have low code and no could have better be secure on the cover. So this has become too important. Points your reaction to networking and security as an investor in this cloud. 2.0, vision. >> Yeah, there's different pieces of it. So networking The closer you go to the edge, you say the word ej and edges, you know, a good bit of it is networking, and it's also executing with limited resource is because we could debate what the edge means for probably three hours. >> Writing is very go there, but what it certainly means is you >> don't have a big data center. That's Amazon scale to run your stuff. So you've got to be more efficient and optimized in some dimension. So people that are really at the intersection of figuring out how to move things around efficiently, deliver with speed and reduce late and see giving platforms to developers at the edge, which, you know if you've one of the big reasons for faster going public was to bring their edge. Developments story out to the larger market. Um, absolutely agree with that as it as it relates to broader security. We're seeing security started, stop being a cyclical trend and started becoming a secular one pretty much at the moment the cloud exploded and those things are not, You know, it's not just a coincidence, as people got Maur comfortable with giving up control of the stuff that that had their arms around for years, a perimeter right at the same time that they say we're going through everything online and connect everything up and get over developers whatever they want and bringing all our partners to our. The amount of access to systems grew dramatically right. At the same time, people handed over a lot of these traditional work flows and processes and pieces of infrastructure. So, yeah, I think a lot of people right now are really re platforming to understand what it means to be to build securely, to deploy securely, to run securely. And that's not always a firewall rack and stack boxes and scan packets type of a game. >> Yeah, I'm serious, certainly embedded. And everything's not just part of the applications everywhere. That's native. Yeah, final question for you. What do you guys investing in now? What's the hot areas you mention? Machine learning? Give a quick plug for your key investments. What's the pitch? The entrepreneur? >> Yeah, so again are pitched. The entrepreneur really hasn't changed from Day zero, and I don't see it changing anytime in the future, which is if you're a world beating technologists, you know you want someone who understand what it's like to work with other world beating technologists and take him from start upto I po And that's the thing that we know how to do both in previous career is as well as in the history of Amplified. That's the pitch. The things that we're really excited right now is, um, what does it look like when the best academic experts in the world who understand new areas of machine learning, who are really able to push the forefront of what we're seeing in reinforcement, learning and machine vision and natural language processing are able to think beyond the narrow confines of what the tech can do and really partner of the domain experts? So there is a lot of domain specific applied A i N M l that we're really excited about thes days. We talked about health care, but that is just the tip of the iceberg we're excited about. Financialservices were excited about traditional enterprise work flows. I'd say that that's one big bucket. Um, we're is excited about the developer as we've ever been. >> You know, you and I were talking before he came on camera for the cube conversation. Around our early days in the industry, we were riffing on the O S. I, you know, open systems interconnect, stack if you look at what that did, Certainly it didn't always get standardize. That kind of dinner is up with T C p I p layer, but still, it changed. That changed the game in the computing industry. Now, more than ever, this trend that we're on the next 10 years is really gonna be about stacks involving and just complete horizontal scalability. Elastic resource is new ways to develop Apple case. I mean a completely different ball game. Next 10 years, your your view of the next 10 years as this 1000 flowers start to bloom with stacks changing in new application methods. How do you see it? Yeah, well, >> what Os? I was a great example of this trend that we go through every few months. So many years. You, you, somebody create something new. It's genius. It's maybe a little bit harder than it needs to be in. At some point, you wanted to go mass market and you introduce an abstraction. And the abstractions continue to work as ways to bring more people in and allow them not to be tough to bottom experts. We've done it in the technology industry since the sixties, you know, thank you. Thank you. Semiconductor world All the way on up. But now I think the new abstractions actually look a heck of a lot like the cloud platforms. Right? They're abstractions. People don't. People want toe. Say things like, I am going to deploy using kubernetes. I want a container package. My application. Now let me think from that level. Don't have don't have me think about particular machines don't have to think about a particular servers. That's one great example developments. The same thing. You know, when you talk about low code and no Koda's ideas, it's just getting people away from the complexity of getting down in the weeds. So if you said, What's the next 10 years look like? I think it's going to be this continual pull of making things easier and more accessible for business users abstracting, abstracting, abstracting and then right up into the point where the abstractions get too generalized and then innovation will come in behind it. >> As I always say in the venture business, cool and relevant works and making things simple, easy use and reducing the steps it takes to do something. It's always a winning formula. >> That's pretty good. Don't >> start to fund a consistent Sydney Ellen. Of course not. The cube funds coming in the next 10 years celebrating 10 years. Great to see you. And it's been great to have you on this journey with you guys and amplify. Congratulations. Congrats on all your success is always a pleasure. Appreciate it. Take care. Okay. I'm here with steel. Dolly. Well, inside the key studios. I'm John for your Thanks for watching.
SUMMARY :
from our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, I've known you since the beginning. to be back. Yeah, on, by the way, Congratulations, fastly when public, thank you very much. and it's moving the right direction. So you guys came out early, Made big bets. So amplify has been around from the beginning to work with technical founders. So on the business model, just to get a clear personal congratulations Really good venturing by the way. out how to recruit a Kick ass team and figure out how to find product market fit and get that So the question is, I know you guys do step away and don't go on board. And you know what we do tend to be those pretty active. You and Mike the team and fly. Thank you. But you guys were hanging out with us and the big data space that had Duke World. you know you would swap out with the next thing if it was, you know, two cents cheaper or 2% faster. both public, and you got more coming around the corner, you got analytics is turning. And I think one of the things that Dev Ops is really enabled is how do you shrink that time? How do you guys look at that? You know you can't really do that in the native cloud unless you can really make it work for What is some of the market basket sectors that you see? You know, people gobbled up tensorflow from Google, and that was a great example of what you could do I mean, the idea of not having to provision something or invest a lot of cash The velocity were talking about earlier, right? It could be, um, you know, some anything. So you don't need a phD from Berkeley or Stanford to go figure it Well, this screen, you know, doesn't talk about video, but serious. as to whether I'm using Jiro for you know, you're for managing issues or So I got to get the VC perspective on this because what you just said, she pointed out, is what we've been talking about as the new We'll get back to you that Yeah, expertise in the work edge of the workflow. So when you look across our portfolio in applied A I and machine learning, in the edge of that work flow, you have the data gathered. So networking The closer you go to the edge, you say the word ej and edges, So people that are really at the intersection of figuring out how to move things around efficiently, What's the hot areas you mention? you know you want someone who understand what it's like to work with other world beating technologists and take him from we were riffing on the O S. I, you know, open systems interconnect, stack if you look at what that did, We've done it in the technology industry since the sixties, you know, As I always say in the venture business, cool and relevant works and making things simple, easy use and reducing the steps That's pretty good. And it's been great to have you on this journey with you guys and amplify.
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Part 2: Andre Pienaar, C5 Capital | Exclusive CUBE Conversation, December 2018
[Music] Andre one of the things that have come up is your relation with Russia as we talked about so I have to ask you a direct question do you to work with sanctioned Russian entities or Russian companies shown we and c5 we do not work with any company that's sanctioned from any country including Russia and the same applies to me we take sanctions very very seriously the one thing you don't mess with is US sanctions which has application worldwide and so you always have to stay absolutely on the right side of the law when it comes to sanctions so nothing nothing that's something that's connection nets are trying to make they're also the other connection is a guy named Victor Vail Selberg Viktor Vekselberg Vekselberg to go with the Russian names as people know what is your relationship with Viktor Vekselberg so victim Viktor Vekselberg is a is a very well known Russian businessman he's perhaps one of the best known Russian businessman in the West because he also lived in the US for a period of time it's a very well-known personality in in in Europe he's a donor for example to the Clinton Foundation and he has aggregated the largest collection of Faberge eggs in the world as part of national Russian treasure so he's a very well known business personality and of course during the course of my career which has focused heavily on also doing investigations on Russian related issues I have come across Viktor Vekselberg and I've had the opportunity to meet with him and so I know him as a as a business leader but c5 has no relationship with Viktor Vekselberg and we've never accepted any investment from him we've never asked him for an investment and our firm a venture capital firm has no ties to Viktor Vekselberg so you've worked had a relationship at some point in your career but no I wouldn't on a daily basis you don't have a deep relationship can you explain how deep that relationship is what were the interactions you had with him so clarify that point so so I know Viktor Vekselberg and I've met him on more than one occasion in different settings and as I shared with you I served on the board of a South African mining company which is black owned for a period of a year and which Renova had a minority investment alongside an Australian company called South 32 and that's the extent of the contact and exposure I've had to so casual business run-ins and interactions not like again that's correct deep joint ventures are very kind of okay let's get back to c5 for a minute cause I want to ask you it but just do just a circle just one last issue and Viktor Vekselberg Viktor Vekselberg is the chairman of scope over the Russian technology innovation park that we discussed and he became the chairman under the presidency of President Dmitry Medvedev during the time when Hillary Clinton was doing a reset on Russian relations and during that time so vekselberg have built up very effective relationships with all of the or many of the leading big US technology companies and today you can find the roster of those partners the list of those partners on the scope of our website and those nuclear drove that yes Victor drove that Victor drove that during during in the Clinton Secretary of this started the scope of our project started during the the Medvedev presidency and in the period 2010-2011 you'll find many photographs of mr. vekselberg signing partnership agreements with very well known technology companies for Skolkovo and most of those companies still in one way or another remain involved in the Skolkovo project this has been the feature the article so there are I think and I've read all the other places where they wanted to make this decision Valley of Russia correct there's a lot of Russian programmers who work for American companies I know a few of them that do so there's technology they get great programmers in Russia but certainly they have technology so oracles they're ibm's they're cisco say we talked about earlier there is US presence there are you do you have a presence there and does Amazon Web service have a presence on do you see five it and that's knowing I was alright it's well it's a warning in the wrong oh sorry about that what's the Skog Obama's called spoke over so Andres Kokomo's this has been well report it's the Silicon Valley of Russia and so a lot of American companies they're IBM Oracle Cisco you mentioned earlier I can imagine it makes sense they a lot of recruiting little labs going on we see people hire Russian engineers all the time you know c5 have a presence there and does AWS have a presence there and do you work together in a TBS in that area explain that relationship certainly c5 Amazon individually or you can't speak for Amazon but let's see if I've have there and do you work with Amazon in any way there c-5m there's no work in Russia and neither does any of our portfolio companies c5 has no relationship with the Skolkovo Technology Park and as I said the parties for this spoke of a Technology Park is a matter of record is only website anyone can take a look at it and our name is not amongst those partners and I think this was this is an issue which I which I fault the BBC report on because if the BBC report was fair and accurate they would have disclosed the fact that there's a long list of partners with a scope of our project very well known companies many of them competitors in the Jedi process but that was not the case the BBC programme in a very misleading and deceptive way created the impression that for some reason somehow c5 was involved in Skolkovo without disclosing the fact that many other companies are involved they and of course we are not involved and your only relationship with Declan Berg Viktor Vekselberg was through the c5 raiser bid three c5 no no Viktor Vekselberg was never involved in c5 raiser Petco we had Vladimir Kuznetsov as a man not as a minority investor day and when we diligence him one of our key findings was that he was acting in independent capacity and he was investing his own money as a you national aniseh Swiss resident so you if you've had no business dealings with Viktor Vekselberg other than casual working c-5 has had no business dealings with with Viktor Vekselberg in a in a personal capacity earlier before the onset of sanctions I served on the board of a black-owned South African mining company and which Renault bombs the Vekselberg company as a minority investment alongside an Australian company called South 32 and my motivation for doing so was to support African entrepreneurship because this was one of the first black owned mining companies in the country was established with a British investment in which I was involved in and I was very supportive of the work that this company does to develop manganese mining in the Kalahari Desert and your role there was advisory formal what was the role there it was an advisory role so no ownership no ownership no equity no engagement you call them to help out on a project I was asked to support the company at the crucial time when they had a dispute on royalties when they were looking at the future of the Kalahari basin and the future of the manganese reserve say and also to help the company through a transition of the black leadership the black executive leadership of the cut year is that roughly 2017 so recently okay let on the ownership of c5 can you explain who owns c5 I mean you're described as the owner if it's a venture capital firm you probably of investors so your managing director you probably have some carry of some sort and then talk about the relationship between c5 razor bidco the Russian special purpose vehicle that was created is that owning what does it fit is it a subordinate role so see my capital so Jones to start with c5 razor boot code was was never a Russian special purpose vehicle this was a British special purpose vehicle which we established for our own investment into a European enterprise software company vladimir kuznetsov later invested as an angel investor into the same company and we required him to do it through our structure because it was transparent and subject to FCA regulation there's no ties back to c5 he's been not an owner in any way of c5 no not on c5 so C fibers owned by five families who helped to establish the business and grow the business and partner in the business these are blue chip very well known European and American families it's a small transatlantic community or family investors who believe that it's important to use private capital for the greater good right history dealing with Russians can you talk about your career you mentioned your career in South Africa earlier talk about your career deal in Russia when did you start working with Russian people I was the international stage Russian Russia's that time in 90s and 2000 and now certainly has changed a lot let's talk about your history and deal with the Russians so percent of the Soviet Union I think there was a significant window for Western investment into Russia and Western investment during this time also grew very significantly during my career as an investigator I often dealt with Russian organized crime cases and in fact I established my consulting business with a former head of the Central European division of the CIA who was an expert on Russia and probably one of the world's leading experts on Russia so to get his name William Lofgren so during the course of of building this business we helped many Western investors with problems and issues related to their investments in Russia so you were working for the West I was waiting for the West so you are the good side and but when you were absolutely and when and when you do work of this kind of course you get to know a lot of people in Russia and you make Russian contacts and like in any other country as as Alexander Solzhenitsyn the great Russian dissident wrote the line that separates good and evil doesn't run between countries it runs through the hearts of people and so in this context there are there are people in Russia who crossed my path and across my professional career who were good people who were working in a constructive way for Russia's freedom and for Russia's independence and that I continue to hold in high regard and you find there's no technical security risk the United States of America with your relationship with c5 and Russia well my my investigative work that related to Russia cases are all in the past this was all done in the past as you said I was acting in the interest of Western corporations and Western governments in their relations with Russia that's documented and you'd be prepared to be transparent about that absolutely that's all those many of those cases are well documented to corporations for which my consulting firm acted are very well known very well known businesses and it's pretty much all on the on the Podesta gaiting corruption we were we were we were helping Western corporations invest into Russia in a way that that that meant that they did not get in meshed in corruption that meant they didn't get blackmailed by Russia organized crime groups which meant that their investments were sustainable and compliant with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other bribery regulation at war for everyone who I know that lives in Europe that's my age said when the EU was established there's a flight of Eastern Europeans and Russians into Western Europe and they don't have the same business practices so I'd imagine you'd run into some pretty seedy scenarios in this course of business well in drug-dealing under I mean a lot of underground stuff was going on they're different they're different government they're different economy I mean it wasn't like a structure so you probably were exposed to a lot many many post-conflict countries suffer from predatory predatory organized crime groups and I think what changed and of course of my invested investigative career was that many of these groups became digital and a lot of organized crime that was purely based in the physical world went into the into the digital world which was one of the other major reasons which led me to focus on cyber security and to invest in cyber security well gets that in a minute well that's great I may only imagine some of the things you're investigated it's easy to connect people with things when yeah things are orbiting around them so appreciate the candid response there I wanna move on to the other area I see in the stories national security risk conflict of interest in some of the stories you seeing this well is there conflict of interest this is an IT playbook I've seen over the years federal deals well you're gonna create some Fahd fear uncertainty and doubt there's always kind of accusations you know there's accusations around well are they self dealing and you know these companies or I've seen this before so I gotta ask you they're involved with you bought a company called s DB advisors it was one of the transactions that they're in I see connecting to in my research with the DoD Sally Donnelly who is Sally Donnelly why did you buy her business so I didn't buy Sonny Donnelly's business again so Sally Tony let's start with Sally darling so Sally Donny was introduced to me by Apple Mike Mullen as a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Sally served as his special advisor when he was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Apple Mullen was one of the first operating parties which we had in c5 and he continues to serve Admiral Mullen the four start yes sir okay and he continues to serve as one of operating partners to this day salad only and that will Mike worked very closely with the Duke of Westminster on one of his charitable projects which we supported and which is close to my heart which is established a new veteran rehabilitation center for Britain upgrading our facility which dates back to the Second World War which is called Headley court to a brand-new state-of-the-art facility which was a half a billion dollar public-private partnership which Duke led and in this context that Ron Mullen and Sally helped the Duke and it's team to meet some of the best experts in the US on veteran rehabilitation on veteran care and on providing for veterans at the end of the service and this was a this was a great service which it did to the to this new center which is called the defense and national rehabilitation center which opened up last summer in Britain and is a terrific asset not only for Britain but also for allies and and so the acquisition she went on to work with secretary Manus in the Department of Defense yes in February Feb 9 you through the transaction yes in February 2017 Sally decided to do public service and support of safety matters when he joined the current administration when she left her firm she sold it free and clear to a group of local Washington entrepreneurs and she had to do that very quickly because the appointment of secretary mattis wasn't expected he wasn't involved in any political campaigns he was called back to come and serve his country in the nation's interest very unexpectedly and Sally and a colleague of us Tony de Martino because of their loyalty to him and the law did to the mission followed him into public service and my understanding is it's an EAJA to sell a business in a matter of a day or two to be able to be free and clear of title and to have no compliance issues while she was in government her consulting business didn't do any work for the government it was really focused on advising corporations on working with the government and on defense and national security issues I didn't buy Sonny's business one of c-5 portfolio companies a year later acquired SPD advisors from the owner supported with a view to establishing and expanding one of our cyber advising businesses into the US market and this is part of a broader bind bolt project which is called Haven ITC secure and this was just one of several acquisitions that this platform made so just for the record c5 didn't buy her company she repeat relieved herself of any kind of conflict of interest going into the public service your portfolio company acquired the company in short order because they knew the synergies because it would be were close to it so I know it's arm's length but as a venture capitalist you have no real influence other than having an investment or board seat on these companies right so they act independent in your structure absolutely make sure I get that's exactly right John but but not much more importantly only had no influence over the Jedi contract she acted as secretary mitosis chief of staff for a period of a year and have functions as described by the Government Accounting Office was really of a ministerial nature so she was much more focused on the Secretary's diary than she was focused on any contracting issues as you know government contracting is very complex it's very technical sally has as many wonderful talents and attributes but she's never claimed to be a cloud computing expert and of equal importance was when sally joined the government in february 17 jeddah wasn't even on the radar it wasn't even conceived as a possibility why did yet I cannot just for just for the record the Jedi contract my understanding is that and I'm not an expert on one government contracting but my understanding is that the RFP the request for proposals for the July contract came out in quarter three of this year for the first time earlier this year there was a publication of an intention to put out an RFP I think that happened in at the end of quarter one five yep classic yeah and then the RFP came out and called a three bits had to go in in November and I understand a decision will be made sometime next year what's your relationship well where's she now what she still was so sunny left finished the public service and and I think February March of this year and she's since gone on to do a fellowship with a think-tank she's also reestablished her own business in her own right and although we remain to be good friends I'm in no way involved in a business or a business deal I have a lot of friends in DC I'm not a really policy wonk of any kind we have a lot of friends who are it's it's common when it administrations turnover people you know or either appointed or parked a work force they leave and they go could they go to consultancy until the next yeah until the next and frustration comes along yeah and that's pretty common that's pretty cool this is what goes on yeah and I think this whole issue of potential conflicts of interest that salad only or Tony the Martino might have had has been addressed by the Government Accounting Office in its ruling which is on the public record where the GAO very clearly state that neither of these two individuals were anywhere near the team that was writing the terms for the general contract and that their functions were really as described by the GAO as ministerial so XI salient Antonia was such a long way away from this contact there's just no way that they could have influenced it in in in any respect and their relation to c5 is advisory do they and do they both are they have relations with you now what's the current relationship since since Sally and Tony went to do public service we've had no contact with them we have no reason of course to have contact with them in any way they were doing public service they were serving the country and serving the nation and since they've come out of public service we've we've not reestablished any commercial relationship so we talked earlier about the relation with AWS there's only if have a field support two incubators its accelerator does c5 have any portfolio companies that are actually bidding or working on the Jedi contract none what Santa John not zero zero so outside of c5 having relation with Amazon and no portfolios working with a Jedi contract there's no link to c5 other than a portfolio company buying Sally Donnelly who's kind of connected to general mattis up here yeah Selleck has six degrees of separation yes I think this is a constant theme in this conspiracy theory Jonas is six degrees of separation it's it's taking relationships that that that developed in a small community in Washington and trying to draw nefarious and sinister conclusions from them instead of focusing on competing on performance competing on innovation and competing on price and perhaps that's not taking place because the companies that are trying to do this do not have the capability to do so Andre I really appreciate you coming on and answering these tough questions I want to talk about what's going on with c5 now but I got to say you know I want to ask you one more time because I think this is critical you've worked for big-time company Kroll with terminus international market very crazy time time transformation wise you've worked with the CIA in Quantico the FBI nuclei in Quantico on a collaboration you were to know you've done work for the good guys you have see if I've got multiple years operating why why are you being put as a bad guy here I mean you're gonna you know being you being put out there with if you search your name on Google it says you're a spy all these evil all these things are connecting and we're kind of digging through them they kind of don't Joan I've had the privilege of a tremendous career I've had the privilege of working with with great leaders and having had great mentors if you do anything of significance if you do anything that's helping to make a difference or to make a change you should first expect scrutiny but also expect criticism when that scrutiny and criticism are fact-based that's helpful and that's good for society and for the health of society when on the other hand it is fake news or it is the construct of elaborate conspiracy theories that's not good for the health of society it's not good for the national interest is not good for for doing good business you've been very after you're doing business for the for the credibility people questioning your credibility what do you want to tell people that are watching this about your credibility that's in question again with this stuff you've done and you're continuing to do what's the one share something to the folks that might mean something to them you can sway them or you want to say something directly what would you say the measure of a person it is his or her conduct in c-five we are continuing to build our business we continue to invest in great companies we continue to put cravat private capital to work to help drive innovation including in the US market we will continue to surround ourselves with good people and we will continue to set the highest standards for the way in which we invest and build our businesses it's common I guess I would say that I'm getting out as deep as you are in the in term over the years with looking at these patterns but the pattern that I see is very simple when bad guys get found out they leave the jurisdiction they flee they go do something else and they reinvent themselves and scam someone else you've been doing this for many many years got a great back record c5 now is still doing business continuing not skipping a beat the story comes out hopefully kind of derail this or something else will think we're gonna dig into it so than angle for sure but you still have investments you're deploying globally talk about what c5 is doing today tomorrow next few months the next year you have deals going down you're still doing business you have business out there our business has not slowed down for a moment we have the support of tremendous investors we have the support of tremendous partners in our portfolio companies we have the support of a great group of operating partners and most important of all we have a highly dedicated highly focused group of investment teams of very experienced and skilled professionals who are making profitable investments and so we are continuing to build our business we have a very full deal pipeline we will be completing more investment transactions next week and we are continue to scalar assets under management next year we will have half a billion dollars of assets under management and we continue to focus on our mission which is to use private capital to help innovate and drive a change for good after again thank you we have the story in the BBC kicked all this off the 12th no one's else picked it up I think other journals have you mentioned earlier you think this there's actually people putting this out you you call out let's got John wheeler we're going to look into him do you think there's an organized campaign right now organized to go after you go after Amazon are you just collateral damage you mentioned that earlier is there a funded effort here well Bloomberg has reported on the fact that that one of the competitors for this bit of trying to bring together a group of companies behind a concerted effort specifically to block Amazon Web Services and so we hear these reports we see this press speculation if that was the case of course that would not be good for a fair and open and competitive bidding process which is I think is the Department of Defense's intention and what is in the interests of the country at a time when national security innovation will determine not only the fate of future Wars but also the fate of a sons and daughters who are war fighters and to be fair to process having something undermine it like a paid-for dossier which I have multiple sources confirming that's happened it's kind of infiltrating the journalists and so that's kind of where I'm looking at right now is that okay the BBC story just didn't feel right to me credible outlet you work for them you did investigations for them back in the day have you talked to them yes no we are we are we are in correspondence with the BBC I think in particular we want them to address the fact that they've conflated facts in this story playing this parlor game of six degrees of separation we want them to address the important principle of the independence of the in editorial integrity at the fact that they did not disclose that they expert on this program actually has significant conflicts of interests of his own and finally we want them to disclose the fact that it's not c5 and Amazon Web Services who have had a relationship with the scope of our technology park the scope of our technology park actually has a very broad set of Western partners still highly engaged there and even in recent weeks of hosted major cloud contracts and conferences there and and all of this should have been part of the story in on the record well we're certainly going to dig into it I appreciate your answer the tough questions we're gonna certainly look into this dossier if this is true this is bad and if there's people behind it acting behind it then certainly we're gonna report on that and I know these were tough questions thanks for taking the time Andre to to answer them with us Joan thanks for doing a deep dive on us okay this is the Q exclusive conversation here in Palo Alto authority narc who's the founder of c-5 capital venture capital firm in the center of a controversy around this BBC story which we're going to dig into more this has been exclusive conversation I'm John Tory thanks for watching [Music] you
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