>> From the SiliconANGLE Media office in Boston massachusetts, it's theCUBE. (techno music) Now, here's your host Stu Miniman. >> Hi, and welcome to a special CUBE conversation here in our Boston area studio. One of the biggest topics we've been digging into as we head through 2020, has really been multi-cloud and as the customers as they're really going through their own transformations understanding what they're doing in their data center to modernize what's happening between all of the public clouds they use, and all the services that fit amongst them. Happy to bring back one of our CUBE alumni to dig into a specific topic. Simon Taylor, who's the CEO of HYCU. Of course data protection, a big piece. A big buzz in the industry for a number of years, in one of those areas, in multi-cloud, that's definitely of big importance. Simon, great to see you, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you so much for having me back on, it's exciting to be here. >> All right, so, Simon, first, give us the update. >> Sure. >> It's 2020. We've seen you at many of the conferences we go to. You're based in Boston, so not to far for you to come out to our Boston area studio here. You know a 40 minute drive without traffic so, >> Not bad at all. >> give us the latest on HYCU. >> Certainly well and Stu, thanks again for having me into your studio, it's gorgeous, everything looks great. It's a lot easier than traveling over to Europe to see you. So this is very very convenient actually. But since we last spoke, which I think was about six months ago now, HYCU has been growing fast and furiously, you know we started out with the world's first purpose built backup and recovery product for Nutanix Of course, we added VMware we added Google Cloud, we wrapped all the data together into multi-cloud data protection as a service, and we called that HYCU Protege. Well I am so thrilled to announce that in just the three months since we've launched Protege, we have seen hundreds of customers flocking to it. And what we're finding is that customers are calling us and they're saying things like, "let me get this straight, "I'm already backing up my data on-prem with you, "I can now migrate to the cloud, "bring it back again for disaster recovery as a service, "and it's all part of HYCU?" and we say yes, you know, and they say, "and this is all offered as a service?" Yes, "and it's natively integrated "into all the platforms that I'm using?" Yes. And I think so customers today, are more and more in need of the kind of expertise that HYCUs providing because they're looking now much more strategically than ever before, at what workloads to leave on-prem and which workloads to migrate to the cloud, and they want to make sure that, that entire data pathway is protected from beginning to end. >> Yeah, it's really interesting stuff, I think back to early in my career that you know that data protection layer was like, "well, this is what I'm running "and don't change it." Think about like when you've rolled out like virtual tape as a technology it was, you know, "I don't want to have to change my backup "because that is just something that runs "and I don't do it." For last five years or so it feels like customers. There's so much change in their environment that they are looking for things that are more flexible, you talked about some of the flexible adoption models for payment and the like that they're looking for. So, you know, what do you think customers are just more embracing of that change, is it just that changes their daily business and therefore data protection needs to come along with that. Well it's funny you asked because just a few years ago I was on theCUBE with you and you said to me, "you guys have a perpetual license model, "what are you doing about that?" and I said, "don't worry, it is shifting to as a service it's going subscription," which was super important for the market is, I've had conversations with folks who are selling cooking gear and they're trying to sell that as a service, I saw yesterday, somebody, I think Panera Bread, is offering a coffee as a service. You know, I think what we've started to realize is that the convenience of the as a service model, the flexibility, which I would argue was probably driven by cloud technology and cloud technology adoption, is something the market has truly embraced and I think anybody who's not moved in that direction at this point is probably very much being left behind. >> Okay, another technology that often goes hand in hand in discussion with data protection is security. Of course ransomware is a hot topic conversation the last few years, how does that fit into your conversations with customers, what are you saying? >> That's a great question. So you know one of our advisory board members, his name is Kevin Powers, and he runs the Boston College cyber security program. I had the privilege and the honor of attending the FBI Boston College cyber program recently at a large scale event at Boston College, and FBI Director Ray was actually on hand to talk about this problem, and it was incredible you know he said, "cyber crime as a service "is becoming a major issue," you're talking about the commoditization of hard to build malware, that's now just skyrocketing off the charts, the amount of cyber exploitation that's going on across the world. This is creating massive massive issues for the FBI because they've got so many thousands of cases, they've got to deal with. And while they're doing a fantastic job. We believe prevention is certainly the key. So one of the things that has been really really wonderful as a CEO to watch has been the way that some of our customers have actually been able to crack the code in terms of not having to give in to these bad actors. We've had actual customers who have had ransomware attacks had millions of dollars in data, literally stolen from them, and they've been told, "you've got to deposit, "$5 million on this Bitcoin account by midnight, "or we're deleting the data." Right? Because HYCU is Linux based because HYCU is not Windows Server based because HYCU is natively integrated into all the platforms that we support. We were able to help those customers get their data back without paying a penny. So I think that that's one of those moments where you really sort of say to yourself, "God I'm glad I'm in this business here," we've built a product that doesn't just do what we say it's going to do, it does a heck of a lot more. And I think it's it's absolutely a massive problem and data protection is really a key part of the answer, >> You know it's great to hear their success stories there, you know I think back to earlier days where it'd be like well you know what if I set up for disasters and data protection and things like that, well maybe I haven't thought about it or maybe I kind of implemented it but I've never really tested it, but there's more and more reasons why I might actually need to leverage these technologies that I've deployed, and it's nice to know that they're there. You know it's not just an insurance thing that I've never used. >> Oh absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. >> All right. So I started off our discussion time in talking about multi-cloud So you talked about earlier we first first met it was at the Nutanix shows in their environments, and some of that you've gone along with Nutanix as they've gone through hybrid and multi-cloud what they call enterprise Cloud Messaging. >> Sure. >> And play with those environments so bring us up to speed. What have your big customers doing with cloud where does HYCU fit in and what are the updates on your product. >> Yeah, sure. And I'll start off by saying that at this point about a third of all AHV customers are using a HYCU for backup AND recovery. >> And just for our audience that doesn't know, AHV of course is Nutanix's >> Yes. >> Acropolis Hypervisor >> Absolutely. >> That comes baked into their solution as an alternative to people like VMware. >> Perfectly said as always sir, yes very much, and you know we've been thrilled as the rise of AHV and Nutanix has sort of taken the market by storm. And when we started out, you know we use to came on the show with zero customers and a new product and said, "we believe in AHV and we think it's going to be great "and we're going to back it up." And that's really paid off in spades for us, which was wonderful, but we also recognize that customers needed that VMware backups. We built a VADP integration and then we started going after the public cloud. So we started with Google Cloud, and we said we're going to build the world's first purpose built backup and recovery as a service for GCP. We launched that last year and it was tremendous you know some of the world's largest companies and organizations and governments are actually now running HYCU specifically for Google Cloud. So we've been thrilled about that. I think the management team at GCP has done a terrific job of making sure that Google can be really competitive in the cloud wars, and we're thrilled to support them. >> Yeah, and I'm glad you've got some customer stories on Google because you know the industry watchers out there it's like, "well you know Google they're number three," and you know we know that Google has some really strong data products Where they're very well known but I'm curious when you're talking to your customers. Is there anything that's kind of commonalities to why customers are using Google and you know what feedback you're hearing from your customers out there. >> Sure I mean I'll start off by saying this, we've polled our customers and we've now got over 1,300 customers in 56 countries. So we polled all of them and we just said, "how many data silos do you have, "how many platforms, how many clouds?" The average was five. Right, so the first thing to say is that I think almost all of these large enterprise customers in public sector and private sector are really using all of them, the extent to which they may be using AWS versus Azure versus GCP, versus Nutanix versus VMware on-prem. we can argue and debate but I think all customers at this point of any size and scale are trying them all out. I think what Google's done really well is they've started to build a really strong partner program. I think where they were a little bit sort of late to the party in terms of AWS and Azure being there sort of first. But I think what Thomas Kurian did when he came in is he sort of tripled down on sort of building out that ecosystem and saying, "what's really important "to make cloud customers comfortable "that their data is going to be as safe on Google Cloud, "as it was on-prem," and I'm thrilled that they've elected to make data protection sort of one of the key pillars of that strategy, not just because we're a data protection company, but because I do think that that was one of the encumbrances in terms of that evolution to cloud. >> Yeah, absolutely, seen a huge growth in the ecosystem around Google. The other big cloud provider that has a very strong partner ecosystem is the one when I went to the show last year, their CEO Satya Nadella talked about trust, so of course talking about Microsoft and Azure, very large ecosystem there, trying to emphasize, maybe against others and by the way you saw this as much of a shot against Google >> Sure. >> you know, how do I trust Google with my data and information from the consumer side as AWS is I might be concerned that they might be competing against them. So, how about the Microsoft relationship? >> It's a great question. So again, so when we started on-prem, with our initial purpose built backup recovery products. We added Google Cloud. You know I'm now thrilled to announce that we're also going to be launching Azure backup and recovery. It's also native, it is purpose built into the Azure Marketplace. All the things you've come to expect from HYCU backup. The simplicity, the fact that it's SLO based. The fact that you can actually go in and decide how many times a day you want a different recovery point et cetera. All of those levels of configuration are now baked in to HYCUs own purpose built backup and recovery as a service for Azure. But I think the important thing to remember about this wonderful wonderful new addition to our portfolio. Is that, it is a critical component of HYCU Protege. So getting back to your question from before about multi-cloud data protection and what we're seeing, we call this the year of migration, because for all of these cloud platforms, what are they really trying to do they need to move massive amounts of data in a safe and resilient manner, to the cloud. So remember after we built out these purpose built backup recovery services, Azure is now one of those. We then pulled all that data together under a single pane of glass we called it HYCU Protege. We then said to customers, we're going to enable you to automatically migrate with the touch of a button an entire workload to the cloud, and then bring it back again for disaster recovery, and we will protect the data on-prem in the cloud and back again. >> Yeah, it's interesting 'cause when we kind of look at what's happening in the marketplace, for many years it was a discussion of what's moving from the data center to the public cloud, some things are moving back from the environment edge, of course, pulls things even further. Often it's, I say it's not even migration anymore it's just mobility, because we are going to be moving things and spinning things up and building things in many more places, and it's going to change. As we started out that conversation, there's so much change going on that so you're giving customers some optionality there, so that this isn't just a one way, you know, let's stick it on a truck put it on this thing and get it to that environment but I need to be able to enable some of that optionality and know what I'm doing today but also knowing that you know six months a year from now, we know things are going to be different >> Yes, yes! >> And in each of these some of those environments. >> Absolutely. We call it the three Ds data assurance, data mobility, and disaster recovery. So I think the ability to not only protect your data, whether it's on-prem as it journeys to the cloud or whether it's in the cloud, the ability to actually assist the customer in the migration. And what I hear time and time again is, "oh but Azure has a tool," or "Google has a tool for migration." Of course they have tools for migration, but I think the challenge for customers is, how do I affect that data resiliency, how do I ensure that I can move the data as a complete workload. Moving an entire SAP HANA instance, for example, to the cloud. And it protected the entire time as it journeys up there, and then bring it back for the disaster recovery without professional services. Because again, you know HYCU it's about simplicity, we want to make sure that these customers can get the same level of readiness, the same ease of deployment that they get from their cloud vendor, when they're thinking about the data protection and the migration. >> All right, I want to click down one layer >> Please. >> in here. We're talking about multi-cloud, you talk about simplicity. >> Sure. >> Well, Kubernetes might not be the simplest thing out there but it absolutely is a fundamental piece of the infrastructure in a multi-cloud environment so you know your partners, Google with GKE, Azure with AKS and >> And Carbon. >> Carbon with a K from Nutanix everyone now, I say it's not about distributions it's really every platform that you're going to use is going to have Kubernetes built into it so what does that mean from a data protection standpoint? Do you just plug into all of these environments you've tested it got customers using it? >> It's a great question it comes up, as you can imagine, all the time. I think it's something that is becoming more and more ready for prime time. A lot of the major vendors are moving to it, making heavy investments in Kubernetes, we ourselves have over 100 customers that are actively using Kubernetes in one form or another and backing the data up using HYCU so there's no question in my mind that HYCU is Kubernetes ready. I think what's really exciting for us is some of the native integrations we're working on with Google and with Nutanix so whether it's Carbon whether it's GKE, we want to make sure that when we work with these platforms that we mimic, how the platform is supporting Kubernetes, so that our customers can get the same experience from HYCU that they're getting from the platform provider itself. >> All right, Simon want to give you the final word. Bring us inside your customers what they're doing with multi-cloud and where HYCU fits there, here in 2020. Sure, we talked about prime time. Cloud for many years has been something that I think large enterprises have talked a big game about, but have been really dipping their toe in the water with. What we've seen the last two years, is a massive massive at scale migration to the largest three public clouds, whether that's GCP, whether that's Azure or the other one. (laughing) We're thrilled to support GCP and Azure because GCP and Azure, we believe do provide the most value to our customers. But I think the name of the game here is not just supporting a customer in the cloud, it's understanding that every customer today is to is on a journey, whether they're on-prem, whether their journeying to cloud or they're in cloud those three Ds, data assurance, which is our backup, data mobility, which is the automated migration, or disaster recovery readiness. That's the name of the game and that's how HYCU wants to help. >> All right, Simon Taylor. Always a pleasure to catch up with you thank you so much for the HYCU updates, >> Stu thanks so much for having us on. >> All right, be sure to check out www.thecube.net for all of our inventory of the shows that we've been at the videos we've done, you can even search on keywords in companies, I'm Stu Miniman and thank you for watching theCUBE. (Techno Music)

(upbeat happy music) >> Hello, and welcome to a special CUBEConversations here at theCUBE Studio in Palo Alto. I'm John Furrier here for a special Women in Tech and Technovation conversation with Tara Chklovski founder and CEO of Iridescent also runs TechNation and Anar Simpson global ambassador of TechNation. Great Women in Tech conversation and you guys have done amazing work, you're both rock stars. Thanks for spending the time. We just had a great chat about your event you had the 2017 World Pitch competition for girls in entrepreneurship in coding and everything else. Congratulations, so tell us about Technovation. What do you guys do and you guys are doing some amazing work. Tara start us off, where are you guys and what's going on? >> So Technovation is the world's largest technology entrepreneurship program for girls and girls aged middle school and high school are challenged that you have to find a problem in your community, to learn how to code a mobile application and learn how to start a startup from scratch all the way to the pitch video business plan. And through that process they are partnered with a woman in tech mentor and they go through a hundred hour learning experience. At the end of it they have to submit their apps and business plans for judging, and we have thousands of judges who are experts in tech from all over the world, review those and then we have a quarter final, semi final and then the big World Pitch competition that was held last week here in Silicon Valley. >> And this sounds so progressive and cutting edge. It sounds like what Palo Alto high school would do with Menlo and Sacred Heart and Castilleja, but this is not just Silicon Valley this is, I mean talk to us a little bit about the scope of the program. How do people get involved? Share some of the data. >> Yeah, totally, and so it is all over the world. We run in a hundred different countries, primarily brought and expanded through our work that our global ambassador Anar has done, and most of it is really trying to bring girls who would have never been exposed to technology entrepreneurship careers. And the way we work is really through partnerships, amazing organizations and visionary leaders who do the hard work of actually supporting these girls, getting these girls interested. So these girls would typically never go into careers in tech because they never see themselves as being interested and so the hook is that you want to find a problem in your community. You have to go out, talk to people, try to understand what is a big problem that is worth solving, and then we say, "Oh by the way, you know you could solve "this problem using technology." And so you get in a whole another group of people that would not normally access these careers. >> So is it an application process? Is it in the US? >> Anybody can. >> So anyone in the US. >> Anybody. >> So my daughter who wants to get some community hours could actually go take it to a whole other level. >> Totally, so you can just register. We haven't launched the new season yet but it'll be out live in October. Sign up, find a team of girls, and there's actually a documentary, an award-winning documentary done about the program. So the same woman who did Inconvenient Truth wanted to profile Women in Tech and she did a whole documentary about Technovation and it's called CodeGirl and you can get it on any online video platform. >> That's awesome, well congratulations. It's super impressive work, very inspirational. And Anar, you're bringing the global perspective in and we were talking before we came on camera that you had a goal. Share with us your five year goal and an update of where you are in taking this out beyond the United States. >> Sure, so you know five years ago I was a mentor for Technovation. It was my first time and it was an amazing experience, and we won in the local competition and the regional competition and then placed third in the final competition. And after that I had a conversation with Tara about the amazing experience that I had, and we were chatting and she said she'd love to take this globally. And being the type A enthusiast that I am, I said oh, well okay that's fine, you know, I come from Kenya. I've lived in Canada, so we've got three-- >> John: The perfect mix. >> Yeah, three countries already, but I'm sure we can take it global. Well in fact with our work together, I was able to take Technovation to 18 countries in the first year, 34 countries in the second year, 72 countries in the third year and this year we're at over a hundred countries. And it hasn't been an easy road. We keep saying this to each other, we just keep trying. Our focus is on getting this program. We don't get caught into anything politics or any otherwise, and we just want to get to as many girls as we can. And as Tara said, partnerships have played an immense role in getting Technovation all over the world. So initially it was just cold calls, people I knew in Kenya, people I knew in Canada, people I knew in LinkedIn, my little circle. But then my circle got bigger and bigger and then lots and lots of opportunities presented themselves and one of them was the Tech Women program that's run by the State Department. They bring in senior technical women to Silicon Valley for an internship and then I said to them, Oh and when they go back home, what do they do? Shouldn't they do Technovation? And so we've done good partnerships with them, we've done a good partnership with the UN women. We've been profiled in the United Nations high-level panel report, and these things keep happening and the... But it's not just because of the community or the relationships we're building. Our program works. It is credible. Our impact reports show that these girls end up in tech-related fields as they progress, and that's the whole point of our purpose, right? Is to say look, girls everywhere should be entering technology fields and what Technovation does it it's building a pipeline of young girls to enter these careers all over the globe. >> Well it's no secret that the folks that know me and watch theCUBE and know the show know that I'm a huge proponent for computer science and you know it's kind of similar, we kind of fell into that in the '80s. It's now become very interesting in that the surface area for computer science has increased a lot, and it's not just coding heads down and squashing bugs and writing code. There's been a whole nother evolution of soft skills, Agile, Cloud, you're seeing a full transformation with the potential unlimited compute available. With mobile now 10 years plus into the iPhone, you see new infrastructure developing. So it creates the notion that okay, you can bring the science of computers to a whole nother level. That must be attractive as you guys have that capability to bring that to bear in the programs. Can you guys comment on how you guys see just the role of computer science playing out? This is not a gender thing, just more of, as I have a young daughter I try to say it's not just writing code you can certainly whip out a mobile app but it's really bringing design to it or bringing a personal passion that you might have. So what are some of the patterns you're seeing in this surface area of what's now known as computer science? >> I think it's super important because as technology has progressed we've been able to provide this program. If we were still programming with you know, the in front of screens and doing the what you see is what you get kind of thing without, we would not be there. I think the big thing that's happened in the last 10 years is the mobile phone. I mean if you find a girl anywhere today in the world, chances are she'll have a mobile phone on her and she's going to be loathe for you to take that one thing from her. You could take other things from her, but try taking that phone away from her, she will not let you. And so the fact that she's so attached to that mobile phone means that you can then tell her, hey you don't have to be just a consumer of that thing. You can be a producer of that thing. Anything that you see on there, you can actually design. This is power. This is your thing to good and great and better, and if we can shift that in their minds that this is their link to the world that's wide open, we're seeing that. >> Well the world in consumed by it, I mean a lot of women in the world will be consumers of product. Certainly with AI, the conversation over the weekend I was having with folks is the role of women. It's super important not just in AI, but as software becomes cognitive, you have to align with half the audience that's out there. So it'd be hard for a guy to program something that's going to be more oriented towards a woman. But it brings up the question of application, and whether it's self-driving cars or utility from work to play and everything in between. Software, and the role of software's going to be critical and that seems to be pretty clear. The question is how do you inspire young girls? That's the question that a lot of fellow males that I talk to who are fathers of daughters and or are promoting Women in Tech and see that vision, what are some of the inspiration areas? How do you really shake the interest and how do you have someone really kind of dig in and enjoy it and taste it and feel it? >> Right, right. >> So there is some research to back what the formula is that works and to drive change in behavior. And so there is this, one of the biggest sort of names in cognitive psychology is Albert Bandura. He's a professor at Stanford. But basically it's the same principles that drives say the addiction from alcohol or weight loss or any kind of new behavior change. So the first is you need to have exposure to someone who you respect showing that this is something of meaning. So the key words are someone you respect, right? And so media can play a very big role here for scale, right otherwise it's only maybe your teacher or your parent and if they're not exposed to technology, they can't really affect your, and so media can play a huge role there. Second is the experience itself, right. Like how do you make it easy to get started, and then it's like learning from video games, right. So you make it very very easy, like the first step is just come over here it'll be fun, there's pizza, come right, like your friends are coming. But then the feedback has to be very fast, so the first step and that's where a good curriculum matters, right. So that's where also working on a mobile phone is very appealing even though many apps is-- >> John: It's relatable. >> It's relatable but the feedback is instantaneous, and so the programming language that the girls use is block based so even though you don't have any prior programming background you can still build a working app so that's critical. Then human beings get tired very easily and so the feedback needs to keep changing. It has to be unpredictable. The third piece is that of expectations, and so you have to have very high expectations, and so that's why this current discussion around cognitive differences in gender I feel is missing the point because it's not what you're born with, what are you capable of? And so if we looked at our genetics we would never go to space, we would never go to the deepest parts of the ocean because we are not meant for that, right? But we had really high visions and expectations and so human beings rose to that. And then the last piece is less relevant in developed countries but it's still important so, it's sort of the human energy. We are not a brain dissociated from the body. We are connected, right, and so if you're hungry and tired and sleepy, not the right time to sort of make a dramatic change in your interests. So this is relevant, if for us, we try to figure out which countries are we going to work in, so post conflict, war torn areas are not the best areas to start a new program in. You need the right partners. >> So you're saying the biological argument of, of course they're different, men and women. >> Yes. >> But it's the capability, that's where people are missing the boat. >> And the support system, right? So have high expectations, provide them with the right support, but the most important thing is your own beliefs in that. >> Let's get your thoughts on that because I think you guys have a great program with Technovation. You mentioned mentors, key part of the formula most likely. What we hear in the conversations I've had with women peers has been you know, there's a real call to arms at the executive level now, folks my age in their fifties who made it who are there succeeding. They really want to give back and they really have recognized the value of having that peer mentorship and then inspiring the young generation. Whether it's part of the things we cover like Grace Hopper or Technovation things that you do. Or even just mentoring in their own communities. What does that mentorship look like that you guys see, that you'd like to see doubled down on or areas you'd like to see tweaked or perceptions that need to change. What's your thoughts on mentorship and the role of inspiring young girls? >> Mentorship from men? >> John: Men and women, I mean. >> From both. >> John: Well I see the mentoring with women, that's the first step. >> Right. >> I have a whole nother conversation in my opinion that the men need training. Not just like go to class and learn how to talk but how to empathize. >> Well my big thing has been that you know when you wanted to encourage women up the ladder in your companies or you want to encourage women to actually get in to technical roles. That intent should not be placed in the CSR department of your organization 'cause that speaks volumes, right. To say oh, well that's in the social responsibility department or the HR, that just says okay, so you're not really, you don't think we're capable of helping you with your product or service. We're sort of part of this and it's like, no, you know. So I think you want to mainstream it, which is what a lot of I and D things are trying to do now. >> John: Inclusion and diversity. >> Inclusion and diversity techs. >> To make it part of the fabric not a department checkbox. >> Exactly, and-- >> That's what you're getting at right? >> Exactly, and you know the evolvement of these departments to include everybody and to make it more diverse is going to be not frictionless, it will be friction until a time where it won't even be necessary. I and D departments should have one goal, which is to work themselves out of a job. If they can work themselves out of a job, then the company would have done what it needs to be done. But I think-- >> John: Meaning it's self sufficient, it's self governing. People are humans, there's respect for individuals. >> Yes. >> I mean this is basically comes down to if you look at it as humans it takes, every conversation could be tabled as, what? There's a person on the other side, it's a human being. Not a woman or a white male or whatever. >> And you know-- >> There's not there yet, but I mean certainly that would be the end game, so in that scenario that department's out of business the I and R, the inclusion and diversity department has done it's job. >> You don't need one, because exactly. You don't need one because you know, you're okay, and I think capabilities is really important. In corporations, and this isn't anybody's fault. This is just how it's been done. This has just been the culture of it, right? Who gets invited to which meetings? Who gets invited to which conferences, right? And so we heard the CEO of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki saying you know, she had to sort of elbow a little bit to say why am I not allowed at a certain conference? And it's like, maybe just wake up to that and say, well why aren't you involving more people at conferences and think tanks because you know, I come from a oil and gas background, and people used to do a lot of deals on the golf course because oil and gas people play golf a lot and a lot of deals used to happen. Well in the Valley we don't play golf a lot but we do do other things, conferences or get togethers and if you don't include the people in your team as groups or representationally well then they're not going to be there when you make these decisions. So maybe just be a little bit-- >> Exclusionary is a problem and Kleiner Perkins was taken to task. They had ski trips apparently planned and they didn't, well mostly guys and they didn't invite the woman partner. It was a big scandal. This is where they kind of make that, it's a normative thing they've got to change the norms. >> It's change the norms and if you actually want your company which is made of all kinds of people, to move really far ahead, don't be like that. Include everybody because the only goodness about that is you'll go forward. You don't include somebody, well you're going to hurt them and then they won't be able to contribute because they just can't and then your product or your service is going to fail. It's really simple. >> You mentioned the Susan Wojcicki post, was an article in Fortune magazine where she wrote a guest article and she mentioned her daughter. >> Yes. >> Was feeling the narrative which by the way changed from the original Google memo to have a different meaning, but that's what she heard. So the question to you guys that I have on that is with Technovation and the work that you're doing, you're exposed to a lot of the ecosystem, across the world not just in the US from young girls. >> Yes. >> They see what's coming down from the top or the media, so certainly it's the game of telephone as things translate down to the level of the girls. Is there a pattern that you see emerging in their eyes as they look at this nonsense of narratives that are moving around. It's kind of a moving train the narrative of gender, Women in Tech but ultimately they have to internalize it and what patterns do you see and what do you guys do to either nullify that misperception and how do you amplify the real perceptions? >> Can I take that one? I was in Nairobi at the Safaricom headquarters. I don't know if you know Safaricom but these are the people who came up with M-PESA, and this is the currency that you can do on your mobile phone and Kenya uses M-PESA, like almost everybody in Kenya uses M-PESA. So Safaricom is a big tel-co and it's a big deal in Kenya, and Safaricom has taken Technovation, it has embraced Technovation in a big way. And the people who embraced Technovation at Safaricom in a big way are both male. So Josephine who is a tech woman fellow who came here and then went back and started Technovation. Her director, Clibeau Royal, he's male and the CEO of Techno, CEO of Safaricom is Bob Collymore and he's also male and these men, if I could clone these men in every country with every company you would see this sort of moving away and shifting away that women aren't good engineers or can't be good engineers. They are embracing it in such a way, not because they like Technovation because they know for their business having more women and equal women and a diverse company is making their product and their goods better. >> John: Yeah, their arbitraging the labor pool, why would you ignore talent? >> Exactly. >> Whether they're over 50 or they're women, it doesn't matter. >> I want to add to that, so there's quite a bit of data, so the pattern's are not anything different from what the message girls get from school and parents, right. So if you look at the data, there are a hundred countries that legally discriminate against women. And so what industry, what message industry is telling is really firstly doesn't filter through to the larger population. Silicon Valley is a completely different bubble. But overall the message is girls are given is like, this is not for you, right, and so especially in some of the more sort of populous dense countries in the world. And so we have to fight a lot of these kinds of perceptions from the ground up, and the number one sort of gatekeeper is the father and so a key part of what we have now done to date is to provide sort of education and training to the parents because... There's a very moving story that, we work in a remote town in South India and a mentor who's very dedicated has been trying to get these girls to participate in Technovation. He did that and then there were, one girl was actually offered a job but the father kept sort of saying no, not needed, no girl in my family ever needs to work, but he fought it. And then so then the girl actually gets a job, and then a year later the father calls the mentor and said, "You know what, I'm so grateful that you did it "because a day after she got the job I got hit in "an accident and I lost my job." But it's these kind of perceptions that have to be changed one person at a time, which is what makes this very hard. Unless you actually are able to get the media to change sort of the messaging. And I think in the US which is, there is some very interesting studies on that question, right. If you were to think, would there be more women in STEM in poorer developing countries versus richer highly developed countries, where would you see more women in STEM? The answer is actually the women in poorer countries like Iran, Malaysia. The reason is because in an individualistic society like in the US where there's a lot of emphasis on materialistic but it's also about are you happy? The conversation has changed to, from parents telling children do what makes you happy, and then you're very prone to advertising, and advertising works when it's highly targeted and highly gendered. And so in the '60s there was no such thing as pink and blue, now there is pink and blue, right? And so now we have just made our entire society entirely susceptible to advertising, and girls are passive and compliant and boys are aggressive. And so then when you are looking at the board structures, there's no, it's very very hard to fix the problem right there, right? You have to go down deeper because you don't get leaders who are compliant, maybe secretaries are compliant. But you have to fix the message that teachers give girls, that parents give their baby girls when they're born. And so industry is just sort of in the spotlight right now, but the issue is not that of industry it's also that of society. >> Industry (mumbles) are supporting you guys is interesting that this industry seems to be chipping, and certainly Silicon Valley's a little bit different as you said, but in general it is a cultural parent thing. Any plans there with Technovation to have a parent track? (laughing) >> Yes totally, I mean I think right now 10% of parents actually volunteer to be mentors, kind of like say Girl Scout troop leaders and so we are trying to figure out okay what is a way to involve parents and to make them part of the discussion. >> Well we'll keep the conversations going with Technovation you guys do incredible work. I'll just end the segment here by just telling a little bit about what you're working on right now? What are your goals? What are you passionate about? What are some of the things you'd like to do in the next half of the year, next year? What are some of the things going, Tara, you start. >> I think for us is to go deeper, so we are just launching a partnership with MIT to increase sort of the rigor of the curriculum, the rigor of the training and also provide more personalized learning and so this is the power of technology so we don't want to have girls drop out of the program because it's a hard program. So really trying to bring the best from industry to support that. >> Right and so you know my goal is to get Technovation to all the countries in the world, but keeping in mind we're making sure that it's delivered in a really good way and so girls complete the program et cetera, and the model that I hope to replicate in many other countries is the model that we're trying within Canada. So the new Canadian government is very interested in making sure that all of its citizens are you know, innovative, ready for the technology change that's coming there, and they launched a new fund called CanCode and so we have been part of that application process and we hope to have Technovation in almost every city in Canada, across Canada, and to really get this going and we, right now Canada is, everybody's like, you know, favorite country. And we hope that if we can do this in Canada, then other countries will follow and so that this program will get to as many girls as it can. >> Well you know how I feel. I feel computer science training in general should be standard in curriculums, because of all the conversation around automation. Automation is the fear is that jobs will go away. The data we have from our research over at Wikibon shows that the billions being automated away is non-differentiated labor. >> Right. >> Which implies that a working knowledge of those machines will shift to the value side. So you know I'm on the pro side of AI and automation personally. Especially I think it's great for-- >> But there's an education side too. >> There's the education side and I think this is a real fun area. You guys are at the cutting edge of it, both doing great work. I appreciate you taking the time and we'll have you back in for an update. Tara, Inar thanks so much. This is theCUBE Conversation here in Palo Alto I'm John Furrier thanks for watching. (upbeat happy music)