(bright music) >> Hello everyone, welcome today's session for the "AWS Startup Showcase" presented by theCUBE, featuring ThoughtSpot for this track and data and analytics. I'm John Furrier, your host. Today, we're joined by Victor Chang, VP of ThoughtSpot Everywhere and Corporate Development for ThoughtSpot. Victor, thanks for coming on and thanks for presenting. Talking about this building interactive data apps through ThoughtSpot Everywhere. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you, it's my pleasure to be here. >> So digital transformation is reality. We're seeing it large-scale. More and more reports are being told fast. People are moving with modern application development and if you don't have AI, you don't have automation, you don't have the analytics, you're going to get slowed down by other forces and even inside companies. So data is driving everything, data is everywhere. What's the pitch to customers that you guys are doing as everyone realizes, "I got to go faster, I got to be more secure," (laughs) "And I don't want to get slowed down." What's the- >> Yeah, thank you John. No, it's true. I think with digital transformation, what we're seeing basically is everything is done in the cloud, everything gets done in applications, and everything has a lot of data. So basically what we're seeing is if you look at companies today, whether you are a SaaS emerging growth startup, or if you're a traditional company, the way you engage with your customers, first impression is usually through some kind of an application, right? And the application collects a lot of data from the users and the users have to engage with that. So for most of the companies out there, one of the key things that really have to do is find a way to make sense and get value for the users out of their data and create a delightful and engaging experience. And usually, that's pretty difficult these days. You know, if you are an application company, whether it doesn't really matter what you do, if you're hotel management, you're productivity application, analytics is not typically your strong suit, and where ThoughtSpot Everywhere comes in is instead of you having to build your own analytics and interactivity experience with a data, ThoughtSpot Everywhere helps deliver a really self-service interactive experience and transform your application into a data application. And with digital transformation these days, all applications have to engage, all applications have to delight, and all applications have to be self-service. And with analytics, ThoughtSpot Everywhere brings that for you to your customers and your users. >> So a lot of the mainstream enterprises and even businesses from SMB, small businesses that are in the cloud are scaling up, they're seeing the benefits. What's the problem that you guys are targeting? What's the use case? When does a potential customer or customer know they get that ThoughtSpot is needed to be called in and to work with? Is it that they want low code, no code? Is it more democratization? What's the problem statement and how do you guys turn that problem being solved into an opportunity and benefit? >> I think the key problem we're trying to solve is that most applications today, when they try to deliver analytics, really when they're delivering, is usually a static representation of some data, some answers, and some insights that are created by someone else. So usually the company would present, you know, if you think about it, if you go to your banking application, they usually show some pretty charts for you and then it sparks your curiosity about your credit card transactions or your banking transactions over the last month. Naturally, usually for me, I would then want to click in and ask the next question, which transactions fall into this category, what time, you know, change the categories a bit, usually you're stuck. So what happens with most applications? The challenge is because someone else is asking the questions and then the user is just consuming static insights, you wet their appetite and you don't satisfy it. So application users typically get stunted, they're not satisfied, and then leave application. Where ThoughtSpot comes in, ThoughtSpots through differentiation is our ability to create an interactive curiosity journey with the user. So ThoughtSpot in general, if you buy a standalone, that's the experience that we really stand by, now you can deliberate your application where the user, any user, business user, untrained, without the help of an analyst can ask their own questions. So if you see, going back to my example, if it's in your banking app, you see some kind of visualization around expense actions, you can dig in. What about last month? What about last week? Which transactions? Which merchant? You know, all those things you can continue your curiosity journey so that the business user and the app user ask their questions instead of an analyst who's sitting in the company behind a desk kind of asking your questions for you. >> And that's the outcome that everyone wants. I totally see that and everyone kind of acknowledges that, but I got to then ask you, okay, how do you make that happen? Because you've got the developers who have essentially make that happen and so, the cloud is essentially SaaS, right? So you got a SaaS kind of marketplace here. The apps can be deployed very quickly, but in order to do that, you kind of need self-service and you got to have good analytics, right? So self-service, you guys have that. Now on the analytics side, most people have to build their own or use an existing tool and tools become specialists, you know what I'm saying? So you're in this kind of like weird cycle of, "Okay, I got to deploy and spend resource to build my own, which could be long and tiresome." >> Yeah. >> "And or rely on other tools that could be good, but then I have too many tools but that creates specialism kind of silos." These seems to be trends. Do you agree with that? And if customers have this situation, you guys come in, can you help there? >> Absolutely, absolutely. So, you know, if you think about the two options that you just laid out, that you could either roll your own, kind of build your own, and that's really hard. If you think about analyst industry, where 20, $30 billion industry with a lot of companies that specialize in building analytics so it's a really tough thing to do. So it doesn't really matter how big of a company you are, even if you're a Microsoft or an Amazon, it's really hard for them to actually build analytics internally. So for a company to try to do it on their own, hire the talent and also to come up with that interactive experience, most companies fail. So what ends up happening is you deliver the budget and the time to market ends up taking much longer, and then the experience is engaging for the users and they still end up leaving your app, having a bad impression. Now you can also buy something. They are our competitors who offer embedded analytics options as well, but the mainstream paradigm today with analytics is delivering. We talked about earlier static visualizations of insights that are created by someone else. So that certainly is an option. You know, where ThoughtSpot Everywhere really stands out above everything else is our technology is fundamentally built for search and interactive and cloud-scale data kind of an experience that the static visualizations today can't really deliver. So you could deliver a static dashboard purchase from one of our competitors, or if you really want to engage your users again, today is all about self-service, it's all about interactivity, and only ThoughtSpot's architecture can deliver that embedded in a data app for you. >> You know, one of the things I'm really impressed with you guys at ThoughtSpot is that you see data as I see strategic advantage for companies and people say that it's kind of a cliche but, or a punchline, and some sort of like business statement. But when you start getting into new kinds of workflows, that's the intellectual property. If you can enable people to essentially with very little low-code, no-code, or just roll their own analysis and insights from a platform, you're then creating intellectual property for the company. So this is kind of a new paradigm. And so a lot of CIO's that I talked to, or even CSOs on the security side of like, they kind of want this but maybe can't get there overnight. So if I'm a CIO, Victor, who do I, how do I point to on my team to engage with you guys? Like, okay, you sold me on it, I love the vision. This is definitely where we want to go. Who do I bring into the meeting? >> I think that in any application, in any company actually, there's usually product leaders and developers that create applications. So, you know, if you are a SaaS company, obviously your core product, your core product team would be the right team we want to talk to. If you're a traditional enterprise, you'd be surprised actually, how many traditional enterprises that been around for 50, 100 years, you might think of them selling a different product but actually, they have a lot of visual applications and product teams within their company as well. For example, you know, we have customers like a big tractor company. You can probably imagine who they might be. They actually have visual applications that they use ThoughtSpot to offer to the dealers so that they can look at their businesses with the tractors. We also have a big telecom company, for example, that you would think about telecom as a whole service but they have a building application that they offer to their merchants to track their billing. So what I'm saying is really, whether you're a software company where that's your core product, or you're a traditional enterprise that has visual applications underneath to support your core product, there's usually product teams, product leaders, and developers. Those are the ones that we want to talk to and we can help them realize a better vision for the product that they're responsible for. >> I mean, the reality is all applications need analytics, right, at some level. >> Yes. >> Full instrumentation at a minimum log everything and then the ability to roll that up, that's where I see people always telling me like that's where the challenge seems to be. Okay, I can log everything, but now how do I have a... And then after the fact that they say, "Give me a report, what's happening?" >> That's right. >> They get stuck. >> They get stuck 'cause you get that report and you know, someone else asked that question for you and you're probably a curious person. I'm a curious person. You always have that next question, and then usually if you're in a company, let's just say, you're a CIO. You're probably used to having a team of analysts at your fingertip so at least if you have a question, you don't like the report, you can find two people, five people they'll respond to your request. But if you're a business application user, you're sitting there, I don't know about you, but I don't remember the last time I actually went through and really found a support ticket in my application, or I really read a detailed documentation describing features in application. Users like to be self-taught, self-service and they like to explore it on their own. And there's no analyst there, there's no IT guy that they can lean on so if they get a static report of the data, they'll naturally always want to ask more questions, then they're stuck. So it's that kind of unsatisfying where, "I have some curiosity, you sparked by questions, I can't answer them." That's where I think a lot of companies struggle with. That's why a lot of applications, they're data intensive but they don't deliver any insights. >> It's interesting and I like this anywhere idea because you think about like what you guys do, applications can be, they always start small, right? I mean, applications got to be built. So you guys, your solution really fits for small startups and business all the way up to large enterprises which in a large enterprise, they could have hundreds and thousands of applications which look like small startups. >> Absolutely, absolutely. You know, that's a great thing about the sort of ThoughtSpot Everywhere which takes the engine around ThoughtSpot that we built over the last eight or nine years and could deliver in any kind of a context. 'Cause nowadays, as opposed to 10, 15, 20 years ago, everything does run in applications these days. We talk about visual transformation at the beginning of the call. That's really what it means is today, the workflows of business are conducted in applications no matter who you're interacting with. And so we have all these applications. A lot of times, yes, if you have big analytical problems, you can take the data and put into a different context like ThoughtSpot's own UI and do a lot of analytics, but we also understand that a lot of times customers and users, they like to analyze in the context the workflow of the application they're actually working in. And so with that situation, actually having the analytics embedded within right next to their workflow is something that I think a lot of, especially business users that are less trained, they'd like to do that right in the context of their business productivity workflow. And so that's where ThoughtSpot Everywhere, I know the terminology is a little self-serving, but ThoughtSpot Everywhere, we think ThoughtSpot could actually be everywhere in your business workflow. >> That's great value proposition. I'm going to put my skeptic hat on challenge you and say, Okay, I don't want to... Prove it to me, what's in it for me? And how much is it going to cost me, how do I engage? So, you know- >> Yeah. >> What's in it for me as the buyer? If people want to buy this, I want to use it, I'm going to get engaged with ThoughtSpot and how much does it cost and what's the engagements look like? >> So, what's in it for you is easy. So if you have data in the cloud and you have an application, you should use ThoughtSpot Everywhere to deliver a much more valuable, interactive experience for your user's data. So that's clear. How do you engage? So we have a very flexible pricing models. If your data's in the cloud, we can either, you can purchase with us, we'll land small and then grow with your consumption. You know, that's always the kind of thing, "Hey, allow us to prove it to you, right?" We start, and then if a user starts to consume, you don't really have to pay a big bill until we see the consumption increase. So we have consumption and data capacity-based types of pricing models. And you know, one of the real advantages that we have for cloud applications is if you're a developer, often, even in the past for ThoughtSpot, we haven't always made that development experience very easy. You have to embed a relatively heavy product but the beauty for ThoughtSpot is from the beginning, we were designed with a modern API-based kind of architecture. Now, a lot of our BI competitors were designed and developed in the desktop server kind of era where everything you embed is very monolithic. But because we have an API driven architecture, we invest a lot of time now to wrap a seamless developer SDK, plus very easy to use REST APIs, plus an interactive kind of a portal to make that development experience also really simple. So if you're a developer, now you really can get from zero to an easy app for ThoughtSpot embedded in your data app in just often in less than 60 minutes. >> John: Yeah. >> So that's also a very great proposition where modern leaders is your data's in the cloud, you've got developers with an SDK, it can get you into an app very quickly. >> All right so bottom line, if you're in the cloud, you got to get the data embed in the apps, data everywhere with ThoughtSpot. >> Yes. >> All right, so let's unpack it a little bit because I think you just highlighted I think what I think is the critical factor for companies as they evaluate their plethora of tools that they have and figuring out how to streamline and be cloud native in scale. You mentioned static and old BI competitors to the cloud. They also have a team of analysts as well that just can make the executives feel like the all of the reports are dynamic but they're not, they're just static. But look at, I know you guys have a relation with Snowflake, and not to kind of bring them into this but to highlight this, Snowflake disrupted the data warehouse. >> Yes. >> Because they're in the cloud and then they refactored leveraging cloud scale to provide a really easy, fast type of value for their product and then the rest is history. They're public, they're worth a lot of money. That's kind of an example of what's coming for every category of companies. There's going to be that. In fact, Jerry Chen, who was just given the keynote here at the event, had just had a big talk called "Castles In The Cloud", you can build a moat in the cloud with your application if you have the right architecture. >> Absolutely. >> So this is kind of a new, this is a new thing and it's almost like beachfront property, whoever gets there first wins the category. >> Exactly, exactly. And we think the timing is right now. You know, Snowflake, and even earlier, obviously we had the best conference with Redshift, which really started the whole cloud data warehouse wave, and now you're seeing Databricks even with their Delta Lake and trying to get into that kind of swim lane as well. Right now, all of a sudden, all these things that have been brewing in the background in the data architecture has to becoming mainstream. We're now seeing even large financial institutions starting to always have to test and think about moving their data into cloud data warehouse. But once you're in the cloud data warehouse, all the benefits of its elasticity, performance, that can really get realized at the analytics layer. And what ThoughtSpot really can bring to the table is we've always, because we're a search-based paradigm and when you think about search. Search is all about, doesn't really matter what kind of search you're doing, it's about digging really deep into a lot of data and delivering interactive performance. Those things have always... Doesn't really matter what data architecture we sit on, I've always been really fundamental to how we build our product. And that translates extremely well when you have your data in a Snowflake or Redshift have billions of rows in the cloud. We're the only company, we think, that can deliver interactive performance on all the data you have in a cloud data warehouse. >> Well, I want to congratulate you, guys. I'm really a big fan of the company. I think a lot of companies are misunderstood until they become big and there was, "Why didn't everyone else do that search? Well, I thought they were a search engine?" Being search centric is an architectural philosophy. I know as a North Star for your company but that creates value, right? So if you look at like say, Snowflake, Redshift and Databricks, you mentioned a few of those, you have kind of a couple of things going on. You have multiple personas kind of living well together and the developers like the data people. Normally, they hated each other, right? (giggles) Or maybe they didn't hate each other but there's conflict, there's always cultural tension between the data people and the developers. Now, you have developers who are becoming data native, if you will, just by embedding that in. So what Snowflake, these guys, are doing is interesting. You can be a developer and program and get great results and have great performance. The developers love Snowflake, they love Databricks, they love Redshift. >> Absolutely. >> And it's not that hard and the results are powerful. This is a new dynamic. What's your reaction to that? >> Yeah, no, I absolutely believe that. I think, part of the beauty of the cloud is I like your kind of analogy of bringing people together. So being in the cloud, first of all, the data is accessible by everyone, everywhere. You just need a browser and the right permissions, you can get your data, and also different kind of roles. They all kind of come together. Things best of breed tools get blended together through APIs. Everything just becomes a lot more accessible and collaborative and I know that sounds kind of little kumbaya, but the great thing about the cloud is it does blur the lines between goals. Everyone can do a little bit of everything and everyone can access a little bit more of their data and get more value out of it. >> Yeah. >> So all of that, I think that's the... If you talk about digital transformation, you know, that's really at the crux of it. >> Yeah, and I think at the end of the day, speed and high quality applications is a result and I think, the speed game if automation being built in on data plays a big role in that, it's super valuable and people will get slowed down. People get kind of angry. Like I don't want to get, I want to go faster, because automations and AI is going to make things go faster on the dev side, certainly with DevOps, clouds proven that. But if you're like an old school IT department (giggles) or data department, you're talking to weeks not minutes for results. >> Yes. >> I mean, that's the powerful scale we're talking about here. >> Absolutely. And you know, if you think about it, you know, if it's days to minutes, it sounds like a lot but if you think about like also each question, 'cause usually when you're thinking about questions, they come in minutes. Every minute you have a new question and if each one then adds days to your journey, that over time is just amplified, it's just not sustainable. >> Okay- >> So now in the cloud world, you need to have things delivered on demand as you think about it. >> Yeah, and of course you need the data from a security standpoint as well and build that in. Chances is people shift left. I got to ask you if I'm a customer, I want to just run this by you. You mentioned you have an SDK and obviously talking to developers. So I'm working with ThoughtSpot, I'm the leader of the organization. I'm like, "Okay, what's the headroom? What's going to happen as a bridge, the future gets built so I'm going to ride with ThoughtSpot." You mentioned SDK, how much more can I do to build and wrap around ThoughtSpot? Because obviously, this kind of value proposition is enabling value. >> Yes. >> So I want to build around it. How do I get started and where does it go? >> Yeah, well, you can get started as easy as starting with our free trial and just play around with it. And you know, the beauty of SDK and when I talk about how ThoughtSpot is built with API-driven architecture is, hey, there's a lot of magic and features built into ThoughtSpot core pod. You could embed all of that into an application if you would like or you could also use our SDK and our APIs to say, "I just want to embed a couple of visualizations," start with that and allow the users to take into that. You could also embed the whole search feature and allow users to ask repetitive questions, or you can have different role-based kind of experiences. So all of that is very flexible and very dynamic and with SDK, it's low-code in the sense where it creates a JavaScript portal for you and even for me who's haven't coded in a long time. I can just copy and paste some JavaScript code and I can see my applications reflecting in real time. So it's really kind of a modern experience that developers in today's world appreciate, and because all the data's in the cloud and in the cloud, applications are built as services connected through APIs, we really think that this is the modern way that developers would get started. And analysts, even analysts who don't have strong developer training can get started with our developer portal. So really, it's a very easy experience and you can customize it in whichever way you want that suits your application's needs. >> Yeah, I think it's, you don't have to be a developer to really understand the basic value of reuse and discovery of services. I think that's one of these we hear from developers all the time, "I had no idea that Victor did that code. Why do I have to rewrite that?" So you see, reuse come up a lot around automation where code is building with code, right? So you have this new vibe and you need data to discover that search paradigm mindset. How prevalent is that on the minds of customers? Are they just trying to like hold on and survive through the pandemic? (giggles) >> Well, customers are definitely thinking about it. You know, the challenge is change is always hard, you know? So it takes time for people to see the possibilities and then have to go through especially in larger organizations, but even in smaller organizations, people think about, "Well, how do I change my workflow?" and then, "How do I change my data pipeline?" You know, those are the kinds of things where, you know, it takes time, and that's why Redshift has been around since 2012 or I believe, but it took years before enterprises really are now saying, "The benefits are so profound that we really have to change the workflows, change the data pipelines to make it work because we can't hold on to the old ways." So it takes time but when the benefits are so clear, it's really kind of a snowball effect, you know? Once you change a data warehouse, you got to think about, "Do I need to change my application architecture?" Then, "Do I need to change the analytics layer?" And then, "Do I need to change the workflow?" And then you start seeing new possibilities because it's all more flexible that you can add more features to your application and it's just kind of a virtuous cycle, but it starts with taking that first step to your point of considering migrating your data into the cloud and we're seeing that across all kinds of industries now. I think nobody's holding back anymore. It just takes time, sometimes some are slower and some are faster. >> Well, all apps or data apps and it's interesting, I wrote a blog post in 2017 called, "Data Is The New Developer Kit" meaning it was just like a vision statement around data will be part of how apps, like software, it'll be data as code. And you guys are doing that. You're allowing data to be a key ingredient for interactivity with analytics. This is really important. Can you just give us a use case example of how someone builds an interactive data app with ThoughtSpot Everywhere? >> Yeah, absolutely. So I think there are certain applications that when naturally things relates to data, you know, I talk about bending or those kinds of things. Like when you use it, you just kind of inherently know, "Hey, there's tons of data and then can I get some?" But a lot of times we're seeing, you know, for example, one of our customers is a very small company that provides software for personal trainers and small fitness studios. You know, you would think like, "Oh well, these are small businesses. They don't have a ton of data. A lot of them would probably just run on QuickBooks or Excel and all of that." But they could see the value is kind of, once a personal trainer conducts his business on a cloud software, then he'll realize, "Oh, I don't need to download any more data. I don't need to run Excel anymore, the data is already there in a software." And hey, on top of that, wouldn't it be great if you have an analytics layer that can analyze how your clients paid you, where your appointments are, and so forth? And that's even just for, again like I said, no disrespect to personal trainers, but even for one or two personal trainers, hey, they can be an analytics and they could be an analyst on their business data. >> Yeah, why not? Everyone's got a Fitbits and watches and they could have that built into their studio APIs for the trainers. They can get collaboration. >> That's right. So there's no application you can think that's too simple or you might think too traditional or whatnot for analytics. Every application now can become a very engaging data application. >> Well Victor, it's great to have you on. Obviously, great conversation around ThoughtSpot anywhere. And as someone who runs corp dev for ThoughtSpot, for the folks watching that aren't customers yet for ThoughtSpot, what should they know about you guys as a company that they might not know about or they should know about? And what are people talking about ThoughtsSpot, what are they saying about it? So what should they know that know that's not being talked about or they may not understand? And what are other people saying about ThoughtSpot? >> So a couple of things. One is there's a lot of fun out there. I think about search in general, search is generally a very broad term but I think it, you know, I go back to what I was saying earlier is really what differentiates ThoughtSpot is not just that we have a search bar that's put on some kind of analytics UI. Really, it's the fundamental technical architecture underlying that is from the ground up built for search large data, granular, and detailed exploration of your data. That makes us truly unique and nobody else can really do search if you're not built with a technical foundation. The second thing is, we're very much a cloud first company now, and a ton of our over the past few years because of the growth of these highly performing data warehouses like Snowflake and Redshift, we're able to really focus on what we do best which is the search and the query processing performance on the front end and we're fully engaged with cloud platforms now. So if you have data in the cloud, we are the best analytics front end for that. >> Awesome, well, thanks for coming on. Great the feature you guys here in the "Startup Showcase", great conversation, ThoughtSpot leading company, hot startup. We did their event with them with theCUBE a couple of months ago. Congratulations on all your success. Victor Chang, VP of ThoughtSpot Everywhere and Corporate Development here on theCUBE and "AWS Startup Showcase". Go to awsstartups.com and be part of the community, we're doing these quarterly featuring the hottest startups in the cloud. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. >> Victor: Thank you so much. (bright music)