>>from around the globe. It's the Cube presenting innovation for good, brought to you by on shape. >>Hello, everyone, and welcome to Innovation for Good Program, hosted by the Cuban. Brought to You by on Shape, which is a PTC company. My name is Dave Valentin. I'm coming to you from our studios outside of Boston. I'll be directing the conversations today. It's a very exciting, all live program. We're gonna look at how product innovation has evolved and where it's going and how engineers, entrepreneurs and educators are applying cutting edge, cutting edge product development techniques and technology to change our world. You know, the pandemic is, of course, profoundly impacted society and altered how individuals and organizations they're gonna be thinking about an approaching the coming decade. Leading technologists, engineers, product developers and educators have responded to the new challenges that we're facing from creating lifesaving products to helping students learn from home toe how to apply the latest product development techniques and solve the world's hardest problems. And in this program, you'll hear from some of the world's leading experts and practitioners on how product development and continuous innovation has evolved, how it's being applied toe positive positively affect society and importantly where it's going in the coming decades. So let's get started with our first session fueling Tech for good. And with me is John Hirschbeck, who is the president of the Suffers, a service division of PTC, which acquired on shape just over a year ago, where John was the CEO and co founder, and Dana Grayson is here. She is the co founder and general partner at Construct Capital, a new venture capital firm. Folks, welcome to the program. Thanks so much for coming on. >>Great to be here, Dave. >>All right, John. >>You're very welcome. Dana. Look, John, let's get into it for first Belated congratulations on the acquisition of Von Shape. That was an awesome seven year journey for your company. Tell our audience a little bit about the story of on shape, but take us back to Day zero. Why did you and your co founders start on shape? Well, >>actually, start before on shaping the You know, David, I've been in this business for almost 40 years. The business of building software tools for product developers and I had been part of some previous products in the industry and companies that had been in their era. Big changes in this market and about, you know, a little Before founding on shape, we started to see the problems product development teams were having with the traditional tools of that era years ago, and we saw the opportunity presented by Cloud Web and Mobile Technology. And we said, Hey, we could use Cloud Web and Mobile to solve the problems of product developers make their Their business is run better. But we have to build an entirely new system, an entirely new company, to do it. And that's what on shapes about. >>Well, so notwithstanding the challenges of co vid and difficulties this year, how is the first year been as, Ah, division of PTC for you guys? How's business? Anything you can share with us? >>Yeah, our first year of PTC has been awesome. It's been, you know, when you get acquired, Dave, you never You know, you have great optimism, but you never know what life will really be like. It's sort of like getting married or something, you know, until you're really doing it, you don't know. And so I'm happy to say that one year into our acquisition, um, PTC on shape is thriving. It's worked out better than I could have imagined a year ago. Along always, I mean sales are up. In Q four, our new sales rate grew 80% vs Excuse me, our fiscal Q four Q three. In the calendar year, it grew 80% compared to the year before. Our educational uses skyrocketing with around 400% growth, most recently year to year of students and teachers and co vid. And we've launched a major cloud platform using the core of on shape technology called Atlas. So, um, just tons of exciting things going on a TTC. >>That's awesome. But thank you for sharing some of those metrics. And of course, you're very humble individual. You know, people should know a little bit more about you mentioned, you know, we founded Solid Works, co founded Solid where I actually found it solid works. You had a great exit in the in the late nineties. But what I really appreciate is, you know, you're an entrepreneur. You've got a passion for the babies that you you helped birth. You stayed with the salt systems for a number of years. The company that quiet, solid works well over a decade. And and, of course, you and I have talked about how you participated in the the M I T. Blackjack team. You know, back in the day, a zai say you're very understated, for somebody was so accomplished. Well, >>that's kind of you, but I tend to I tend Thio always keep my eye more on what's ahead. You know what's next, then? And you know, I look back Sure to enjoy it and learn from it about what I can put to work making new memories, making new successes. >>Love it. Okay, let's bring Dana into the conversation. Hello, Dana. You look you're a fairly early investor in in on shape when you were with any A And and I think it was like it was a serious B, but it was very right close after the A raise. And and you were and still are a big believer in industrial transformation. So take us back. What did you see about on shape back then? That excited you. >>Thanks. Thanks for that. Yeah. I was lucky to be a early investment in shape. You know, the things that actually attracted me. Don shape were largely around John and, uh, the team. They're really setting out to do something, as John says humbly, something totally new, but really building off of their background was a large part of it. Um, but, you know, I was really intrigued by the design collaboration side of the product. Um, I would say that's frankly what originally attracted me to it. What kept me in the room, you know, in terms of the industrial world was seeing just if you start with collaboration around design what that does to the overall industrial product lifecycle accelerating manufacturing just, you know, modernizing all the manufacturing, just starting with design. So I'm really thankful to the on shape guys, because it was one of the first investments I've made that turned me on to the whole sector. And while just such a great pleasure to work with with John and the whole team there. Now see what they're doing inside PTC. >>And you just launched construct capital this year, right in the middle of a pandemic and which is awesome. I love it. And you're focused on early stage investing. Maybe tell us a little bit about construct capital. What your investment thesis is and you know, one of the big waves that you're hoping to ride. >>Sure, it construct it is literally lifting out of any what I was doing there. Um uh, for on shape, I went on to invest in companies such as desktop metal and Tulip, to name a couple of them form labs, another one in and around the manufacturing space. But our thesis that construct is broader than just, you know, manufacturing and industrial. It really incorporates all of what we'd call foundational industries that have let yet to be fully tech enabled or digitized. Manufacturing is a big piece of it. Supply chain, logistics, transportation of mobility or not, or other big pieces of it. And together they really drive, you know, half of the GDP in the US and have been very under invested. And frankly, they haven't attracted really great founders like they're on in droves. And I think that's going to change. We're seeing, um, entrepreneurs coming out of the tech world orthe Agnelli into these industries and then bringing them back into the tech world, which is which is something that needs to happen. So John and team were certainly early pioneers, and I think, you know, frankly, obviously, that voting with my feet that the next set, a really strong companies are going to come out of the space over the next decade. >>I think it's a huge opportunity to digitize the sort of traditionally non digital organizations. But Dana, you focused. I think it's it's accurate to say you're focused on even Mawr early stage investing now. And I want to understand why you feel it's important to be early. I mean, it's obviously riskier and reward e er, but what do you look for in companies and and founders like John >>Mhm, Um, you know, I think they're different styles of investing all the way up to public market investing. I've always been early stage investors, so I like to work with founders and teams when they're, you know, just starting out. Um, I happened to also think that we were just really early in the whole digital transformation of this world. You know, John and team have been, you know, back from solid works, etcetera around the space for a long time. But again, the downstream impact of what they're doing really changes the whole industry. And and so we're pretty early and in digitally transforming that market. Um, so that's another reason why I wanna invest early now, because I do really firmly believe that the next set of strong companies and strong returns for my own investors will be in the spaces. Um, you know, what I look for in Founders are people that really see the world in a different way. And, you know, sometimes some people think of founders or entrepreneurs is being very risk seeking. You know, if you asked John probably and another successful entrepreneurs, they would call themselves sort of risk averse, because by the time they start the company, they really have isolated all the risk out of it and think that they have given their expertise or what they're seeing their just so compelled to go change something, eh? So I look for that type of attitude experience a Z. You can also tell from John. He's fairly humble. So humility and just focus is also really important. Um, that there's a That's a lot of it. Frankly, >>Excellent. Thank you, John. You got such a rich history in the space. Uh, and one of you could sort of connect the dots over time. I mean, when you look back, what were the major forces that you saw in the market in in the early days? Particularly days of on shape on? And how is that evolved? And what are you seeing today? Well, >>I think I touched on it earlier. Actually, could I just reflect on what Dana said about risk taking for just a quick one and say, throughout my life, from blackjack to starting solid works on shape, it's about taking calculated risks. Yes, you try to eliminate the risk Sa's much as you can, but I always say, I don't mind taking a risk that I'm aware of, and I've calculated through as best I can. I don't like taking risks that I don't know I'm taking. That's right. You >>like to bet on >>sure things as much as you sure things, or at least where you feel you. You've done the research and you see them and you know they're there and you know, you, you you keep that in mind in the room, and I think that's great. And Dana did so much for us. Dana, I want to thank you again. For all that, you did it every step of the way, from where we started to to, you know, your journey with us ended formally but continues informally. Now back to you, Dave, I think, question about the opportunity and how it's shaped up. Well, I think I touched on it earlier when I said It's about helping product developers. You know, our customers of the people build the future off manufactured goods. Anything you think of that would be manufacturing factory. You know, the chair you're sitting in machine that made your coffee. You know, the computer you're using, the trucks that drive by on the street, all the covert product research, the equipment being used to make vaccines. All that stuff is designed by someone, and our job is given the tools to do it better. And I could see the problems that those product developers had that we're slowing them down with using the computing systems of the time. When we built solid works, that was almost 30 years ago. If people don't realize that it was in the early >>nineties and you know, we did the >>best we could for the early nineties, but what we did. We didn't anticipate the world of today. And so people were having problems with just installing the systems. Dave, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to install these systems. You need toe speck up a special windows computer, you know, and make sure you've got all the memory and graphics you need and getting to get that set up. You need to make sure the device drivers air, right, install a big piece of software. Ah, license key. I'm not making this up. They're still around. You may not even know what those are. You know, Dennis laughing because, you know, zero cool people do things like this anymore. Um, and it only runs some windows. You want a second user to use it? They need a copy. They need a code. Are they on the same version? It's a nightmare. The teams change, you know? You just say, Well, get everyone on the software. Well, who's everyone? You know, you got a new vendor today? A new customer tomorrow, a new employee. People come on and off the team. The other problem is the data stored in files, thousands of files. This isn't like a spreadsheet or word processor, where there's one file to pass around these air thousands of files to make one, even a simple product. People were tearing their hair out. John, what do we do? I've got copies everywhere. I don't know where the latest version is. We tried like, you know, locking people out so that only one person can change it At the time that works against speed, it works against innovation. We saw what was happening with Cloud Web and mobile. So what's happened in the years since is every one of the forces that product developers experience the need for speed, the need for innovation, the need to be more efficient with their people in their capital. Resource is every one of those trends have been amplified since we started on shape by a lot of forces in the world. And covert is amplified all those the need for agility and remote work cove it is amplified all that the same time, The acceptance of cloud. You know, a few years ago, people were like cloud, you know, how is that gonna work now They're saying to me, You know, increasingly, how would you ever even have done this without the cloud. How do you make solid works work without the cloud? How would that even happen? You know, once people understand what on shapes about >>and we're the >>Onley full SAS solution software >>as a service, >>full SAS solution in our industry. So what's happened in those years? Same problems we saw earlier, but turn up the gain, their bigger problems. And with cloud, we've seen skepticism of years ago turn into acceptance. And now even embracement in the cova driven new normal. >>Yeah. So a lot of friction in the previous environments cloud obviously a huge factor on, I guess. I guess Dana John could see it coming, you know, in the early days of solid works with, you know, had Salesforce, which is kind of the first major independent SAS player. Well, I guess that was late nineties. So his post solid works, but pre in shape and their work day was, you know, pre on shape in the mid two thousands. And and but But, you know, the bet was on the SAS model was right for Crick had and and product development, you know, which maybe the time wasn't a no brainer. Or maybe it was, I don't know, but Dana is there. Is there anything that you would invest in today? That's not Cloud based? >>Um, that's a great question. I mean, I think we still see things all the time in the manufacturing world that are not cloud based. I think you know, the closer you get to the shop floor in the production environment. Um e think John and the PTC folks would agree with this, too, but that it's, you know, there's reliability requirements, performance requirements. There's still this attitude of, you know, don't touch the printing press. So the cloud is still a little bit scary sometimes. And I think hybrid cloud is a real thing for those or on premise. Solutions, in some cases is still a real thing. What what we're more focused on. And, um, despite whether it's on premise or hybrid or or SAS and Cloud is a frictionless go to market model, um, in the companies we invest in so sass and cloud, or really make that easy to adopt for new users, you know, you sign up, started using a product, um, but whether it's hosted in the cloud, whether it's as you can still distribute buying power. And, um, I would I'm just encouraging customers in the customer world and the more industrial environment to entrust some of their lower level engineers with more budget discretionary spending so they can try more products and unlock innovation. >>Right? The unit economics are so compelling. So let's bring it, you know, toe today's you know, situation. John, you decided to exit about a year ago. You know? What did you see in PTC? Other than the obvious money? What was the strategic fit? >>Yeah, Well, David, I wanna be clear. I didn't exit anything. Really? You >>know, I love you and I don't like that term exit. I >>mean, Dana had exit is a shareholder on and so it's not It's not exit for me. It's just a step in the journey. What we saw in PTC was a partner. First of all, that shared our vision from the top down at PTC. Jim Hempleman, the CEO. He had a great vision for for the impact that SAS can make based on cloud technology and really is Dana of highlighted so much. It's not just the technology is how you go to market and the whole business being run and how you support and make the customers successful. So Jim shared a vision for the potential. And really, really, um said Hey, come join us and we can do this bigger, Better, faster. We expanded the vision really to include this Atlas platform for hosting other SAS applications. That P D. C. I mean, David Day arrived at PTC. I met the head of the academic program. He came over to me and I said, You know, and and how many people on your team? I thought he'd say 5 40 people on the PTC academic team. It was amazing to me because, you know, we were we were just near about 100 people were required are total company. We didn't even have a dedicated academic team and we had ah, lot of students signing up, you know, thousands and thousands. Well, now we have hundreds of thousands of students were approaching a million users and that shows you the power of this team that PTC had combined with our product and technology whom you get a big success for us and for the teachers and students to the world. We're giving them great tools. So so many good things were also putting some PTC technology from other parts of PTC back into on shape. One area, a little spoiler, little sneak peek. Working on taking generative design. Dana knows all about generative design. We couldn't acquire that technology were start up, you know, just to too much to do. But PTC owns one of the best in the business. This frustrated technology we're working on putting that into on shaping our customers. Um, will be happy to see it, hopefully in the coming year sometime. >>It's great to see that two way exchange. Now, you both know very well when you start a company, of course, a very exciting time. You know, a lot of baggage, you know, our customers pulling you in a lot of different directions and asking you for specials. You have this kind of clean slate, so to speak in it. I would think in many ways, John, despite you know, your install base, you have a bit of that dynamic occurring today especially, you know, driven by the forced march to digital transformation that cove it caused. So when you sit down with the team PTC and talk strategy. You now have more global resource is you got cohorts selling opportunities. What's the conversation like in terms of where you want to take the division? >>Well, Dave, you actually you sounds like we should have you coming in and talking about strategy because you've got the strategy down. I mean, we're doing everything said global expansion were able to reach across selling. We got some excellent PTC customers that we can reach reach now and they're finding uses for on shape. I think the plan is to, you know, just go, go, go and grow, grow, grow where we're looking for this year, priorities are expand the product. I mentioned the breath of the product with new things PTC did recently. Another technology that they acquired for on shape. We did an acquisition. It was it was small, wasn't widely announced. It, um, in an area related to interfacing with electrical cad systems. So So we're doing We're expanding the breath of on shape. We're going Maura, depth in the areas were already in. We have enormous opportunity to add more features and functions that's in the product. Go to market. You mentioned it global global presence. That's something we were a little light on a year ago. Now we have a team. Dana may not even know what we have. A non shape, dedicated team in Barcelona, based in Barcelona but throughout Europe were doing multiple languages. Um, the academic program just introduced a new product into that space that z even fueling more success and growth there. Um, and of course, continuing to to invest in customer success and this Atlas platform story I keep mentioning, we're going to soon have We're gonna soon have four other major PTC brands shipping products on our Atlas Saas platform. And so we're really excited about that. That's good for the other PTC products. It's also good for on shape because now there's there's. There's other interesting products that are on shape customers can use take advantage of very easily using, say, a common log in conventions about user experience there, used to invest of all they're SAS based, so they that makes it easier to begin with. So that's some of the exciting things going on. I think you'll see PTC, um, expanding our lead in SAS based applications for this sector for our our target, uh, sectors not just in, um, in cat and data management, but another area. PTC's Big and his augmented reality with of euphoria, product line leader and industrial uses of a R. That's a whole other story we should do. A whole nother show augmented reality. But these products are amazing. You can you can help factory workers people on, uh, people who are left out of the digital transformation. Sometimes we're standing from machine >>all day. >>They can't be sitting like we are doing Zoom. They can wear a R headset in our tools, let them create great content. This is an area Dana is invested in other companies. But what I wanted to note is the new releases of our authoring software. For this, our content getting released this month, used through the Atlas platform, the SAS components of on shape for things like revision management and collaboration on duh workflow activity. All that those are tools that we're able to share leverage. We get a lot of synergy. It's just really good. It's really fun to have a good time. That's >>awesome. And then we're gonna be talking to John MacLean later about that. Let's do a little deeper Dive on that. And, Dana, what is your involvement today with with on shape? But you're looking for you know, which of their customers air actually adopting. And they're gonna disrupt their industries. And you get good pipeline from that. How do you collaborate today? >>That sounds like a great idea. Um, Aziz, John will tell you I'm constantly just asking him for advice and impressions of other entrepreneurs and picking his brain on ideas. No formal relationship clearly, but continue to count John and and John and other people in on shaping in the circle of experts that I rely on for their opinions. >>All right, so we have some questions from the crowd here. Uh, one of the questions is for the dream team. You know, John and Dana. What's your next next collective venture? I don't think we're there yet, are we? No. >>I just say, as Dana said, we love talking to her about. You know, Dana, you just returned the compliment. We would try and give you advice and the deals you're looking at, and I'm sort of casually mentoring at least one of your portfolio entrepreneurs, and that's been a lot of fun for May on, hopefully a value to them. But also Dana. We uran important pipeline to us in the world of some new things that are happening that we wouldn't see if you know you've shown us some things that you've said. What do you think of this business? And for us, it's like, Wow, it's cool to see that's going on And that's what's supposed to work in an ecosystem like this. So we we deeply value the ongoing relationship. And no, we're not starting something new. I got a lot of work left to do with what I'm doing and really happy. But we can We can collaborate in this way on other ventures. >>I like this question to somebody asking With the cloud options like on shape, Wilmore students have stem opportunities s Oh, that's a great question. Are you because of sass and cloud? Are you able to reach? You know, more students? Much more cost effectively. >>Yeah, Dave, I'm so glad that that that I was asked about this because Yes, and it's extremely gratified us. Yes, we are because of cloud, because on shape is the only full cloud full SAS system or industry were able to reach. Stem education brings able to be part of bringing step education to students who couldn't get it otherwise. And one of most gratifying gratifying things to me is the emails were getting from teachers, um, that that really, um, on the phone calls that were they really pour their heart out and say We're able to get to students in areas that have very limited compute resource is that don't have an I T staff where they don't know what computer that the students can have at home, and they probably don't even have a computer. We're talking about being able to teach them on a phone to have an android phone a low end android phone. You can do three D modeling on there with on shape. Now you can't do it any other system, but with on shape, you could do it. And so the teacher can say to the students, They have to have Internet access, and I know there's a huge community that doesn't even have Internet access, and we're not able, unfortunately to help that. But if you have Internet and you have even an android phone, we can enable the educator to teach them. And so we have case after case of saving a stem program or expanding it into the students that need it most is the ones we're helping here. So really excited about that. And we're also able to let in addition to the run on run on whatever computing devices they have, we also offer them the tools they need for remote teaching with a much richer experience. Could you teach solid works remotely? Well, maybe if the student ran it had a windows workstation. You know, big, big, high end workstation. Maybe it could, but it would be like the difference between collaborating with on shape and collaborate with solid works. Like the difference between a zoom video call and talking on the landline phone. You know, it's a much richer experience, and that's what you need. And stem teaching stem is hard, So yeah, we're super super. Um, I'm excited about bringing stem to more students because of cloud yond >>we're talking about innovation for good, and then the discussion, John, you just had it. Really? There could be a whole another vector here. We could discuss on diversity, and I wanna end with just pointing out. So, Dana, your new firm, it's a woman led firm, too. Two women leaders, you know, going forward. So that's awesome to see, so really? Yeah, thumbs up on that. Congratulations on getting that off the ground. >>Thank you. Thank you. >>Okay, so thank you guys. Really appreciate It was a great discussion. I learned a lot and I'm sure the audience did a swell in a moment. We're gonna talk with on shaped customers to see how they're applying tech for good and some of the products that they're building. So keep it right there. I'm Dave Volonte. You're watching innovation for good on the Cube, the global leader in digital tech event coverage. Stay right there. >>Oh, yeah, it's >>yeah, yeah, around >>the globe. It's the Cube presenting innovation for good. Brought to you by on shape. >>Okay, we're back. This is Dave Volonte and you're watching innovation for good. A program on Cuba 3 65 made possible by on shape of PTC company. We're live today really live tv, which is the heritage of the Cube. And now we're gonna go to the sources and talkto on shape customers to find out how they're applying technology to create real world innovations that are changing the world. So let me introduce our panel members. Rafael Gomez Furberg is with the Chan Zuckerberg bio hub. A very big idea. And collaborative nonprofit was initiative that was funded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, and really around diagnosing and curing and better managing infectious diseases. So really timely topic. Philip Tabor is also joining us. He's with silver side detectors, which develops neutron detective detection systems. Yet you want to know if early, if neutrons and radiation or in places where you don't want them, So this should be really interesting. And last but not least, Matthew Shields is with the Charlottesville schools and is gonna educate us on how he and his team are educating students in the use of modern engineering tools and techniques. Gentlemen, welcome to the Cuban to the program. This should be really interesting. Thanks for coming on. >>Hi. Or pleasure >>for having us. >>You're very welcome. Okay, let me ask each of you because you're all doing such interesting and compelling work. Let's start with Rafael. Tell us more about the bio hub and your role there, please. >>Okay. Yeah. So you said that I hope is a nonprofit research institution, um, funded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Um, and our main mission is to develop new technologies to help advance medicine and help, hopefully cure and manage diseases. Um, we also have very close collaborations with Universe California, San Francisco, Stanford University and the University California Berkeley on. We tried to bring those universities together, so they collaborate more of biomedical topics. And I manage a team of engineers. They by joining platform. Um, and we're tasked with creating instruments for the laboratory to help the scientist boats inside the organization and also in the partner universities Do their experiments in better ways in ways that they couldn't do before >>in this edition was launched Well, five years ago, >>it was announced at the end of 2016, and we actually started operation with at the beginning of 2017, which is when I joined, um, So this is our third year. >>And how's how's it going? How does it work? I mean, these things take time. >>It's been a fantastic experience. Uh, the organization works beautifully. Um, it was amazing to see it grow From the beginning, I was employee number 12, I think eso When I came in, it was just a nem P office building and empty labs. And very quickly we had something running about. It's amazing eso I'm very proud of the work that we have done to make that possible. Um And then, of course, that's you mentioned now with co vid, um, we've been able to do a lot of very cool work attire being of the pandemic in March, when there was a deficit of testing, uh, capacity in California, we spun up a testing laboratory in record time in about a week. It was crazy. It was a crazy project, Um, but but incredibly satisfying. And we ended up running all the way until the beginning of November, when the lab was finally shut down. We could process about 3000 samples a day. I think at the end of it all, we were able to test about 100 on the order of 100 and 50,000 samples from all over the state. We were providing free testing toe all of the Department of Public Health Department of Public Health in California, which at the media pandemic, had no way to do testing affordably and fast. So I think that was a great service to the state. Now the state has created that testing system that would serve those departments. So then we decided that it was unnecessary to keep going with testing in the other biopsy that would shut down. >>All right. Thank you for that. Now, Now, Philip, you What you do is mind melting. You basically helped keep the world safe. Maybe describe a little bit more about silver sod detectors and what your role is there and how it all works. >>Tour. So we make a nuclear bomb detectors and we also make water detectors. So we try and do our part thio keep the world from blowing up and make it a better place at the same time. Both of these applications use neutron radiation detectors. That's what we make. Put them out by import border crossing places like that. They can help make sure that people aren't smuggling. Shall we say very bad things. Um, there's also a burgeoning field of research and application where you can use neutrons with some pretty cool physics to find water so you could do things. Like what? A detector up in the mountains and measure snowpack. Put it out in the middle of the field and measure soil moisture content. And as you might imagine, there's some really cool applications in, uh, research and agronomy and public policy for this. >>All right, so it's OK, so it's a It's much more than, you know, whatever fighting terrorism, it's there's a riel edge or I kind of i o t application for what you guys >>do. We do both its's to plowshares. You might >>say a mat. I I look at your role is kind of scaling the brain power for for the future. Maybe tell us more about Charlottesville schools and in the mission that you're pursuing and what you do. >>Thank you. Um, I've been in Charlottesville City schools for about 11 or 12 years. I started their teaching, um, a handful of classes, math and science and things like that. But Thescore board and my administration had the crazy idea of starting an engineering program about seven years ago. My background is an engineering is an engineering. My masters is in mechanical and aerospace engineering and um, I basically spent a summer kind of coming up with what might be a fun engineering curriculum for our students. And it started with just me and 30 students about seven years ago, Um, kind of a home spun from scratch curriculum. One of my goals from the outset was to be a completely project based curriculum, and it's now grown. We probably have about six or 700 students, five or six full time teachers. We now have pre engineering going on at the 5th and 6th grade level. I now have students graduating. Uh, you know, graduating after senior year with, like, seven years of engineering under their belt and heading off to doing some pretty cool stuff. So it's It's been a lot of fun building a program and, um, and learning a lot in the process. >>That's awesome. I mean, you know, Cuba's. We've been passionate about things like women in tech, uh, diversity stem. You know, not only do we need more, more students and stem, we need mawr underrepresented women, minorities, etcetera. We were just talking to John Herstek and integrate gration about this is Do you do you feel is though you're I mean, first of all, the work that you do is awesome, but but I'll go one step further. Do you feel as though it's reaching, um, or diverse base? And how is that going? >>That's a great question. I think research shows that a lot of people get funneled into one kind of track or career path or set of interests really early on in their educational career, and sometimes that that funnel is kind of artificial. And so that's one of the reasons we keep pushing back. Um, so our school systems introducing kindergartners to programming on DSO We're trying to push back how we expose students to engineering and to stem fields as early as possible. And we've definitely seen the first of that in my program. In fact, my engineering program, uh, sprung out of an after school in Extracurricular Science Club that actually three girls started at our school. So I think that actually has helped that three girls started the club that eventually is what led to our engineering programs that sort of baked into the DNA and also our eyes a big public school. And we have about 50% of the students are under the poverty line and we e in Charlottesville, which is a big refugee town. And so I've been adamant from Day one that there are no barriers to entry into the program. There's no test you have to take. You don't have to have be taking a certain level of math or anything like that. That's been a lot of fun. To have a really diverse set of kids enter the program and be successful, >>that's final. That's great to hear. So, Philip, I wanna come back to you. You know, I think about maybe some day we'll be able to go back to a sporting events, and I know when I when I'm in there, there's somebody up on the roof looking out for me, you know, watching the crowd, and they have my back. And I think in many ways, the products that you build, you know, our similar. I may not know they're there, but they're keeping us safe or they're measuring things that that that I don't necessarily see. But I wonder if you could talk about a little bit more detail about the products you build and how they're impacting society. >>Sure, so There are certainly a lot of people who are who are watching, trying to make sure things were going well in keeping you safe that you may or may not be aware of. And we try and support ah lot of them. So we have detectors that are that are deployed in a variety of variety of uses, with a number of agencies and governments that dio like I was saying, ports and border crossing some other interesting applications that are looking for looking for signals that should not be there and working closely to fit into the operations these folks do. Onda. We also have a lot of outreach to researchers and scientists trying to help them support the work they're doing. Um, using neutron detection for soil moisture monitoring is a some really cool opportunities for doing it at large scale and with much less, um, expense or complication than would have been done. Previous technologies. Um, you know, they were talking about collaboration in the previous segment. We've been able to join a number of conferences for that, virtually including one that was supposed to be held in Boston, but another one that was held out of the University of Heidelberg in Germany. And, uh, this is sort of things that in some ways, the pandemic is pushing people towards greater collaboration than they would have been able to do. Had it all but in person. >>Yeah, we did. Uh, the cube did live works a couple years ago in Boston. It was awesome show. And I think, you know, with this whole trend toward digit, I call it the Force march to digital. Thanks to cove it I think that's just gonna continue. Thio grow. Rafael. What if you could describe the process that you use to better understand diseases? And what's your organization's involvement? Been in more detail, addressing the cove in pandemic. >>Um, so so we have the bio be structured in, Um um in a way that foster so the combination of technology and science. So we have to scientific tracks, one about infectious diseases and the other one about understanding just basic human biology, how the human body functions, and especially how the cells in the human body function on how they're organized to create tissues in the body. On Ben, it has this set of platforms. Um, mind is one of them by engineering that are all technology rated. So we have data science platform, all about data analysis, machine learning, things like that. Um, we have a mass spectrometry platform is all about mass spectrometry technologies to, um, exploit those ones in service for the scientist on. We have a genomics platform that it's all about sequencing DNA and are gonna, um and then an advanced microscopy. It's all about developing technologies, uh, to look at things with advanced microscopes and developed technologies to marry computation on microscopy. So, um, the scientists set the agenda and the platforms, we just serve their needs, support their needs, and hopefully develop technologies that help them do their experiments better, faster, or allow them to the experiment that they couldn't do in any other way before. Um And so with cove, it because we have that very strong group of scientists that work on have been working on infectious disease before, and especially in viruses, we've been able to very quickly pivot to working on that s O. For example, my team was able to build pretty quickly a machine to automatically purified proteins on is being used to purify all these different important proteins in the cove. It virus the SARS cov to virus Onda. We're sending some of those purified proteins all over the world. Two scientists that are researching the virus and trying to figure out how to develop vaccines, understand how the virus affects the body and all that. Um, so some of the machines we built are having a very direct impact on this. Um, Also for the copy testing lab, we were able to very quickly develop some very simple machines that allowed the lab to function sort of faster and more efficiently. Sort of had a little bit of automation in places where we couldn't find commercial machines that would do it. >>Um, eso Matt. I mean, you gotta be listening to this and thinking about Okay, So someday your students are gonna be working at organizations like like, like Bio Hub and Silver Side. And you know, a lot of young people they're just don't know about you guys, but like my kids, they're really passionate about changing the world. You know, there's way more important than you know, the financial angles and it z e. I gotta believe you're seeing that you're right in the front lines there. >>Really? Um, in fact, when I started the curriculum six or seven years ago, one of the first bits of feedback I got from my students is they said Okay, this is a lot of fun. So I had my students designing projects and programming microcontrollers raspberry, PiS and order we nose and things like that. The first bit of feedback I got from students was they said Okay, when do we get to impact the world? I've heard engineering >>is about >>making the world a better place, and robots are fun and all, but, you know, where is the real impact? And so um, dude, yeah, thanks to the guidance of my students, I'm baking that Maurin. Now I'm like day one of engineering one. We talk about how the things that the tools they're learning and the skills they're gaining, uh, eventually, you know, very soon could be could be used to make the world a better place. >>You know, we all probably heard that famous line by Jeff Hammer Barker. The greatest minds of my generation are trying to figure out how to get people to click on ads. I think we're really generally generationally, finally, at the point where young students and engineering a really, you know, a passionate about affecting society. I wanna get into the product, you know, side and understand how each of you are using on shape and and the value that that it brings. Maybe Raphael, you could start how long you've been using it. You know, what's your experience with it? Let's let's start there. >>I begin for about two years, and I switched to it with some trepidation. You know, I was used to always using the traditional product that you have to install on your computer, that everybody uses that. So I was kind of locked into that. But I started being very frustrated with the way it worked, um, and decided to give on ship chance. Which reputation? Because any change always, you know, causes anxiety. Um, but very quickly my engineers started loving it, Uh, just because it's it's first of all, the learning curve wasn't very difficult at all. You can transfer from one from the traditional product to entree very quickly and easily. You can learn all the concepts very, very fast. It has all the functionality that we needed and and what's best is that it allows to do things that we couldn't do before or we couldn't do easily. Now we can access the our cat documents from anywhere in the world. Um, so when we're in the lab fabricating something or testing a machine, any computer we have next to us or a tablet or on iPhone, we can pull it up and look at the cad and check things or make changes. That's something that couldn't do before because before you had to pay for every installation off the software for the computer, and I couldn't afford to have 20 installations to have some computers with the cat ready to use them like once every six months would have been very inefficient. So we love that part. And the collaboration features are fantastic, especially now with Kobe, that we have to have all the remote meetings eyes fantastic, that you can have another person drive the cad while the whole team is watching that person change the model and do things and point to things that is absolutely revolutionary. We love it. The fact that you have very, very sophisticated version control before it was always a challenge asking people, please, if you create anniversary and apart, how do we name it so that people find it? And then you end up with all these collection of files with names that nobody ever remembers, what they are, the person left. And now nobody knows which version is the right one. A mess with on shape on the version ING system it has, and the fact that you can go back in history off the document and go back to previous version so easily and then go back to the press and version and explore the history of the part that is truly, um, just world changing for us, that we can do that so easily on for me as a manager to manage this collection of information that is critical for our operations. It makes it so much easier because everything is in one place. I don't have to worry about file servers that go down that I have to administer that have to have I t taken care off that have to figure how to keep access to people to those servers when they're at home, and they need a virtual private network and all of that mess disappears. I just simply give give a person in accounting on shape and then magically, they have access to everything in the way I want. And we can manage the lower documents and everything in a way that is absolutely fantastic. >>Feel what was your what? What were some of the concerns you had mentioned? You had some trepidation. Was it a performance? Was it security? You know some of the traditional cloud stuff, and I'm curious as to how, How, whether any of those act manifested really that you had to manage. What were your concerns? >>Look, the main concern is how long is it going to take for everybody in the team to learn to use the system like it and buy into it? Because I don't want to have my engineers using tools against their will write. I want everybody to be happy because that's how they're productive. They're happy, and they enjoyed the tools they have. That was my main concern. I was a little bit worried about the whole concept of not having the files in a place where I couldn't quote unquote seat in some server and on site, but that That's kind of an outdated concept, right? So that took a little bit of a mind shift, but very quickly. Then I started thinking, Look, I have a lot of documents on Google Drive. Like, I don't worry about that. Why would I worry about my cat on on shape, right? Is the same thing. So I just needed to sort of put things in perspective that way. Um, the other, um, you know, the concern was the learning curve, right? Is like, how is he Will be for everybody to and for me to learn it on whether it had all of the features that we needed. And there were a few features that I actually discussed with, um uh, Cody at on shape on, they were actually awesome about using their scripting language in on shape to sort of mimic some of the features of the old cat, uh, in on, shaped in a way that actually works even better than the old system. So it was It was amazing. Yeah, >>Great. Thank you for that, Philip. What's your experience been? Maybe you could take us through your journey within shape. >>Sure. So we've been we've been using on shaped silver side for coming up on about four years now, and we love it. We're very happy with it. We have a very modular product line, so we make anything from detectors that would go into backpacks. Two vehicles, two very large things that a shipping container would go through and saw. Excuse me. Shape helps us to track and collaborate faster on the design. Have multiple people working a same time on a project. And it also helps us to figure out if somebody else comes to us and say, Hey, I want something new how we congrats modules from things that we already have put them together and then keep track of the design development and the different branches and ideas that we have, how they all fit together. A za design comes together, and it's just been fantastic from a mechanical engineering background. I will also say that having used a number of different systems and solid works was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Before I got using on shape, I went, Wow, this is amazing and I really don't want to design in any other platform. After after getting on Lee, a little bit familiar with it. >>You know, it's funny, right? I'll have the speed of technology progression. I was explaining to some young guns the other day how I used to have a daytime er and that was my life. And if I lost that daytime, er I was dead. And I don't know how we weigh existed without, you know, Google maps eso we get anywhere, I don't know, but, uh but so So, Matt, you know, it's interesting to think about, you know, some of the concerns that Raphael brought up, you hear? For instance, you know, all the time. Wow. You know, I get my Amazon bill at the end of the month that zip through the roof in, But the reality is that Yeah, well, maybe you are doing more, but you're doing things that you couldn't have done before. And I think about your experience in teaching and educating. I mean, you so much more limited in terms of the resource is that you would have had to be able to educate people. So what's your experience been with With on shape and what is it enabled? >>Um, yeah, it was actually talking before we went with on shape. We had a previous CAD program, and I was talking to my vendor about it, and he let me know that we were actually one of the biggest CAD shops in the state. Because if you think about it a really big program, you know, really big company might employ. 5, 10, 15, 20 cad guys, right? I mean, when I worked for a large defense contractor, I think there were probably 20 of us as the cad guys. I now have about 300 students doing cat. So there's probably more students with more hours of cat under their belt in my building than there were when I worked for the big defense contractor. Um, but like you mentioned, uh, probably our biggest hurdle is just re sources. And so we want We want one of things I've always prided myself and trying to do in this. Programs provide students with access two tools and skills that they're going to see either in college or in the real world. So it's one of the reason we went with a big professional cad program. There are, you know, sort of K 12 oriented software and programs and things. But, you know, I want my kids coding and python and using slack and using professional type of tools on DSO when it comes to cat. That's just that That was a really hurt. I mean, you know, you could spend $30,000 on one seat of, you know, professional level cad program, and then you need a $30,000 computer to run it on if you're doing a heavy assemblies, Um and so one of my dreams And it was always just a crazy dream. And I was the way I would always pitcher in my school system and say, someday I'm gonna have a kid on a school issued chromebook in subsidized housing, on public WiFi doing professional level bad and that that was a crazy statement until a couple of years ago. So we're really excited that I literally and you know, March and you said the forced march, the forced march into, you know, modernity, March 13th kids sitting in my engineering lab that we spent a lot of money on doing cad March 14th. Those kids were at home on their school issued chromebooks on public WiFi, uh, keeping their designs going and collaborating. And then, yeah, I could go on and on about some of the things you know, the features that we've learned since then they're even better. So it's not like this is some inferior, diminished version of Academy. There's so much about it. Well, I >>wanna I wanna ask you that I may be over my skis on this, but we're seeing we're starting to see the early days of the democratization of CAD and product design. It is the the citizen engineer, I mean, maybe insulting to the engineers in the room, But but is that we're beginning to see that >>I have to believe that everything moves into the cloud. Part of that is democratization that I don't need. I can whether you know, I think artists, you know, I could have a music studio in my basement with a nice enough software package. And Aiken, I could be a professional for now. My wife's a photographer. I'm not allowed to say that I could be a professional photographer with, you know, some cloud based software, and so, yeah, I do think that's part of what we're seeing is more and more technology is moving to the cloud. >>Philip. Rafael Anything you Dad, >>I think I mean, yeah, that that that combination of cloud based cat and then three d printing that is becoming more and more affordable on ubiquitous It's truly transformative, and I think for education is fantastic. I wish when I was a kid I had the opportunity to play with those kinds of things because I was always the late things. But, you know, the in a very primitive way. So, um, I think this is a dream for kids. Teoh be able to do this. And, um, yeah, there's so many other technologies coming on, like Arduino on all of these electronic things that live kids play at home very cheaply with things that back in my day would have been unthinkable. >>So we know there's a go ahead. Philip, please. >>We had a pandemic and silver site moved to a new manufacturing facility this year. I was just on the shop floor, talking with contractors, standing 6 ft apart, pointing at things. But through it all, our CAD system was completely unruffled. Nothing stopped in our development work. Nothing stopped in our support for existing systems in the field. We didn't have to think about it. We had other server issues, but none with our, you know, engineering cad, platform and product development in support world right ahead, which was cool, but also a in that's point. I think it's just really cool what you're doing with the kids. The most interesting secondary and college level engineering work that I did was project based, taken important problem to the world. Go solve it and that is what we do here. That is what my entire career has been. And I'm super excited to see. See what your students are going to be doing, uh, in there home classrooms on their chromebooks now and what they do building on that. >>Yeah, I'm super excited to see your kids coming out of college with engineering degrees because, yeah, I think that Project based experience is so much better than just sitting in a classroom, taking notes and doing math problems on day. I think it will give the kids a much better flavor. What engineering is really about Think a lot of kids get turned off by engineering because they think it's kind of dry because it's just about the math for some very abstract abstract concept on they are there. But I think the most important thing is just that hands on a building and the creativity off, making things that you can touch that you can see that you can see functioning. >>Great. So, you know, we all know the relentless pace of technology progression. So when you think about when you're sitting down with the folks that on shape and there the customer advisor for one of the things that that you want on shape to do that it doesn't do today >>I could start by saying, I just love some of the things that does do because it's such a modern platform. And I think some of these, uh, some some platforms that have a lot of legacy and a lot of history behind them. I think we're dragging some of that behind them. So it's cool to see a platform that seemed to be developed in the modern era, and so that Z it is the Google docks. And so the fact that collaboration and version ing and link sharing is and like platform agnostic abilities, the fact that that seems to be just built into the nature of the thing so far, That's super exciting. As far as things that, uh, to go from there, Um, I don't know, >>Other than price. >>You can't say >>I >>can't say lower price. >>Yeah, so far on P. D. C. S that work with us. Really? Well, so I'm not complaining. There you there, >>right? Yeah. Yeah. No gaps, guys. Whitespace, Come on. >>We've been really enjoying the three week update. Cadence. You know, there's a new version every three weeks and we don't have to install it. We just get all the latest and greatest goodies. One of the trends that we've been following and enjoying is the the help with a revision management and release work flows. Um, and I know that there's more than on shape is working on that we're very excited for, because that's a big important part about making real hardware and supporting it in the field. Something that was cool. They just integrated Cem markup capability. In the last release that took, we were doing that anyway, but we were doing it outside of on shapes. And now we get to streamline our workflow and put it in the CAD system where We're making those changes anyway when we're reviewing drawings and doing this kind of collaboration. And so I think from our perspective, we continue to look forward. Toa further progress on that. There's a lot of capability in the cloud that I think they're just kind of scratching the surface on you, >>right? I would. I mean, you're you're asking to knit. Pick. I would say one of the things that I would like to see is is faster regeneration speed. There are a few times with convicts, necessities that regenerating the document takes a little longer than I would like. It's not a serious issue, but anyway, I I'm being spoiled, >>you know? That's good. I've been doing this a long time, and I like toe ask that question of practitioners and to me, it It's a signal like when you're nit picking and that's what you're struggling to knit. Pick that to me is a sign of a successful product, and and I wonder, I don't know, uh, have the deep dive into the architecture. But are things like alternative processors. You're seeing them hit the market in a big way. Uh, you know, maybe helping address the challenge, But I'm gonna ask you the big, chewy question now. Then we maybe go to some audience questions when you think about the world's biggest problems. I mean, we're global pandemics, obviously top of mind. You think about nutrition, you know, feeding the global community. We've actually done a pretty good job of that. But it's not necessarily with the greatest nutrition, climate change, alternative energy, the economic divides. You've got geopolitical threats and social unrest. Health care is a continuing problem. What's your vision for changing the world and how product innovation for good and be applied to some of the the problems that that you all are passionate about? Big question. Who wants toe start? >>Not biased. But for years I've been saying that if you want to solve the economy, the environment, uh, global unrest, pandemics, education is the case. If you wanna. If you want to, um, make progress in those in those realms, I think funding funding education is probably gonna pay off pretty well. >>Absolutely. And I think Stam is key to that. I mean, all of the ah lot of the well being that we have today and then industrialized countries. Thanks to science and technology, right improvements in health care, improvements in communication, transportation, air conditioning. Um, every aspect of life is touched by science and technology. So I think having more kids studying and understanding that is absolutely key. Yeah, I agree, >>Philip, you got anything to add? >>I think there's some big technical problems in the world today, Raphael and ourselves there certainly working on a couple of them. Think they're also collaboration problems and getting everybody to be able to pull together instead of pulling separately and to be able to spur the ideas on words. So that's where I think the education side is really exciting. What Matt is doing and it just kind of collaboration in general when we could do provide tools to help people do good work. Uh, that is, I think, valuable. >>Yeah, I think that's a very good point. And along those lines, we have some projects that are about creating very low cost instruments for low research settings, places in Africa, Southeast Asia, South America, so that they can do, um, um, biomedical research that it's difficult to do in those place because they don't have the money to buy the fancy lab machines that cost $30,000 an hour. Um, so we're trying to sort of democratize some of those instruments. And I think thanks to tools like Kahn shape then is easier, for example, to have a conversation with somebody in Africa and show them the design that we have and discuss the details of it with them on. But it's amazing, right to have somebody, you know, 10 time zones away, Um, looking really life in real time with you about your design and discussing the details or teaching them how to build a machine, right? Because, um, you know, they have a three D printer. You can you can just give them the design and say like, you build it yourself, uh, even cheaper than and, you know, also billing and shipping it there. Um, so all that that that aspect of it is also super important. I think for any of these efforts to improve some of the hardest part was in the world for climate change. Do you say, as you say, poverty, nutrition issues? Um, you know, availability of water. You have that project at about finding water. Um, if we can also help deploy technologies that teach people remotely how to create their own technologies or how to build their own systems that will help them solve those forms locally. I think that's very powerful. >>Yeah, the point about education is right on. I think some people in the audience may be familiar with the work of Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, the second machine age where they sort of put forth the premise that, uh, is it laid it out. Look, for the first time in history, machines air replacing humans from a cognitive perspective. Machines have always replaced humans, but that's gonna have an impact on jobs. But the answer is not toe protect the past from the future. The answer is education and public policy that really supports that. So I couldn't agree more. I think it's a really great point. Um, we have We do have some questions from the audience. If if we could If I can ask you guys, um, you know, this one kind of stands out. How do you see artificial intelligence? I was just talking about machine intelligence. Um, how do you see that? Impacting the design space guys trying to infuse a I into your product development. Can you tell me? >>Um, absolutely, like, we're using AI for some things, including some of these very low cost instruments that will hopefully help us diagnose certain diseases, especially this is that are very prevalent in the Third World. Um, and some of those diagnostics are these days done by thes armies of technicians that are trained to look under the microscope. But, um, that's a very slow process. Is very error prone and having machine learning systems that can to the same diagnosis faster, cheaper and also little machines that can be taken to very remote places to these villages that have no access to a fancy microscope. To look at a sample from a patient that's very powerful. And I we don't do this, but I have read quite a bit about how certain places air using a Tribune attorneys to actually help them optimize designs for parts. So you get these very interesting looking parts that you would have never thought off a person would have never thought off, but that are incredibly light ink. Earlier, strong and I have all sort of properties that are interesting thanks to artificial intelligence machine learning in particular >>yet another. The advantage you get when when your work is in the cloud I've seen. I mean, there's just so many applications that so if the radiology scan is in the cloud and the radiologist is goes to bed at night, Radiologist could come in in the morning and and say, Oh, the machine while you were sleeping was using artificial intelligence to scan these 40,000 images. And here's the five that we picked out that we think you should take a closer look at. Or like Raphael said, I can design my part. My, my, my, my, my you know, mount or bracket or whatever and go to sleep. And then I wake up in the morning. The machine has improved. It for me has made it strider strider stronger and lighter. Um And so just when your when your work is in the cloud, that's just that's a really cool advantage that you get that you can have machines doing some of your design work for you. >>Yeah, we've been watching, uh, you know, this week is this month, I guess is AWS re invent and it's just amazing to see how much effort is coming around machine learning machine intelligence. You know Amazon has sage maker Google's got, you know, embedded you no ML and big query. Uh, certainly Microsoft with Azure is doing tons of stuff and machine learning. I think the point there is that that these things will be infused in tow R and D and in tow software product by the vendor community. And you all will apply that to your business and and build value through the unique data that your collecting, you know, in your ecosystems. And and that's how you add value. You don't have to be necessarily, you know, developers of artificial intelligence, but you have to be practitioners to apply that. Does that make sense to you, Philip? >>Yeah, absolutely. And I think your point about value is really well chosen. We see AI involved from the physics simulations all the way up to interpreting radiation data, and that's where the value question, I think, is really important because it's is the output of the AI giving helpful information that the people that need to be looking at it. So if it's curating a serious of radiation alert, saying, Hey, like these air the anomalies. You need to look at eyes it, doing that in a way that's going to help a good response on. In some cases, the II is only as good as the people. That sort of gave it a direction and turn it loose. And you want to make sure that you don't have biases or things like that underlying your AI that they're going to result in less than helpful outcomes coming from it. So we spend quite a lot of time thinking about how do we provide the right outcomes to people who are who are relying on our systems? >>That's a great point, right? Humans air biased and humans build models, so models are inherently biased. But then the software is hitting the market. That's gonna help us identify those biases and help us, you know? Of course. Correct. So we're entering Cem some very exciting times, guys. Great conversation. I can't thank you enough for spending the time with us and sharing with our audience the innovations that you're bringing to help the world. So thanks again. >>Thank you so much. >>Thank you. >>Okay. Welcome. Okay. When we come back, John McElheny is gonna join me. He's on shape. Co founder. And he's currently the VP of strategy at PTC. He's gonna join the program. We're gonna take a look at what's next and product innovation. I'm Dave Volonte and you're watching innovation for good on the Cube, the global leader. Digital technology event coverage. We'll be right back. >>Okay? Okay. Yeah. Okay. >>From around >>the globe, it's the Cube. Presenting innovation for good. Brought to you by on shape. >>Okay, welcome back to innovation. For good. With me is John McElheny, who is one of the co founders of On Shape and is now the VP of strategy at PTC. John, it's good to see you. Thanks for making the time to come on the program. Thanks, Dave. So we heard earlier some of the accomplishments that you've made since the acquisition. How has the acquisition affected your strategy? Maybe you could talk about what resource is PTC brought to the table that allowed you toe sort of rethink or evolve your strategy? What can you share with us? >>Sure. You know, a year ago, when when John and myself met with Jim Pepperman early on is we're we're pondering. Started joining PTC one of things became very clear is that we had a very clear shared vision about how we could take the on shape platform and really extended for, for all of the PTC products, particular sort of their augmented reality as well as their their thing works or the i o. T business and their product. And so from the very beginning there was a clear strategy about taking on shape, extending the platform and really investing, um, pretty significantly in the product development as well as go to market side of things, uh, toe to bring on shape out to not only the PTC based but sort of the broader community at large. So So So PTC has been a terrific, terrific, um, sort of partner as we've we've gonna go on after this market together. Eso We've added a lot of resource and product development side of things. Ah, lot of resource and they go to market and customer success and support. So, really, on many fronts, that's been both. Resource is as well a sort of support at the corporate level from from a strategic standpoint and then in the field, we've had wonderful interactions with many large enterprise customers as well as the PTC channels. So it's been really a great a great year. >>Well, and you think about the challenges of in your business going to SAS, which you guys, you know, took on that journey. You know, 78 years ago. Uh, it's not trivial for a lot of companies to make that transition, especially a company that's been around as long as PTC. So So I'm wondering how much you know, I was just asking you How about what PCP TC brought to the table? E gotta believe you're bringing a lot to the table to in terms of the mindset, uh, even things is, is mundane is not the right word, but things like how you compensate salespeople, how you interact with customers, the notion of a service versus a product. I wonder if you could address >>that. Yeah, it's a it's a really great point. In fact, after we had met Jim last year, John and I one of the things we walked out in the seaport area in Boston, one of things we sort of said is, you know, Jim really gets what we're trying to do here and and part of let me bring you into the thinking early on. Part of what Jim talked about is there's lots of, you know, installed base sort of software that's inside of PTC base. That's helped literally thousands of customers around the world. But the idea of moving to sass and all that it entails both from a technology standpoint but also a cultural standpoint. Like How do you not not just compensate the sales people as an example? But how do you think about customer success? In the past, it might have been that you had professional services that you bring out to a customer, help them deploy your solutions. Well, when you're thinking about a SAS based offering, it's really critical that you get customers successful with it. Otherwise, you may have turned, and you know it will be very expensive in terms of your business long term. So you've got to get customers success with software in the very beginning. So you know, Jim really looked at on shape and he said that John and I, from a cultural standpoint, you know, a lot of times companies get acquired and they've acquired technology in the past that they integrate directly into into PTC and then sort of roll it out through their products, are there just reached channel, he said. In some respects, John John, think about it as we're gonna take PTC and we want to integrate it into on shape because we want you to share with us both on the sales side and customer success on marketing on operations. You know all the things because long term, we believe the world is a SAS world, that the whole industry is gonna move too. So really, it was sort of an inverse in terms of the thought process related to normal transactions >>on That makes a lot of sense to me. You mentioned Sharon turns the silent killer of a SAS company, and you know, there's a lot of discussion, you know, in the entrepreneurial community because you live this, you know what's the best path? I mean today, You see, you know, if you watch Silicon Valley double, double, triple triple, but but there's a lot of people who believe, and I wonder, if you come in there is the best path to, you know, in the X Y axis. If if it's if it's uh, growth on one and retention on the other axis. What's the best way to get to the upper right on? Really? The the best path is probably make sure you've nailed obviously the product market fit, But make sure that you can retain customers and then throw gas on the fire. You see a lot of companies they burn out trying to grow too fast, but they haven't figured out, you know that. But there's too much churn. They haven't figured out those metrics. I mean, obviously on shape. You know, you were sort of a pioneer in here. I gotta believe you've figured out that customer retention before you really, You know, put the pedal to the >>metal. Yeah, and you know, growth growth can mask a lot of things, but getting getting customers, especially the engineering space. Nobody goes and sits there and says, Tomorrow we're gonna go and and, you know, put 100 users on this and and immediately swap out all of our existing tools. These tools are very rich and deep in terms of capability, and they become part of the operational process of how a company designs and builds products. So any time anybody is actually going through the purchasing process. Typically, they will run a try along or they'll run a project where they look at. Kind of What? What is this new solution gonna help them dio. How are we gonna orient ourselves for success? Longer term. So for us, you know, getting new customers and customer acquisition is really critical. But getting those customers to actually deploy the solution to be successful with it. You know, we like to sort of, say, the marketing or the lead generation and even some of the initial sales. That's sort of like the Kindle ing. But the fire really starts when customers deploy it and get successful. The solution because they bring other customers into the fold. And then, of course, if they're successful with it, you know, then in fact, you have negative turn which, ironically, means growth in terms of your inside of your install. Bates. >>Right? And you've seen that with some of the emerging, you know, SAS companies, where you're you're actually you know, when you calculate whatever its net retention or renew ALS, it's actually from a dollar standpoint. It's up in the high nineties or even over 100%. >>So >>and that's a trend we're gonna continue. See, I >>wonder >>if we could sort of go back. Uh, and when you guys were starting on shape, some of the things that you saw that you were trying to strategically leverage and what's changed, you know, today we were talking. I was talking to John earlier about in a way, you kinda you kinda got a blank slate is like doing another startup. >>You're >>not. Obviously you've got installed base and customers to service, but But it's a new beginning for you guys. So one of the things that you saw then you know, cloud and and sas and okay, but that's we've been there, done that. What are you seeing? You know today? >>Well, you know, So So this is a journey, of course, that that on shape on its own has gone through it had I'll sort of say, you know, several iterations, both in terms of of of, you know, how do you How do you get customers? How do you How do you get them successful? How do you grow those customers? And now that we've been part of PTC, the question becomes okay. One, There is certainly a higher level of credibility that helps us in terms of our our megaphone is much bigger than it was when we're standalone company. But on top of that now, figuring out how to work with their channel with their direct sales force, you know, they have, um, for example, you know, very large enterprises. Well, many of those customers are not gonna go in forklift out their existing solution to replace it with with on shape. However, many of them do have challenges in their supply chain and communications with contractors and vendors across the globe. And so, you know, finding our fit inside of those large enterprises as they extend out with their their customers is a very interesting area that we've really been sort of incremental to to PTC. And then, you know, they they have access to lots of other technology, like the i o. T business. And now, of course, the augmented reality business that that we can bring things to bear. For example, in the augmented reality world, they've they've got something called expert capture. And this is essentially imagine, you know, in a are ah, headset that allows you to be ableto to speak to it, but also capture images still images in video. And you could take somebody who's doing their task and capture literally the steps that they're taking its geo location and from their builds steps for new employees to be, we'll learn and understand how todo use that technology to help them do their job better. Well, when they do that, if there is replacement products or variation of of some of the tools that that they built the original design instruction set for they now have another version. Well, they have to manage multiple versions. Well, that's what on shape is really great at doing and so taking our technology and helping their solutions as well. So it's not only expanding our customer footprint, it's expanding the application footprint in terms of how we can help them and help customers. >>So that leads me to the tam discussion and again, as part of your strategist role. How do you think about that? Was just talking to some of your customers earlier about the democratization of cat and engineering? You know, I kind of joked, sort of like citizen engineering, but but so that you know, the demographics are changing the number of users potentially that can access the products because the it's so much more of a facile experience. How are you thinking about the total available market? >>It really is a great question, You know, it used to be when you when you sold boxes of software, it was how many engineers were out there. And that's the size of the market. The fact that matter is now when, When you think about access to that information, that data is simply a pane of glass. Whether it's a computer, whether it's a laptop, UH, a a cell phone or whether it's a tablet, the ability to to use different vehicles, access information and data expands the capabilities and power of a system to allow feedback and iteration. I mean, one of the one of the very interesting things is in technology is when you can take something and really unleash it to a larger audience and builds, you know, purpose built applications. You can start to iterate, get better feedback. You know there's a classic case in the clothing industry where Zara, you know, is a fast sort of turnaround. Agile manufacturer. And there was a great New York Times article written a couple years ago. My wife's a fan of Zara, and I think she justifies any purchases by saying, You know, Zara, you gotta purchase it now. Otherwise it may not be there the next time. Yet you go back to the store. They had some people in a store in New York that had this woman's throw kind of covering Shaw. And they said, Well, it would be great if we could have this little clip here so we can hook it through or something. And they sent a note back toe to the factory in Spain, and literally two weeks later they had, you know, 4000 of these things in store, and they sold out because they had a closed loop and iterative process. And so if we could take information and allow people access in multiple ways through different devices and different screens, that could be very specific information that, you know, we remove a lot of the engineering data book, bring the end user products conceptually to somebody that would have had to wait months to get the actual physical prototype, and we could get feedback well, Weaken have a better chance of making sure whatever product we're building is the right product when it ultimately gets delivered to a customer. So it's really it's a much larger market that has to be thought of rather than just the kind of selling A boxes software to an engineer. >>That's a great story. And again, it's gonna be exciting for you guys to see that with. The added resource is that you have a PTC, Um, so let's talk. I promise people we wanna talk about Atlas. Let's talk about the platform. A little bit of Atlas was announced last year. Atlas. For those who don't know it's a SAS space platform, it purports to go beyond product lifecycle management and you You're talking cloud like agility and scale to CAD and product design. But John, you could do a better job than I. What do >>we need to know about Atlas? Well, I think Atlas is a great description because it really is metaphorically sort of holding up all of the PTC applications themselves. But from the very beginning, when John and I met with Jim, part of what we were intrigued about was that he shared a vision that on shape was more than just going to be a cad authoring tool that, in fact, you know, in the past these engineering tools were very powerful, but they were very narrow in their purpose and focus. And we had specialty applications to manage the versions, etcetera. What we did in on shape is we kind of inverted that thinking. We built this collaboration and sharing engine at the core and then kind of wrap the CAD system around it. But that collaboration sharing and version ING engine is really powerful. And it was that vision that Jim had that he shared that we had from the beginning, which was, how do we take this thing to make a platform that could be used for many other applications inside of inside of any company? And so not only do we have a partner application area that is is much like the APP store or Google play store. Uh, that was sort of our first Stan Shih ation of this. This this platform. But now we're extending out to broader applications and much meatier applications. And internally, that's the thing works in the in the augmented reality. But there'll be other applications that ultimately find its way on top of this platform. And so they'll get all the benefits of of the collaboration, sharing the version ing the multi platform, multi device. And that's an extremely extremely, um, strategic leverage point for the company. >>You know, it's interesting, John, you mentioned the seaport before. So PTC, for those who don't know, built a beautiful facility down at the Seaport in Boston. And, of course, when PTC started, you know, back in the mid 19 eighties, there was nothing at the seaport s. >>So it's >>kind of kind of ironic, you know, we were way seeing the transformation of the seaport. We're seeing the transformation of industry and of course, PTC. And I'm sure someday you'll get back into that beautiful office, you know? Wait. Yeah, I'll bet. And, uh and but I wanna bring this up because I want I want you to talk about the future. How you how you see that our industry and you've observed this has moved from very product centric, uh, plat platform centric with sass and cloud. And now we're seeing ecosystems form around those products and platforms and data flowing through the ecosystem powering, you know, new innovation. I wonder if you could paint a picture for us of what the future looks like to you from your vantage point. >>Yeah, I think one of the key words you said there is data because up until now, data for companies really was sort of trapped in different applications. And it wasn't because people were nefarious and they want to keep it limited. It was just the way in which things were built. And, you know, when people use an application like on shape, what ends up happening is there their day to day interaction and everything that they do is actually captured by the platform. And, you know, we don't have access to that data. Of course it's it's the customer's data. But as as an artifact of them using the system than doing their day to day job, what's happening is they're creating huge amounts of information that can then be accessed and analyzed to help them both improve their design process, improve their efficiencies, improve their actual schedules in terms of making sure they can hit delivery times and be able to understand where there might be roadblocks in the future. So the way I see it is companies now are deploying SAS based tools like on shape and an artifact of them. Using that platform is that they have now analytics and tools to better understand and an instrument and manage their business. And then from there, I think you're going to see, because these systems are all you know extremely well. Architected allow through, you know, very structured AP. I calls to connect other SAS based applications. You're gonna start seeing closed loop sort of system. So, for example, people design using on shape, they end up going and deploying their system or installing it, or people use the end using products. People then may call back into the customers support line and report issues, problems, challenges. They'll be able to do traceability back to the underlying design. They'll be able to do trend analysis and defect analysis from the support lines and tie it back and closed loop the product design, manufacture, deployment in the field sort of cycles. In addition, you can imagine there's many things that air sort of as designed. But then when people go on site and they have to install it. There's some alterations modifications. Think about think about like a large air conditioning units for buildings. You go and you go to train and you get a large air conditioning unit that put up on top of building with a crane. They have to build all kinds of adaptors to make sure that that will fit inside of the particulars of that building. You know, with on shape and tools like this, you'll be able to not only take the design of what the air conditioning system might be, but also the all the adapter plates, but also how they installed it. So it sort of as designed as manufactured as stalled. And all these things can be traced, just like if you think about the transformation of customer service or customer contacts. In the early days, you used to have tools that were PC based tools called contact management solution, you know, kind of act or gold mine. And these were basically glorified Elektronik role in Texas. It had a customer names and they had phone numbers and whatever else. And Salesforce and Siebel, you know, these types of systems really broadened out the perspective of what a customer relationship? Waas. So it wasn't just the contact information it was, you know, How did they come to find out about you as a company? So all of the pre sort of marketing and then kind of what happens after they become a customer and it really was a 3 60 view. I think that 3 60 view gets extended to not just to the customers, but also tools and the products they use. And then, of course, the performance information that could come back to the manufacturer. So, you know, as an engineer, one of the things you learn about with systems is the following. And if you remember, when the CD first came out CDs that used to talk about four times over sampling or eight times over sampling and it was really kind of, you know, the fidelity the system. And we know from systems theory that the best way to improve the performance of a system is to actually have more feedback. The more feedback you have, the better system could be. And so that's why you get 16 60 for example, etcetera. Same thing here. The more feedback we have of different parts of a company that a better performance, The company will be better customer relationships. Better, uh, overall financial performance as well. So that's that's the view I have of how these systems all tied together. >>It's a great vision in your point about the data is I think right on. It used to be so fragmented in silos, and in order to take a system view, you've gotta have a system view of the data. Now, for years, we've optimized maybe on one little component of the system and that sometimes we lose sight of the overall outcome. And so what you just described, I think is, I think sets up. You know very well as we exit. Hopefully soon we exit this this covert era on John. I hope that you and I can sit down face to face at a PTC on shape event in the near term >>in the seaport in the >>seaport would tell you that great facility toe have have an event for sure. It >>z wonderful >>there. So So John McElhinney. Thanks so much for for participating in the program. It was really great to have you on, >>right? Thanks, Dave. >>Okay. And I want to thank everyone for participating. Today we have some great guest speakers. And remember, this is a live program. So give us a little bit of time. We're gonna flip this site over toe on demand mode so you can share it with your colleagues and you, or you can come back and and watch the sessions that you heard today. Uh, this is Dave Volonte for the Cube and on shape PTC. Thank you so much for watching innovation for good. Be well, Have a great holiday. And we'll see you next time. Yeah.

>> Announcer: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is theCUBE conversation. >> Hey, welcome back everybody Jeff Frick here with the cube. This is a special week it's Grace Hopper week, and Grace Hopper is the best name in tech conferences. The celebration of women in computing, and we've been going there for years we're not there this year, but one of the themes that comes up over and over at Grace Hopper is women and girls need to see women in positions that they can envision themselves being in someday. That is a really important piece of the whole diversity conversation is can I see people that I can role model after and I just want to bring up something from a couple years back from 2016 when we were there, we were there with Mimi Valdez, Christina Deoja and Dr. Jeanette Epps, Dr. Jeanette Epps is the astronaut on the right. They were there talking about "The Hidden Figures" movie. If you remember it came out 2016, it was about Katherine Johnson and all the black women working at NASA. They got no credit for doing all the math that basically keep all the astronauts safe and they made a terrific movie about it. And Janet is going up on the very first Blue Origin Space Mission Next year. This was announced a couple of months ago, so again, phenomenal leadership, black lady astronaut, going to go into space and really provide a face for a lot of young girls that want to get into that and its clearly a great STEM opportunity. So we're excited to have four terrific women today that well also are the leaders that the younger women can look up to and follow their career. So we're excited to have them so we're just going to go around. We got four terrific guests, our first one is Annabel Chang, She is the Head of State Policy and Government Regulations at Waymo. Annabel great to see you, where are you coming in from today? >> from San Francisco >> Jeff: Awesome. Next up is Inamarie Johnson. She is the Chief People and Diversity Officer for Zendesk Inamarie, great to see you. Where are you calling in from today? >> Great to be here. I am calling in from Palos Verdes the state >> Jeff: awesome >> in Southern California. >> Jeff: Some of the benefits of a virtual sometimes we can, we couldn't do that without the power of the internet. And next up is Jennifer Cabalquinto she is the Chief Financial Officer of the Golden State Warriors. Jennifer, great to see you Where are you coming in from today? >> Well, I wish I was coming in from the Chase Center in San Francisco but I'm actually calling in from Santa Cruz California today. >> Jeff: Right, It's good to see you and you can surf a lot better down there. So that's probably not all bad. And finally to round out our panelists, Kate Hogan, she is the COO of North America for Accenture. Kate, great to see you as well. Where are you coming in from today? >> Well, it's good to see you too. I am coming in from the office actually in San Jose. >> Jeff: From the office in San Jose. All right, So let's get into it . You guys are all very senior, you've been doing this for a long time. We're in a kind of a crazy period of time in terms of diversity with all the kind of social unrest that's happening. So let's talk about some of your first your journeys and I want to start with you Annabel. You're a lawyer you got into lawyering. You did lawyering with Diane Feinstein, kind of some politics, and also the city of San Francisco. And then you made this move over to tech. Talk about that decision and what went into that decision and how did you get into tech? 'cause we know part of the problem with diversity is a pipeline problem. You came over from the law side of the house. >> Yes, and to be honest politics and the law are pretty homogenous. So when I made the move to tech, it was still a lot of the same, but what I knew is that I could be an attorney anywhere from Omaha Nebraska to Miami Florida. But what I couldn't do was work for a disruptive company, potentially a unicorn. And I seized that opportunity and (indistinct) Lyft early on before Ride Hailing and Ride Sharing was even a thing. So it was an exciting opportunity. And I joined right at the exact moment that made myself really meaningful in the organization. And I'm hoping that I'm doing the same thing right now at Waymo. >> Great, Inamarie you've come from one of my favorite stories I like to talk about from the old school Clorox great product management. I always like to joke that Silicon Valley needs a pipeline back to Cincinnati and Proctor and Gamble to get good product managers out here. You were in the classic, right? You were there, you were at Honeywell Plantronics, and then you jumped over to tech. Tell us a little bit about that move. Cause I'm sure selling Clorox is a lot different than selling the terrific service that you guys provide at Zendesk. I'm always happy when I see Zendesk in my customer service return email, I know I'm going to get taken care of. >> Oh wow, that's great. We love customers like you., so thank you for that. My journey is you're right from a fortune 50 sort of more portfolio type company into tech. And I think one of the reasons is because when tech is starting out and that's what Zendesk was a few five years back or so very much an early stage growth company, two things are top of mind, one, how do we become more global? And how do we make sure that we can go up market and attract enterprise grade customers? And so my experience having only been in those types of companies was very interesting for a startup. And what was interesting for me is I got to live in a world where there were great growth targets and numbers, things I had never seen. And the agility, the speed, the head plus heart really resonated with my background. So super glad to be in tech, but you're right. It's a little different than a consumer products. >> Right, and then Jennifer, you're in a completely different world, right? So you worked for the Golden State Warriors, which everybody knows is an NBA team, but I don't know that everyone knows really how progressive the Warriors are beyond just basketball in terms of the new Chase Center, all the different events that you guys put on it. And really the leadership there has decided we really want to be an entertainment company of which the Golden State Warrior basketball team has a very, very important piece, you've come from the entertainment industry. So that's probably how they found you, but you're in the financial role. You've always been in the financial role, not traditionally thought about as a lot of women in terms of a proportion of total people in that. So tell us a little bit about your experience being in finance, in entertainment, and then making this kind of hop over to, I guess Uber entertainment. I don't know even how you would classify the warriors. >> Sports entertainment, live entertainment. Yeah, it's interesting when the Warriors opportunity came up, I naturally said well no, I don't have any sports background. And it's something that we women tend to do, right? We self edit and we want to check every box before we think that we're qualified. And the reality is my background is in entertainment and the Warriors were looking to build their own venue, which has been a very large construction project. I was the CFO at Universal Studios Hollywood. And what do we do there? We build large attractions, which are just large construction projects and we're in the entertainment business. And so that sort of B to C was a natural sort of transition for me going from where I was with Universal Studios over to the Warriors. I think a finance career is such a great career for women. And I think we're finding more and more women entering it. It is one that you sort of understand your hills and valleys, you know when you're going to be busy and so you can kind of schedule around that. I think it's really... it provides that you have a seat at the table. And so I think it's a career choice that I think is becoming more and more available to women certainly more now than it was when I first started. >> Yeah, It's interesting cause I think a lot of people think of women naturally in human resources roles. My wife was a head of human resources back in the day, or a lot of marketing, but not necessarily on the finance side. And then Kate go over to you. You're one of the rare birds you've been at Accenture  for over 20 years. So you must like airplanes and travel to stay there that long. But doing a little homework for this, I saw a really interesting piece of you talking about your boss challenging you to ask for more work, to ask for a new opportunity. And I thought that was really insightful that you, you picked up on that like Oh, I guess it's incumbent on me to ask for more, not necessarily wait for that to be given to me, it sounds like a really seminal moment in your career. >> It was important but before I tell you that story, because it was an important moment of my career and probably something that a lot of the women here on the panel here can relate to as well. You mentioned airplanes and it made me think of my dad. My father was in the air force and I remember him telling stories when I was little about his career change from the air force into a career in telecommunications. So technology for me growing up Jeff was, it was kind of part of the dinner table. I mean it was just a conversation that was constantly ongoing in our house. And I also, as a young girl, I loved playing video games. We had a Tandy computer down in the basement and I remember spending too many hours playing video games down there. And so for me my history and my really at a young age, my experience and curiosity around tech was there. And so maybe that's, what's fueling my inspiration to stay at Accenture for as long as I have. And you're right It's been two decades, which feels tremendous, but I've had the chance to work across a bunch of different industries, but you're right. I mean, during that time and I relate with what Jennifer said in terms of self editing, right? Women do this and I'm no exception, I did this. And I do remember I'm a mentor and a sponsor of mine who called me up when I'm kind of I was at a pivotal moment in my career and he said you know Kate, I've been waiting for you to call me and tell me you want this job. And I never even thought about it. I mean I just never thought that I'd be a candidate for the job and let alone somebody waiting for me to kind of make the phone call. I haven't made that mistake again, (laughing) but I like to believe I learned from it, but it was an important lesson. >> It's such a great lesson and women are often accused of being a little bit too passive and not necessarily looking out for in salary negotiations or looking for that promotion or kind of stepping up to take the crappy job because that's another thing we hear over and over from successful people is that some point in their career, they took that job that nobody else wanted. They took that challenge that really enabled them to take a different path and really a different Ascension. And I'm just curious if there's any stories on that or in terms of a leader or a mentor, whether it was in the career, somebody that you either knew or didn't know that was someone that you got kind of strength from kind of climbing through your own, kind of career progression. Will go to you first Annabel. >> I actually would love to talk about the salary negotiations piece because I have a group of friends about that we've been to meeting together once a month for the last six years now. And one of the things that we committed to being very transparent with each other about was salary negotiations and signing bonuses and all of the hard topics that you kind of don't want to talk about as a manager and the women that I'm in this group with span all types of different industries. And I've learned so much from them, from my different job transitions about understanding the signing bonus, understanding equity, which is totally foreign to me coming from law and politics. And that was one of the most impactful tools that I've ever had was a group of people that I could be open with talking about salary negotiations and talking about how to really manage equity. Those are totally foreign to me up until this group of women really connected me to these topics and gave me some of that expertise. So that is something I strongly encourage is that if you haven't openly talked about salary negotiations before you should begin to do so. >> It begs the question, how was the sensitivity between the person that was making a lot of money and the person that wasn't? And how did you kind of work through that as a group for the greater good of everyone? >> Yeah, I think what's really eye opening is that for example, We had friends who were friends who were on tech, we had friends who were actually the entrepreneurs starting their own businesses or law firm, associates, law firm partners, people in PR, so we understood that there was going to be differences within industry and frankly in scale, but it was understanding even the tools, whether I think the most interesting one would be signing bonus, right? Because up until a few years ago, recruiters could ask you what you made and how do you avoid that question? How do you anchor yourself to a lower salary range or avoid that happening? I didn't know this, I didn't know how to do that. And a couple of women that had been in more senior negotiations shared ways to make sure that I was pinning myself to a higher salary range that I wanted to be in. >> That's great. That's a great story and really important to like say pin. it's a lot of logistical details, right? You just need to learn the techniques like any other skill. Inamarie, I wonder if you've got a story to share here. >> Sure. I just want to say, I love the example that you just gave because it's something I'm super passionate about, which is transparency and trust. Then I think that we're building that every day into all of our people processes. So sure, talk about sign on bonuses, talk about pay parody because that is the landscape. But a quick story for me, I would say is all about stepping into uncertainty. And when I coach younger professionals of course women, I often talk about, don't be afraid to step into the role where all of the answers are not vetted down because at the end of the day, you can influence what those answers are. I still remember when Honeywell asked me to leave the comfort of California and to come to the East coast to New Jersey and bring my family. And I was doing well in my career. I didn't feel like I needed to do that, but I was willing after some coaching to step into that uncertainty. And it was one of the best pivotal moment in my career. I didn't always know who I was going to work with. I didn't know the challenges and scope I would take on, but those were some of the biggest learning experiences and opportunities and it made me a better executive. So that's always my coaching, like go where the answers aren't quite vetted down because you can influence that as a leader. >> That's great, I mean, Beth Comstock former vice chair at GE, one of her keynotes I saw had a great line, get comfortable with being uncomfortable. And I think that its a really good kind of message, especially in the time we're living in with accelerated change. But I'm curious, Inamarie was the person that got you to take that commitment. Would you consider that a sponsor, a mentor, was it a boss? Was it maybe somebody not at work, your spouse or a friend that said go for it. What kind of pushed you over the edge to take that? >> It's a great question. It was actually the boss I was going to work for. He was the CHRO, and he said something that was so important to me that I've often said it to others. And he said trust me, he's like I know you don't have all the answers, I know we don't have this role all figured out, I know you're going to move your family, but if you trust me, there is a ton of learning on the other side of this. And sometimes that's the best thing a boss can do is say we will go on this journey together. I will help you figure it out. So it was a boss, but I think it was that trust and that willingness for him to stand and go alongside of me that made me pick up my family and be willing to move across the country. And we stayed five years and really, I am not the same executive because of that experience. >> Right, that's a great story, Jennifer, I want to go to you, you work for two owners that are so progressive and I remember when Joe Lacob came on the floor a few years back and was booed aggressively coming into a franchise that hadn't seen success in a very long time, making really aggressive moves in terms of personnel, both at the coaches and the players level, the GM level. But he had a vision and he stuck to it. And the net net was tremendous success. I wonder if you can share any of the stories, for you coming into that organization and being able to feel kind of that level of potential success and really kind of the vision and also really a focus on execution to make the vision real cause vision without execution doesn't really mean much. If you could share some stories of working for somebody like Joe Lacob, who's so visionary but also executes so very, very effectively. >> Yeah, Joe is, well I have the honor of working for Joe, for Rick Welts to who's our president. Who's living legend with the NBA with Peter Guber. Our leadership at the Warriors are truly visionary and they set audacious targets. And I would say from a story the most recent is, right now what we're living through today. And I will say Joe will not accept that we are not having games with fans. I agree he is so committed to trying to solve for this and he has really put the organization sort of on his back cause we're all like well, what do we do? And he has just refused to settle and is looking down every path as to how do we ensure the safety of our fans, the safety of our players, but how do we get back to live entertainment? And this is like a daily mantra and now the entire organization is so focused on this and it is because of his vision. And I think you need leaders like that who can set audacious goals, who can think beyond what's happening today and really energize the entire organization. And that's really what he's done. And when I talked to my peers and other teams in there they're talking about trying to close out their season or do these things. And they're like well, we're talking about, how do we open the building? And we're going to have fans, we're going to do this. And they look at me and they're like, what are you talking about? And I said, well we are so fortunate. We have leadership that just is not going to settle. Like they are just always looking to get out of whatever it is that's happening and fix it. So Joe is so committed His background, he's an epidemiologist major I think. Can you imagine how unique a background that is and how timely. And so his knowledge of just around the pandemic and how the virus is spread. And I mean it's phenomenal to watch him work and leverage sort of his business acumen, his science acumen and really think through how do we solve this. Its amazing. >> The other thing thing that you had said before is that you basically intentionally told people that they need to rethink their jobs, right? You didn't necessarily want to give them permission to get you told them we need to rethink their jobs. And it's a really interesting approach when the main business is just not happening, right? There's just no people coming through the door and paying for tickets and buying beers and hotdogs. It's a really interesting talk. And I'm curious, kind of what was the reception from the people like hey, you're the boss, you just figure it out or were they like hey, this is terrific that he pressed me to come up with some good ideas. >> Yeah, I think when all of this happened, we were resolved to make sure that our workforce is safe and that they had the tools that they needed to get through their day. But then we really challenged them with re imagining what the next normal is. Because when we come out of this, we want to be ahead of everybody else. And that comes again from the vision that Joe set, that we're going to use this time to make ourselves better internally because we have the time. I mean, we had been racing towards opening Chase Center and not having time to pause. Now let's use this time to really rethink how we're doing business. What can we do better? And I think it's really reinvigorated teams to really think and innovate in their own areas because you can innovate anything, right?. We're innovating how you pay payables, we're all innovating, we're rethinking the fan experience and queuing and lines and all of these things because now we have the time that it's really something that top down we want to come out of this stronger. >> Right, that's great. Kate I'll go to you, Julie Sweet, I'm a big fan of Julie Sweet. we went to the same school so go go Claremont. But she's been super aggressive lately on a lot of these things, there was a get to... I think it's called Getting to 50 50 by 25 initiative, a formal initiative with very specific goals and objectives. And then there was a recent thing in terms of doing some stuff in New York with retraining. And then as you said, military being close to your heart, a real specific military recruiting process, that's formal and in place. And when you see that type of leadership and formal programs put in place not just words, really encouraging, really inspirational, and that's how you actually get stuff done as you get even the consulting businesses, if you can't measure it, you can't improve it. >> Yeah Jeff, you're exactly right. And as Jennifer was talking, Julie is exactly who I was thinking about in my mind as well, because I think it takes strong leadership and courage to set bold bold goals, right? And you talked about a few of those bold goals and Julie has certainly been at the forefront of that. One of the goals we set in 2018 actually was as you said to achieve essentially a gender balance workforce. So 50% men, 50% women by 2025, I mean, that's ambitious for any company, but for us at the time we were 400,000 people. They were 500, 6,000 globally. So when you set a goal like that, it's a bold goal and it's a bold vision. And we have over 40% today, We're well on our path to get to 50%, I think by 2025. And I was really proud to share that goal in front of a group of 200 clients the day that it came out, it's a proud moment. And I think it takes leaders like Julie and many others by the way that are also setting bold goals, not just in my company to turn the dial here on gender equality in the workforce, but it's not just about gender equality. You mentioned something I think it's probably at as, or more important right now. And that's the fact that at least our leadership has taken a Stand, a pretty bold stand against social injustice and racism, >> Right which is... >> And so through that we've made some very transparent goals in North America in terms of the recruitment and retention of our black African American, Hispanic American, Latinex communities. We've set a goal to increase those populations in our workforce by 60% by 2025. And we're requiring mandatory training for all of our people to be able to identify and speak up against racism. Again, it takes courage and it takes a voice. And I think it takes setting bold goals to make a change and these are changes we're committed to. >> Right, that's terrific. I mean, we started the conversation with Grace Hopper, they put out an index for companies that don't have their own kind of internal measure to do surveys again so you can get kind of longitudinal studies over time and see how you're improving Inamarie, I want to go to you on the social justice thing. I mean, you've talked a lot about values and culture. It's a huge part of what you say. And I think that the quote that you use, if I can steal it is " no culture eats strategy for breakfast" and with the social injustice. I mean, you came out with special values just about what Zendesk is doing on social injustice. And I thought I was actually looking up just your regular core mission and value statement. And this is what came up on my Google search. So I wanted to A, you published this in a blog in June, taking a really proactive stand. And I think you mentioned something before that, but then you're kind of stuck in this role as a mind reader. I wonder if you can share a little bit of your thoughts of taking a proactive stand and what Zendesk is doing both you personally, as well as a company in supporting this. And then what did you say as a binder Cause I think these are difficult kind of uncharted waters on one hand, on the other hand, a lot of people say, hello, this has been going on forever. You guys are just now seeing cellphone footage of madness. >> Yeah Wow, there's a lot in there. Let me go to the mind reader comments, cause people are probably like, what is that about? My point was last December, November timing. I've been the Chief People Officer for about two years And I decided that it really was time with support from my CEO that Zendesk have a Chief Diversity Officer sitting in at the top of the company, really putting a face to a lot of the efforts we were doing. And so the mind reader part comes in little did I know how important that stance would become, in the may June Timing? So I joked that, it almost felt like I could have been a mind reader, but as to what have we done, a couple of things I would call out that I think are really aligned with who we are as a company because our culture is highly threaded with the concept of empathy it's been there from our beginning. We have always tried to be a company that walks in the shoes of our customers. So in may with the death of George Floyd and the world kind of snapping and all of the racial injustice, what we said is we wanted to not stay silent. And so most of my postings and points of view were that as a company, we would take a stand both internally and externally and we would also partner with other companies and organizations that are doing the big work. And I think that is the humble part of it, we can't do it all at Zendesk, we can't write all the wrongs, but we can be in partnership and service with other organizations. So we used funding and we supported those organizations and partnerships. The other thing that I would say we did that was super important along that empathy is that we posted space for our employees to come together and talk about the hurt and the pain and the experiences that were going on during those times and we called those empathy circles. And what I loved is initially, it was through our mosaic community, which is what we call our Brown and black and persons of color employee resource group. But it grew into something bigger. We ended up doing five of these empathy circles around the globe and as leadership, what we were there to do is to listen and stand as an ally and support. And the stories were life changing. And the stories really talked about a number of injustice and racism aspects that are happening around the world. And so we are committed to that journey, we will continue to support our employees, we will continue to partner and we're doing a number of the things that have been mentioned. But those empathy circles, I think were definitely a turning point for us as an organization. >> That's great, and people need it right? They need a place to talk and they also need a place to listen if it's not their experience and to be empathetic, if you just have no data or no knowledge of something, you need to be educated So that is phenomenal. I want to go to you Jennifer. Cause obviously the NBA has been very, very progressive on this topic both as a league, and then of course the Warriors. We were joking before. I mean, I don't think Steph Curry has ever had a verbal misstep in the history of his time in the NBA, the guy so eloquent and so well-spoken, but I wonder if you can share kind of inside the inner circle in terms of the conversations, that the NBA enabled right. For everything from the jerseys and going out on marches and then also from the team level, how did that kind of come down and what's of the perception inside the building? >> Sure, obviously I'm so proud to be part of a league that is as progressive and has given voice and loud, all the teams, all the athletes to express how they feel, The Warriors have always been committed to creating a diverse and equitable workplace and being part of a diverse and equitable community. I mean that's something that we've always said, but I think the situation really allowed us, over the summer to come up with a real formal response, aligning ourselves with the Black Lives Matter movement in a really meaningful way, but also in a way that allows us to iterate because as you say, it's evolving and we're learning. So we created or discussed four pillars that we wanted to work around. And that was really around wallet, heart, beat, and then tongue or voice. And Wallet is really around putting our money where our mouth is, right? And supporting organizations and groups that aligned with the values that we were trying to move forward. Heart is around engaging our employees and our fan base really, right? And so during this time we actually launched our employee resource groups for the first time and really excited and energized about what that's doing for our workforce. This is about promoting real action, civic engagement, advocacy work in the community and what we've always been really focused in a community, but this really hones it around areas that we can all rally around, right? So registration and we're really focused on supporting the election day results in terms of like having our facilities open to all the electorate. So we're going to have our San Francisco arena be a ballot drop off, our Oakland facilities is a polling site, Santa Cruz site is also a polling location, So really promoting sort of that civic engagement and causing people to really take action. heart is all around being inclusive and developing that culture that we think is really reflective of the community. And voice is really amplifying and celebrating one, the ideas, the (indistinct) want to put forth in the community, but really understanding everybody's culture and really just providing and using the platform really to provide a basis in which as our players, like Steph Curry and the rest want to share their own experiences. we have a platform that can't be matched by any pedigree, right? I mean, it's the Warriors. So I think really getting focused and rallying around these pillars, and then we can iterate and continue to grow as we define the things that we want to get involved in. >> That's terrific. So I have like pages and pages and pages of notes and could probably do this for hours and hours, but unfortunately we don't have that much time we have to wrap. So what I want to do is give you each of you the last word again as we know from this problem, right? It's not necessarily a pipeline problem, it's really a retention problem. We hear that all the time from Girls in Code and Girls in Tech. So what I'd like you to do just to wrap is just a couple of two or three sentences to a 25 year old, a young woman sitting across from you having coffee socially distanced about what you would tell her early in the career, not in college but kind of early on, what would the be the two or three sentences that you would share with that person across the table and Annabel, we'll start with you. >> Yeah, I will have to make a pitch for transportation. So in transportation only 15% of the workforce is made up of women. And so my advice would be that there are these fields, there are these opportunities where you can make a massive impact on the future of how people move or how they consume things or how they interact with the world around them. And my hope is that being at Waymo, with our self driving car technology, that we are going to change the world. And I am one of the initial people in this group to help make that happen. And one thing that I would add is women spend almost an hour a day, shuttling their kids around, and we will give you back that time one day with our self driving cars so that I'm a mom. And I know that that is going to be incredibly powerful on our daily lives. >> Jeff: That's great. Kate, I think I might know what you're already going to say, but well maybe you have something else you wanted to say too. >> I don't know, It'll be interesting. Like if I was sitting across the table from a 25 year old right now I would say a couple of things first I'd say look intentionally for a company that has an inclusive culture. Intentionally seek out the company that has an inclusive culture, because we know that companies that have inclusive cultures retain women in tech longer. And the companies that can build inclusive cultures will retain women in tech, double, double the amount that they are today in the next 10 years. That means we could put another 1.4 million women in tech and keep them in tech by 2030. So I'd really encourage them to look for that. I'd encouraged them to look for companies that have support network and reinforcements for their success, and to obviously find a Waymo car so that they can not have to worry where kids are on for an hour when you're parenting in a few years. >> Jeff: I love the intentional, it's such a great word. Inamarie, >> I'd like to imagine that I'm sitting across from a 25 year old woman of color. And what I would say is be authentically you and know that you belong in the organization that you are seeking and you were there because you have a unique perspective and a voice that needs to be heard. And don't try to be anything that you're not, be who you are and bring that voice and that perspective, because the company will be a better company, the management team will be a better management team, the workforce will be a better workforce when you belong, thrive and share that voice. >> I love that, I love that. That's why you're the Chief People Officer and not Human Resources Officer, cause people are not resources like steel and cars and this and that. All right, Jennifer, will go to you for the wrap. >> Oh my gosh, I can't follow that. But yes, I would say advocate for yourself and know your value. I think really understanding what you're worth and being willing to fight for that is critical. And I think it's something that women need to do more. >> Awesome, well again, I wish we could go all day, but I will let you get back to your very, very busy day jobs. Thank you for participating and sharing your insight. I think it's super helpful. And there and as we said at the beginning, there's no better example for young girls and young women than to see people like you in leadership roles and to hear your voices. So thank you for sharing. >> Thank you. >> All right. >> Thank you. >> Okay thank you. >> Thank you >> All right, so that was our diversity panel. I hope you enjoyed it, I sure did. I'm looking forward to chapter two. We'll get it scheduled as soon as we can. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From Sand Hill Road in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's "theCUBE," presenting the People First Network, insights from entrepreneurs and tech leaders. (upbeat electronic music) >> Hi, everyone, welcome to this special "CUBE" conversation. I'm John Furrier, co-host of "theCUBE" and co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media. We are on Sand Hill Road at Mayfield Fund, the venture capitalist funding startups. We're here with Tara Vaishnav, who is the vice president of technology, innovation, and advanced analytics at The Clorox Company, as part of the People First Network co-creation of content with SiliconANGLE and Mayfield. Tara, welcome. >> Well, thank you very much for having me! And congratulations to Mayfield on 50 amazing years, wow! >> 50 years they have been in Sand Hill Road, they've been investing in some great startups. They really have a great philosophy about people first. >> Yep. >> And you've had a very distinguished career in technology, IT, in big companies. Long tenures, too, like, you know, decades. >> Yes, oh, yes. >> And now at Clorox, a consumer company. So talk about your journey, where your experience is, where you started, tell us about your background. >> Yeah, well, I grew up in India, if it's not obvious already. I came to the United States after I finished my undergrad in India, I had an undergrad in electrical engineering. Came over here, got my electrical engineering master's at the University of Southern California, go Trojans. And after that, I worked for several companies, but mostly in health care and life sciences. So the past four years, I have been the vice president of IT at The Clorox Company, which is a CPG company, so quite a bit of a learning curve there. >> Health care, serving patients, now you're serving consumers. >> That's right, that's right. >> Clorox is well-known for their analytics, well-known for technology, innovation. >> Tara: Yes, yeah. >> I've interviewed a bunch of folks at Clorox, they've always been at the head of the curve. >> Tara: Yeah. >> Like Procter & Gamble, you guys, consumer companies have to be. >> Tara: Definitely. >> Now, more than ever, digital disruption is an opportunity for companies to have a better relationship with their customers. >> Tara: Absolutely. >> And changes the makeup of their brand as well, since it touches the customer. How do you see that evolving? What's the current state of the art of some of the things you're working on? >> Yeah, it's pretty fascinating, actually. And I hate to use cliches, but things like consumer experience is really at the heart of it. We're a brand company, at the end of the day, and how people feel about us is really, really important. It's not so much, it is about the products, and we make amazing products, but how do they feel about us as a company, and how do they engage with us differently than they did before? We do not buy the same way as we did even five years ago. And so, learning that, learning the new, evolving consumer, and getting really close to what's important to them, that's really on the forefront of how we think about our digital transformation. >> One of the cool things that's great about the People First Network that we've been doing-- >> Tara: Yeah. >> This content, is that we have a lot of luminaries who have had a storied career, like yourself, have looked at the changes and the waves of innovation that have come before, and now, more than ever, omnichannel, how you advertise and reach customers, how they interact, how they buy and consume. When you look at health care and some of the things you've been involved in, in the '90s, remember, client-server was big, they had computers. >> Tara: (laughs) Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. >> IT has changed a lot. >> It has. >> What is the most striking thing that you see from those changes in this new wave that we're living now? >> You know, so, (sharply exhales) I was fortunate in that I decided that data was where it was at, right from the beginning of my career. That's how I kind of made my way up my career ladder, is really that focus on data. I had a software engineering background, but really felt the power of data to change things. What has happened, if I think about some of the big changes, or the key milestones, if you will, in my career, one of the first real big changes came about when data, which was up until that point really sort of coming along for the ride, you had applications, applications had data, when data actually became the mainstay and the applications kind of came and went. I remember one of my mentors in the past, a past CIO, actually, telling me that applications come and go, but data is forever. And when that really started to become a thing was when big data and big data technologies became, came of enterprise age, if you will, along with cloud technologies. That marriage really, that was, I think, the tipping point where the things that you could do with data and the way that you could get insights from data really took on a life of its own, if you will. >> You know, one of the things, that's a great point. I'd love to get your insights as a leader and as you grew with data, because it wasn't really obvious at that time. Certainly, people had databases and that, the big data, the applications had data. >> Tara: Sure, sure, yeah. >> But it was always kind of old-school data. "Hey, get some data, let's look at the demographics, "let's look at the Consumer Price Index," blah, blah, blah, all kinds of data. But access to data became driven by the database. >> Tara: Correct. >> So there might've been data available-- >> Tara: Yeah. >> But getting it in the hands of the practitioners even now is hard, but even back then, you might not have had the data. So as a leader who's sought data-- >> Tara: Yeah. >> As a strategic advantage. By the way, that's rare early, isn't it? So, (laughs) awesome for you. >> You know, I got lucky. >> How did you get through that? How did you lead the organization to make data at the center of things? >> It is a very good question. There were a few things that started to take shape once big data and the marriage of the cloud started to happen. It started to open up doors, break down organizational silos. When you brought that data together, the business value, or the potential business value that could be unlocked, became obvious. The way that we approached it, though, under my leadership, I always believe in small steps. I believe in leapfrog, but I believe that you have to feed innovation or innovative thinking out in small doses. People are not always ready to consume it in one big (laughs) fell swoop, if you will. So doing things incrementally, but with an idea towards transformation, was, I think, the secret sauce that I used to approach these things. So as a couple of examples, in Kaiser Permanente, when I worked there for almost seven years, I was instrumental in bringing their big data platform to life. But it was not just a matter of, "Here's the technology "for technology's sake." It was a matter of, "Here are some real problems "that we are having a lot of difficulty in solving today. "Let's show you how we can solve those differently "in an amazing way." And we proved that. It was an experiment, that we proved that, and that really started to get us those adopters, if you will. >> John: So take baby steps. >> Yep. >> Don't try to do wholesale changes hardcore. >> Correct, correct. >> Let people get used to it. >> Yeah. >> This must've had an impact on culture. >> Yes, yes. >> And this comes up a lot in the DevOps culture we've seen in the past decade, even now. >> Yeah. >> Getting people to change has become very difficult. >> Yes! >> John: We all know that person-- >> Yes. >> Has their project that's their baby, adding features, "No, don't take my "baby away from me." >> Tara: Yes, yes, yes. >> "I don't want to change." >> (laughs) Oh, yeah. >> How do you make that happen? How do you lead people through that very difficult transformation at an emotional level, on a business level? What's the strategy there? What's your technique? >> Yeah, so, again, back to, you have to show results. And you have to show results incrementally in a way that people can appreciate them and consume them. You have to look at technology from a business value perspective. Business value comes first, technology is just along for the ride. That's how people see it, and that's how they should see it. >> John: Mm-hm. >> It's what you can do with the technology that makes a difference. So, some of the techniques that I have used in the past have been, number one, you do have to find like-minded people in the organization. You can't go at it alone. You have to start to build your clan, if you will, of innovators, so you've got a target audience that you're chippin' away at, slowly, but you've got to build credibility. Because results build credibility. Credibility builds trust. Trust removes barriers. So that's kind of the way that I approach things. I bring like-minded people together, I find people in the organization, of the people that are resistant, that I can bring onto "my side," if you will, and I use their knowledge, their insights, their knowledge of how this person who is obviously a stakeholder, and an important stakeholder, how they think and what's important to them, and I use that language and that person to be able to approach individuals in different ways. It's about culture. >> And it's always good to make them, you know, success has many fathers, if you will-- >> Yep. >> Is always an expression. Making them feel part of the solution. >> Absolutely. >> So I got to ask you a question. Is having a software background, coming into the tech world and the business world, this, now, you're starting to see applications really dictate to the infrastructure. Elastic clouds are out there. >> Tara: Yes. >> You have data as a resource now. If you were entering the market as a young software engineer today, and you were asked to come in and make an impact, knowing what you know, how do you see the world today? Because, you know, a lot of software engineers creating value from men, and, now, a lot more women are coming on board. >> Yeah, yeah. >> It's still lower numbers, but still, software's not just that software engineer. >> Yeah. >> It's software architecture, it's software engineering, software development, UX, UI-- >> Tara: Yeah. >> Analytics, a lot of range-- >> Tara: Yeah, yeah. >> Of software opportunities. How would you attack the marketplace today if you were coming in and entering the workforce or in the middle of your career? >> Yes, you know, when I look at my career, which is a little longer than I'd like to admit, I see myself as a young undergraduate student in India. I was one of six girls in a class of about 50. I was striving to get a degree in what was called, actually, electronics and telecommunication. I was in a minority. I came over here to the United States, and I continued to be in the minority. I look at my career, which is more than 25 years old. I have also continued to stay in the minority throughout that career. The biggest difference between where I am now in my career versus where I was then is I don't care as much anymore that I'm in the minority. (both laugh) Right? What is fascinating to me, though, John, is when I look at some of the very young students, actually, we had a high school intern program for the first time this year at Clorox, which is actually interesting. We typically have college interns, but this year, Clorox, a 105-year-old company in the middle of the Silicon Valley, having the ability to see that the very, very young generation can think very differently, and bringing in the high school intern, or a set of high school interns, to help with that journey, I think, was forward-thinking for the company. And those kids, the confidence that they have? They are not shackled by knowing too much, you know? >> John: Yes. >> But they know what's relevant, they know how to make things happen, and boy, do they know how to use technology to make problems that we consider problems that would take months, happen so quickly. They were with us for four weeks. In four weeks, they developed an app, a website. They developed our logo. They developed a PR video for us. They had an innovation showcase. In four weeks, four little students. >> It's interesting, for the first time (Tara laughs) in my career, I can admit that, from a self-awareness standpoint, "Well, I really don't know what I'm talking about." These young kids have a different view, because now their experiences are different. >> Tara: Yes. >> And so, the insight coming out of this new generation really is pretty compelling. >> Tara: It is. >> They are adding a lot more because there's been a shift in expectations, there's been a shift in experiences-- >> Tara: Yes. >> For this new generation, and they're at the forefront, so it's a big wave coming. What's your thoughts on that? Because analytics is a big part of your career now, and it always-- >> Tara: Yes, yes. >> Has been, but now, more than ever-- >> Yeah. >> The younger generation, they want instant gratification, they want value. >> They do. >> They don't want to wait and be told-- >> They do. >> They want to see the immediacy. >> They do. >> Talk about this new shift, this new younger generation. >> Yeah, yeah. You know, there used to be the good old days, where we could, say, put a product out there and, you know, eventually it kind of works its way into the consumer ecosystem, and then we'd get to hear back, over the course of time. Customers would call in with a recommendation or a complaint. It's very different now. Things are out there instantaneously. We put something out there, you're getting comments and reviews, some of them good, some of them not so good. It's out there, and it's out there instantly. And that also, the modern consumer is not shy. They kind of hide behind the keyboard, and they're putting their comments out there, right? (both laugh) They're the keyboard warriors! >> John: (laughs) Yeah. >> So being able to respond to that and having not just the data, but the ability to extract insights from data and to extract insights in real time, that is crucial. And so, gone are the days where you had months to do your analytics. You have to be able to do your analytics in the flow, you have to be able to take in new information, incorporate it into your models, be able to do predictive analytics on it. So technology and the way that it is evolving is super critical for survival these days. >> So, survival, and also competitive advantage, we've heard-- >> Oh, for sure. >> From other CIOs, and also CSOs, from a security standpoint-- >> Yes, yes. >> There's business risks involved. How real-time do you see the advantage being? Obviously, near real time is pretty much what people talk about. >> Yeah. >> Real time is to the second, and self-driving cars will certainly need that. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> But as a leader chasing the real-time holy grail-- >> Yeah. >> Seems to be a theme we hear. How do you react to that, and how do you view real-time data? >> There is definitely something that builds up to the richness of data that you can take advantage of in "real time." And I am saying "real time" in quotes because there is a contextuality associated with it. The wonder of modern advanced analytics and machine learning is that you have an existing model that you're tweaking and evolving with new information, and that model is serving as your guide as you receive new information. So, does it have to be reactive, or can it be proactive? You're building the insights, and then you're adding on new information as you see it. And you're using technology to help you make more holistic decisions. And at the end of the day, there is something to be said about the human aspect of it. The machine can give you guidance-- >> John: Yes. >> But the human being needs to make the decision. >> I'd love to ask you a quick question on that, because I think this is something that we talk about all the time. >> Yeah. >> Humans are critical in the equation, machines augment the humans. >> Yes. >> In the data world, if you're "data-driven," which has been (laughs) a cliche, "We're data-driven!" >> Tara: Yes, yes. >> It takes on multiple forms. >> Tara: Yes. >> I've seen multiple actors saying, "We're data-driven," but they're really just correlating data. >> Tara: Yeah. >> The causation side of it is, what's causing things, that's more of a management thing. >> Tara: Yeah. >> So causation and correlation are two different variables-- >> Tara: Yes. >> In the analytics field right now-- >> Tara: Yeah. >> That are being amplified as, you got to know the distinction between correlation, because you can correlate anything, causation is something that might be more designed towards figuring out something, and you really can't rest on one more than the other. >> Yeah. (laughs) >> Your thoughts on the balance between the two. >> You're talking to someone who worked in health care for-- (laughs) >> John: (laughs) I probably won't get you to continue. >> For almost seven years. Causation and correlation are-- >> John: More important than ever. >> Are more important than ever. And I think more and more, the boundary between what machines can do and how they can augment human beings, versus actually having the machines help you make decisions, it's getting fuzzier, and machines are able to do more and more. I mean, all of the knowledge that you could read about 24 hours a day cannot sit in your head. You have to be able to leverage machines to help you make those decisions. So as far as causation and correlation, I think the correlation is something that the machine can be the master of. It can see patterns where you may not even think to look for patterns. So I think that, let's give it up to the machines. Correlation is where-- >> John: They got that. >> The machines have got that, and you got to set them up so that they can do that for you. Causation is where the tricky area starts to happen. Because there is a lot to say, especially when you talk about doctors, about experience and working with individuals. Each individual is different. You can't say that the causation for this person is the same as that because the correlations are similar. No, you have to look, there are so many factors that go into what is causing-- >> John: Yeah. >> A disease or a condition in a person. So I think that is where the human element and experience really, really still make a difference. >> In the media business, we call it behavioral and contextual. >> Yes. >> Context is really important for really aligning-- >> It is. >> With whatever the problem statement may be. >> Yes, yes. >> Correlation, behavior, machines can do that. >> Correct. >> That's awesome, great, great, great insight there. A final question for you is, for other folks out there, CIOs or IT executives, as they look at the digital transformation journey, which, again, very cliche, but very real, there's a lot of opportunities, but also potential pitfalls if not executed properly. >> Tara: Yeah. >> Your thoughts on general roadmaps or best practices around how to tackle transformation, if they're doing it, coming in for the first time or at the beginning, or if they're in the middle of a digital transformation, and they're stuck in the mud-- >> Yeah, yeah. >> Or "Oh my God, "my head person quit. "I got to get more people." >> Yeah. >> "I need developers," or people on the back end of the transformation, different parts of the journey. What's your advice? >> Yeah, I've got a couple of, again, from the scars of my past, a couple of things that I think are important. Number one, when I joined Clorox, I had the stretch goal of actually building out their cybersecurity program. I had not done that in the previous part of my career. I was an enterprise architect, that's where I would spend most of my many years. But cybersecurity, and I hired the CSO and built out that program for Clorox, it puts a whole different lens on how you look at your transformation, and it is an important lens. And I think I would not have been rounded, as either an enterprise architect who's developing technology strategy or a digital technology innovator, if I did not have that lens of, there is risk that you need to consider. Now, the point to remember is that you can't over-rotate one way or the other. You have to consider risk and opportunity, and there's a fine line. And I think the smartest CIOs and senior executives know where that fine line exists, and are able to tell when you need to go this way or that way. So that's one thing that I would say, is don't lose that lens. Technology can do wonderful things for you, but so can the hackers from a different-- >> You got to be aware-- >> You've got to be aware. >> And then, you've got to shape it, too, as it evolves. Is that something that you see as important? >> You have to have that lens of, you're doing this wonderful, amazing thing, however, what if the unintended audience is able to access whatever you're doing? And what can they do with it? So that's one thing that I would say, is keep that balance in mind. Again, don't over-rotate one way or the other, but keep that balance in mind. The other thing that I would say is, innovation is a state of mind that needs to be nurtured and developed, and it needs to be sought from every part of the organization. The only way to scale innovation is to have everybody be an innovator in the organization. So that would be my advice, is innovation can come from the youngest high school intern, or, we actually just had someone at Clorox celebrate their 50th year at Clorox. So, you know-- >> John: Yeah. >> Innovation can come from anywhere in the organization. You have to always be ready, open-minded, and prepared to grab that opportunity when it happens. >> My final takeaway for this is in context to where we are now, we're on Sand Hill Road-- >> Yes. >> At Mayfield Fund, they're a venture capitalist. >> Yes. >> They fund early-stage and growth. >> Yep. >> The younger generation, we just talked about the insights that they can have, new shifts that are happening in experiences, expectations. The startups, more than ever, have an opportunity to have customers like Clorox. >> Tara: Yes, yes. >> What used to be, "Well, a startup, "risk, don't go through the, go through TSA, "and when you get approved, "then we'll talk to you," kind of thing. (Tara guffaws) It's a big, painful process. >> Used to be? >> Now, more than ever, startups want to land the big Clorox deals. >> Yes, yes. >> They want to show the value proposition, time to value, shortening, with cloud and other things. What's your advice to startups who want to sell to you or hope to, aspire to, be successful in the marketplace? >> You know, I love startups, and I spent a lot of time with them. What I have seen as differentiating in the startups that I have seen is, some of them, they're out there, they want your business. So they are looking at you from that, "Can I get your business?" And then there are other startups that, I'm sure they've got that lens, but they don't make it obvious to you. To them, the value is in working with you. You're a company that is well-reputed. You've got a ton of amazing data that can be used to develop your models. You've got a ton of insights and understanding of the business that you can get by just working with this "reputed" company, like Clorox. Those in itself, you can't put a tangible, material value on that, but that is what helps startups build relevant and amazing products. And that, in itself, is "payment." The money will come, but look to the experiences, look to the ability to leverage data, and, above all, look to how you can position your product in a way that it is solving a business problem. Don't do technology for technology's sake. >> So, your advice would be, don't focus on on the PO. If they're venture-backed, they probably have some runway. >> Yes. >> Focus on the value proposition. >> Absolutely, and learning how companies operate and what's important to them, take the time to do that. >> How about scale? Do you hear that a lot with startups, they want to try to use the value proposition? One, they have to get in the door and show value, so that's one. >> Tara: Of course. >> Kind of table stakes, get through the door. >> Okay, yep. >> Then it's more about how they can be operationalized. That becomes something I've seen with startups. What's your thoughts on that? Because one of the benefits of getting in the door is getting (laughs) in the door, but staying in-- >> Yeah. >> Is about operationalizing that new value proposition. How do you look at that as a leader? >> (sharply exhales) Yeah, the word operationalization is an interesting one. So, companies like Clorox, I mean, while I love to work with startups, I will tell you that I do experiments, four, six, eight weeks, we've got a metric. If we go beyond that, it's probably a project that needs to go through a different route. But we do these experiments, and we do them quickly. The thing that we do worry about is, "Okay, great startup, great product. "Is it enterprise-ready?" You know? And I think that is where a lot of startups struggle a little bit, is, can they prove to you that their product is Fort Knox, that it won't be a way through which your systems get hacked? Can they prove to you that they've got a good handle on where they are going, what their roadmap is, what capabilities they are developing in their roadmap? Can they showcase that to you in a way that makes sense to you? We're looking for companies that are not just here today and gone tomorrow, companies that are here for the long run. And then, even if they can't do all of that, show that you integrate really well with our other products. Because, guess what, if you don't work out so well for us, little startup, we want to be able to replace you. We want to have that option. And if you don't integrate seamlessly and can be plucked out and put back in again, then we're stuck with something that we can't extract from our environment. So they've got to think how we think, is what I would advise them. (laughs) >> Tara, thanks so much for this great insight. For startups out there, for folks entering their career, for other women who are looking to break into tech, we have a great inspirational leader here. >> Thank you. >> John: Thank you for spending the time, we really appreciate it. >> Thank you very much, really appreciate it. >> Thank you very much. I'm John Furrier. You're watching the People First program with SiliconANGLE and Mayfield. Thanks for watching. (upbeat electronic music)

>> Livefrom London, England, it's theCUBE, covering .Next Conference Europe 2018. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back to London, England. This is theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Nutanix .Next 2018 Europe. My name's Stu Miniman. My cohost for these two days of coverage has been Joep Piscaer. And happy to welcome to the program, two first (mumbles). We're gonna talk about culture and people. To my right is Rukmini Sivaraman, who is the vice president of business operations and chief of staff to the CEO. And sitting next to her is Prabha Krishna, who is the senior vice president of people and places, both of them with Nutanix. Ladies, thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. >> All right so, we've been covering Nutanix for a long time. I've been to every one of the shows. I start out, I guess... Dheeraj talked for a long time about the three Hs. It was humble, hungry, and honest, if I got those right. And more recently, it was with heart. Actually sitting not too far behind us, there's a big booth for heart. So, the culture of the company is something that is tied with the founders. We've watched that growth. I've watched the company go from about 35 people to over 3500 people. So, having those core principles is something that we look at in companies. Why don't we start? If you could both just give quick introduction, what brought you to Nutanix, and what your role is there. >> Sure, I've been at Nutanix a little over 18 months and I started out as an engineer, then went to finance and investment banking of all things, was at Goldman for almost a decade. And Nutanix is a client of Goldman's back form the IPO, and I had heard great things about the company, of course, but wasn't intending to leave Goldman Sachs. But when I got introduced to Dheeraj, there was so much that was compelling about the company, the disruption, the category-defining, category-creating kind of position that the company had. And more importantly, I think, where we were going, which was just phenomenal. it was ambitious, it was bold. And I think for me, it's always been about the people. We spend a lot of time at work and it's really important to feel that connection to the people. And that was really important 'cause I had to pick up and move from New York City to the Bay Area to make this move. And we can talk more about this, but to me the people were, like I said, ambitious, but they were also grounded. And I see it and after being at Nutanix now, it's phenomenal how truly humble the people are and that's always struck me as a great combination. You want ambition and challenging problems to solve, but you also want humility and people that you can relate to. So that's really what got me to Nutanix. >> Please. >> Yeah so, I've actually been following Nutanix for quite a while. It's a company that addresses a space that's very underserved and has created a suite of products that's nothing short of amazing for our customers, entirely focused on our customer base. But for me, the most interesting thing was, it's a company that is as right-brained as it is left-brained. I've actually spent 19 years of my career in engineering and made a career switch into the people side. And it's one of the few companies where that fit is almost perfect. And once I met our founder and our CEO, Dheeraj, this became even more obvious. So. I'm actually very happy to be here. I've been here for about four months now, and it's already very clearly the beginning of a very, very exciting journey. >> Yeah, interesting, both of you kind of making those shifts. Talk a little bit about that, talk about... People from outside of Silicon Valley, always, it's like, "Oh, there's the one where they have the playground "and free meals and free drinks." And it's like, "Yeah, that's because you do the analysis "and if they'll work 18 hours a day, "if we can keep them there, "maybe even put a cot in the office, that's good." I haven't seen cots in the office when I go to Nutanix, but hey are really nice offices. And even on the east coast, we're tartin' to change and see some of those things there. Maybe give us a little bit of insight as to that culture. And Nutanix is much more than just Silicon Valley based now. >> That's right. So we are truly a global organization. And we decided very early on that we wanted to be a global organization, but we're also thinking local. All right, so we do have multiple offices within the US, in Durham and Seattle and other places, but we're also truly global. Our Bangalore office, in India we have a big presence. And so for us what that means is there's people from different perspectives and background. But ultimately, it's our sort of, like you said, the four values, but also our culture principles that we've qualified fairly recently that bind us. And that really help us move forward in the same direction and pointing that same direction, and growing the same way. So that has been a phenomenal to see and it's one that I think we've very deliberately qualified more recently. It's sort of the how, how do we behave that embodies those four values that you talked about. >> So Prabha, so you're a new hire, right? >> Yes. >> You haven't been with Nutanix as much. So while we're talking on the subject, what's your personal experience coming into Nutanix? Is it true what you're talking about? How does it work in real life, in practice? >> No, absolutely. All companies state a culture. All companies, I think, in this day and age at least and definitely in Silicon Valley, are very clear about having a specific culture. But the key, as far as I'm concerned, and the strength of a company is how they live and breathe their culture every single day, in every decision, and every action, right. In every difficult balance that they need to meet, that's where the culture really shows up. And at Nutanix, it is... How shall I put it? It's really the core of every single thing we do. It's the core of how we interact. It's the core of how we grow. It's the core of how we recruit, how we define our organizations. And frankly, I have to say, I have been in a lot of organizations and a lot of organizations over time, actually, and particularly as they reach our size... We're a bit at sort of an inflection point, if you will, in terms of size. Our growth has definitely been very, very quick and continues to accelerate. Having that culture being something that we really live is the most important thing. And it is what will allow us to continue to innovate and continue to succeed all over the globe as Rukmini just explained. For me, it's quite extraordinary to see it in action. >> Yeah, that's really interesting because, one, our industry has some challenges hiring. It's finding the right skillset there. If you match that with a culture, what challenge are there? What are you looking for? What is the fit from the outside to match what you're looking for? >> Yeah, I'm happy to address a little bit. So recruiting for us is everything. We want to bring in the best. We wanna bring in the brightest and we wanna bring in folks who really value our culture and our values, who really understand them. And again, are willing to live them every single day. So we do look for great talent all over the planet because great talent exists all over the planet. This is absolutely fundamental to our growth. We are an infrastructure company and we offer, actually, very interesting work for anyone who is interested in the engineering side, who is interested in the sales side, who's interested in market. And for me, the most interesting part in the roles we have, and frankly the most unusual piece if you will, is we offer opportunities to build things from scratch. So, the creative side, the creative mind is really what we encourage. And it shows up in every single aspect of the way we're structured. So, the diversity of thought, the diversity of background, the diversity of... Whether it's gender or location, philosophies, and all of that, is really what we want to bring in and what will allow us to continue to create these products that are quite unique. >> If I may add to that, we talk internally a lot about the founder's mentality. It's a concept, a framework that was developed by Bain & Company and the gist of it is as follows: When you think about great disruptive startups, they're on this rocket ship, accelerating growth. And then they get to a certain size, so they become a little bigger. And they get enjoy the benefits of scale, economies of scale, and that's a good thing. But the best companies take that and then they enjoy those benefits, but they then also don't lose what got them there in the first place, which is the innovation, the ability to disrupt and look around corners, and all of that. So we want the best of both worlds. And in this framework, it's called a scaled insurgent. So you're scaled, but you're still an insurgency. And that is important to us. Folks that can sort of balance the two, really make sure that we are benefiting from one, but also not losing sight of the other. And it's a paradox in many ways and we believe in embracing those paradoxes. And folks who can sort of balance those two would be really a great fit. >> And so, if you're growing that fast, I can imagine that keeping the balance between culture and engineering, and you're growing, that's difficult. How does Nutanix handle that paradox? >> I think it goes back to what Prabha was saying. And for us, culture and the way we behave is like oxygen. So it almost fuels the fire as opposed to the other way around or having to do two things at once. And that's how we've thought about it. And the principles, when we thought about them and conceived them, it was the same idea, which is how can this just be the way we conduct ourselves we treat our customers, we treat each other, we treat our partners? How can it just become the way we do business? And so far, that's worked well for us. >> So one of my favorite culture principles, actually, is comfortable being uncomfortable. And there's a real reason that because given our scale, given the way we wanna grow, and given the fact that we want to preserve that innovative seed at every step, for us, every single day is about balancing opposing forces. Do we invest in the short term? Do we invest in the long term? Do we manage locally? Do we manage more globally? Do we centralize things, do we not? Do we distribute, right? Every single day is about balancing those kinds of things and it's that balance that encourages the creativity in every single one of us. So, the very fact that we've sort of embodied that in a culture principle, really is a very strong indication of what we look for and what we wanna be. >> Right, with the time that we have left, I wondering if you could talk about both at the show and beyond the show, what things Nutanix is doing. Think tech for good, think about the charitable things. Some of speakers I've seen at these shows... Mick Ebeling is one that stood out from a previous show. On talking about tech for good, Dr. Jane Goodall, who I know spoke at a women's lunch event and in the keynote here today, is just so inspiring. As someone that loves science and animals, it was very powerful. You've got the .heart initiatives here. Maybe help for those that don't know here and what else you're doing around the globe and around the year. >> Did you wanna go first? >> Yeah, so giving back is very important for us. It's very fundamental. Gratitude, understanding where we all came from, where we are, and where we wanna go, and not losing ourselves, that's really the key of, I think, any type of success, frankly. So we have an organization around that. It's a very active organization, we all participate. And the company is very much involved in as many different types of charities as possible. It also feeds into the kinds of sourcing that we do when every bring people in. We look for folks who care. We care very much about our people. The amount of attention and the amount of just knowledge and thought that goes into structuring our organization is very much reflective of that sense of giving back and gratitude as well. Our employees are everything and the folks around us who are in need are also everything. It sort of goes together, if you will. So basically to us, it's a hugely, hugely important effort and we'll continue investing in those kinds of things as we go forward. >> I think one thing I would add is as you saw at the end of the closing keynote, I think we announced or shared that thanks to everyone here, really all the folks here, our customers, partners, all of our participants, we were able to collect over 10,000 pounds for .heart and that is phenomenal. We're forever grateful to our community to be able to do things like that. We also partner with organizations like Girls in Tech, which is doing great work on making sure that we are bringing all kinds of talent, as Prabha said, to the table. We believe there's great people everywhere. And so, how do we harness the power of all of those initiatives? >> All right, those are some great examples. And Prabha, to your point, I think that that individual touch to your employees, that also translates to the customer side. Something I hear from Nutanix customers is despite the fact how large you've grown and how many customers you have, they feel that they get that individual attention. So thank you so much for sharing all of the updates. Wish you both the best of luck in your continued journey. And we wanna thank our community, of course, for tuning in to our coverage. It is truly our pleasure to help document what's happening out in the industry, hopefully be a surrogate for you, to ask the questions that you wanna hear and help you along your journeys. My name's Stu Miniman. My first European cohost who also did a segment in Dutch, Joep Piscaer, Can you goodbye in Dutch for us, Joep? >> (Dutch). >> All right, I'll have to learn that one some time because, unfortunately, my english and speaking numbers in a couple of different languages is where I'm a little bit limited. But once again, thanks for watching. Turn to thecube.net to catch all of the replays from this show as well as all the shows that we will be at. Including, next year, Nutanix will be at Anaheim and the spring and Copenhagen in the fall. And our team look forward to bringing you coverage from both of those. So once again, thank you for watching theCUBE. >> Thank you. (slick electronic music) >> Hi, I'm John Wallis. I've been with theCUBE for a couple years serving as a host here on our broadcast, our flagship broadcast on SiliconANGLE TV. I like to think about the hows and the whys, and the whats of technology. How's it work? Why does it matter? What is it doing for end users? When I think about theCUBE does and what it means, to me, it's an ...

>> From Santa Clara, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE. Covering Technovation's World Pitch 2018. Now, here's Sonia Tagare. >> Hi, welcome back, I'm Sonia Tagare here with theCUBE in Santa Clara, California, covering Technovation's World Pitch Summit 2018, a pitch competition for girls to develop apps in order to create a better, positive change in the world. This week, 12 finalist teams are competing for their chance to win the gold or silver scholarships. With us today, we have on Amy Kim, the Chief Operating Officer for Iridescent. Amy, congratulations, and welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Can you tell me more about Technovation? >> Technovation is a program for girls where girls identify a problem in their community and they build a mobile app and a business plan to help solve that problem. Our girls, this past year we had almost 20,000 girls participate from all around the world. We had about 115 different countries registered this year so we've had really big growth. We are in a ninth year of operation for this program, and Iridescent, who's our mother organization, we're about 13 years old. >> How did you get involved with all of this? >> I actually started off as a mentor and a volunteer here at Iridescent, so I used to volunteer for Technovation team when we used to do a small program in L.A. and San Francisco where girls used to physically come to the studio and do the Technovation program and also I used to be a mentor for our Curiosity Machine program, which is a hands-on engineering design challenge program and competition. I was a volunteer for about four years, and then I came on board as a staff member about four years ago. >> What have you noticed has been the change from when you came on to now? >> I think one thing we have done at Iridescent strategically is grow the program globally, and we did that by making our programs free and all of our curriculum accessible. What we've really relied on is training our volunteers. I think you've talked to some of the mentors, some of the regional ambassadors. The trainer model has really helped us grow, and then we're able to reach more girls at a lower cost. Most of the money that we are able to raise, we are able to serve more children and serve more kids. >> What method do you think that's really helping getting these girls noticing Technovation? Is it online, is it through mentorship? >> Actually a lot of it is word of mouth. We were featured in a documentary called Code Girl about two years ago, and that has helped us get a broader reach, too, but really it's one girl who participates or one volunteer who volunteered with us. And our RAs, our regional ambassadors, in each of their countries they really do a great job promoting on our behalf to get more girls an opportunity to be a part of this program. >> What are you most excited about for this year's competition? >> That's a little tricky, cause we always get a little attached to every team, and we really try hard not to pick a favorite, but I think one thing we've seen this year is we updated our curriculum last year and I think the curriculum has really shown to be really strong and then more and more countries can adapt it. I think just seeing what the girls can accomplish, if you guys, what you'll see is that the girls are tackling really hard problems and they bring their own unique perspectives. Just seeing how they approach a problem is, to me, very exciting. >> What are these girls judged on for their pitches? >> They're mostly judged on a few criteria. One is the actual technical ability of their apps and how well do they solve the problem that they are trying to solve. Also, what is their business plan, is this a doable thing, does this business already exist, what is unique. There will be a little bit of public speaking, also how they present themselves, and the actual technical ability of the apps as well. >> That's great. What do you hope Technovation will bring for the greater girls in tech community? >> I'm a chemist by training, and I was the only woman in my PhD program, and I think one thing that really comes up a lot is that women oftentimes don't have mentors, don't have a community, and I think for these girls, I hope that as they grow and as they go to college and they pursue their career that they have a community that they built from here that will carry on through their career. >> What success stories do you have from past Technovation winners? >> That's a tricky question cause we have so many. We have, sorry, I'm trying to remember her name. We have a student who participated about four years ago and she built an app to help Alzheimer's patients, and what she has done is she has actually created a start-up and has been featured in New York Times before. We have stories like that, but we also have stories like in the slums of India where girls don't have internet, they don't have power everyday, so what they will do is they will code on post-it notes. Then when the power will come on, they will turn on their internet and they will be able to code it on App Inventor altogether in that one hour. We have success that really varies and the way we count our success is really the fact that the girls had an opportunity that they may not have had otherwise. That's really how we count our success. Even if they don't become technology entrepreneurs, our goal really is that they try to tackle something hard, they learn through their failures, and they persisted is really our goal. >> That's wonderful, and we're so glad to be here at Technovation. Thank you for having us on. >> Thank you so much. >> Thanks for being here. I'm Sonia Tagare, and this is Amy Kim, and we're at Technovation's World Pitch Summit 2018. Stay tuned for more. (electronic tones)

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. (upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Downtown San Francisco at Bespoke. It's in the Westfield Shopping Mall, kind of a cool event space up on the fourth floor, and we're at Girls in Tech Catalyst. We were last here a couple years ago in Phoenix, and we're excited to be back. 700 people, really great event, and the program's pretty simple. You've got great women leaders telling their story, and the stories are varied and really cool, and we just got out of Christina's story. She's Christina Kosmowski, global head of customer success at Slack. >> That's right. >> Christina, really good job up there. >> Thank you. >> There was a couple of things I wanted to really kind of jump on that I thought were so important. In the first one you talk about early in your career and raising your hand. When opportunities come up, don't be afraid, raise your hand, go for it. >> Yeah, absolutely. I was always saying, yes to everything. And now I work on saying no to some things. (laughs) >> That's a whole other conversation-- >> I think it's really important that you know there's all those cliches around the fact that you know you've got to go through the window sometimes or you know opportunities are masked and they really are and so just saying yes to everything and really being open to trying new things and learning new experiences will give you opportunities you didn't even realize you had. And so, I always raised my hand, you know, in college to start the soccer team. I raised my hand in my first job to go to Europe and start the London office. I raised my hand to come to Salesforce, at every single point, Salesforce had something new, I said, oh I want to do it and so I was kind of known as the person who always liked to start and build things from scratch. And so, I always wanted to be that yes person and experience these new opportunities. >> And that was huge, I think you said when you started Salesforce, revenue was like 20 million and when you left it was-- >> Almost 10 million, yeah, it's crazy. It was quite a ride, quite a ride. >> But great, cause then you get those opportunities. >> Yeah. >> Another story you were telling which I thought was pretty impactful was, your college soccer experience, you're a soccer player and you know, the difference between putting in your own work and time to achieve something and, you know, nobody ever sees the work that happens when they're not there, but more importantly, bringing along the team. >> Yeah. >> And getting everybody else to buy into your work ethic to raise the performance of the team. I wonder if you can expand on that a little bit. Cause then you said you've used that throughout your career over and over again. >> I have, it was an important lesson. I think, for those that didn't see that speech, I talked about the fact that my freshman year in soccer, it was the first year of the varsity program. We won three games and I was very angry about that and so I spent the next year kind of working my butt off. And so I got to this level but my rest of the team didn't get to the level and so I was able to challenge them to match my level and we were ultimately able to get, you know, into the top six team in the country at the end of my career and that was the first time that I realized it's not just about me. And I've seen that in every step in the way is, I can get there, I can get my idea there, I can work as hard as I can but if I can't empower the team and I can't bring all the cross-functional leaders along with me, we aren't going to achieve what we need to achieve. And at Slack, I've even seen that to be even more of the case, because I've come into a function that's brand new, it started very much as a product-based company versus Salesforce was a little more sales focused. And so it's really important that people understand what our mission is, why it's important, how we can bring these other organizations with us. >> Right, so a great kind of business theme that touched both on Salesforce and at Slack, it's kind of the subscription economy. >> Yes. >> And we've done this conference and we all switched over to our paid Adobe subscription versus trying to find a friend who'll get you a license for a deal at the end of the year. (laughs) But I think the really important thing that you touched on, when you go to subscription economy it really changes the dynamic between you and your customer. And you run customer success. >> I do. >> Because it's not just take the check and send 'em the 15% maintenance bill anymore, now you've got to build a relationship, you've got to deliver value each and every month cause they're paying you each and every month. And so you've translated that into actually building an organization that supports this very different relationship. >> That's right. >> So why don't you tell us, you know, how did that transform? How hard of a sell was that and what's the ultimate outcome with your relationship with the customers? >> I think it's so important to realize that technology is really important, but if we can't apply that into the business setting and to specific outcomes and use cases, it doesn't become valuable over time. And so, we've built an organization that really focuses on customer maturity and value. And so we take it in steps. And so we look at what are those things we can do to give value and outcomes and affect people the way they're working today? And then what does that look like tomorrow, how do we build upon that, and then what does it look like to, they can get to this fully transformed state, and we've done that through a combination of working with product to build features and in-app education, we work with all of our customers to understand what are their needs, we bring people to the table, we bring one to many programs, we've really created this champion network where we are able to allow these peer to peer relationships, and really have this network effect with our customers, and so there's lots of different methods and vehicles that we're doing to really ensure that our customers are getting that outcome. >> Yeah, it's interesting, we cover a lot of the AWS shows and, you know, Jeff Bezos will talk about them just being maniacally customer focused, and lots of companies like to talk about being maniacally customer focused, but most of them are not, they're product focused or they're competitor focused or they're kind of opportunity focused, they're not customer focused. So, how do you build that culture, can you switch if it's not there or does it got to be from the top down at the beginning? >> You can, you can, I think, you know, at Slack, we've been really fortunate it also has that extreme customer focus, but our organization started about 15 months ago, so we brought even more rigor to that, and so there's lots of programs you can do to affect the culture. So, one of the programs we have is a red account program, and one of the things there is really about bringing all the company together to swarm around issues or risks that our customers might have seen, and that's one way that we can start to talk about customer importance. >> What do you call it? >> We call it the customer red account program. >> Red account, so red like treble, because, so you basically-- >> We swarm. >> Swarm, swarm, what a great, swarm meaning a lot of people from a lot of different places. >> Lot of different places, and there's full accountability on all parts of the organization to solve it, because my organization can't solve everything, we're really just the advocates and the facilitators back into, back into Slack, and so that's important that we have that accountability, and we're swarming all around the customer. We have product feedback sessions where we're able to bring that advocacy back, we have a lot of surveys and that promoter score, things where we're measuring and looking for accountability about how we're doing with out customers, and so there's lots of different programs that you can help bring this to light, even in just tactical ways that help ultimately build this culture of customer success. >> See, so like I said, you've got a lot of sniffers in the system to see when you need to call a code red. So, I'm just curious, when you get everyone together, are people surprised where the problems are, is it like, oh, I thought we were doing a great job, and this group's like, no, no, no, you know, you're the problem? >> Sometimes, sometimes, but I think it is really around it being a team effort and really understanding that when issues or challenges expose themselves, there's multiple root causes and you can really understand, okay, part of it could be a product, part of it could be how we supported them, part of it could be in some of our marketing and messaging. And how do we all solve that in a more universal experience? >> All right, last question before I let you go. Just your impressions of the Catalyst today, you said it's your first time here. >> This is my first time here, I am blown away by the energy and excitement and really the quality of speakers and conversations that are happening, I've been hanging around all morning, and just really powerful conversations, and I think I said this in my speech, but we are in a really fortunate time right now, and I think our time is now, and it's so great to see all these women come together, and we, you know, we're the ones that can do this. >> Excellent, we'll see you Amplify later this year. >> Absolutely. >> All right, Christina, well, thanks for stopping by and sharing your story. >> All right, thanks. >> All right, she's Christina, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're at Girls in Tech Catalyst in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. (upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Downtown San Francisco at Bespoke. It's in the Westfield Shopping Mall, kind of a cool event space up on the fourth floor, and we're at Girls in Tech Catalyst. We were last here a couple years ago in Phoenix, and we're excited to be back. 700 people, really great event, and the program's pretty simple. You've got great women leaders telling their story, and the stories are varied and really cool, and we just got out of Christina's story. She's Christina Kosmowski, global head of customer success at Slack. >> That's right. >> Christina, really good job up there. >> Thank you. >> There was a couple of things I wanted to really kind of jump on that I thought were so important. In the first one you talk about early in your career and raising your hand. When opportunities come up, don't be afraid, raise your hand, go for it. >> Yeah, absolutely. I was always saying, yes to everything. And now I work on saying no to some things. (laughs) >> That's a whole other conversation-- >> I think it's really important that you know there's all those cliches around the fact that you know you've got to go through the window sometimes or you know opportunities are masked and they really are and so just saying yes to everything and really being open to trying new things and learning new experiences will give you opportunities you didn't even realize you had. And so, I always raised my hand, you know, in college to start the soccer team. I raised my hand in my first job to go to Europe and start the London office. I raised my hand to come to Salesforce, at every single point, Salesforce had something new, I said, oh I want to do it and so I was kind of known as the person who always liked to start and build things from scratch. And so, I always wanted to be that yes person and experience these new opportunities. >> And that was huge, I think you said when you started Salesforce, revenue was like 20 million and when you left it was-- >> Almost 10 billion, yeah, it's crazy. It was quite a ride, quite a ride. >> But great, cause then you get those opportunities. >> Yeah. >> Another story you were telling which I thought was pretty impactful was, your college soccer experience, you're a soccer player and you know, the difference between putting in your own work and time to achieve something and, you know, nobody ever sees the work that happens when they're not there, but more importantly, bringing along the team. >> Yeah. >> And getting everybody else to buy into your work ethic to raise the performance of the team. I wonder if you can expand on that a little bit. Cause then you said you've used that throughout your career over and over again. >> I have, it was an important lesson. I think, for those that didn't see that speech, I talked about the fact that my freshman year in soccer, it was the first year of the varsity program. We won three games and I was very angry about that and so I spent the next year kind of working my butt off. And so I got to this level but my rest of the team didn't get to the level and so I was able to challenge them to match my level and we were ultimately able to get, you know, into the top sixteen in the country at the end of my career and that was the first time that I realized it's not just about me. And I've seen that in every step in the way is, I can get there, I can get my idea there, I can work as hard as I can but if I can't empower the team and I can't bring all the cross-functional leaders along with me, we aren't going to achieve what we need to achieve. And at Slack, I've even seen that to be even more of the case, because I've come into a function that's brand new, it started very much as a product-based company versus Salesforce was a little more sales focused. And so it's really important that people understand what our mission is, why it's important, how we can bring these other organizations with us. >> Right, so a great kind of business theme that touched both on Salesforce and at Slack, it's kind of the subscription economy. >> Yes. >> And we've done this conference and we all switched over to our paid Adobe subscription versus trying to find a friend who'll get you a license for a deal at the end of the year. (laughs) But I think the really important thing that you touched on, when you go to subscription economy it really changes the dynamic between you and your customer. And you run customer success. >> I do. >> Because it's not just take the check and send 'em the 15% maintenance bill anymore, now you've got to build a relationship, you've got to deliver value each and every month cause they're paying you each and every month. And so you've translated that into actually building an organization that supports this very different relationship. >> That's right. >> So why don't you tell us, you know, how did that transform? How hard of a sell was that and what's the ultimate outcome with your relationship with the customers? >> I think it's so important to realize that technology is really important, but if we can't apply that into the business setting and to specific outcomes and use cases, it doesn't become valuable over time. And so, we've built an organization that really focuses on customer maturity and value. And so we take it in steps. And so we look at what are those things we can do to give value and outcomes and affect people the way they're working today? And then what does that look like tomorrow, how do we build upon that, and then what does it look like to, they can get to this fully transformed state, and we've done that through a combination of working with product to build features and in-app education, we work with all of our customers to understand what are their needs, we bring people to the table, we bring one to many programs, we've really created this champion network where we are able to allow these peer to peer relationships, and really have this network effect with our customers, and so there's lots of different methods and vehicles that we're doing to really ensure that our customers are getting that outcome. >> Yeah, it's interesting, we cover a lot of the AWS shows and, you know, Jeff Bezos will talk about them just being maniacally customer focused, and lots of companies like to talk about being maniacally customer focused, but most of them are not, they're product focused or they're competitor focused or they're kind of opportunity focused, they're not customer focused. So, how do you build that culture, can you switch if it's not there or does it got to be from the top down at the beginning? >> You can, you can, I think, you know, at Slack, we've been really fortunate it also has that extreme customer focus, but our organization started about 15 months ago, so we brought even more rigor to that, and so there's lots of programs you can do to affect the culture. So, one of the programs we have is a red account program, and one of the things there is really about bringing all the company together to swarm around issues or risks that our customers might have seen, and that's one way that we can start to talk about customer importance. >> What do you call it? >> We call it the customer red account program. >> Red account, so red like treble, because, so you basically-- >> We swarm. >> Swarm, swarm, what a great, swarm meaning a lot of people from a lot of different places. >> Lot of different places, and there's full accountability on all parts of the organization to solve it, because my organization can't solve everything, we're really just the advocates and the facilitators back into, back into Slack, and so that's important that we have that accountability, and we're swarming all around the customer. We have product feedback sessions where we're able to bring that advocacy back, we have a lot of surveys and that promoter score, things where we're measuring and looking for accountability about how we're doing with out customers, and so there's lots of different programs that you can help bring this to light, even in just tactical ways that help ultimately build this culture of customer success. >> See, so like I said, you've got a lot of sniffers in the system to see when you need to call a code red. So, I'm just curious, when you get everyone together, are people surprised where the problems are, is it like, oh, I thought we were doing a great job, and this group's like, no, no, no, you know, you're the problem? >> Sometimes, sometimes, but I think it is really around it being a team effort and really understanding that when issues or challenges expose themselves, there's multiple root causes and you can really understand, okay, part of it could be a product, part of it could be how we supported them, part of it could be in some of our marketing and messaging. And how do we all solve that in a more universal experience? >> All right, last question before I let you go. Just your impressions of the Catalyst today, you said it's your first time here. >> This is my first time here, I am blown away by the energy and excitement and really the quality of speakers and conversations that are happening, I've been hanging around all morning, and just really powerful conversations, and I think I said this in my speech, but we are in a really fortunate time right now, and I think our time is now, and it's so great to see all these women come together, and we, you know, we're the ones that can do this. >> Excellent, we'll see you Amplify later this year. >> Absolutely. >> All right, Christina, well, thanks for stopping by and sharing your story. >> All right, thanks. >> All right, she's Christina, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're at Girls in Tech Catalyst in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Commentator: Live from Palo Alto, it's theCUBE, covering Women Transforming Technology 2017, brought to you by VMware. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Women Transforming Technology held at VMware. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. Joining me today is Cornelia Davis. She is the Senior Director of Technology at Pivotal which is the Palo Alto-based company that provides Agile development services on an open source platform. Thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here. >> So before the cameras were rolling, you started telling me a little bit about your personal story. You're a woman in tech who loves the tech, but you said for the past three years, you've also become an activist and an evangelist for getting more women into this business. Tell us about that transformation. >> Yes, I'll tell you a little bit about that story. I have the gray hair to prove it. I've been doing this for some time. I actually was a woman studying computer science back in the day where we were getting close to equity. >> Rebecca: There was a time when it was-- >> Yeah, there was so back in the '80s, I was majoring in computer science and I think that we were close to 40% at the time, although I have to say even before I was in college, I was always the girl who was out playing soccer with the boys at lunch time. Gender never really seemed to make much of a difference to me but anyway, I got a degree in computer science and then I spent 25 years in the industry and sure, there were times where I would notice that I was the only woman in the room. Actually I would say maybe three or four years ago, I went to a customer opening where they were catering to the developer community and in the room there were 250 developers, I was the only woman. I mean seriously, I was the only woman of 250 and I was like wow. But other than notice it and chuckle about it and even have some of those experiences where maybe somebody assumed that I was the HR person and not the technologist, those types of things, I never really did anything about it. And then about three years ago, I had the great fortune of meeting Robin Hauser Reynolds and Stacy Hartmann who are the two women behind the movie Code: Debugging the Gender Gap, you've seen it? >> Rebecca: Yes, yes. >> A fantastic film, a fantastic piece and had this opportunity to meet them and got involved in the film and Pivotal became a sponsor. They did some of the filming. They did some interviewing of people at Pivotal and it was through that experience and then I got to go to some of the screenings and participate in panels and so on and it was through that experience that I started to understand that it wasn't just curiosity, that it was actually declining, the numbers were declining and that it was a real serious problem. And so after being in the industry for 25 years and not really doing anything about it, I've become an activist and so I spend a lot of time jabbing on about this. I'll give you another example. Last year in January, Pivotal brought most of the company together here in the Bay Area. We brought about 1,200 people into the Bay Area for worldwide kickoff. And the very first talk that they had after our CEO spoke was a talk on diversity and they actually invited me to come up and speak about gender diversity or lack thereof in technology and talked about the Girls Who Code and some of those great programs out there. >> I want to get back to Girls Who Code because I know that you're passionate about it, but I want to also just get back to the moment that you described where you went from chuckling about being the only woman in the room and saying, "Oh it's not silly," to really feeling, "Hey this isn't right. "I want things to be different." What was that moment? Are you trying to recreate that moment for other women as a wake up call? How would you describe your activism? >> I don't know that it was a moment, but the thing that catalyzes me, the thing that makes me really passionate about doing this is that I have this tremendous opportunity. The way that I came into computing personally was at the end of my sophomore year in high school when we were signing up for classes the following year, I was looking at what might I sign up for and I signed up for a computer programming class and then I went off and I joked around that I went off and had a bitchin' summer. That's the stuff we said in the '80s. I went off and had a bitchin' summer. >> We should bring that word back. Let's do it, Cornelia. >> It's a good word. And I came back and had this computer class on my schedule and I was like, "Uh no, no, no, no. "There is no way I'm doing this." And I skipped class for the first two or three days and then I finally went and curiosity got the better of me. I tried it out and I was hooked. Literally that was the moment, not for my activism, but that was the moment where I had like, "Oh my gosh, this is going to change everything. "This is what want to I do." And that's what brought me to computing and that's what makes me an activist now because I didn't realize for those 25 years that other people didn't have those opportunities, that they were actually systemically being discouraged from having those opportunities and so I think that's at the core of my activism is I want people to have the opportunity because I love what I do so much and I think I was mentioning before before we started rolling the cameras that I've been a technologist my whole career. Occasionally I've branched off and tried to do maybe a little bit more leadership or a little bit more of that, but I love the tech so much and it's such a great wonderful career to be in, self-sustaining and all of those things, I want other people to have that opportunity. That's what gets me going. >> I was reading a bio where you're a self-described propeller head and you can find her knee deep in the code and now you want to inspire the next generation and so you've gotten involved with Girls Who Code. Tell us more. >> Yes so it wasn't actually through the film. I think it was just simply, it was serendipitous, right around the time that I was starting to awaken to what was going on in the industry. Working for Pivotal, Pivotal in our San Francisco office, it's a very cool office. It's very different from what I saw in most of my career which was cube farms. It's a very open floor plan, very hip, just a cool place to be. >> What the rest of us East Coasters envisions Silicon Valley to be. >> Yeah, it's really pretty cool. And so the Girls Who Code, for those of you who might be watching that don't know about the Girls Who Code, it's an organization that really targets high school girls and their flagship program is in the summer they have a seven-week immersion program where they bring girls in and they basically code, they learn to code from nine to five every day for seven weeks. It's a pretty intensive program. Well about three years ago, we weren't sponsoring at that level, but we would be a field trip location. One of our close partners, investors, customers, is General Electric. They hosted a group of these 20 girls in their San Ramon office. They came to us for a couple of summers as a field trip location and of course the girls loved it. They walk off the elevator there's snacks, there's drinks. We parent programmed with them. It's a really cool experience. And then last summer, we actually took the next step and hosted our own groups so we had a group of 20 young women who were here in our Palo Alto office for seven weeks learning to code and I had the wonderful opportunity to spend time with them several times throughout the summer and I actually commute to the Bay Area, not everyday but I commute to the Bay Area and the days that I was coming up here in part to see the girls, I'd wake up at four in the morning for my flight and I'd be like, "I get to spend time with the girls today," and I saw it. I saw the girls who in the first week were clearly there because their parents made them be there and they're sitting there like this and they've got the same attitude that I had when I was in high school the first three days like I am not doing this and the same people are standing up at the graduation ceremony at the end of the seven weeks saying, "This changed my life." And one of those young women I'm spending a little bit more time with is now a computer science major at Northwestern, early decision. It's just fantastic to see that light up. That's what gets me going. >> Now why high school? I get high school in the sense that they're old enough to take on a summer job like internship, but what is it about that age do you think that is so critical? >> Yeah so that age, I'll be honest with you, I think is almost too late for a lot of girls because we are able to reach, I just mentioned, that there were girls in there whose parents forced them into that. They had already self-selected out. Just like I had when I was in high school. I had self-selected out. I was way too cool to be in computing and so in some ways high school is a little bit too late. However, I think you nailed it, is that there's an opportunity there that they're mature enough that you can do something as immersive as a seven-week program and these girls are tremendous. These girls after a seven-week program are going back to their high schools and being the president of their Girls Who Code after school clubs and teaching them and I was just spending some time, we had a hangout with them recently where they said when their friends are asking, "What are you going to do this summer?" And the girls said, "I have no idea, "but you know what you should do "is you should do Girls Who Code." She said, "That's all I want to do. "I just want to do Girls Who Code all over again." And so I think you're right, I think it's opportunistic in that they're ready, but unfortunately I think it, like I said, it self-selects a lot of people out. I think fundamentally the thing that we need to do to reach the younger grades, the younger students, is it needs to be part of the curriculum. It absolutely 100% needs to be part of primary school curriculum so that they can get hooked and understand what it is before they self-select out because they're self-selecting out based on a perception and the image that they have of what it is, the Silicon Valley show, that's a perception. Sure it's satyr but young people see that and they don't see it as that. It just looks like something where there's a whole bunch of misbehaving men treating women poorly. >> So on that actually Cornelia, what do you make of the really distressing news that we're hearing that's not necessarily new, there has been the Uber bombshell of last week, but what we know about the culture here and maybe why there were so many women and it was almost 50/50 and then we started to see a drastic change and lower numbers of women in computer science and a lot of women just saying, "Ew, I don't want to be part of that. "I don't want that for my career." What do you say to them and what do you say to the men who are not even knowingly discouraging them from that kind of career? >> Oh, I love what you just said, not even knowingly. One of the things that I spend a lot of time talking with folks about every chance I get is implicit bias. I think that there's definitely overt sexism and in the last week we've seen that big in the news and that is a huge problem. I think I've heard statistics of whatever 60% of women have some level of relatively overt sexism, 100% of us get the implicit, the non-overt, and people who are well-meaning saying things, when they say for example, I was just chatting with a young lady a couple of weeks ago. She's a sophomore in college and she was telling me that last summer during her internship, within the first week or two, her boss was talking to her about her career plans moving forward and was already encouraging her to go more into management than into technology. This person was not evil, wasn't trying to keep women out of technology or keep women out of the most technical parts of a technology career, but he really genuinely believed that, "Maybe women are better at that and not so good at this," and it's really just our implicit biases. So I think that's a big part of it. And for the last year or two, I've been talking about implicit bias and I've been talking about the compensating mechanisms so first of all recognizing your implicit biases and then being conscious about them and then consciously combating them. I've become in the last several months, I would say six months, I've become more and more interested in the idea of how do we actually change those implicit biases. >> And this is men and women. It's not just the men here. >> No question because when I've had conversations where I've spoken for example on implicit bias, I've had women come up to me afterward and say, "I signed my son up for a coding camp. "I never even thought about signing up my daughter." >> Rebecca: Oh, that hurts. >> And I was like, "So you're signing her up now, right?" She's like, "Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah." And so I think it's really interesting to start thinking about how do we actually get rid of them? It's one thing to recognize them and then fight them, but it's another thing to get rid of them. I think the only way we can get rid of them goes back to the statistics that we talked about early on which is I am surprised when I see a woman technologist. That's just the way our brains work. We categorize things. >> We have an idea in our head of what that person looks like. >> We put things in buckets. We wouldn't be able to function in this world with so many different inputs unless we put things into buckets and we just put things into buckets largely based on statistics. And so I'm becoming increasingly interested in really amplifying the voice of women in technology because when we hear women's voices in technology, women who are up there not talking about what we're talking about today which is the gender imbalance, but talking about the tech itself, then we start to normalize, then we start to re-categorize things in our brains so that we're not surprised when we hear a woman talking about something deeply technical or somebody who's doing particle physics or something like that, we're not surprised anymore and say, "Wow she's a rocket scientist," it's normal. That's what I'm interested in doing is getting that to be the norm, not the exception. I think the first step what I would say to people, what I do say to men and women across the industry is first of all recognize it and then let's see what we can do to change it. >> Cornelia Davis, thank you so much. That's good advice, that's good advice. And we'll be right back with theCUBE's coverage of Women Transforming Technology here at VMware. (modern techno music)

on the ground from galvanized San Francisco its excused covering amplified woman's bitch night here's Jeff hey welcome back here ready Jeff Rick here with a cute we're at galvanized a downtown San Francisco at the girls in tech amplify event which is is women's pitch night so I think they have ten entrepreneurs here pitching their company pitching their ideas somebody's gonna walk away with 10,000 bucks some computers and other fun stuff so we're happy to be here share the stories with you because this is where innovation happens and our next guest is Ellen health can hard do I get that right from Stila welcome thank you first I've had your pitch go pretty good yes okay so your project is called still emotion so what is still emotion still emotion is that pocket-sized secure system it's had a little sample here okay so this is what it looked like so it's a smaller device that you put on anything that you wants to be still like a bag or computer or a stroller or on a window and and if something moves that shouldn't you get an instant notification to your phone or to your SmartWatch okay so it's got accelerometers and those types of things in there that it's really all about motions yeah little app onto your phone or whatever exactly okay so so there's a lot of action right now with tile and those types of things how is it different kind of what's the different value propositions well it's as I said it's kind of the opposite instead of like finding your thinks it's not losing them in the first place so it's it's a preventative device rather than it's proactive instead of reactive okay but it does have similar functionality as well so if you forget your bag at the cafe you will you will get a notification when the distance is Williams contact but yeah if you're sitting here with me and your bag walks away the tiles the trackers won't help versus the Stila would tell you directly someone is touching your your bag right so how did you come up with the idea I was actually learning how to program Arduino boards I I was running an hour working at a hardware accelerator and my background is more sorry ated but I'm I'm a geek at heart so I had like this little Arduino board that I that I learned how to code with so I I just I literally I'm so I'm so geeky I have Arduino boards in my purse but yes I do so this is a little computer kind of so we were sitting in like learning this at the cafe and I dropped it on my bike and when I lifted it up it started blinking and I'll say you know what that would be great if it did something else to plate and that's why I came up with the idea and how long ago is that so give a little just about kind of history the company how many people are you kind of where you on yeah and the development phase still prototype well I also had idea because I've done a hundred startup before but it took like four years and I'm kind of I wasn't willing to give it four years so it's like is it possible to I like the idea but I didn't know if I want to commit so much time and effort and money so I was like can I make it in a hundred days it's it possible to start a Harvard company in a hundred days so I kind of challenged myself to do it did you have a regular job while you're doing this a normal job i I worked this Australia consulting because I had to fund myself so I had no money no money no funding no team no nothing yeah and I was like yeah I'm gonna make this little button so I did this and then I literally make prototypes in clay and paint and like I talk to people I I got a team together and I did patent applications and got apps together and did yeah so I went from this to functioning Harvard product in 100 days and then I was like I actually want to do this so I kind of quit my job and and made sure that I went all in and got a team together and some of the basic investors to help me out and then yeah we got going and it took a hundred days to make the first product and then it had taken almost a year to build the company right right this is just the start like this is the first product and they will have a whole line of things that we're doing so we're you know what are you gonna do with the money kind of is it for scaling is it for more licensing what are you gonna yeah we just closed our campaign okay on Friday last week and we are now in the last batch of prototyping so I'm going down to our hardware engineers in Orange County next week to finalize the production before we kind of go into tooling and then after that we're doing final stages of the app and then we're going to send Jen in China where produce and started tooling and manufacturing process so we're shipping and March next year more chips here awesome so great story and you said you've got team members from all over the world five of seven continents you're leveraging a lot of others technology like accelerometers to pull this thing together in such a short period of time yeah well very exciting well good luck to you and I hope get some of that money tonight thank you all right we'll keep an eye and worship people go to get more information about the company yet my still of calm my still at ICON spelled STI ll a all right my STI ll a with my in the front awesome all right Alan well thank you very much thank you all right I'm Jeff Rick we are at the girls of tech amplify pitch night here at galvanize in San Francisco we'll be right back after this short break