>> Hey everyone. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage day two of CloudNative Security CON 23. Lisa Martin here in studio in Palo Alto with John Furrier. John, we've had some great conversations. I've had a global event. This was a global event. We had Germany on yesterday. We had the Boston Studio. We had folks on the ground in Seattle. Lot of great conversations, a lot of great momentum at this event. What is your number one takeaway with this inaugural event? >> Well, first of all, our coverage with our CUBE alumni experts coming in remotely this remote event for us, I think this event as an inaugural event stood out because one, it was done very carefully and methodically from the CNCF. I think they didn't want to overplay their hand relative to breaking out from CUBE CON So Kubernetes success and CloudNative development has been such a success and that event and ecosystem is booming, right? So that's the big story is they have the breakout event and the question was, was it a good call? Was it successful? Was it going to, would the dog hunt as they say, in this case, I think the big takeaway is that it was successful by all measures. One, people enthusiastic and confident that this has the ability to stand on its own and still contribute without taking away from the benefits and growth of Kubernetes CUBE CON and CloudNative console. So that was the key. Hallway conversations, the sessions all curated and developed properly to be different and focused for that reason. So I think the big takeaway is that the CNCF did a good job on how they rolled this out. Again, it was very intimate event small reminds me of first CUBE CON in Seattle, kind of let's test it out. Let's see how it goes. Again, clearly it was people successful and they understood why they're doing it. And as we commented out in our earlier segments this is not something new. Amazon Web Services has re:Invent and re:Inforce So a lot of parallels there. I see there. So I think good call. CNCF did the right thing. I think this has legs. And then as Dave pointed out, Dave Vellante, on our last keynote analysis was the business model of the hackers is better than the business model of the industry. They're making more money, it costs less so, you know, they're playing offense and the industry playing defense. That has to change. And as Dave pointed out we have to make the cost of hacking and breaches and cybersecurity higher so that the business model crashes. And I think that's the strategic imperative. So I think the combination of the realities of the market globally and open source has to go faster. It's good to kind of decouple and be highly cohesive in the focus. So to me that's the big takeaway. And then the other one is, is that there's a lot more security problems still unresolved. The emphasis on developers productivity is at risk here, if not solved. You saw supply chain software, again, front and center and then down in the weeds outside of Kubernetes, things like BIND and DNS were brought up. You're seeing the Linux kernel. Really important things got to be paid attention to. So I think very good call, very good focus. >> I would love if for us to be able to, as the months go on talk to some of the practitioners that actually got to attend. There were 72 sessions, that's a lot of content for a small event. Obviously to your point, very well curated. We did hear from some folks yesterday who were just excited to get the community back together in person. To your point, having this dedicated focus on CloudNativesecurity is incredibly important. You talked about, you know, the offense defense, the fact that right now the industry needs to be able to pivot from being on defense to being on offense. This is a challenging thing because it is so lucrative for hackers. But this seems to be from what we've heard in the last couple days, the right community with the right focus to be able to make that pivot. >> Yeah, and I think if you look at the success of Kubernetes, 'cause again we were there at theCUBE first one CUBE CON, the end user stories really drove end user participation. Drove the birth of Kubernetes. Left some of these CloudNative early adopters early pioneers that were using cloud hyperscale really set the table for CloudNative CON. I think you're seeing that here with this CloudNative SecurityCON where I think we're see a lot more end user stories because of the security, the hairs on fire as we heard from Madrona Ventures, you know, as they as an investor you have a lot of use cases out there where customers are leaning in with getting the rolling up their sleeves, working with open source. This has to be the driver. So I'm expecting to see the next level of SecurityCON to be end user focused. Much more than vendor focused. Where CUBECON was very end user focused and then attracted all the vendors in that grew the industry. I expect the similar pattern here where end user action will be very high at the beginning and that will essentially be the rising tide for the vendors to be then participating. So I expect almost a similar trajectory to CUBECON. >> That's a good path that it needs to all be about all the end users. One of the things I'm curious if what you heard was what are some of the key factors that are going to move CloudNative Security forward? What did you hear the last two days? >> I heard that there's a lot of security problems and no one wants to kind of brag about this but there's a lot of under the hood stuff that needs to get taken care of. So if automation scales, and we heard that from one of the startups we've just interviewed. If automation and scale continues to happen and with the business model of the hackers still booming, security has to be refactored quickly and there's going to be an opportunity structurally to use the cloud for that. So I think it's a good opportunity now to get dedicated focus on fixing things like the DNS stuff old school under the hood, plumbing, networking protocols. You're going to start to see this super cloud-like environment emerge where data's involved, everything's happening and so security has to be re imagined. And I think there's a do over opportunity for the security industry with CloudNative driving that. And I think this is the big thing that I see as an opportunity to, from a story standpoint from a coverage standpoint is that it's a do-over for security. >> One of the things that we heard yesterday is that there's a lot of it, it's a pretty high percentage of organizations that either don't have a SOCK or have a very primitive SOCK. Which kind of surprised me that at this day and age the risks are there. We talked about that today's focus and the keynote was a lot about the software supply chain and what's going on there. What did you hear in terms of the appetite for organizations through the voice of the practitioner to say, you know what guys, we got to get going because there's going to be the hackers are they're here. >> I didn't hear much about that in the coverage 'cause we weren't in the hallways. But from reading the tea leaves and talking to the folks on the ground, I think there's an implied like there's an unlimited money from customers. So it's a very robust from the data infrastructure stack building we cover with the angel investor Kane you're seeing data infrastructure's going to be part of the solution here 'cause data and security go hand in hand. So everyone's got basically checkbook wide open everyone wants to have the answer. And we commented that the co-founder of Palo Alto you had on our coverage yesterday was saying that you know, there's no real platform, there's a lot of tools out there. People will buy anything. So there's still a huge appetite and spend in security but the answer's not going to more tool sprawling. It's going to more platform auto, something that enables automation, fix some of the underlying mechanisms involved and fix it fast. So to me I think it's going to be a robust monetary opportunity because of the demand on the business side. So I don't see that changing at all and I think it's going to accelerate. >> It's a great point in terms of the demand for the business side because as we know as we said yesterday, the next Log4j is out there. It's not a matter of if this happens again it's when, it's the extent, it's how frequent we know that. So organizations all the way up to the board have to be concerned about brand reputation. Nobody wants to be the next big headline in terms of breaches and customer data being given to hackers and hackers making all this money on that. That has to go all the way up to the board and there needs to be alignment between the board and the executives at the organization in terms of how they're going to deal with security, and now. This is not a conversation that can wait. Yeah, I mean I think the five C's we talked about yesterday the culture of companies, the cloud is an enabler, you've got clusters of servers and capabilities, Kubernetes clusters, you've got code and you've got all kinds of, you know, things going on there. Each one has elements that are at risk for hacking, right? So that to me is something that's super important. I think that's why the focus on security's different and important, but it's not going to fork the main event. So that's why I think the spin out was, spinout, or the new event is a good call by the CNCF. >> One of the things today that struck me they're talking a lot about software supply chain and that's been in the headlines for quite a while now. And a stat that was shared this morning during the keynote just blew my brains that there was a 742% increase in the software supply chain attacks occurring over the last three years. It's during Covid times, that is a massive increase. The threat landscape is just growing so amorphously but organizations need to help dial that down because their success and the health of the individuals and the end users is at risk. Well, Covid is an environment where everyone's kind of working at home. So there was some disruption to infrastructure. Also, when you have change like that, there's opportunities for hackers, they'll arbitrage that big time. But I think general the landscape is changing. There's no perimeter anymore. It's CloudNative, this is where it is and people who are moving from old IT to CloudNative, they're at risk. That's why there's tons of ransomware. That's why there's tons of risk. There's just hygiene, from hygiene to architecture and like Nick said from Palo Alto, the co-founder, there's not a lot of architecture in security. So yeah, people have bulked up their security teams but you're going to start to see much more holistic thinking around redoing security. I think that's the opportunity to propel CloudNative, and I think you'll see a lot more coming out of this. >> Did you hear any specific information on some of the CloudNative projects going on that really excite you in terms of these are the right people going after the right challenges to solve in the right direction? >> Well I saw the sessions and what jumped out to me at the sessions was it's a lot of extensions of what we heard at CUBECON and I think what they want to do is take out the big items and break 'em out in security. Kubescape was one we just covered. They want to get more sandbox type stuff into the security side that's very security focused but also plays well with CUBECON. So we'll hear more about how this plays out when we're in Amsterdam coming up in April for CUBECON to hear how that ecosystem, because I think it'll be kind of a relief to kind of decouple security 'cause that gives more focus to the stakeholders in CUBECON. There's a lot of issues going on there and you know service meshes and whatnot. So it's a lot of good stuff happening. >> A lot of good stuff happening. One of the things that'll be great about CUBECON is that we always get the voice of the customer. We get vendors coming on with the voice of the customer talking about and you know in that case how they're using Kubernetes to drive the business forward. But it'll be great to be able to pull in some of the security conversations that spin out of CloudNative Security CON to understand how those end users are embracing the technology. You brought up I think Nir Zuk from Palo Alto Networks, one of the themes there when Dave and I did their Ignite event in December was, of 22, was really consolidation. There are so many tools out there that organizations have to wrap their heads around and they need to be able to have the right enablement content which this event probably delivered to figure out how do we consolidate security tools effectively, efficiently in a way that helps dial down our risk profile because the risks just seem to keep growing. >> Yeah, and I love the technical nature of all that and I think this is going to be the continued focus. Chris Aniszczyk who's the CTO listed like E and BPF we covered with Liz Rice is one of the most three important points of the conference and it's just, it's very nerdy and that's what's needed. I mean it's technical. And again, there's no real standards bodies anymore. The old days developers I think are super important to be the arbiters here. And again, what I love about the CNCF is that they're developer focused and we heard developer first even in security. So you know, this is a sea change and I think, you know, developers' choice will be the standards bodies. >> Lisa: Yeah, yeah. >> They decide the future. >> Yeah. >> And I think having the sandboxing and bringing this out will hopefully accelerate more developer choice and self-service. >> You've been talking about kind of putting the developers in the driver's seat as really being the key decision makers for a while. Did you hear information over the last couple of days that validates that? >> Yeah, absolutely. It's clearly the fact that they did this was one. The other one is, is that engineering teams and dev teams and script teams, they're blending together. It's not just separate silos and the ones that are changing their team dynamics, again, back to the culture are winning. And I think this has to happen. Security has to be embedded everywhere in making it frictionless and to provide kind of the guardrail so developers don't slow down. And I think where security has become a drag or an anchor or a blocker has been just configuration of how the organization's handling it. So I think when people recognize that the developers are in charge and they're should be driving the application development you got to make sure that's secure. And so that's always going to be friction and I think whoever does it, whoever unlocks that for the developer to go faster will win. >> Right. Oh, that's what I'm sure magic to a developer's ear is the ability to go faster and be able to focus on co-development in a secure fashion. What are some of the things that you're excited about for CUBECON. Here we are in February, 2023 and CUBECON is just around the corner in April. What are some of the things that you're excited about based on the groundswell momentum that this first inaugural CloudNative Security CON is generating from a community, a culture perspective? >> I think this year's going to be very interesting 'cause we have an economic challenge globally. There's all kinds of geopolitical things happening. I think there's going to be very entrepreneurial activity this year more than ever. I think you're going to see a lot more innovative projects ideas hitting the table. I think it's going to be a lot more entrepreneurial just because the cycle we're in. And also I think the acceleration of mainstream deployments of out of the CNCF's main event CUBECON will happen. You'll see a lot more successes, scale, more clarity on where the security holes are or aren't. Where the benefits are. I think containers and microservices are continuing to surge. I think the Cloud scale hyperscale as Amazon, Azure, Google will be more aggressive. I think AI will be a big theme this year. I think you can see how data is going to infect some of the innovation thinking. I'm really excited about the data infrastructure because it powers a lot of things in the Cloud. So I think the Amazon Web Services, Azure next level gen clouds will impact what happens in the CloudNative foundation. >> Did you have any conversations yesterday or today with respect to AI and security? Was that a focus of anybody's? Talk to me about that. >> Well, I didn't hear any sessions on AI but we saw some demos on stage. But they're teasing out that this is an augmentation to their mission, right? So I think a lot of people are looking at AI as, again, like I always said there's the naysayers who think it's kind of a gimmick or nothing to see here, and then some are just going to blown away. I think the people who are alpha geeks and the industry connect the dots and understand that AI is going to be an accelerant to a lot of heavy lifting that was either manual, you know, hard to do things that was boring or muck as they say. I think that's going to be where you'll see the AI stories where it's going to accelerate either ways to make security better or make developers more confident and productive. >> Or both. >> Yeah. So definitely AI will be part of it. Yeah, definitely. One of the things too that I'm wondering if, you know, we talk about CloudNative and the goal of it, the importance of it. Do you think that this event, in terms of what we were able to see, obviously being remote the event going on in Seattle, us being here in Palo Alto and Boston and guests on from Seattle and Germany and all over, did you hear the really the validation for why CloudNative Security why CloudNative is important for organizations whether it's a bank or a hospital or a retailer? Is that validation clear and present? >> Yeah, absolutely. I think it was implied. I don't think there was like anyone's trying to debate that. I think this conference was more of it's assumed and they were really trying to push the ability to make security less defensive, more offensive and more accelerated into the solving the problems with the businesses that are out there. So clearly the CloudNative community understands where the security challenges are and where they're emerging. So having a dedicated event will help address that. And they've got great co-chairs too that put it together. So I think that's very positive. >> Yeah. Do you think, is it possible, I mean, like you said several times today so eloquently the industry's on the defense when it comes to security and the hackers are on the offense. Is it really possible to make that switch or obviously get some balances. As technology advances and industry gets to take advantage of that, so do the hackers, is that balance achievable? >> Absolutely. I mean, I think totally achievable. The question's going to be what's the environment going to be like? And I remember as context to understanding whether it's viable or not, is to look at, just go back 13 years ago, I remember in 2010 Amazon was viewed as an unsecure environment. Everyone's saying, "Oh, the cloud is not secure." And I remember interviewing Steve Schmidt at AWS and we discussed specifically how Amazon Cloud was being leveraged by hackers. They made it more complex for the hackers. And he said, "This is just the beginning." It's kind of like barbed wire on a fence. It's yeah, you're not going to climb it so people can get over it. And so since then what's happened is the Cloud has become more secure than on premises for a lot of either you know, personnel reasons, culture reasons, not updating, you know, from patches to just being insecure to be more insecure. So that to me means that the flip the script can be flipped. >> Yeah. And I think with CloudNative they can build in automation and code to solve some of these problems and make it more complex for the hacker. >> Lisa: Yes. >> And increase the cost. >> Yeah, exactly. Make it more complex. Increase the cost. That'll be in interesting journey to follow. So John, here we are early February, 2023 theCUBE starting out strong as always. What year are we in, 12? Year 12? >> 13th year >> 13! What's next for theCUBE? What's coming up that excites you? >> Well, we're going to do a lot more events. We got the theCUBE in studio that I call theCUBE Center as kind of internal code word, but like, this is more about getting the word out that we can cover events remotely as events are starting to change with hybrid, digital is going to be a big part of that. So I think you're going to see a lot more CUBE on location. We're going to do, still do theCUBE and have theCUBE cover events from the studio to get deeper perspective because we can then bring people in remote through our our studio team. We can bring our CUBE alumni in. We have a corpus of content and experts to bring to table. So I think the coverage will be increased. The expertise and data will be flowing through theCUBE and so Cube Center, CUBE CUBE Studio. >> Lisa: Love it. >> Will be a integral part of our coverage. >> I love that. And we have such great conversations with guests in person, but also virtually, digitally as well. We still get the voices of the practitioners and the customers and the vendors and the partner ecosystem really kind of lauded loud and clear through theCUBE megaphone as I would say. >> And of course getting the clips out there, getting the highlights. >> Yeah. >> Getting more stories. No stories too small for theCUBE. We can make it easy to get the best content. >> The best content. John, it's been fun covering CloudNative security CON with you with you. And Dave and our guests, thank you so much for the opportunity and looking forward to the next event. >> John: All right. We'll see you at Amsterdam. >> Yeah, I'll be there. We want to thank you so much for watching TheCUBES's two day coverage of CloudNative Security CON 23. We're live in Palo Alto. You are live wherever you are and we appreciate your time and your view of this event. For John Furrier, Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. Thanks for watching guys. We'll see you at the next show.

(uplifting music) >> Hello, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of CloudNativeSecurityCon, the inaugural event, in Seattle. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE, here in the Palo Alto Studios. We're calling it theCUBE Center. It's kind of like our Sports Center for tech. It's kind of remote coverage. We've been doing this now for a few years. We're going to amp it up this year as more events are remote, and happening all around the world. So, we're going to continue the coverage with this segment focusing on the data stack, entrepreneurial opportunities around all things security, and as, obviously, data's involved. And our next guest is a friend of theCUBE, and CUBE alumni from 2013, entrepreneur himself, turned, now, venture capitalist angel investor, with his own firm, Opher Kahane, Managing Director, Sonoma Ventures. Formerly the founder of Origami, sold to Intuit a few years back. Focusing now on having a lot of fun, angel investing on boards, focusing on data-driven applications, and stacks around that, and all the stuff going on in, really, in the wheelhouse for what's going on around security data. Opher, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> My pleasure. Great to be back. It's been a while. >> So you're kind of on Easy Street now. You did the entrepreneurial venture, you've worked hard. We were on together in 2013 when theCUBE just started. XCEL Partners had an event in Stanford, XCEL, and they had all the features there. We interviewed Satya Nadella, who was just a manager at Microsoft at that time, he was there. He's now the CEO of Microsoft. >> Yeah, he was. >> A lot's changed in nine years. But congratulations on your venture you sold, and you got an exit there, and now you're doing a lot of investments. I'd love to get your take, because this is really the biggest change I've seen in the past 12 years, around an inflection point around a lot of converging forces. Data, which, big data, 10 years ago, was a big part of your career, but now it's accelerated, with cloud scale. You're seeing people building scale on top of other clouds, and becoming their own cloud. You're seeing data being a big part of it. Cybersecurity kind of has not really changed much, but it's the most important thing everyone's talking about. So, developers are involved, data's involved, a lot of entrepreneurial opportunities. So I'd love to get your take on how you see the current situation, as it relates to what's gone on in the past five years or so. What's the big story? >> So, a lot of big stories, but I think a lot of it has to do with a promise of making value from data, whether it's for cybersecurity, for Fintech, for DevOps, for RevTech startups and companies. There's a lot of challenges in actually driving and monetizing the value from data with velocity. Historically, the challenge has been more around, "How do I store data at massive scale?" And then you had the big data infrastructure company, like Cloudera, and MapR, and others, deal with it from a scale perspective, from a storage perspective. Then you had a whole layer of companies that evolved to deal with, "How do I index massive scales of data, for quick querying, and federated access, et cetera?" But now that a lot of those underlying problems, if you will, have been solved, to a certain extent, although they're always being stretched, given the scale of data, and its utility is becoming more and more massive, in particular with AI use cases being very prominent right now, the next level is how to actually make value from the data. How do I manage the full lifecycle of data in complex environments, with complex organizations, complex use cases? And having seen this from the inside, with Origami Logic, as we dealt with a lot of large corporations, and post-acquisition by Intuit, and a lot of the startups I'm involved with, it's clear that we're now onto that next step. And you have fundamental new paradigms, such as data mesh, that attempt to address that complexity, and responsibly scaling access, and democratizing access in the value monetization from data, across large organizations. You have a slew of startups that are evolving to help the entire lifecycle of data, from the data engineering side of it, to the data analytics side of it, to the AI use cases side of it. And it feels like the early days, to a certain extent, of the revolution that we've seen in transition from traditional databases, to data warehouses, to cloud-based data processing, and big data. It feels like we're at the genesis of that next wave. And it's super, super exciting, for me at least, as someone who's sitting more in the coach seat, rather than being on the pitch, and building startups, helping folks as they go through those motions. >> So that's awesome. I want to get into some of these data infrastructure dynamics you mentioned, but before that, talk to the audience around what you're working on now. You've been a successful entrepreneur, you're focused on angel investing, so, super-early seed stage. What kind of deals are you looking at? What's interesting to you? What is Sonoma Ventures looking for, and what are some of the entrepreneurial dynamics that you're seeing right now, from a startup standpoint? >> Cool, so, at a macro level, this is a little bit of background of my history, because it shapes very heavily what it is that I'm looking at. So, I've been very fortunate with entrepreneurial career. I founded three startups. All three of them are successful. Final two were sold, the first one merged and went public. And my third career has been about data, moving data, passing data, processing data, generating insights from it. And, at this phase, I wanted to really evolve from just going and building startup number four, from going through the same motions again. A 10 year adventure, I'm a little bit too old for that, I guess. But the next best thing is to sit from a point whereby I can be more elevated in where I'm dealing with, and broaden the variety of startups I'm focused on, rather than just do your own thing, and just go very, very deep into it. Now, what specifically am I focused on at Sonoma Ventures? So, basically, looking at what I refer to as a data-driven application stack. Anything from the low-level data infrastructure and cloud infrastructure, that helps any persona in the data universe maximize value for data, from their particular point of view, for their particular role, whether it's data analysts, data scientists, data engineers, cloud engineers, DevOps folks, et cetera. All the way up to the application layer, in applications that are very data-heavy. And what are very typical data-heavy applications? FinTech, cyber, Web3, revenue technologies, and product and DevOps. So these are the areas we're focused on. I have almost 23 or 24 startups in the portfolio that span all these different areas. And this is in terms of the aperture. Now, typically, focus on pre-seed, seed. Sometimes a little bit later stage, but this is the primary focus. And it's really about partnering with entrepreneurs, and helping them make, if you will, original mistakes, avoid the mistakes I made. >> Yeah. >> And take it to the next level, whatever the milestone they're driving with. So I'm very, very hands-on with many of those startups. Now, what is it that's happening right now, initially, and why is it so exciting? So, on one hand, you have this scaling of data and its complexity, yet lagging value creation from it, across those different personas we've touched on. So that's one fundamental opportunity which is secular. The other one, which is more a cyclic situation, is the fact that we're going through a down cycle in tech, as is very evident in the public markets, and everything we're hearing about funding going slower and lower, terms shifting more into the hands of typical VCs versus entrepreneur-friendly market, and so on and so forth. And a very significant amount of layoffs. Now, when you combine these two trends together, you're observing a very interesting thing, that a lot of folks, really bright folks, who have sold a startup to a company, or have been in the guts of the large startup, or a large corporation, have, hands-on, experienced all those challenges we've spoken about earlier, in turf, maximizing value from data, irrespective of their role, in a specific angle, or vantage point they have on those challenges. So, for many of them, it's an opportunity to, "Now, let me now start a startup. I've been laid off, maybe, or my company's stock isn't doing as well as it used to, as a large corporation. Now I have an opportunity to actually go and take my entrepreneurial passion, and apply it to a product and experience as part of this larger company." >> Yeah. >> And you see a slew of folks who are emerging with these great ideas. So it's a very, very exciting period of time to innovate. >> It's interesting, a lot of people look at, I mean, I look at Snowflake as an example of a company that refactored data warehouses. They just basically took data warehouse, and put it on the cloud, and called it a data cloud. That, to me, was compelling. They didn't pay any CapEx. They rode Amazon's wave there. So, a similar thing going on with data. You mentioned this, and I see it as an enabling opportunity. So whether it's cybersecurity, FinTech, whatever vertical, you have an enablement. Now, you mentioned data infrastructure. It's a super exciting area, as there's so many stacks emerging. We got an analytics stack, there's real-time stacks, there's data lakes, AI stack, foundational models. So, you're seeing an explosion of stacks, different tools probably will emerge. So, how do you look at that, as a seasoned entrepreneur, now investor? Is that a good thing? Is that just more of the market? 'Cause it just seems like more and more kind of decomposed stacks targeted at use cases seems to be a trend. >> Yeah. >> And how do you vet that, is it? >> So it's a great observation, and if you take a step back and look at the evolution of technology over the last 30 years, maybe longer, you always see these cycles of expansion, fragmentation, contraction, expansion, contraction. Go decentralize, go centralize, go decentralize, go centralize, as manifested in different types of technology paradigms. From client server, to storage, to microservices, to et cetera, et cetera. So I think we're going through another big bang, to a certain extent, whereby end up with more specialized data stacks for specific use cases, as you need performance, the data models, the tooling to best adapt to the particular task at hand, and the particular personas at hand. As the needs of the data analysts are quite different from the needs of an NL engineer, it's quite different from the needs of the data engineer. And what happens is, when you end up with these siloed stacks, you end up with new fragmentation, and new gaps that need to be filled with a new layer of innovation. And I suspect that, in part, that's what we're seeing right now, in terms of the next wave of data innovation. Whether it's in a service of FinTech use cases, or cyber use cases, or other, is a set of tools that end up having to try and stitch together those elements and bridge between them. So I see that as a fantastic gap to innovate around. I see, also, a fundamental need in creating a common data language, and common data management processes and governance across those different personas, because ultimately, the same underlying data these folks need, albeit in different mediums, different access models, different velocities, et cetera, the subject matter, if you will, the underlying raw data, and some of the taxonomies right on top of it, do need to be consistent. So, once again, a great opportunity to innovate, whether it's about semantic layers, whether it's about data mesh, whether it's about CICD tools for data engineers, and so on and so forth. >> I got to ask you, first of all, I see you have a friend you brought into the interview. You have a dog in the background who made a little cameo appearance. And that's awesome. Sitting right next to you, making sure everything's going well. On the AI thing, 'cause I think that's the hot trend here. >> Yeah. >> You're starting to see, that ChatGPT's got everyone excited, because it's kind of that first time you see kind of next-gen functionality, large-language models, where you can bring data in, and it integrates well. So, to me, I think, connecting the dots, this kind of speaks to the beginning of what will be a trend of really blending of data stacks together, or blending of models. And so, as more data modeling emerges, you start to have this AI stack kind of situation, where you have things out there that you can compose. It's almost very developer-friendly, conceptually. This is kind of new, but kind of the same concept's been working on with Google and others. How do you see this emerging, as an investor? What are some of the things that you're excited about, around the ChatGPT kind of things that's happening? 'Cause it brings it mainstream. Again, a million downloads, fastest applications get a million downloads, even among all the successes. So it's obviously hit a nerve. People are talking about it. What's your take on that? >> Yeah, so, I think that's a great point, and clearly, it feels like an iPhone moment, right, to the industry, in this case, AI, and lots of applications. And I think there's, at a high level, probably three different layers of innovation. One is on top of those platforms. What use cases can one bring to the table that would drive on top of a ChatGPT-like service? Whereby, the startup, the company, can bring some unique datasets to infuse and add value on top of it, by custom-focusing it and purpose-building it for a particular use case or particular vertical. Whether it's applying it to customer service, in a particular vertical, applying it to, I don't know, marketing content creation, and so on and so forth. That's one category. And I do know that, as one of my startups is in Y Combinator, this season, winter '23, they're saying that a very large chunk of the YC companies in this cycle are about GPT use cases. So we'll see a flurry of that. The next layer, the one below that, is those who actually provide those platforms, whether it's ChatGPT, whatever will emerge from the partnership with Microsoft, and any competitive players that emerge from other startups, or from the big cloud providers, whether it's Facebook, if they ever get into this, and Google, which clearly will, as they need to, to survive around search. The third layer is the enabling layer. As you're going to have more and more of those different large-language models and use case running on top of it, the underlying layers, all the way down to cloud infrastructure, the data infrastructure, and the entire set of tools and systems, that take raw data, and massage it into useful, labeled, contextualized features and data to feed the models, the AI models, whether it's during training, or during inference stages, in production. Personally, my focus is more on the infrastructure than on the application use cases. And I believe that there's going to be a massive amount of innovation opportunity around that, to reach cost-effective, quality, fair models that are deployed easily and maintained easily, or at least with as little pain as possible, at scale. So there are startups that are dealing with it, in various areas. Some are about focusing on labeling automation, some about fairness, about, speaking about cyber, protecting models from threats through data and other issues with it, and so on and so forth. And I believe that this will be, too, a big driver for massive innovation, the infrastructure layer. >> Awesome, and I love how you mentioned the iPhone moment. I call it the browser moment, 'cause it felt that way for me, personally. >> Yep. >> But I think, from a business model standpoint, there is that iPhone shift. It's not the BlackBerry. It's a whole 'nother thing. And I like that. But I do have to ask you, because this is interesting. You mentioned iPhone. iPhone's mostly proprietary. So, in these machine learning foundational models, >> Yeah. >> you're starting to see proprietary hardware, bolt-on, acceleration, bundled together, for faster uptake. And now you got open source emerging, as two things. It's almost iPhone-Android situation happening. >> Yeah. >> So what's your view on that? Because there's pros and cons for either one. You're seeing a lot of these machine learning laws are very proprietary, but they work, and do you care, right? >> Yeah. >> And then you got open source, which is like, "Okay, let's get some upsource code, and let people verify it, and then build with that." Is it a balance? >> Yes, I think- >> Is it mutually exclusive? What's your view? >> I think it's going to be, markets will drive the proportion of both, and I think, for a certain use case, you'll end up with more proprietary offerings. With certain use cases, I guess the fundamental infrastructure for ChatGPT-like, let's say, large-language models and all the use cases running on top of it, that's likely going to be more platform-oriented and open source, and will allow innovation. Think of it as the equivalent of iPhone apps or Android apps running on top of those platforms, as in AI apps. So we'll have a lot of that. Now, when you start going a little bit more into the guts, the lower layers, then it's clear that, for performance reasons, in particular, for certain use cases, we'll end up with more proprietary offerings, whether it's advanced silicon, such as some of the silicon that emerged from entrepreneurs who have left Google, around TensorFlow, and all the silicon that powers that. You'll see a lot of innovation in that area as well. It hopefully intends to improve the cost efficiency of running large AI-oriented workloads, both in inference and in learning stages. >> I got to ask you, because this has come up a lot around Azure and Microsoft. Microsoft, pretty good move getting into the ChatGPT >> Yep. >> and the open AI, because I was talking to someone who's a hardcore Amazon developer, and they said, they swore they would never use Azure, right? One of those types. And they're spinning up Azure servers to get access to the API. So, the developers are flocking, as you mentioned. The YC class is all doing large data things, because you can now program with data, which is amazing, which is amazing. So, what's your take on, I know you got to be kind of neutral 'cause you're an investor, but you got, Amazon has to respond, Google, essentially, did all the work, so they have to have a solution. So, I'm expecting Google to have something very compelling, but Microsoft, right now, is going to just, might run the table on developers, this new wave of data developers. What's your take on the cloud responses to this? What's Amazon, what do you think AWS is going to do? What should Google be doing? What's your take? >> So, each of them is coming from a slightly different angle, of course. I'll say, Google, I think, has massive assets in the AI space, and their underlying cloud platform, I think, has been designed to support such complicated workloads, but they have yet to go as far as opening it up the same way ChatGPT is now in that Microsoft partnership, and Azure. Good question regarding Amazon. AWS has had a significant investment in AI-related infrastructure. Seeing it through my startups, through other lens as well. How will they respond to that higher layer, above and beyond the low level, if you will, AI-enabling apparatuses? How do they elevate to at least one or two layers above, and get to the same ChatGPT layer, good question. Is there an acquisition that will make sense for them to accelerate it, maybe. Is there an in-house development that they can reapply from a different domain towards that, possibly. But I do suspect we'll end up with acquisitions as the arms race around the next level of cloud wars emerges, and it's going to be no longer just about the basic tooling for basic cloud-based applications, and the infrastructure, and the cost management, but rather, faster time to deliver AI in data-heavy applications. Once again, each one of those cloud suppliers, their vendor is coming with different assets, and different pros and cons. All of them will need to just elevate the level of the fight, if you will, in this case, to the AI layer. >> It's going to be very interesting, the different stacks on the data infrastructure, like I mentioned, analytics, data lake, AI, all happening. It's going to be interesting to see how this turns into this AI cloud, like data clouds, data operating systems. So, super fascinating area. Opher, thank you for coming on and sharing your expertise with us. Great to see you, and congratulations on the work. I'll give you the final word here. Give a plugin for what you're looking for for startup seats, pre-seeds. What's the kind of profile that gets your attention, from a seed, pre-seed candidate or entrepreneur? >> Cool, first of all, it's my pleasure. Enjoy our chats, as always. Hopefully the next one's not going to be in nine years. As to what I'm looking for, ideally, smart data entrepreneurs, who have come from a particular domain problem, or problem domain, that they understand, they felt it in their own 10 fingers, or millions of neurons in their brains, and they figured out a way to solve it. Whether it's a data infrastructure play, a cloud infrastructure play, or a very, very smart application that takes advantage of data at scale. These are the things I'm looking for. >> One final, final question I have to ask you, because you're a seasoned entrepreneur, and now coach. What's different about the current entrepreneurial environment right now, vis-a-vis, the past decade? What's new? Is it different, highly accelerated? What advice do you give entrepreneurs out there who are putting together their plan? Obviously, a global resource pool now of engineering. It might not be yesterday's formula for success to putting a venture together to get to that product-market fit. What's new and different, and what's your advice to the folks out there about what's different about the current environment for being an entrepreneur? >> Fantastic, so I think it's a great question. So I think there's a few axes of difference, compared to, let's say, five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago. First and foremost, given the amount of infrastructure out there, the amount of open-source technologies, amount of developer toolkits and frameworks, trying to develop an application, at least at the application layer, is much faster than ever. So, it's faster and cheaper, to the most part, unless you're building very fundamental, core, deep tech, where you still have a big technology challenge to deal with. And absent that, the challenge shifts more to how do you manage my resources, to product-market fit, how are you integrating the GTM lens, the go-to-market lens, as early as possible in the product-market fit cycle, such that you reach from pre-seed to seed, from seed to A, from A to B, with an optimal amount of velocity, and a minimal amount of resources. One big difference, specifically as of, let's say, beginning of this year, late last year, is that money is no longer free for entrepreneurs, which means that you need to operate and build startup in an environment with a lot more constraints. And in my mind, some of the best startups that have ever been built, and some of the big market-changing, generational-changing, if you will, technology startups, in their respective industry verticals, have actually emerged from these times. And these tend to be the smartest, best startups that emerge because they operate with a lot less money. Money is not as available for them, which means that they need to make tough decisions, and make verticals every day. What you don't need to do, you can kick the cow down the road. When you have plenty of money, and it cushions for a lot of mistakes, you don't have that cushion. And hopefully we'll end up with companies with a more agile, more, if you will, resilience, and better cultures in making those tough decisions that startups need to make every day. Which is why I'm super, super excited to see the next batch of amazing unicorns, true unicorns, not just valuation, market rising with the water type unicorns that emerged from this particular era, which we're in the beginning of. And very much enjoy working with entrepreneurs during this difficult time, the times we're in. >> The next 24 months will be the next wave, like you said, best time to do a company. Remember, Airbnb's pitch was, "We'll rent cots in apartments, and sell cereal." Boy, a lot of people passed on that deal, in that last down market, that turned out to be a game-changer. So the crazy ideas might not be that bad. So it's all about the entrepreneurs, and >> 100%. >> this is a big wave, and it's certainly happening. Opher, thank you for sharing. Obviously, data is going to change all the markets. Refactoring, security, FinTech, user experience, applications are going to be changed by data, data operating system. Thanks for coming on, and thanks for sharing. Appreciate it. >> My pleasure. Have a good one. >> Okay, more coverage for the CloudNativeSecurityCon inaugural event. Data will be the key for cybersecurity. theCUBE's coverage continues after this break. (uplifting music)