hello welcome everyone to thecube's coverage here in monaco i'm john furrier host of thecube the monaco crypto summit is happening we're here for the full day and tonight at the yacht club for special presentations crypto team is here digital bits and the industry's gathering and we get some great guests lined up throughout the day our first guest is michael gord co-founder and ceo of gda capital michael welcome to thecube cube great lunch on so we're kicking off the day here we got a lot of a lot of commentary around crypto and also we're in monaco so kind of a special inaugural event why this event why are people gathering here in monaco monaco has traditionally been a top financial jurisdiction but and there has been crypto events here before but never with participation from from prince albert so this being the first event first blockchain focus event in monaco that has participation from prince albert has brought a has brought a global audience and the fact that digital bets is intending to there's a a lot of excitement and and what uh what digital bits is going to be coming to market with yeah and i think i talked to alberto the founder and ceo of digitalbits um i've known him for many years he's a tech guy by heart but he's been in the trenches doing a lot of work over the years in crypto and one of the things i think digital bits has nailed this first the name's amazing but they got real deals i saw our announcement a couple days ago less than 48 hours roma soccer team has a new player they brought the big roll out digitalbits is on the uniform on the front of it huge crowd great visibility so this is a real trend where the the assets of physical and digital coming together there's certainly a lot of hype and a lot of kind of like cleaning up right now in the market but this train is definition is happening training has left the station there's been a lot of over the past decade a lot of startups building in the on blockchains and some of those startups have become big companies but big traditional enterprises have been slow to adopt digital assets and uh digitalbits is really well positioned to bring a lot of those and bring a lot of enterprise participation to the blockchain yeah i mean we met a couple days ago and we were talking in um at the hotel um you're you've been at this for a while you got some great successes talk about your firm what are you guys doing gda what are some of the things you're working on uh you're doing some investment what are some of the angles you're taking bets you've made things you're looking at yeah so i'm a serial entrepreneur and investor i've been focused on the mainstream adoption digital assets for the last decade went about that in in various different ways as i have as i've matured but the way our business looks now is uh is focused on bridging the gap between institutional capital markets and the blockchain and helping institutional capital participate in the market um so we help digital assets with their with their public offering we've gotten into traditional public markets through uh the blockchain moon acquisition corp spac that one of my co-founders is director of we have a brokerage business that does a few hundred million dollars about the transaction volume collateralized lending business we just started some some funds principal investments and then we incubate our own companies internally in category new categories like the metaverse nfts and um other things like that so pretty diversified across the boxing cabinet market at this point and in general looking to create solutions to um help the traditional capital market and the boxing cabinet market get get deeper exposure here you know it's interesting i hear you're speaking about the um how you guys are handling your your view of the landscape multiple moving parts on the investment thesis a lot of integration of instruments and vehicles it's a new creative structural change i mean if you look at just the money how crypto and the future of money this this cultural shift it's also some structural change on how to invest how to manage the investments how to bring on like incubation into most capital public private at the same time on the other side of the coin you have the entrepreneurial energy of um a lot of entrepreneurial ideas you see a lot of creative artists the creator culture has emerged in the past year and a half as a massive wave but to me that's just an application on top of the new infrastructure if you look at all the big investment houses that are pouring billions of whether it's industrial horowitz or other big vcs moving and shifting it's all the same game it's the infrastructure platform applications and it's but it's different it's not what we used to see because it decentralized how do you react to that what's your view on that concept you see it the same way yeah i think that there's everything with blockchains is novel but almost all of it we've seen before so um we've had games before now with the blockchain we have the ability to earn income by playing games we've had exchanges before but they've always been a centralized organization that everything that is now built on blockchains exists in the traditional internet or capital market or game industry or or whatever uh that you know there has been art for generations there's been uh now the ability to have art on the blockchain with provable nft like every everything is innovative because of the decentralization aspect but it's not it's not the first thing the first time that we've seen any of this stuff it's almost interesting you're seeing it recycling all the same concepts on the old web kind of come in the new web and there's also a gen z angle especially the metaverse metaverse the constant theme i'm seeing is hey you want to watch sports you can watch in the metaverse and do it differently and not have to attend so you know the whole pandemic has shown us that hybrid virtual and hybrid is coming together and so i see a huge tsunami of innovation coming from just the tailwind post pandemic i think still massive value in a real event like this us being able to sit in front of each other as real people is uh not replicatable in the metaverse but to be in monaco is not possible for everyone because uh visa reasons because they have something you know it's just you have to be here today is not possible for a hundred percent of the world or for a sports game or for a concert or for a music premiere movie premiere really anything that's happening in the real world is not the metaverse is not gonna replace the real world but it is gonna create a massive additional audience to anything that's happening in the real world that anyone around the world can participate and how amazing would it be for uh for someone from zimbabwe someone from sydney and someone from brazil to all be interested in what digital bits is doing in monaco and what prince albert is you know how how how how the monarchical crypto summit is looking to position monaco in the future of cryptocurrency the kind of theme of this event and they have the amazing fortune to meet in the metaverse it doesn't replace well i mean i think i mean i think this is a great point this to me is going to be the holy grail in my opinion i agree if you look at the notion of presence we're face to face we're here there's people here so we peace we see each other in the lobby maybe he's out sightseeing at dinners so when you have that face to face that's the scarce resource right that's going to be the intimacy sometimes it's not even just to learn about what the pro what's going on but if we're present here how do we create that same experience when you have presence not just some icon chatting but like just movement knowing that you're there connected to people first party is going to be no one's really done it well i think the metaverse is to me is showing the path to being a first-class citizen digitally with a real-time event it's new so it is possible to communicate in the metaverse through through a microphone so if if you're beside someone then similar to the real world you can say you know hey how's it going what do you think about the presentation or or whatever you want and if you're speaking in a conversational way then the person beside you will hear what the person down the hall might might not um it's also that i've i've seen new features in certain like experiences that are coming to market that kind of take the google hangout or skype yeah like video infrastructure and put that in so we could choose to have our cameras on which is it's getting better but it of course doesn't replace real presence there's no doubt in my mind that in near future soon sooner or later there's gonna be a guest sitting right next to you that's not here okay there will be a hologram model where people will be interviewed will have capability to visualize that person they'll be in a metaverse they'll be queuing up for interviews this is a game this is a mind-blowing thing i mean if you just think about that concept that we could have participation in real time here with expressions with their with their digital expression their icon whatever whatever their nfts are so i think this is going to be the blending of how communities gather and i think ultimately how truth and and journalism and news is going to change so to me yeah we're super excited we're here obviously because we want to get the stories and you know we love what digital bits is doing prince albert certainly a relevant figure on the global stage um i think this is a signal for a lot of things to come indeed indeed all right so final question before we move on what's your hottest thing you got going on what are you looking at what are you most excited about um well just just this conference um we've got quite a lot of of companies we have exposure in that are that are presenting and a lot of them are coining new new new niches of the market so um we have uh um we've spoken about a lot about the metaverse we have you know i'm and i think the metaverse is probably the the thing that i'm overall most excited about i think it's the next multi-trillion dollar market that feels like bitcoins in but in addition to that we have the first regenerative finance platform that is that is presenting here that's using decentralized finance and and blockchain technology to create a model that people can earn income while mining carbon credits essentially with an objective of having first boxing all blocking protocols but eventually creating a leader board of carbon positive businesses where businesses will challenge their competitors to be more carbon positive in a way that actually earns them earn some income outside of the potential value what's the name of that company that's kyoto protocol uh we have the first entertained to earn a company that is is presenting here it's playgood um the first uh e-commerce metaverse platform so integrated directly into e-commerce without needing to i think the future of the metaverse is is social links you have you know finest in the metaverse and you have all of the all the logos of metaverses that you have experiences in which is cool yeah that that's uh but then you're you're going out of the native website instead of having a um instead of you know native to the to the website having a metabolism experience so they're doing that um yeah really cool awesome final question one more final question i got for you because you made me think of it so metaverse obviously hot is there going to be an open metaverse you start to see walled gardens and you got facebook they got slam dunk by the u.s uh in terms of monopolistic move for buying a exercise act which you know i can i i don't think that was a good move by the u.s i think i let him do that but but there they're they're kind of the wall garden model the old facebook i mean decentralized about open yeah historically if we go back in time there's always open and closed infrastructure in the internet um there was there is companies building open infrastructure companies building closed infrastructure and we could have been talking in 1992 about whether the private intranet will create mass adoption or the open internet will create mass adoption and not that the the intranet is probably is even today still a multi-billion dollar per year business but it's not a multi-trillion dollar per year per year you know infrastructure like the public internet same with the blockchain in 2012 2013 um private blockchains were all the rage by banking raising hundreds of millions of dollars to build up private boxing infrastructure and private blockchains are generating probably today still multi-billion dollars of revenue annually but they haven't accrued multi-trillion dollars like the public watching has i think the same thing will be in the metaverse there will be open and closed infrastructure um but event and there already is close you know fortnight and and games are are essentially closed metaverses just without ownable land um i always look at the i'm old school i look at aol they had they monopolized dial up internet like where the hell did that go you know history so again yeah we don't know it's going to be maybe a connection a connection point between these open metaverses we'll see maybe i'm investment update michael thanks for coming on thecube appreciate you kicking off the event here monaco crypto summit powered by digital bits presented by digital bits uh the company really and behind all the innovation here and the companies i'm john furrier with more coverage after this short break thanks john [Music] you

>> live from San Francisco, celebrating 10 years of high tech coverage. It's the Cube covering Veum, World 2019 brought to you by the M Wear and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to San Francisco. Day three of our coverage here on the Cube Of'em world 2019. I'm John Wall's Glad to have you here aboard for our continuing coverage here Day Volonte is also joining me, as is the sartorially resplendent Eric Herzog, cm of and vice president. Global storage channels that IBM storage. Eric, good to see you and love the shirt. Very >> nice. Thank you. Well, always have a wine shirts when I'm on the Cube >> I love in a long time Cuba to we might say, I'm sure he's got the record. Yeah, might pay. Well, >> you and pattern, neck and neck. We'll go to >> the vault. And well, >> since Pat used to be my boss, you know, couch out a path. >> Well, okay. Let the little show what IBM think. Maybe. Well, that's OK. Let's just start off a big picture. We're in all this, you know. Hybrid. Multilingual. This discussion went on this week. Obviously, just your thoughts about general trends and where the business is going now supposed to wear? Maybe we're 23 years ago. Well, the >> good thing is for IBM storage, and we actually came to your partner and titty wiki Bond when our new general manager, Ed Walsh, joined. And we came and we saw Dave and John at the old office are at your offices, and we did a pitch about hybrid multi cloud. Remember that gave us some feedback of how to create a new slide. So we created a slide based on Dave's input, and we were doing that two and 1/2 years ago. So we're running around telling the storage analyst Storage Press about hybrid multi cloud based on IBM storage. How weaken transparently move data, things we do with backup, Of course. An archive. You've got about 450 small and medium cloud providers. Their backup is a service engine. Is our spectrum protect? And so we talked about that. So Dave helped us craft the slide to make it better, because he said, we left a couple things >> out that Eric >> owes you. There were a few other analysts I'm sure you talked to and got input, but but us really were the first toe to combine those things in your in your marketing presentations. But >> let's I'd love to get >> an update on the business. Yes, help people understand the IBM storage organization. You guys created the storage business, you know, years and years and years ago. It's a it's a you know you've got your core business, which is column arms dealers. But there's a lot of Regent IBM, the Cloud Division. You've got the service's division, but so help us understand this sort of organizational structure. So >> the IBM story division's part of IBM Systems, which includes both the mainframe products Z and the Power Server entities. So it's a server in storage division. Um, the Easy guys in particular, have a lots of software that they sell and not just mainframe. So they have a very, very large software business, as do we. As you know, from looking at people that do the numbers, We're the second largest storage software company in the world, and the bulk of that software's not running on IBM gear. So, for example, spectrum protect will back up anyone's array spectrum scale and our IBM Cloud Object storage are sold this software only software defined as the spectrum virtualized. You could basically create a J. Bader Jabo after your favorite distributor or reseller and create your honor. Rates are software, but the all of the infrastructure would actually not be ours, not branded by us. And you call us for tech support for the software side. But if you had a bad power supplier fan, you'd have to call, you know, the reseller distributor said this very robust storage software business. Obviously you make sure that was compatible with the other server elements of IBM systems. But the bulk of our storage is actually sitting connect to some server that doesn't have an IBM logo on it. So that's the bulk of our business connected to Intel servers of all types that used to include, of course, IBM Intel Server division, which was sold off to Lenovo. So we still have a very robust business in the array space that has nothing to do with working on a power machine are working on a Z machine, although we clearly worked very heavily with them and have a number of things going with him, including something that's coming very shortly in the middle of September on some new high end products that we're going to dio >> went 90 Sea Counts All this stuff. Do they >> count to give IBM credit for all the storage that lives inside of the IBM Cloud? Do you get you get credit for that or >> not get credit for that? So when they count our number, it's only the systems that we sell and the storage software that we sell. So if you look at if we were a standalone company, which would include support service made everything, some of which we don't get credit for, right, the support and service is a different entity at IBM that does that, UM, the service's group, the tech support that all goes to someone else. We don't have a new credit >> so hypothetical I don't I don't think this is the case, but let's say hypothetically, if pure storage sold an array into IBM Cloud, they would get credit for it. But if you're array and I'm sure this happens is inside of the IBM, you don't get credit for it. >> That's true interesting, so it's somewhat undercounts. Part of that is the >> way we internally count because we're selling it to ourselves. >> But that's it. >> It's not. It's more of an accounting thing, but it's different when we sell the anybody else. So, for example, we sell the hundreds of cloud providers who in theory compete with the IBM Cloud Division >> to you Get credit for that. You get credit for your own away. That's way work. But if we were standing >> on coming for, say, government, we were Zog in store and I bought the company away, we would be about a $6.3 billion standalone storage software company. That's what we would be if we were all in because support service manes. If we were our own company with our own right legal entity, just like net app or the other guys, we'd be Stanley would be in that, you know, low $6 billion range, counting everything all in. When we do report publicly, we only report our storage system because we don't report our storage software business. And as you notice a few times, our CFO has made comments. If we did count, the storage software visit would be ex, and he's publicly stated that price at least two times. Since I've been an idea when he talks about the software on, but legally we only talk about IBM storage systems. When he publicly state our numbers out onto Wall Street, that's all >> we publicly report. So, um, you're like, you're like a walking sheet of knowledge here, but I wonder if you could take the audience through the portfolio. Oh, it's vast. How should we think about it? And the names have changed. You talk about, you know, 250 a raise, whatever it is the old sand volume control. And now it's a spectrum virtualized, >> right? So take us to the portfolio. What's the current? It's free straight for. >> We have really three elements in the portfolio, all built around, if you will, solution plays. But the three real elements in the portfolio our storage arrays, storage systems, we have entry mid range and high end, just like our competitors do. We lead with all flash, but we still sell hybrid and obviously, for backup, an archive. We still sell all hard drive right for those workloads. So and we have filed blocking object just like most other guys do, Um, for an array, then we have a business built around software, and we have two key elements. Their software defined storage, and we saw that software completely stand alone. It happens, too, by the way, be embedded on the arrays. So, for example, Dave, you mentioned Spectrum virtualized that ship's on flash systems and store wise. But if you don't want our raise, we will sell you just spectrum virtualized alone for block spectrum scale for Big Big Data A. I file Workloads and IBM caught object storage, which could all of them could be bought on an array. But they also could be bought. Itjust Standalone component. Yes, there's a software so part of the advantage we feel that delivers. It's some of the people that have software defined storage, that air raid guys. It's not the same software, so for us, it's easier for us to support and service. It's easier for a stack developing have leading it. Features is not running two different pieces of software running, one that happens to have a software on Lee version or an array embedded version. So we've got that, and then the third is around modern data protection, and that's really it. So a modern data protection portfolio built around spectrum, protect and Protect Plus and some other elements. A software to find storage where we sell the software only, and then arrays. That's it. It's really three things and not show. Now they're all kinds components underneath the hood. But what we really do is we sell. We don't really run around and talk about off last race. We talk about hybrid multi cloud. Now all of our flash raise and a lot of our software defined storage will automatically tear data out, too. Hybrid multi cloud configurations. We just So we lead with that same thing. We have one around cyber resiliency. Now, the one thing that spans the whole portfolio of cyber resiliency way have cyber rebellion see and a raise. We have some softer on the mainframe called Safeguarded Copy that creates immutable copies and has extra extra security for the management rights. You've got management control, and if you have a malware ransomware attack, you couldn't recover to these known good copies. So that's a piece of software that we sell on the mainframe on >> how much growth have you seen in that in? Because he's never reveals if you've got it resonating pervasive, right, Pervasive. So >> we've got, for example, malware and ransomware detection. Also, Inspector protect. So it's taken example. So I'm going to steal from the Cube and I'm gonna ask Dave and for you, I want a billion dollars and Dave's gonna laugh at me because he used a spectrum protect. He's gonna start laughing. But if I'm the ransomware guy, what do I do? I go after your snapshots, your replicas and your backup data sets. First, I make sure I've got those under control. And then when I tell you I'm holding you for ransom, you can't go back to a known good copy. So Ransomware goes after backup snaps and replicas first. Then it goes half your primary storage. So what we do, inspector protect, for example, is we know that at Weeki Bond and the Cube, you back up every night from 11 32 1 30 takes two hours to back you up every night. It's noon. There's tons of activity in the backup data sets. What the heck is going on? We send it out to the admin, So the admin for the Cube wicky bond takes a look and says, No server failure. So you can't be doing a lot of recovery because of a bad server. No storage failures. What the heck is going on? It could be a possible mount where ransomware attack. So that type of technology, we encrypt it, rest on all of our store to raise. We have both tape and tape and cloud air gapping. I'm gonna ask you about that. We've got both types of air gapped >> used to hate tape. Now he loves my love, right? No, I used to hate it, But now I love it because it's like the last resort, just in case. And you do air gapping when you do a WR gapping with customers, Do you kind of rotate the You know, it's like, uh, you know, the Yasser Arafat used to move every night. You sleep in a different place, right? You gonna rotate the >> weird analogy? You do >> some stuff. There's a whole strategy >> of how we outlined how you would do a tape air gap, you a cloud air gap. Of course you're replicating or snapping out to the cloud anyway, so they can't get to that. So if you have a failure, we haven't known good copy, depending on what time that is, right. And then you just recover. Cover back to that and even something simple. We have data rest, encryption. Okay. A lot of people don't use it or won't use it on storage because it's often software based, and so is permanent. Well, in our D s platform on the mainframe, we can encrypt with no performance hit on our flash system products we can encrypt with no performance it on our high end store. Wise, we have four models on the two high end stores models we could encrypt with no performance penalty. So why would you not encrypt all your debt? When there's a performance penalty, you have to sort of pick and choose. My God, I got to encrypt this valuable financial data, but, boy, I really wish it wasn't so slow with us. There is no performance it when you encrypt. So we have encryption at rest, encryption at flight malware and ran somewhere detection. We've got worm, which is important, obviously, doesn't mean I can't steal from wicked Bond Cube, but I certainly can't go change all your account numbers for all your vendors. For sake. of argument, right? So and there's obviously heavily regulated industries that still require worm technology, right? Immutable on the fine, by the way, you could always if it's wormed, you could encrypt it if you want to write. Because Worm just means it's immutable. It doesn't. It's not a different data type. It's just a mutable version of that data. >> So the cyber resiliency is interesting, and it leads me to another question I have around just are, indeed so A lot of companies in this industry do a lot of D developing next generation products. I think, you know, look a t m c when you were there, you know, this >> was a lot of there. Wasn't a ton, >> of course, are a lot of patents and stuff like that. IBM does corps are a lot of research and research facilities, brainiac scientists, I want if you could talk about how the storage division takes advantage of that, either specifically, is it relates to cyber resiliency. But generally, >> yes, so as you know, IBM has got, I think it's like 12 12 or 15 research on Lee sites that that's all they do, and everyone there is, in fact, my office had to be. Akiyama didn't labs, and there's two labs actually hear. The AMA didn't research lab and the Silicon Valley lab, which is very close about five miles away. Beautiful. Almost everything. There is research. There's a few product management guys I happen, Navid desk there every once. Well, see a sales guy or two. But essentially, they're all Richard with PhDs from the leading inverse now at Al Madden and many sites, all the divisions have their own research teams there. There's a heavy storage contingent at Al Midan as an example. Same thing in Zurich. So, for example, we just announced last week, as you know, stuff that will work with Quantum on the tape side. So you don't have to worry about because one of things, obviously, that people complain about quantum computing, whether it's us or anyone else, the quantum computing you can crack basically any encryption. Well, guess what? IBM research has developed tape that can be encrypted. So if using quantum computer, whether it be IBM or someone else's when you go with quantum computing, you can have secured data because the quantum computer can't actually cracked the encryption that we just put into that new tape that was done at IBM Research. How >> far away are we from From Quantum, actually being ableto be deployed and even minor use cases. >> Well, we've got available right now in ibm dot com for Betas. So we've got several 1000 people who have been accidents in it. And entities, we've been talking publicly in the 3 to 7 year timeframe for quantum computer crap out. Should it? Well, no, because if you do the right sort of security, you don't but the power. So if you're envisioning one of my favorite movies, I robot, right where she's doing her talking and that's that would really be quantum in all honesty. But at the same time, you know, the key thing IBM is all about ethics and all about how we do things, whether it be what we do with our diversity programs and hiring. And IBM is always, you know, at the forefront of doing and promoting ethical this and ethical. Then >> you do a customer data is huge. >> Yeah, and what we do with the customer data sets right, we do. GDP are, for example, all over the world were not required by law to do it really Only in Europe we do it everywhere. And so if you're not, if you're in California, if you happen to be in Zimbabwe or you're in Brazil, you get the same protection of GDP are even though we're not legally required to do it. And why are we doing that? Because they're always concerned about customers data, and we know they're paranoid about it. We want to make sure people feel comfortable with IBM. We do. Quantum computing will end up in that same vein. >> But you know, I don't worry about you guys. I were about the guys on the other side of the fence, the ones that I worry about, the same thing Capabilities knew that was >> on, of course. And you know, he talked about it in his speech, and he talked about action on the Cube yesterday about some of his comments on the point, and he mentioned that was based on Blockchain. What he said was Blockchain is a great technology. They've got Blockchain is no. IBM is a big believer in Blockchain. We promoted all over the place and in fact we've done all kinds of different Blockchain things we just did. One announced it last week with Australia with the Australian. I think it is with their equivalent of Wall Street. We've done some stuff with Merrick, the big shipping container thing, and it's a big consortium. That's all legal stuff that was really talking about someone using it the wrong way. And he's very specific point out that Blockchain is a great technology if used ethically, and IBM is all about how we do it. So we make sure whether be quantum computing, Blockchain, et cetera, that everything we do at IBM is about helping the end users, making sure that we're making, for example, open source. As you know. Well, the number one provider of open source technology pre read had acquisition is IBM. We submit Maur into the open community. Renounce Now are we able to make some money off of that? Sure we are, but we do it for a reason, because IBM believes as day point out in this core research. Open computing is court research, and we just join the Open Foundation last week as well. So we're really big on making sure that what we do ourselves is Ethel now We try to make sure that what happens in the hands of people who buy our technology, which we can always track, is also done ethically. And we go out of our way to join the right industry. Associations work with governments, work with whatever we need to do to help make sure that technology could really be iRobot. Anyone who thinks that's not true. If you talk to your grandparent's goto, go to the moon. What are you talking about? >> What Star Trek. It's always >> come to me. Oh, yeah, >> I mean, if you're your iPhone is basically the old community. Transport is the only thing I wish I could have the transfer. Aziz. You know, >> David has the same frame us up. I'm afraid of flying, and I I felt like two million miles on United and David. He's laughs about flowers, so I'm waiting for the transport. I know that's why anymore there's a cone over here. Go stand. Or maybe maybe with a little bit of like, I'm selling my Bitcoin. No, hang on, just hold on. There's always a comeback. Not always. There could be a comeback because Derek always enjoy it as always. Thanks for the good seeing you. All right, Back with more Veum. World 2019 The Cube live in San Francisco.

>> live from Barcelona, Spain. It's the key covering KubeCon Cloud, Native Con Europe twenty nineteen by Red Hat, the Cloud, Native Computing Foundation and Ecosystem Partners. >> Welcome back to Barcelona, Spain >> were here of the era, and seventy seven hundred people are here for the KubeCon Cloud NativeCon, twenty, nineteen, Off student. My co host for the two days of coverage is Corey Quinn, and joining Me are the two co chairs of this CNC event. Janet Cooper, who is also thie, suffer engineer with Google and having done the wrap up on stage in the keynote this morning, find Lyle's a senior staff engineer with BM where thank you both for joining us, >> Thank you. >> Thanks for having me. >> So let's start. We're celebrating five years of Kubernetes as damn calm laid out this morning. You know, of course, you know came from Google board in over a decade of experience there. So it just helps out the state for us. >> Um, so I started working on communities since before the 1.4 release and then steal a project Montana today. And I feel so proud to see, uh, the progress off this project and its has grown exponentially. And today we have already thirty one thousand contributors and expect it to grow even more if you can. >> All right. So, Brian, you work with some of the original people that helped create who Burnett ease because you came to be and where, by way of the FTO acquisition, seventy seven hundred people here we said it. So it's, you know, just about the size of us feel that we had in Seattle a few months ago Way Expect that San Diego is going to be massive when we get there in the fall. But you know, talk to us is the co chair, you know, What's it mean to, you know, put something like this together? >> Well, so as ah is a long time open source person and seeing you know, all these companies move around for, you know, decades. Now it's nice to be a part of something that I saw from the sidelines for so, so long. I'm actually... it's kind of surreal because I didn't do anything special to get here. I just did what I was doing. And you know, Jan and I just wound up here together, so it's a great feeling, and it's the best part about it is whenever I get off stage and I walked outside and I walked back. It's like a ten minute walk each way. So many people are like, Yeah, you really made my morning And that's that's super special. >> Yeah. I mean, look, you know, we're we're huge fans of open source in general and, you know, communities, especially here. So look, there was no, you know, you both have full time jobs, and you're giving your time to support this. So thank you for what you did. And, you know, we know it takes an army to put together in a community. Some of these people, we're Brian, you know, you got upstate talk about all the various project. There's so many pieces here. We've only have a few minutes. Any kind of major highlights You wanna pull from the keynote? >> So the biggest. Actually, I I've only highlight won the open census open. Tracing merge is great, because not only because it's going to make a better product, but he had two pretty good pieces of software. One from Google, actually, literally both from Google. Ultimately, But they realize that. Hey, we have the same goals. We have similar interfaces. And instead of going through this arms race, what they did is sable. This is what we'LL do. We'LL create a new project and will merge them. That is, you know, that is one of the best things about open source. You know, you want to see this in a lot of places, but people are mature enough to say, Hey, we're going to actually make something bigger and better for everyone. And that was my favorite update. >> Yeah, well, I tell you, and I'm doing my job well, because literally like during the keynote, I reached out to Ben. And Ben and Morgan are going to come on the program to talk about that merging later today. That was interested. >> I've often been accused of having that first language being snark, and I guess in that light, something that I'm not particularly clear on, and this is not the setup for a joke. But one announcement that was made on stage today was that Tiller is no longer included in the current version of Wasn't Helm. Yes, yes, And everyone clapped and applauded, and my immediate response was first off. Wow, if you were the person that wrote Tiller, that probably didn't feel so good given. Everyone was copping and happy about it. But it seems that that was big and transformative and revelatory for a lot of the audience. What is Tiller and why is it perceived as being less than awesome? >> All right, so I will give you a disclaimer, >> please. >> The disclaimer is I do not work on the helm project... Wonderful >> ...so anything that I say should be fact checked. >> Excellent. >> So Well, so here's the big deal. When Tiller, when Helm was introduced, they had this thing called Tiller. And what tiller did was it ran at a basically a cluster wide level to make sure that it could coordinate software being installed and Kubernetes named Spaces or groups how Kubernetes applications are distributed. So what happens is is that that was the best vector for security problems. Basically, you had this root level piece of software running, and people were figuring out ways to get around it. And it was a big security hole. What >> they've done Just a component. It's an attack platform. It >> was one hundred percent. I mean, I remember bit. Nami actually wrote a block post. You know, disclaimer of'em were just bought that bit na me. >> Yes, I insisted It's called Bitten, am I? But we'LL get to that >> another. This's a disclaimer, You know, There Now you know there now my co workers But they wrote they were with very good article about a year and a half ago about just all the attack vectors, but and then also gave us solution around that. Now you don't need that solution. What you get by default. Now something is much more secure. And that's the most important piece. And I think the community really loves Helm, and now they have helm with better defaults. >> So, Janet, a lot of people at the show you talk about, you know, tens of thousands of contributors to it. But that being said, there's still a lot of the world that is just getting started. Part of the key note. And I knew you wrote something running workloads and cover Netease talk a little bit about how we're helping you know, those that aren't yet, you know, on board with you getting into the community ship. >> So I work on the C gaps. So she grabs one of the sub fracture that own is the work wells AP Eyes. That's why I had that. What post? About running for closing covered alleys. So basically, you you're using coronaries clarity, baby eyes to run a different type of application, and we call it were close. So you have stay full state wears or jobs and demons and you have different guys to run those clothes in the communities. And then for those who are just getting started, maybe start with, uh, stay last were close. That's the easiest one. And then for people who are looking Teo, contribute war I. I encouraged you to start with maybe small fixes, maybe take some documents or do some small P R's and you're reputations from there and star from small contributions and then feel all the way up. >> Yeah, so you know, one of one of the things when I look out there, you know, it's a complex ecosystem now, and, you know, there's a lot of pieces in there, you know, you know, trend we see is a lot of customers looking for manage services. A lot of you know, you know, I need opinions to help get me through all of these various pieces. You know what? What do you say to those people? And they're coming in And there's that, you know, paradox of choice When they, you know, come, come looking. You know, all the options out there. >> So I would say, Start with something simple that works. And then you can always ask others for advice for what works, What doesn't work. And you can hear from their success stories or failure stories. And then I think I recently he saw Block post about Some people in the community is collecting a potential failure stories. There is also a talk about humanity's fellow, the stories. So maybe you can go there and learn from the old those mistakes and then how to build a better system from there. >> I'd love that. We have to celebrate those failures that we hopefully can learn from them. Find anything on that, You know, from your viewpoint. >> Eso Actually, it's something I research is developer experience for you. Bernetti. So my communities is this whole big ping. I look on top of it and I'm looking at the outside in howto developers interact with Burnett, ese. And what we're seeing is that there's lots of room for opportunities and Mohr tools outside of the main community space that will help people actually interact with it because that's not really communities. Developers responsibility, you know, so one anything that I think that we're doing now is we're looking and this is something that we're doing and be aware that I can talk about is that we're looking at a P ice we're looking at. We realize that client go, which is the way that you burnett ese talks with sapi eyes, and a lot of people are using out externally were looking at. But what does it actually mean for human to use this and a lot of my work is just really around. Well, that's cool for computers. Now, what if a human has to use it? So what we're finding is that no. And I'm going to talk about this in my keynote tomorrow. You know, we're on this journey, and Kubernetes is not the destination. Coover Netease is the vehicle that is getting us to the destination that we don't even know what it is. So there's lots of spaces that we can look around to improve Kubernetes without even touching Cooper Netease itself, because actually, it's pretty good and it's fairly stable in a lot of cases. But it's hard, and that's the best part. So that's, you know, lots of work for us, the salt >> from my perspective. One of the turning points in Kou Burnett is a success. Story was when it got beyond just Google. Well, folks working on it. For better or worse, Google has a certain step of coding standards, and then you bring it to the real world, where there are people who are, Let's be honest, like me, where my coding standard is. I should try to right some some days, and not everything winds up having the same constraints. Not everything has the same approach. To some extent, it really feels like a tipping point for all of it was when you wind up getting to a position where people are bringing their real world workload that don't look like anything, anyone would be able to write a googol and keep their job. But still having to work with this, there was a wound up being sort of blossoming effect really accelerating the project. Conversely, other large infrastructure projects we need not mention when they had that tipping point in getting more people involved, they sort of imploded on themselves. I'm curious. Do you have any thoughts as to why you Burnett? He started thriving where other projects and failed trying to do the same things. >> I have something you go first. And >> I think the biggest thing about cybernetics is the really strong community and the ecosystem and also communities has the extensive bility for you to build on top of communities. We've seen people building from works, and then the platform is different platforms. Open source platforms on top of you. Burnett is so other people can use on other layers. Hyah. Layers off stacks on top of fraternities. Just use those open source. So, for example, we have the CRD. It's an A P I that allows you to feel your own customized, overnighted style FBI, so they're using some custom for couple databases. You could just create your own carbonated style FBI and call out your database or other stuffs, and then you can combine them into your own platform. And that's very powerful because everywhere. I can just use the same FBI, the Carbonari style idea to manage almost everything and that enables a Teo be able to, you know, on communities being adopted in different industry, such as I o t. A and Lord. >> So actually, this is perfect because the sleaze and so what I was going to say The secret of community is that we don't talk about actually job, Ada says. It's a lot, but it's a communities is a platform for creating platforms. So Kubernetes really is almost built on itself. You can extend Cooper. Netease like communities extends itself with the same semantics that it lets users extended. So Janet was talking about >> becoming the software that is eating the world. Yeah, it >> literally is. So Janet talked about the CRD sees custom resource definitions. It's the same. It's the same mechanism that Kubernetes uses to add new features. So whenever you're using these mechanisms, you're using Kou Burnett. He's basically the Cooper Nate's infrastructure to create. So really, what it is is that this is the tool kit for creating your solutions. What is why I say that Kubernetes is not an end point its its journey. >> So the cloud native system. >> So you know what? Yeah, and I like I like the limits analogy that people talk about. Like Coburn. Eighties is is like clinics. If you think about how Lennox you know little l. Lennox. Yeah. You know, I'm saying little l olynyk sub Let's put together. Yeah, you Burnett. He's like parts of communities would be system. And it's it's all these components come together the creature operating system, and that's the best part about it. >> Okay, so for me, the people that are not the seventy seven hundred that air here give them a little bit of, you know, walk around the show and some of the nooks and crannies that they might not know, like, you know, for myself having been to a number of these like Boy, there were so many half day and full day workshops yesterday there were, like, at least, like fifteen or seventeen or something like that that I saw, You know, obviously there's some of the big keynote. The Expo Hall is sprawling it, you know, I've been toe, you know, fifteen twenty thousand people show here This sex Bohol feels is bustling ahs that one is and well as tons of breakout session. So, you know, give us some of the things that people would have been missing if they didn't come to the show here. >> So just for the record, if you missed the show, you can still watch all the videos online. And then you can also watch the lifestream for keynotes so on. I personally love the applicant the different ways for a customizing covered at ease. So there's Ah, customizing overnight is track. And also there's the apple that applications track and I personally love that. And also I like the color case studies So you can't go to the case studies track to see on different users and users off Cooper, Natty shared. There were war stories, >> Yes, So I think that she will miss. There's a few things that you'll miss if you if you're not here in Barcelona right now, the first thing is that this convention center is huge. It's a ten minute walk from the door to where we're sitting right now, but more seriously, one. The things you'LL miss is that before the conference starts, there are there are a whole bunch of summits, Red had had a summit and fewer people had some. It's yesterday where they talk about things. There's the training sessions, which a lot of cases aren't recorded. And then another thing is that the special interest groups, the cigs. So Cooper ninety six, they all get together and they have faced the face discussions and then generally one from yesterday We're not. We're not recorded. So what you're missing is the people who actually make this big machine turn. They get together face to face and they first of all, they built from a rotary. But they get to discuss items that have require high bit of bandwith that you really can't do over again of issue or email, or even even a slack call like you can actually get this thing solved. And the best thing is watching these people. And then you watch the great ideas that in, you know, three, six months to a year become like, really big thing. So I bet yesterday, so something was discussed. Actually, I know of some things that we discussed yesterday that might fundamentally change how we deal with communities. So that's that is the value of being here and then the third thing is like when you come to a conference like this, where there's almost a thousand people, there's a lot of conversations that happened between, you know, the Expo Hall and the session rooms. And there's, um there's, you know, people are getting jobs here, People are finding new friends and people are learning. And before thing and I'll end with This is that I walk around looking for people who come in on the on the diversity scholarships, and I would not hear their stories if I did not come. So I met two people. I met a young lady from New Zealand who got the scholarship and flew here, you know, and super smart, but is in New Zealand and university, and I get to hear her insights with life. And then I get to share how you could be better in the same thing. I met a gentleman from Zimbabwe yesterday was going to school and take down, and what I hear is that there's so many smart people without opportunities, so if you're looking for opportunities, it's in these halls. There's a lot of people who have either money for you or they have re sources were really doesn't have a job or just you know what? Maybe there's someone you can call whenever you're stuck. So there is a lot of benefit to come into these. If you can get here, >> talent is evenly distributed. Opportunity is not. So I think the diversity scholarship program is one of the most inspirational things I saw mentioned out of a number of inspirational things that >> I know. It's It's my favorite part of communities. You know, I am super lucky that I haven't employees that our employer that can afford to send me here. Then I'm also super lucky that I probably couldn't afford to send myself here if I wanted to. And I do as much as I can to get people >> here. Well, Brian and Janet thank you so much for all you did to put this and sharing it with our community here. I'Ll repeat something that I said in Seattle. Actually, there was a lot of cloud shows out there. But if you're looking for you know, that independent cloud show that you know, lives in this multi hybrid cloud, whatever you wanna call it world you know this is one of the best out there. And the people? Absolutely. If you don't come with networking opportunities, we had into it on earlier, and they talked about how you know, this is the kind of place you come and you find a few people that you could hire to train the hundreds of people inside on all of the latest cloud native pieces. >> Can I say one thing, please? Brian S O, this is This is significant and it's significant for Janet and I. We are in the United States. We are, you know, Janet is a minority and I am a minority. This is the largest open source conference in the world. Siri's This is the largest open source conference in Europe. When we do, when we do, it ended a year. Whenever we do San Diego, it'Ll be the largest open source conference in the world. And look who's running it. You know, my new co chair is also a minority. This is amazing. And I love that. It shows that people who look like us we can come up here and do these things because like you said, opportunity is is, you know, opportunities the hard thing. Talent is everywhere. It's all over the place. And I'm glad we had a chance to do this. >> All right. Well, Brian, Janet, thank you so much for all of that. And Cory and I will be back with more coverage after this brief break. Thank you for watching the cues.

>> From Sand Hill Road in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE. Presenting, the People First Network; insights from entrepreneurs and tech leaders. >> Hello everyone, we are here for CUBE conversation in San Francisco. I'm John Furrier with siliconANGLE media theCUBE. We are in San Francisco with John Zimmer, who is the co-founder of president of Lyft, the famous ride sharing company that's dominating the world and changing the game in transportation. We all use Lyft, we love it. John, great to see you here for this People First Network special conversation. Thanks for spending the time. >> Thanks for having me. >> I know you're super busy, you guys are growing, billions of dollars in raised capital. You guys are growing like a weed on a rocket ship. A lot of things happening. But, you know, it's interesting, you guys are not that old of a company and the growth has just been fantastic. So, as you continue to ride the wave here, there's a lot of lessons that you've learned. So, tell the story about how you guys got started. You and your co-founder have a great relationship, and this has been a part of the culture at Lyft. How did it all get started? >> Yeah, so I'll start with Logan, my co-founder. He grew up in L.A. surrounded by traffic and he hated that. And he wanted to find a better way to get around. So when he went to college, he went to UC Santa Barbara, he did not take his car. He rode the bus, he car pooled, he had friends with cars. And then he went to start a car sharing program before Zipcar was around on college campuses. He got the attention of the local transit board, he got elected as the youngest member ever on the transit board. And he fell in love with the promise of public transportation. Affortable, accessible transportation for everyone. But frustrated by the reality that it was dependent on tax money. So, he wanted to create a better solution and he started coding his own website, named Zimride, named after a trip he took to Zimbabwe, for long distance car pooling. My own journey was I was on the east coast. I did not know Logan, was in love with hospitality, making people happy through great service. So I went to Cornell Hotel School, I took a city planning course, and I saw that the most important hospitality experience we have in society today is the city itself, and yet unfortunately we've designed cities for cars, and not people. What I mean by that is most of our cities are paved over. There's roads, there's parking lots, and if you design a city instead for people, pedestrians, safe places to bike, and don't need people to own cars in order to get around, then you could have a much more durable place to live. So we came together in 2007 to work on Zimride. And then a few years later, in 2012, we launched Lyft. >> So this is a transportation problem, ultimately, to solve. But the itch you guys were scratching was just the need for transportation. You saw it as more of a convenience thing as well. The hospitality thing kind of comes together, boom, Lyft is born. Then you guys enter the market, and the transportation problems are still there, and then you have the growth of mobile, so sort of a perfect storm coming together. What is the biggest challenge and exciting things that you guys see in this transportation scheme? Is it it's antiquated and inadequate? Is it a technical thing? What are some of the challenges that you guys are exited about? >> Well I think the biggest thing is this fact that the American dream has almost become, or been, historically, synonymous with a car in every garage. And that everyone should own a car. And that was your sense of freedom. But the reality is not quite that. American families spend more on their car than they do on food. It's the second highest household expense. A new car costs, on average, an American family $9,000 per year to own and operate. And so, there's a lot of ingrained behaviors, and designs of cities so that it does cater to needing to own a car. So we're trying to break that down piece by piece and making progress. But we're about 1% of the way there. >> Yeah, it's a cultural change too. But I also want to get to that in a second about culture, both with Lyft and and into your audience, which is the cities and the environments you guys deploy in, but also the users. But the founding and the story of you guys growing is interesting, because startups are all about execution and culture. You've had an interesting relationship with your co-founder. And this is the secret sauce of startups. It's documented somewhat, but it's a people first mindset, where you get a good team early on, you kind of feel your way through those first couple of years. Talk about that relationship with the founders, because this is something that's important. It's not just a number on a cap table, it's a little more than that. Talk about the relationship. >> I mean Logan has become my best friend. We actually carpool to work, still. Almost every day. And we weren't friends prior. So, a lot of times you have friends that start a company together. We were two people that were incredibly passionate about our mission, which is to improve people's lives with the best transportation. So we shared this passion, we share this vision, and we're two completely different people. So our approaches were different. His approach is often product-oriented and my approach is often hospitality-oriented. And the fact is, for transportation, you need to combine those two pieces. So it worked out really well for us. So I think having a co-founder is a massive advantage, because you can have two different people and then you want to find the thing in common, which is the thing you're fighting for, within our case the mission. >> How did you guys work together to play off each other, to get that innovation spark. Because when you get into the ride sharing, certainly it's a brand new category, huge demand, and there's a lot of build up, a lot of things you've got to stand up for the business. At the same time, you also want to differentiate and be innovative. You're kind of a first mover, with Uber, these guys are out there too. You guys are building a business, and growing really fast. So, how do you guys nurture that innovation? How do you put a twist on it? How do you keep it alive, versus the blocking and tackling and standing up the basic business activities? >> Well I think because we, you know at the beginning, we created a new category. We're the first to do peer-to-peer ride sharing. Uber existed, but they were doing cabs and limos. And we said, that may work for 1% of the population, but we wanted to use this under-utilized asset, which is the car that's sitting in everyone's parking spot or garage. And so that DNA of innovation, that DNA of being the underdog, the challenger, has always been true to us, but also the people that we we've brought on and hired. People and the hiring is something that, over the last ten years, is probably the one activity we've spent the most time on. Because that's the best way to keep those values, keep that focus on vision. >> And certainly these days, people want to work for a company that has a purpose. And that has a mission. When you hear the word people first, what pops into your head? >> Obvious. It just feels, in everything I've tried to do as a person, whether that was studying- like hospitality is the business of people first. How do you give people a great service and a great experience. And so I think often times, when people think about technology, they think about the what, which is I made this phone, I made this device, or I made this app, when way more important to that, is the why. Why did you do that? Who are you doing that for? And so we try to start everything we do with the person we're trying to- you know our mission is to improve people's lives with the world's best transportation. It's not to build the worlds best transportation. >> So that's your why. I was talking about how you guys scaled to a world-class organization. You guys have build a world-class team, certainly got great investors, Floodgate, Mayfield and then the rest is all on the web. You guys raised a lot of money, but you can't just throw money at the problem, you have to have that foundation and culture. How do you scale up a world-class organization? What's the learnings, can you share your perspective? >> Yeah, so first having clarity on the mission, which we've talked about, but also having clarity on core values. So we have three core values that have been true for a very long time. So, one is to be yourself. It also sounds very simple, like people first, but a lot of corporate environments have made spaces where people aren't comfortable being themselves, where there's group think, where people don't feel comfortable bringing their full self, and therefore their most productive self, to work. So be yourself, respecting the diversity of our team, has been critical from the beginning. The second is uplift others. So we use that both internally and externally. Life's short, we spend a lot of our time working. We might as well enjoy what we're doing. Again, all these values are both the right thing to do, make for a better place to work, and lead to better productivity and business success. And the last is make it happen. That's pretty self explanatory. Be an owner, go out and take action and get stuff done. And so with those three simple core values, looking for amazing, talented people, who also care about our mision. People are mission oriented, people want to care about what they're working on. And if you're fortunate to have a choice where you work, what we've seen is that people will follow a mission. >> Yeah, it's totally true. I can see that in culture here. And I've also seen you guys got kind of a cool factor too in the way I've seen some of your activations out in the marketplace. You kind of got a cool factor going on as well. But I think what's interesting, and I want to get your reaction to this, I think this points to some of the cultural discussions, just recently during the elections I saw you guys really wanted to make an effort to help people to get to the polls. Here in California, the disasters of wildfires are really tragic. You guys are doing some work there. This speaks to the culture. You say, hey, Lyft's available, and you're helping people out. Talk about what that means to you and the team here, and the culture at Lyft. >> Yeah, at the end of the day, when we look back on the work we've done, we want to make sure it has improved people's lives. And when we see opportunities to take our ability to provide transportation that will benefit people in a meaningful way, whether it was, you know, in the last- not this most recent election, but in the last election, in the last presidential election, I believe it was about 15 million people listed transportation as a reason why they couldn't vote. >> They've got a way, hey! >> Yeah, let's solve that. We can. When you think about unfortunate natural disasters, if we can help people get to safety, or help a horrible situation, then we should do that. I think that's just a moral and civic responsibility. It allows us to be aware and proud of the solution we've created, and I think it keeps our team extremely motivated. >> And I think it's one of those intangibles in terms of the mission, changing the transportation industry sounds academic and corporate. But here, you're changing lives by one, the voting, and two, saving lives potentially, with the disasters. So, great job. Okay, so what I thought, let's talk about the growth okay. I had a great conversation with the CEO of Amazon Web Services, Andy Jassy, a few years ago, talking about the early days of AWS. You have to be misunderstood for a while, and get through that early on, if you're going to be successful, because most big things are misunderstood. He also made a point about the key learnings during the early days. When you're trying to do stuff, things going so fast, that there's learnings that come out of it. And if you can persevere through it, that sets the culture. Share a story around something that you guys have been through at Lyft, where you persevered through it. It might have been some scar tissue. It might have been you got a little bloody, a little dirty. But you got through it and you learned from it. You applied it, and changed the culture. >> Well I think there's two main ones that come to mind. So, you know, people may think Lyft, in the last five years, has really come out of nowhere, but Logan and I have been working together for eleven years. And the first idea was Zimride, was long distance car pooling. And we built a team of 20, 25 people, we got this to break even. That's actually the company that Mayfield invested in, or the product. But it didn't have product-market fit in a massive way. It wasn't a massive success. And then so we tried to reinvent ourselves five years later, and that was Lyft. And at this point, that was a crazy idea. To have people riding in what everyone thought of as a stranger's other vehicle. And so that was a reinvention, an acknowledgement that the first solution we created did not fully work in the way that we wanted it to. The second was about four to five years ago, we wake up and Uber raises three billion dollars. And we have a hundred million dollars in the bank and about five months left. And everyone said Lyft is done. There is no way that they can survive this, it's a winner take all market, Uber is way more aggressive. And we proved that wrong. By focusing and staying true to our values and to our mission. By having an incredible team. An amazing community of drivers providing great service to our customers, we've gone from the early days of single digit market share to nearly 40% market share, amidst that pressure and belief that we couldn't survive. >> Game's on. Either rally or fold, right? It's a cultural test really. What's your mindset around the capital market. I know, I've done a lot of startups myself, I know a lot of fellow entrepreneurs, and when you raise that money, and you guys had that product-market fit, post the first venture, where you got through that. Then you get lightning in a bottle, whoa, let's double down on this. I want to go back to the early stages when you were thinking about investment. Was there any cautions around VC, cause a lot of startups have that conversation. What was the narrative for you guys at that time? Hey, let's go to Mayfield, should we raise money, should we bootstrap and make it cashflow positive. What was your mindset as founders, at that time when you were doing the venture round? >> Well, I think we knew that we needed a certain amount of capital to get to a scale that was interesting to us. So, not every business needs as much capital. But for they type of transportation infrastructure that we wanted to change, the type of scale we wanted to get to, we knew that it was important to raise VC money. So, money that was substantial and also understood the level of risk we were taking. So, at that point, we were fortunate to have a firm like Mayfield believe in us. And what we were looking for was people that care about who we were, cared about our mission, and understood what it was like to be an entrepreneur and an operator, not just an investor. >> What's the rallying call now for the team as you guys look out a6nd continue to have this growth? Obviously you guys cleared the runway in a big way. And there's still a lot more work to do, the market's still early. You know, you think about transportation and the regulatory environment and how technology and policy are coming together. A lot of forces out there, you got some tailwinds and some headwinds. How do you guys look at the future? What's the next mountain you're going to climb? >> Yeah, so, we've now done a billion rides. Since inception. And we're focused on providing a full alternative to car ownership. So I don't think people grasp that. The idea is not to provide an alternative to a taxi, or a late ride home. It's to completely replace car ownership. And so, we are 1% of the way there. Those that are joining our team and our mission get to be there for the 99% rest of that. And at the same time, as we go towards the next billion rides, we want to stay focused and rally around the individual stories behind each ride. So, every single week, we have over ten million rides happening, where two people are coming together. They could be two people that helped each other have a better day. They could be a Democrat and a Republican sitting next to each other and finding common ground. And so to us, yes we have big milestones and big opportunities ahead, but also care about each ride that's happening on the platform. >> And the other thing I love about your background in hospitality is you're bringing an experience as well. Not just math, in terms of the bottom line numbers. There's a lot of people doing the math and saying hmm, should I have a car? But I got to ask you a question. So what you learned at school, Cornell great school, great Lacrosse team, great Ivy League school, they teach you the textbook, the old hospitality. This is a new era we're living in. What is happening in your world that they don't teach you in the textbook from a hospitality standpoint? As you look at the experience of ride sharing and transportation for users, what is different, what's the twist in hospitality that has not yet been written in the textbooks, that you're exploring or thinking about? >> I actually think the old basics are more important than ever. There's all this flashy technology and opportunity to do it at larger scale, and to use data, that's new. To use data in ways that help inform providing great service. But, the basics of human interaction, communication, and treating people with respect, can get you pretty far. >> And happy customers, right? Final question, I know you got to go, I appreciate your time. Share a story or something about Lyft that people might not know about. First of all, everyone knows about your brass, you guys are doing a great job out there with the market share. But tell a story about Lyft, or something a datapoint, anecdotal piece of information, that they might not know about, that they should know about. Share an inside story or factoid about Lyft, that people should know about that they might not know about. >> I think it's really deep, deep in the mission. That people may not understand what gets us out of bed in the morning. You know, every time I have a new hire orientation, I try to talk to every new hire that comes to the company and really emphasize the importance of every driver, every passenger. And I read a story about a driver and passenger that really helped each other. And don't really want to provide the details because they're private to those individuals, but it's incredibly powerful to hear about. And so, I would just, we may look like a big company or brand at this point, but we care deeply about each individual that's on the platform. >> The fabric of society is being changed by you guys, really appreciate the work you've done, and congratulations, and a lot more work to do. Thanks for the conversation. >> Yeah, thanks. >> I'm John Furrier, here in San Francisco at Lyft's headquarters, talking with John Zimmer, who's the co-founder and President of Lyft, sharing his stories and successes, and a lot more work to do here at the People First conversations. With theCUBE, and Mayfield, I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (outro music)

>> Live from Toronto, Canada, it's theCUBE! Covering Blockchain Futurist Conference 2018. Brought to you by theCUBE! >> Hey, welcome back, everyone, we're live here in Toronto for the Blockchain Futurist Conference put on by Untraceable, Tracy and her team doing a fantastic job, so shout out to the team at Untraceable for another great event. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, my cohost's Dave Vellante, and we're here with CUBE's friend, CUBE alumni, from the CryptoChicks, Nataliya Hearn, director, good to see you, great to have you back. >> Thank you. (laughs) >> Okay, good to see you, we're laughing, we've got some great funny stories we've been telling, since PolyCon, but really, some great things going on, so give us the update, you had a hackathon recently, you got new things happening here in your organization, take a quick minute to explain what it is for the folks that don't know, what do you guys do, and what's going on? >> Good, well, CryptoChicks is a organization focused on educating women in blockchain and cryptospace. We started because at meetups there would be one or two women out of hundreds of men, who would be afraid to ask stupid questions, so we said, Oh, okay, there's no stupid questions, come and join us, and we'll show you how to open a wallet, what blockchain is all about, so we've been doing that. We've actually grew quite a bit, we are now have chapters in all over the world, in Pakistan, in Bahamas, in Moscow, we just teamed up with She Codes in Israel, which is 50,000 women, so, we're doing really well. >> Congratulations, a great mission, we totally support it, and, you know, I'm proud to say that I love my shirt that says, Satoshi is Female, thanks to Nyla Rodgers, who gave it to me, at Consensus in Blockchain Week in New York, but this is really beyond women in tech, it's beyond that, it's a really, you're doing some innovative things around onboarding, new talent and education, this is a really important, because the Internet is bounded on discovery, learning. >> Absolutely. >> What's the new thing? >> Well, you know when you hear, when you go to the blockchain conference and events, and we hear again and again about the chasm. How do we bridge the chasm, right? That's just the, like, big word that you hear like every third presentation, because the blockchain community needs it. But I think globally, blockchain represents something that's quite unique, and it's an opportunity not just to make money and speculate, or to develop new technology, it's technology that can liberate. But how do we get that message across? And I think we have to start with kids. Kids are our future, but they're also the ones who spend most of their time on social media, so that's a good thing, but if you ask their parents, that's not such a good thing necessarily. So how do we convert them, some of their time from social media to learning? So we've put, we're putting together this program that focuses on children to earn to learn. >> Earn to learn, like they earn coins or money, or? >> That's right, basically they can earn swag, so basically we're creating the marketplace that rewards children for learning. >> All kids, right? >> All kids, well we're focusing on -- >> On girls. >> No, not on girls, we're going to high schools, so immediate next generation. >> So girls, boys, everybody's welcome? >> Absolutely. Yep. >> Awesome. >> Next generation, and they're the next generation that has to solve the problems that we, and opportunities that can be captured, that's coming right to their front door. >> Absolutely, we have a lot of question marks in the blockchain community. Which blockchain, how do we do it, there is going to be multi-chain tokens, we're talking about, next generation is the one who's going to provide solutions for us. So we got to open their minds, and to show that blockchain is a tool like potentially calculus is a tool. To create something that hasn't been there before. >> You know, I have a lot of conversations in Silicon Valley and Nataliya, recently at the Google Cloud event, Google's been very much a great change agent, especially with women in tech and underrepresented minorities, but Aparna Sinha, who's one of the senior people there, dual degrees from Stanford, she's got a PhD, she said we're losing the girls early, and what came out of it was a conversation that, when you have these new market movements like blockchain, AI, these are new skills that you can level up, so the ability to come from behind and level up is an opportunity for people who have traditionally been behind, whether it's women or other minorities, to level up. So it's a huge opportunity now to put the naysayers down to rest, and saying, Screw you, we're going to level up and learn. >> Absolutely, and it's global, the thing is -- >> There's nothing stopping anyone from learning. >> Absolutely, and trust, and the borderless system that blockchain potentially can provide is at a global advantage. As long as you have a cell phone, you can be in a village, an old village, like at our last hackathon, we actually were streaming women hackers from Zimbabwe. So there you go, it's doable. >> So how are you, how are you scaling your message globally? >> So we're starting, one thing is that education today, is basically the bill is being paid either by the government or by parents. The reason I would call that a marketplace, I would like companies to be involved. And it could be local companies, or it could be global. What about creating ARVR classrooms, and providing the information to kids, via a completely new way that they would actually move away from swiping or just looking on some random YouTube videos, to something that they can get a phone, some shoes, mascara, focusing on girls, right? And to understand what that borderless economy really means by experiencing, what does it mean to have tokens that you can trade globally? You are used to your parents giving you some dollars, you go to a corner store. What about if you learn something, you go to a bakery, in Kenya, and for the work that you've done, you get a bun, right, or a meal? >> So this democratizing access, it's bringing education to the masses? >> And it's also uniting the blockchain community, 'cause we would be building this governance platform on blockchain, we would tokenize it, and there will be many elements of it, reward programs, smart contracts that reward content, some level of AI in terms of analysis of what we're doing, so I think this is why I was looking at multi-chain tokens. Maybe that would be a solution to kind of, to deal with -- >> Explain that, what does that mean? >> Well, we've got different chains right now, right? You've got Hyperledger, you've got Ethereum, and all this good stuff. How do you bridge all this, right, instead of having to choose one, you're now saying, I can work in all of them, because each one potentially can offer something unique. Maybe you don't have to choose one. We don't know. Only time will tell, as this, this is such a young industry, and this is why it's so exciting. >> Well, Nataliya -- >> It -- >> Oh, go ahead. >> No, I was going to say, and you're giving the kids examples, so a lot of times kids ask me, Well, what's the difference between crypto and Venmo? I'm like, okay, you know, let's talk about the different things you can do with crypto that you can't do, but they're closer than the older generations are to transferring, you know, money, at least, so now you're applying different use cases and expanding their minds in ways that, perhaps -- >> Absolutely, and I'll give you my example. I mean, I got into blockchain early before Ethereum was launched, and partly I was into public markets, and then I kind of stopped because that project ended, or I stopped and I actually reentered it, because my fifteen-year-old who started mining. But he started mining because I was in that field already, so there you go, it kind of, you know, what comes around. >> Good job. I hope he gets all his Bitcoin. >> Yeah, he did. (laughs) >> So, I want you to tell a story, of what you've seen that's been high impact from your work you've done. You had, again, that whole Pakistan thing going on, you've got all these hackathons, what is a good story you could share? >> You know, the good story we can share, I think the part that we were able to do, the hackathons that we are doing are local, but they're also global, it really is, there's this sense of empowerment, and you know what I think the best story, this is the best story: best story was, at the hackathon that we ran, it was women, over 100 women, that participated. But all our mentors were young, geeky programming guys. Sorry guys. But you really knew they really knew their stuff, so there was technology transfer, and we had a 48 hour hackathon, these guys stayed 48 hours, they didn't go to sleep, they didn't have to as mentors, and there was this amazing technology transfer that happened, and I think some relationships were formed too. >> Yeah, some serious bonding went on, right? >> Yeah, absolutely. >> It's actually a good thing that you're including people. It's not just a certain thing, you got this inclusion. >> Absolutely, and actually all it is is about inclusion, all it is is we are giving a platform for women not to be afraid, I mean, I'm an engineer, so I've been working with men all my life, so for me to ask difficult questions, or stupid questions, it's like natural now, because it's been what my life, but for women, for many, it isn't. So we just wanted to kind of cross that divide, it's not a chasm, it's just a little divide that we're bridged. >> So when you say stupid questions, do you mean like, Why do you do it that way? (laughs) Why don't you do it this way? >> Or, what's a wallet? Like, what's a private key? What's a public key? And asking that not once, but twenty times until you got it. That's okay too. >> That's called learning. >> Yeah. >> Last question, okay I got to ask you, the most important question is, how do someone get a CryptoChicks shirt? >> I think you can order it on our website, sizes are a problem, I know we've discussed this, so we need to -- >> Extra-large. >> Well, CryptoChicks is a not-for-profit organization so there are, we'll have to order this in bunches, so I'll figure this out, but what I wanted to say is that we have another hackathon that's coming up. And the hackathon is in New York, October 5th to 8th, and we have three streams, so if you're a developer, and this is for women, so if you're a developer, we have a stream. If you're not a developer, or you've never coded in your life, but you have a business mind, and you think you have a really good idea that you can put on blockchain, you're welcome to join as well, and now with all the news and regulations, we also have a regulatory stream. >> So for entrepreneurs and for business-minded people, that want to get involved, that they can come too? >> Absolutely. >> Okay, and their website is cryptochicks.ca, that's where you can get access to the information, that's great. >> October 5th to 8th, you said, right? >> That's right. >> And anybody can go? >> Anybody can register. >> And where in New York? >> It's going to be at University of New York, and at their School of Law. >> Great. >> Blockchain Educational Fun Hub. That's what it says on the website, love your website. Looking forward to getting some shirts, and putting it out there, and promoting your mission. Great job, good to see you again. >> You guys are awesome. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Nataliya. >> Thank you. >> This is crypto for good, a lot of education, and this opportunity, and our role is to share that, as a community, and I think this is a great example of the kind of community that crypto is. Education people can level up and move fast through and get proficiency, and change their lives. This is what this is all about, glad to bring us this CUBE coverage live, stay with us! Day One continues, I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante, we'll be right back from Toronto Blockchain Futurist Summit. Thank you. (techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico. It's theCUBE, covering Block Chain Unbound, Brought to you by Blockchain Industries. >> Hello, everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's exclusive coverage in Puerto Rico for Block Chain Unbound. It's a global event, people from all around the world, from South Africa, Miami, Russia, San Francisco, New York, all around the world, talking about Blockchain cryptocurrency, the decentralized internet, and the future of Money, that's the killer app in Blockchain and cryptocurrency. I'm John Furrier, your host, my next guest is Scott Picken, who's the founder and CEO of Wealth Migrate Platform. Scott, thanks for coming on. >> Yeah, awesome John, thanks for having me. It's quite an exciting group of people here. >> We met last night, had a great conversation, I really liked some of the things that we were talking about, I wanted to bring you on because being in South Africa, where you're living and working, you have a unique perspective because you see the global landscape. So, I'm from Silicon Valley, we're here in Puerto Rico, America's got their view, the UK just announced a deal with Coinbase for essentially a license to convert funds into separate bank accounts through faster payment mechanisms, basically taking crypto and turning it into Fiat. Kind of a game changer. >> The one thing with the UK is they've been at the head of all of the different innovations over the last five to 10 years. They were right at the head in terms of crowdfunding and they're doing exactly the same in terms of now with the whole cryptospace. And it's actually quite interesting because when you take into account Brexit, they actually really need to do it because they want funds coming into the country, they want to be seen as the future of the banking market, et cetera, so it's actually really exciting. When you look around the world it's fascinating that I said this to you last night, that America really grew because Europe used to have all the controls. And so the capital basically left Europe and were in America and now it's happening 300 years later as America has all the controls and the capital's starting to go elsewhere. >> So America's turning into Europe. And so the potential is to bring, you don't have to say it, I'm an American and we're concerned about it. Americans are concerned that we don't want to be that old guard, like Europe was to America in the America days. So a new liberation's happening. UK's putting a stake in the ground, saying, "We want to get our mojo back," my words. >> Scott: sitting here in Puerto Rico. >> Yeah, they're in Puerto Rico. They're going to put a stake in the ground saying, "We're going to give you tax breaks 'til 2036." This is a money flow game right now. So you've been doing some pioneering work, what's your perspective, talk a little bit about some of the world dynamics that you see because, let's face it, this is the transfer of money, with crypto, it's happening at a massive scale, not just some underbelly boutique underground activities. This is front and center, mainstream, real money, real commerce. Your thoughts? >> I would take it a step back, actually. I think there's eight major macro trends that are all culminating at the same time. So the first one is in the education space, and the whole of education is changing, and it's really becoming gamification, and it's becoming learning while doing. So you don't learn and then go do something, you actually learn while you're doing it. The second one, for me, is the whole Blockchain. And what that's enabling people is getting democratization to wealth and access to assets, whether they're in their country or global assets, basically. The third thing that's really important is you've got the rise of the middle class. You know, a lot of people talk about the unbanked three billion, but what they don't realize is that 1.2 billion people joined the middle class. And they are primarily in the emerging world, they're in Africa, India, China. And what they want is, they want health, they want education, and they want access to wealth. Then you take into account what's happening in terms of collaborative investing. In the old days it was I do it on my own, you do it on your own, we sort of trust the financial industry. Now we're coming together, it's the power of the crowd. I could go on and on, that's just four of them, there's another four. They're all coming together and because this is happening is why we're seeing this metamorphosis and cryptocurrency is the catalyst on top of Blockchain that's allowing this to take place. >> Talk about some of the things that you've been advocating for, I know you were sharing a private story, maybe this may or may not be the right time to talk about it, but you put forth some pretty forthright concepts in memos and letters to folks, and no one will publish it. What are those views, because we've got the cameras rolling right now, share your vision. >> Again, I fundamentally believe that technology can solve grand challenges. And when you take our platform and what we're doing, we're effectively helping the 99% invest in commercial real estate like the top 1%. So what we were talking about last night was, I come from a country, South Africa, I was previously from Zimbabwe, and unfortunately for us is that in South Africa, they're talking now about taking away land without compensation. So land redistribution without compensation. Now, Einstein says that if you want to solve a problem, you can't solve it with the same reality that created the problem. And so I wrote a letter to the President, an open letter two weeks ago, and I said, listen. Why don't we do it differently? You're giving a person a piece of land in the middle of nowhere when they've never been a farmer will not help them get wealthy, I guarantee it. And if I'm wrong, let's go look at Zimbabwe. Which is a economic disaster. What about if we give them access to ownership of a good quality commercial asset that's earning a passive income? That is how you'll grow your wealth. And then add to that, Cape Town nearly became the first city, and it still could be the first city, that literally runs out of water. So why don't you go build a decent ionization plant in Cape Town with government money, allow people that you would give land to actually access to that asset and allow them to have the ownership? And that's sort of the concept, where you just think about it completely different. And you allow technology to actually give people what they want, which is wealth and prosperity for their family, and not just a farm in the middle of nowhere. >> And you're really addressing, I think, the incentive system combined with structural change. You talk about gamification earlier, this is kind of the dynamic. How important from an education standpoint, meaning educating stakeholders, old guard or existing governments, because you have this organic groundswell coming up of young people, people with vision that are older and more experienced like us, what's the formula, how do you get this ball rolling? >> So it's quite interesting, I get asked this question all the time and for us, in the first world, a lot of what we're talking about is it nice to have? It's sort of a bit of a game and if I can participate, but where I come from in the emerging world, it's a necessity. There are no other solutions. So if you live in South Africa or China or India and you want to get your money into a first world country like England, Australia, or America, it's very very difficult and virtually no one can do it. But it's a major problem, because you want world preservation, you want your Plan B, you want your children to be able to go to a first world university, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so to answer your question, I think the way it will get solved is in communities where it's not a nice to have, it's a necessity. In terms of educating the old guard, I believe that what happens is you get groundswell, like literally when people really need a solution solved, they persuade governments and regulators to change and it's interesting, coming back to how we started the conversation, that's why smaller countries are often the ones to adopt the regulated new change and, more importantly, countries in emerging markets, whereas first world countries are trying to protect what they have and, unfortunately, the new world is about capital. And its capital flows. >> It's a choice between playing offense or defense, really in my mind it's a sports metaphor, whatever sport you like you know. We love the sports analogies. But this is what UK's doing, they're playing offense. And I think you're seeing other countries wanting to restructure themselves as digital nations because that's what the young people are expecting. So with that in mind, you have a global fabric here at this event, and it's just a microcosm of what we're seeing, which is outside the US, call it the little US bubble that we're living in, Silicon Valley, that's one case I'm wary of, but the growth outside the United States and even in Asia and south of the border, if you will, south of the equator, there's a ton of global action. What is, in your opinion, the few global things that are going on, that people should know about when it comes to how money's flowing and what they can do to take advantage of the trend rather than trying to hold it back. What do we do, is it get into the current? Ride the wave? What should people understand about the new global dynamic? >> So the first thing I would say is, I always laugh at this, but people don't understand how much innovation's going on in China. Like, go and understand WeChat to start off with. It is phenomenal, what is happening. The second thing for me is the global capital flows. When you consider how much capital is moving from the emerging world into the first world, primarily in real estate at the moment. And that's just the top 1% of the top 1%, you know, that's the people with 10, a hundred million dollars. But I've already said to you, there's 1.2 billion people coming into the emerging markets. In the middle class, they're going to want the same things. And so those capital flows are going to be going cross border. I also believe, with time, capital flows will be going from the first world into the emerging world in a safe way but wanting higher returns. >> So then the emerging world, the US has a shrinking middle class, but yet the emerging world has a growing middle class. That's going to attract new entrants. >> Exactly. >> Okay. >> Well, take into account China. Has China had a big impact on the global economy in the last 20 years? Yes or no? >> Yes. >> How many people are in the middle class in China? Plus or minus? >> Don't know. >> I've heard different reports from 200 million to 400 million, but whether it's 200 or 400-- >> It's more than it was 10 years ago. >> I know, but think about the impact that's had on the global economy. I'm not saying that this is 1.2 billion in the next 10 years, it's either a factor of five to eight, depending on which way you want to look at it. >> How much money, in your guesstimation, if you had to throw a dart at the board, order of magnitude, is flowing out of China with crypto into other assets? >> In the crypto space that's fascinating, because a lot of it is hard to tell, actually. In real estate last year alone, it was just short of 30 billion dollars went into commercial real estate from China. Now what's interesting is that a lot of that money is sort of gray, like no one actually knows where it's coming from, which is why China tightened it up so much. It's also why they tightened up the crypto side of things. Because a lot of people want to get their money out of the country and into first world economies, and that's why, in the emerging world, cryptocurrencies have been embraced more, actually, than in the first world. >> John: It's a faster way to move that money. >> Coming back to necessity. So in South Africa, in Zimbabwe, in China you pay more for Bitcoin than you do in America or Europe. I don't know if you know that. >> John: No, I don't know that. >> And by quite a lot. Like in Zimbabwe you pay nearly double. So a lot of people are making money by overcharging coins. They buy them in Europe, they sell them in South Africa, they sell them in Zimbabwe, they sell them in Nigeria. >> So the demand to move the money out of country is very high. >> Well, because they've got capital controls. So they have currency controls. So you're only allowed to move a certain amount of capital out of the country legally. So what happens now, you buy cryptocurrency and you can effectively invest in assets around the world. And you literally started off this conversation, right in the beginning, there's a democratization in terms of capital flows and what's happening, and people are going to put their capital where they want to. And governments, I believe, are not going to be able to control it by putting up controls, they're going to have to make their countries attractive so that the capital's flowing into the country, not out of the country. >> So what's your take on big multinational corporations that have capital structures, have equity positions, and it could be also growing venture-backed or private equity-based companies, they have capital structures, they have equity investors, in some case public, and privates, and unicorn valleys or whatnot, now moving to look at utility tokens as a way to get to a global gamification. So you have multiple securities, a utility, and in some cases a security token a real security. That seems to be a dynamic, are you seeing that on a global scale, are you seeing any activity there, we're seeing a little bit of movement around big companies trying to figure out how to play in crypto. >> From my experience, not a huge amount. I think that most people, they have a board, it's all around reputation, they got to meet the lawyers, the lawyers tell them, you're going to get crucified. And so from my experience, not a huge amount, it tends to be the small to medium enterprises that are prepared to go out and look at it. However, I will say from our personal business perspective, we built our entire company on a community. We've got shareholders all over the world and so for me, when it came to the crypto and the ICO market, that was just doing that more aggressively, effectively, and community-based companies are the future. So whether you're a Fortune 500 company or a start up, it's all about building the community, and I believe that whether it's utility token or security or a combination of the two, it provides an incredible vehicle to ultimately be the catalyst to a community. And if you're the catalyst to a community adding value, then you're going to build a company of value. >> And capture that value. So, Scott, I got to ask you about Wealth Migrate. Talk about your platform. First of all, thank you for sharing your perspective here on theCUBE. It's been fantastic to get that data out. What's your company about? Take a minute to explain what you guys are doing, your value proposition, state of the company, are you doing an ICO, have you had an ICO, what's the status of the company? >> So from Wealth Migrate's perspective, the platform went live in October, 2013, so we're a little over four years in now. We've effectively got members from 111 countries around the world and we've raised just short of 70 million dollars. All though the platform, all on Blockchain. We've facilitated real estate deals of over 485 million dollars and what I'm proudest of, actually, is that we've got a higher than 70% reinvestment rate. What we're doing is we're allowing the 99% to invest like the 1%, our minimum investment at the moment is $1,000, we're beta testing $100, and my dream is to get it to $1. You asked a little bit about the ICO. We built our platform on Blockchain not because of an ICO. Our number one challenge was trust. And ultimately Blockchain enabled us to solve the trust problem. The second thing for us is that my dream is to get it to $1 per person per investment. I want to solve the wealth gap. And I truly believe we can do it when we can allow anyone anywhere to invest in good quality assets. I can't do it with the current system, there's too many friction costs. With crypto and volume I can. >> Whether it's semantics, or education and/or hurdle rate on dollars, it's an interesting concept. You want to make the 99% invest like the 1%. Explain what that means, take a minute to explain that concept. I mean, some people are like, "Okay, I know what "the 1% is, there was a movement about that." So now you're talking about something pretty radical and interesting. What does that actually mean? I mean, empowering people to make more money? Unpack that concept. >> So let me ask you a question. Do you personally own a medical building? >> Do I own what? >> A medical building. >> No. >> Like a hospital, medical building. >> No. >> So it's 2009, I'm in Bondi Beach, Sydney and I meet two US dollar billionaires. I had helped about two and a half thousand people buy houses and apartments in England, Australia, America, and South Africa. And I sat with them and I said, "What are you investing in?" And they said, "Medical buildings." I said, "Why medical buildings?" And they said, "Well think about it. "No matter what happens in the global economy, "people need doctors." I was like, that makes sense. Secondly, they said, "Doctors never move." I was like, that makes sense. Thirdly, doctors are very good at being doctors, but they're not accountants. And so they sign long term, good, favorable leases. Now from a property perspective, real estate perspective, that's a no brainer. And I said to them, "How do I participate?" And they said it's really simple. It's for friends and family, there's eight people only, it's five million Australian dollars each. I was like, now there's the problem. That company today is over 700 million dollars, it's on the Australian Stock Exchange, and it's what I call financial exclusion. You and me don't own medical buildings. Since October 2013, we've enabled people to invest in medical buildings from $1,000. So the top 1% get wealthy by investing in better assets than the 99%. >> John: Because they have access. >> Because they've got access. >> John: And the cash. >> And the cash. But we've dropped the barriers to entry. Because you and I can participate now from $1,000 and I will get it to $1. >> So it's a combination of leveraging the asset based securitization with that opportunity by using a crowdsourcing kind of model, is that what you're thinking? >> So, effectively, and I'd suggest-- >> John: I'm oversimplifying it. >> No, no, 100%, I'd suggest everyone goes and looks up the term collaborative investing which is ultimately, it's a thing that's been going on for decades by very wealthy people on how to successfully invest. We've taken that but we've added a smart component. And why that's important is because in the past you needed 10, 50 million dollars to do collaborative investing, now you can do collaborative investing with $1,000. >> Yeah and what's beautiful is that you understand potentially whose reputation you're working with, you can move in herds, network effect kicks in, that's awesome. >> What gives me the greatest pleasure, I mean, children, my son is six years old, he's already investing. You know, most kids are playing Monopoly, he's playing real Monopoly, and so are adults. And what gives me the most pleasure and pride ever, and what I'm grateful for, is that we're changing people's lives. >> People talk about how to solve the welfare system, all kinds of things, you make people own something, or try to own something or trade, whether they make money or lose money, you learn from it, you're better for it. Here, you're providing a great service by opening the door, lowering the barriers to entry, to potentially wealth creation. >> Dude, I call it freedom. At the end of the day, if you're where you want to live, where you want to send your kids to school, how you want to retire, whether you want to donate to the church or whatever, I don't really care what you want, but I want you to have the freedom to be able to do it. And wealthy people get that freedom by investing in quality assets. And we're just allowing them to do that now. >> And the democratization is multiful, in this case you're creating a new economy model so the whole freedom, democracy aspect is in play. >> Well, I mean if you think about it, when you get into $1 per person, $1 will not change your life. But if you change your habits, you'll change your financial destiny. And so my philosophy is get it to $1, so that every single person can participate. And once you start to learn good habits around money and wealth, the rest just, it's a formula. >> It's a flywheel. Kickstand. Scott Picken, who's the founder and CEO of Wealth Migrate Platform from South Africa, formerly of Zimbabwe we learned today, great sharing the global perspective. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Exclusive coverage from Puerto Rico, this is theCUBE, I'm John Furrier getting the signal here out of all the noise in the market, this is what we do, this is theCUBE's mission, to bring you the best content, best story from the best people, more coverage here in Puerto Rico. Day one of two days of coverage. After this short break, thanks for watching.

>> Announcer: Live from Madrid, Spain. It's theCube covering HPE Discover Madrid 2017. Brought to you by Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. >> And we're back at HPE Discover Madrid 2018. This is theCube, the leader in live tech coverage. I'm Dave Vellante, with my co-host Peter Burris. This is day two of the event. Johannes Koch is here, he's the Vice President and Managing Director of Central Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa for Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, and he's joined by Ali Saleh, he's the Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at GE Digital for Middle East and Africa. Gentlemen, thanks so much for coming to theCube. >> Appreciate it. Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. >> Johannes, let's start off with you. GE, HPE, what are you guys all about, what are you doing together? Talk about the partnership and the alliance. >> So, you know, it started actually one month ago, I suppose and it was meetings that we had with General Electric to understand the customer requirements in cybersecurity, and what we figured is in this world of IoT, Internet of Things there is an increased requirement for security. And there was, from our perspective, lots of solutions out there but it's quite difficult for customers to understand the landscape and who to turn to. And we also figured that in this world, nobody can serve every requirement of a customer, so this is how we figured out with GED that we have a joint interest here, to serve in the Central/Eastern European and then mainly in the Middle East and Africa part our customer base. And this is how it started and I think what I can say is it has accelerated incredibly during the last two months since we signed the joint agreement. We've been building a channel, we've been having lots of meetings with customers and built a really nice pipeline in the meantime, also I think here the show reflects an incredible interest by our customers. So I think we are in a very good state at the moment having a lot of interest, probably all the key customers in our region having this on their agenda. >> Ali, maybe you could just describe the situation, the industrial expansion if you will in Middle East and Africa, what you guys are seeing in terms of the big trends, and what the opportunity looks like. >> Well thank you. You know, GE has been in the Middle East, Africa, for over 80 years in some countries, and we have deep relationships on industrial side, whether it's power, oil and gas, aviation, healthcare and others. And our customers are thinking a lot about cost, quality, and access, and productivity is top of mind, and they've discovered that their industrial assets are smart and capable but the data are not being collected. So when we collaborate with ecosystem of partners, and we fetch the data and get connected, and get insights from the machine to make them able to make the right decision at the right time and then it drives optimization. This is top of mind. They want to see how they can do better for less. >> Okay, so the customers at GE Digital, the customers are going digital, they have all these devices, instruments, machines, and they're moving in a new direction you guys are trying to lead in. What are the challenges that they're facing, what are they asking your help on, what are the big problems that they're trying to solve? >> So, everyone wants to talk about productivity and calls out. The challenge is that not everyone is ready for digital transformation. Some do not feel there is a burning platform, and those that are ready when they feel there is a burning platform, they don't have a plan, they don't have a playbook. So it's important that we collaborate and help our partners and customers understand their current state and heat map and desired state and pinpoint to quick wins so that they get it and they see incremental improvement. And asset performance management has been an easy way for us to say, "Your asset is underutilized "compared to your industrial entitlement "you can do 10x better," and this gets their attention, and this is where we see the power of one in the industrial age is relevant, one percent. In our market, in the world free market, when we talk to them about one or two percent productivity they laugh at us. They say, "Talk to us about ten or twenty." Because there has been a lot of gap in productivity and efficiency. >> Are you able to, I mean, it's only been nine months, but are you able to start to see any kind of customer results at this point? Do you have some examples even early wins with customers? >> So to be exact, the start of the relationship in a formal way-- >> Was it, what'd you say? >> --is two months. >> I thought I heard nine months. >> No, no, we started our first conversations and until it was over, it came to the agreement-- >> So it was brand new, in terms of... >> It is really brand new and I think what we can say is, I think we have 180 partners already engaged. We have probably more than 500 customer contacts in the region already so with large accounts. And we have a pipeline that is multi-million dollar in size. So we're expecting the first close within our first quarter, which ends at January 2018. I think there's no question that there is a big market opportunity out there, right? And I think the show here, I think for me, even accelerated things, because I think in the past, digital transformation was sort of limited to a few industries, we always give travel industry, we take banking sometimes but here, I think what became transparent to many of the customers that we had here, that there is no industry that is sort of immune against what is happening out there and specifically also that the sensors and the devices out there require special attention. And I think with the, specifically on the OT side, we have a solution now with GED that we can basically roll out across our territory. >> So I wanna talk about three things very quickly, I'm gonna lay this out and ask you if in fact this is going to catalyze that much more attention. Number one is a lot of the industry in the Middle East and Africa are natural resource industries, where the historical ways of doing things have been relatively inefficient. So there's a lot of opportunity to use IoT and related things to bring more efficiency, better practices, overall resource management. Number two is, that the technology's now capable of doing that in places where you don't necessarily have the best infrastructure. Aruba technology, for wireless, some of the other things are now possible, that adds to it. And number three, we've seen some recent steps in liberalizing some of the countries that have the most opportunity to do some things differently. You know, Robert Mugabe, no longer in Zimbabwe, the new prince in Saudi Arabia talking about liberalizing things. Are you seeing these come together in a way that would encourage people to think new ways, do new things, use information perhaps differently than it did before? What do you think, is this a confluence, is this a moment? >> Well I agree with you, and absolutely. Today, our customers and partners in region are more ready than before, and they're pulling hard. And when we put our act together as an ecosystem of partners we make it easier on them to make the right decision. When we talk productivity, productivity comes from people, from process operation, from industrial entitlement. And when we talk about the digital thread that brings it all together whether we look at the culture and vision and mission and people utilization, look at the process defined or not, and how we can optimize it, look at the industrial entitlement, and tell them, "Compared to your peers, "this is where you can be." We have their attention. And with the push from the government for productivity and utilization and do more for less, this is becoming top of mind, everyone is talking about it. So, when we partner together and we say, "This is the playbook, this is how you can start, "and this is the edge to cloud solution in a secure way." And we link it to the industrial entitlement, and let's underline industrial, because when we speak the healthcare language and the power language and the oil and gas language we get their attention. >> Excellent, so there's an increasing interest, and you anticipate that there's going to be new action with their pocketbooks. >> Johannes: Yes. And I would add, I think we, this is not an easy marketplace but you can have some outstanding projects. And we have, in the region, you may have heard about, there was in the private investment fund, when the crown prince did announce the NEOM project. Or, we have in Dubai Smart City as a project, with the city of Dubai which are all projects that probably would not happen in Western Europe. So there is potential, there are bigger things happening, and I think there is also an understanding that this is a way how to leapfrog, to your point, to leapfrog technology. And I think that is what can happen. What we need to be careful of is where to invest, because there are lots of ideas out there, and to understand what are the real things, and what are the things that we need to make happen. This is, I think, the challenge. >> And they wouldn't happen in Western Europe because, what? The maturity of the infrastructure, the space limitations, the appetite? >> Johannes: I think, to give the example of Smart City. >> Dave: Yeah. >> So I think we have a lot of, in my remit we have lots of discussion on Smart City. But it's usually you have to find the city that is willing to pay a POC. >> Pete: 12 layers of bureaucracy. >> And exactly. And you need to talk to each and every city individually, whereas here, if you have a decision maker to say, "Yes, we do this." >> Pete: Yep. >> Dave: Right. >> And then we do it. >> Dave: You cut the line. >> And the answer is about readiness. When you go to a large enterprise that's very successful, you meet the CEO and you quickly conclude whether they're ready for digital transformation or not, are they gonna make this top of mind for them? Are they gonna give you time? Are they gonna talk about productivity? Or is this going to be an IT discussion, and they're gonna treat you as a supplier? Those that are ready, we roll up our sleeves, and we put in our dedicated resources to help them look at the transformation. When the government official is pushing and mandating for calls out, then obviously everyone wants to copy and talk about it. And this makes it easier for us to execute. >> You're talking, again, big numbers. Not one percent, ten percent, so that's the nirvana. How confident are you that you can actually have that type of impact? >> So we've got data points, right? If you look at healthcare in the Saudi Ministry of Health, we've been collaborating on looking at operating room optimization or emergency room optimization, without touching digitization. Looking at the process and utilization of appointments, no-show, and the way the clinical governance is taking place, we're showing 40 percent improvement. If you look at, the factory of the future with Obeikan in Saudi Arabia, we've got asset performance improvement project, and they already yielded a 12 percent improvement, and the entitlement is up to 20, that we're working on. When you transform something, it's iterative, right? When you transform something that you have not pushed for efficiency before it's easy for the first iteration to show an incremental change. >> Pete: Yup. >> That challenge will be for the change to last. And this is where digitization makes it last and makes it impactful. And when we look at the HPE relationship with the MOH on the electronic medical record, we've got right now two active projects with two hospitals, and it's all powered by Predix, and HP peripherals are being deployed to the site. And if we go to the Saudi Electricity Company, we've got a project now on asset performance management across all their assets and again HPE peripherals are also deployed and it's all about GE ecosystem of Predix-enabled solutions. >> So I've had the pleasure and honor of speaking in front of a relatively large group of CIOs a couple times in Africa in the past few years. And I always was surprised by the degree to which they suggested that the necessity of change in this region, and the fact that a little bit of technology can have an enormous impact, the degree to which we might actually see some leadership technology come out of this region. What do you think, are the types of issues, the types of problems that could be solved with this technology in Africa, the types of problems that solving them there could actually start driving the industry in different directions? Solving new classes, whole new classes of problems. Do you think that this type of technology can have a transformative effect, not only in Africa but more broadly? >> Absolutely, this is a way for systems to leapfrog. If you look at Kenya right now, they've got a transformation project for 98 hospitals. And they've got massive shortage of radiologists. So right now, we're replacing equipment in 98 hospitals but tele-radiology is the answer for the shortage of radiologists. If you look to South African Discovery, what Discovery is doing is best in class, and I haven't seen any other insurance company looking at the ecosystem the way they do it. So, absolutely, we're seeing pockets of excellence in Africa, and this can be a way to leapfrog. >> You said you started the conversations around security. >> Johannes: Cybersecurity. >> What was that conversation like? Why was that the starting point? I mean, obviously it's important, but why? >> To be honest, I would have to leave this to you, but I think it was because mainly there was we saw the customer interest. >> Yeah. >> And I would say, probably a year or two years ago, you would have not seen this as a very typical HPE alliance. We were technology people. We were software or hardware people. What you see in, and I mentioned in the beginning, in the world of IoT, things are blurring a bit. What is happening on the edge is very much in the business of General Electric. So I think this builds automatically the new ecosystem. When you look here at Discovery, the alliance has become more and more industrial companies. It's linked to industrial 4.0, car industries and all that. Everywhere where data is being created, we need to have the partnership because and that is because the data that is being created at the edge also needs to be computed at the edge. If we want to be successful, we gotta say, "We cannot limit ourselves to the "data centers the rest is the others." And this is where I think we find the very good connection point because now we have software that actually can operate at the edge. I think you have good examples on that. >> Yeah absolutely, if you look at the pain point in Middle East, Africa, majority of our partners and customers are government entities and for them top of mind securing their large industrial assets is important. And in the operations space there hasn't been much done on security, where you can go into a hospital and simulate light flickering with a voltmeter. And you can take over the temperature and play with it. Today there's a lot of smart sensors out there, but we're securing the IT firewall, but within the hospital, or within the plant, we can do a lot of crazy stuff. And we owe it to our partners to show our capability. That's what we do within our factories, and our platform is designed around security for operations. So the easier interlock with HPE is our ability to get closer to the edge and peripherals, and ensure the operation is secure and that's the first experiment but then, obviously, we're expanding beyond that to other opportunities. >> Dave: Excellent. Alright, gentlemen, we have to leave it there. Thanks so much for coming to theCube. >> Johannes: Thank you very much. >> Sharing your story, good luck with the partnership. >> Thank you. >> Dave: Hope you can come back, maybe in Las Vegas or maybe next year at this event, give us the update. >> For sure. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. >> Dave: Okay. Keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back with our next guest. Dave Vellante, Peter Burris, this is theCube live from Madrid HPE Discover 2017. (upbeat music)