appreciate your time on "the washington journal. >> thanks for having me. that is our show tuesday morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern and 4:00 a.m. pacific. have a great monday. [captioninge national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] c-span3 programming today focusses on tech business and coming up shortly, several hours from the tech crunch disrupt new york conference, examining the latest technology start-ups. entrepreneurs, investors and media hear from the heads of companies about their products and services involving on-demand delivery services. after that, fcc chairman tom wheeler talks about broadband internet and its availability nationwide. then the national press foundation honors journalists for their work and reporting by media outlets. the c-span literary sites hears from across the nation from authors and civic leaders every other weekend on c-span2's book tv and american history tv on c-span3. this month with congress on summer recess the city store is on c-span each day at 6:00 p.m. eastern, and we continue monday with a visit to colorado springs. we'll learn about explorers ebulent pike and treatment of tuberculosis around the 20th century and nicolai tesla who conducted experiments in colorado springs. that's today on c-span starting at 6:00 eastern. innovators and venture capitalists and members of the media look at new products and services in the technology start-up world. this tech crunch new york conference features conversations with company leaders from the social media network pinterest, a start-up that sells do it yourself computer assembly kits and a data storage supplier that was sold to dell computers for $1.4 billion. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> i wanted to start out. i understand you wanted to say a few words about jeff goldberg? >> think it's awesome the way the tech community sticks together and the moment of silence for david, i think is very appropriate because here is a ceo who is a role model for all of silicon valley, humble, a great leader, a great manager and better than that, a great friend and most important, the father of two great kids. and like everyone here and in tech, i'm sure we're all going to keep cheryl and david and the kids in our thoughts and prayers. everyone should do something nice today in honor of david goldberg. >> thank you. to kick off, you wrote a post about why tech should be civically engaged. you had thoughts on that, do you want to share a little bit? >> not just civically engaged. i think people should be engage individual sorts of efforts efforts for the world we live in and people in tech do that with their work by making products and by making companies and i think that increasingly, the technology that we make and the companies that we build are impacting life in good ways and in bad ways, and i think it's important to understand those impacts and work with governments, local governments and work with philanthropy and other people who potentially can help mitigate those negative impacts and there are negative impacts. >> see, what's interesting, when i think about a lot of the investments you were making five to ten years ago a lot of the hottest companies were purely software products and today they deal with the world with education and transit and then jobs and, you know, one of the things that i see, for example, when i talk to robotics founders and robotics ceos that are creating machines that make hamburgers and machines that can work at factories and i ask about the implications for the job market and they kind of give me this look like, yeah, that's really hard and you know, it's going to be really hard for the education system and the workforce development programs. what do you -- i mean, what do you think their responsibility is when you're having this much impact? >> i don't think it's just their responsibility. i think it's collectively the technology industry's responsibility to give back whether that's in terms of civic involvement and philanthropic involvement to help to make changes that could potentially be better and i think we'll talk more about it, and i think things like education and education reform and things like and making sure there's access, internet access for everybody and things like that can help create opportunity for everybody and a lifestyle that everybody can -- sustain are important issues. technology is making thesepbpof things harder, therefore, we should work to try to -- >> what does that engagement look like, though? ron, you created a subsidy. is it, like, you go out of your way. you're a founder and you should go and try to find the relevant people through a city government or do they go through an organization like yours? >> well, i think you should do what suits your fancy. >> yeah. >> as long as you get engaged. >> yeah. >> ten years ago the tech community was a tiny percentage is 10% of the city's population. >> yeah. >> today the community say much larger percentage of the population of the community. so tech, because of that, has got to get involved in the community so in san francisco we started sfcity which is basically the tech chamber of commerce and tech cisco. we had tech issues that were resolved. >> you moved from payroll to gross receipts. >> we got that behind us. >> yeah. >> and then we said, okay. >> and then we said let's do the next most important thing which is civic engagement, volunteerism throughovolunteer ism in san francisco where any tech company in san francisco can adopt a school and the principle of the school becomes the ceo and that principal tell us the tech workers here's what i need done in my school, not you should do this and this. the principal says i want you to monitor the kids when they leave school i want you to help them read. whatever that is. >> do you think that is -- when i talk to san francisco, when i talk to the district school teachers, like, the fact that the school districts can't pay them a living wage that allows them to be able to find housing in san francisco. that's not a thing that volunteering necessarily solves and it's a thing where we have to consider how we finance public schools for example in the state of california. so when you think about circle the schools, i mean, it has a well-intended effect and is it a long-term -- is it a solution? >> circle the schools allows tech workers to get involved in volunteerism and there are many other programs that tech companies have started, as well. the housing issue and income inequality is a separate issue that ed lee is dealing with where he has set a goal by 30,000 housing units and one-third of them at least for low, middle income. >> would -- what do you think the technology when you look at industry leaders what do you think the role should be in those with income and equality. >> i think the first thing is so that the tech industry leaders have the ability to educate and inform civic leaders about important issues. a lot of these civic leaders don't see a lot of the things that we see coming. and they get out ahead of the issues and they don't care about them enough and if the tech industry can say here are things you can do in your schools. here's what you can do about ubiquitous broadband and here are things you can do about housing and here are things you can do about transportation, and then i think local govern ments might start to make more enlightened investments and create enlightened policy and the most important thing is to get into the conversation and educating them. >> when you look at new york city's workforce and you look at how the skills of the tech industry needs and it changes quite fast. year over year the different languages that you need to know. what does the system look like for effectively giving that feedback into workforce development and education programs here? >> when you think of workforce development there's really two big pieces of it. it's the students in the public school system and making sure that you're teaching them the skills you're going to need for this century versus last century and then the adult education piece, retraining and taking someone who unfortunately didn't get that kind of education growing up. the second one is harder. i think it's critical. you can't just you know, wave off an entire generation. i think the easier thing is k through 12, and you know, i think new york city is doing a lot of very interesting things there. the mayor's speaking later today and i don't want to get out in front of him on anything and i don't want to get too specific and what i can tell you is because the tech industry is in a tight dialogue with the mayor and his team, i think that this administration can do a lot of really good things in that regard. >> okay. >> i want to talk to you about housing and it's an issue that i've written a lot about for tech crunch. >> i know -- no, i mean, every -- it's, like, every day i hear a crazy, crazy story. there was a chart that a friend of a planning agency shared last night and two bedroom have gone from $2600 to $4600 over ten years and i met a founder that has $3 million in funding that is spending two grand to share a bed with his brother in a mission. it's just wild. what -- what is the city -- like, mayor ed lee has done 30k as a gel and i look at 10,000 to 20,000 people moving to san francisco per year and i don't think it's aggressive enough. >> it's definitely not enough, but ed lee is an unusual politician. he doesn't overcommit. he wants to underpromise and overdeliver. 30,000 is a lot. >> yeah. >> coming from zero san francisco was basically not addressing housing at all. >> so at least he's planted a stake in the ground. this year's goal is 5,000 of the 30,000 units and that will happen. so he wants to meet the commitment. in addition to that, however, he is putting on a ballot measure in the november ballot for a $250 million housing bond that with leverage will hopefully create another couple of thousand units for low to middle income. this is important for school teachers, cops, firemen, but also entry-level tech workers. >> yeah. are faced with this very same issue. a lot of people make it sound like tech is unsympathetic to this. no, this is a huge issue for tech and for every engineer that's hired, there's four support workers who are entry-level workers who have to have housing. so, yes, we have to increase from 30,000, but at least we have a stake in the ground. >> yeah. how do you reconcile that tension in the market with air b and b because it seems really hard. >> is this the notion that air b and b is displacing renters? >> i think there are a lot of underlying causes to the housing situation in california that go back over many decades, but air b & b could definitely add a little bit of pressure to that, couldn't it? >> i disagree with that. >> yeah. >> even the planning department in san francisco has released data that says that in a, an air b & b host would have to rent out their unit to an air b & b guest 257 days a year in order to derive more income than just renting it out. >> yeah. >> and so the notion that air b & b is part of the problem. it is completely false. >> yeah. >> it is just a conjured-up argument that the opposition of air b & b and people who don't understand the sharing economy have come up with. >> yeah. i mean, that databases that rent off of what the market rate rent is and the market rate rent applies to over 10% of the housing stock in san francisco. so there is a large swath of people that are rent-controlled that are paying well below the 3600 median is and there is a strong financial pressure for them to be much more lucrative. >> keep -- keep in mind, air b and b got started in 2008. >> yeah. >> in the city of new york. >> yeah. >> three founders moved here during the financial crisis and that's where it got its name because people in new york were going to be displaced and evicted from their homes and apartments if they didn't augment their income by renting out a room. and in san francisco, the same thing is happening. we have elderly people who, if they weren't renting out a room in their home would be evicted from their home or not be able to afford their home. so air b & b is contributing -- >> to certain cases, if you have a mortgage that you need to pay, do you -- i mean, what do you think about caps on a number of days that air b & b rooms should be rented out? >> i think there should be a false ceiling. >> there shouldn't be a cap? >> why should the government be involved in that? whenever the government gets involved in thing, pipa years ago. >> you're telling us to get involved in the government. i mean -- i mean, when i look at the regulatory process in san francisco, you know, the city is not -- the city is operating when they're trying to size that market they'ron rating off of data that the new york state government has subpoenaed and whatever the san francisco chronicle has scraped off and you don't have actual transparency into how large the short-term rental market is in san francisco and what do you think about data or data sharing? >> once again, i think the government does not have a right to send in some bureaucrat to examine the records of air b & b's hosts. that's -- we talk about the nsa. >> yeah. >> and now we have a municipality saying that we want to inspect the records of your hosts. >> but aggregate? >> that's not the free enterprise. >> if it's aggregate and itemized -- >> if it was aggregate and itemized maybe that's reasonable, but this proposed ballot proposition. they want every ounce of data about air b and b host. it looks like air b and b will be on the ballot in san francisco in november so it will be very interesting and it will be very public. >> private companies should not be forced to hand over data about their users. that is an invasion of privacy. >> on the other hand, if they did willingly hand over the data maybe they could resolve a lot of these concerns about air b and b that are misfounded, right? companies can use this data and by actively sharing their data to essentially make clear to people that the fears that they have about a service are unfounded so i would encourage companies to be proactive about sharing their data as much as possible without on eye understand the issues about revealing specific data about specific customers because then you've -- you've -- you're gotten in the way of a trust relationship of a company and its customers, but the more a company can disclose the data on an aggregated basis, they can use that to make a specific case for the fact that they're doing something good or not doing good. >> and air b and b has been disclosing, just in the last week they disclosed a whole bunch of new data about their impact in the market. >> yeah. i mean, that's a really -- i mean, what you're touching on, fred is a very, very interesting tension. it's playing out in los angeles as these companies get really, really large and they create large sets of data about their users in the real world they have insight and knowledge into things that affect public systems. for example, when we were sharing data with the city of los angeles that was about helping the city understand how to mitigate or manage traffic because people were using the app to go off on the side roads and we were going off on neighborhoods that weren't on the traditional 405 or whatever. >> i mean, do you have a rule of thumb around that? >> i'm sorry. >> like, you were talking about -- is there a rule of thumb when if you have a lot of data you should collaborate with the city versus not. >> wiee would encourage our portfolio companies to be as public with their data as possible. however, ways can't take an individual ways user and share their data with the company because that user might speed all of the time and so that user would feel like their trust was violated. there is a limit to what companies can do without violating the trust that they have with their user, but the more that they can be public with their data on an a nonmyselfed basis where they're not outing any specific person i think that's very, very valuable. >> so there's one more thing i want to touch on before we go because we were talking a little bit about philanthropy earlier and one model that you and mark have been a big proponent of is the pledge 1% model and that sales force is expanding that to new york today. do you want to talk about what that is? >> yes. i think it's very exciting that the pledge 1% is teaming up with the robinhood foundation in new york to launch the 1% pledge campaign in new york, and what that involves is a ceo commits 1% of the company's equity and 1% volunteer time and then if, republicable, 1% of the company's product to philanthropy, and this was the founding principle of salesforce.com. it's been adopted by google, yelp, splunk, many, many other tech companies and we want to bring that whole campaign to the city of new york and that launches today. so we can put our money where our mouth is. with volunteer hours and pledging 1% of equity. what's exciting is after you go public, that 1% is worth in the case of yelp, it was over 50 million and in the case of google it was half a billion. the company gets to decide what charities they want to adopt and donate that money, too. it becomes part of the culture of the company. >> i have two ideas that i throw out there and one which the three of us discussed backstage. the attorneys who serviced the start-up founders whether it's gunnederson, coolly, wilson or whatever, there are lots of them if they put this 1% founders stock to a foundation as an option that founders could just select right at the very beginning when they form their company you could see a lot of founders doing it, they don't want to spend the money with the paperwork, but if it became something that they could just add without any cost you would see a lot more founders doing it. that's one thing and a call out to the legal community and the second thing is that it's important that each city's tech community create some sort of volunteerism system, right? so that the people who want to volunteer know what are the opportunities to volunteer. i think a lot of the problems that people have with volunteering their 1% is they don't know where they can use their skills for the highest advantage. for example, going into the schools and teaching computer science is something that's a pet project of mine and there are three or four programs in new york doing that and we still have enough trouble getting software engineers to do that every year and that's because there are aren't good systems like linked-in or indeed.com or whatever to match people who have the skills with non-profits or other cause-based organizations that need those skills. >> cool. >> the other thing we're doing for adopting the pledge 1% is we're asking venture capital firms that when the ceo of your company asks about pledging the 1% equity with the vc firm says yes, we endorse the 1% pledge. >> why would they not do that? >>el with, we're asking them all to. just making sure. >> thank you so much. >> and many firms have already said yes, yes, yes. >> okay. thank you, guys. >> thank you. [ applause ] ♪ >> all right. they keep yelling at me to not stand too close in front of the stage because i get out of the light so this is good. you can all see me. for those that you that don't know i'm pretty gay and our next guest and i have a lot in common. she's not gay, but she does take a hurj interest in women and she finds them mysterious just like i do. she knows how to capture their attention unlike i do. so please welcome to the stage joanne bradford of pinterest and our moderator anthony hoff. ♪ ♪ >> thank you for joining us, joanne. so this is kind of fun. you guys actually made an announcement this morning which people can read about also on tech crunch.com, but don't do that yet. listen to us. so what was the announcement? >> the announcement was that we are building out the developer platform and we are going to move to an open api. we are going to have it in beta for a little while so if you would like to get on the waitlist and go to pinterest.com and get on the waitlist there and we're really excited because we think that developers can build everything from education disruption to vacation planning to meal planning to places you want to go and travel and so we're really excited to have the developer community be able to access pinterest and our 50 million pins and millions of users in an app-based environment. >> to be clear, when you have had apis open to third parties and on the brand and marketing side as opposed to the developer side. >> yes. we have two other apis that we announced last week. we have a content api that is used for publishing contact for people that are pinning and then we have an ads api that is useded for buying promoted pins and so the one that we announced today is the most open for app development and more broad-based developers. >> so your job is focused kind of on the business side and on brands and partners and you joined pinterest back in 2013, and i think i was reading some of the articles that came out at the time and the idea that you were brought on to accelerate and turned pinterest into a real business and was that a fair characterization of your role there. i think prior to joining my team had really 100% been focused on the consumer experience, and we have something that we call put pinners first which is something about the idea that the pinner experience matters more than anything else and so whether i got there we started to work on the promoted pin product which is basically a pin that you can scale up with a little bit of media spending to it. the other thing is that businesses are wrel come on pinterest. so brands are a very big part of what pinterest does, so we spend a lot of time educating partners about how to think about pinterest and how to think about pinterest presence. >> i can show you some examples. >> i think we have slides that we can go to. >> great. so for -- who has never seen pinterest before out there? no hands go up, which is a good thing. so this is a[>ç pinterest boardd we just wanted to show you a couple of examples of people using pinterest to help drive the traffic and it is a huge partner of hours and you can see button and just think when something is originally pinned then it's usually pinned 11 more times and that's pretty good and that's a lot of earned traffic. so everyone shoulhave mobile sdk and this is britain code and you can see where they put the pin it button on the photo. pretty aggressive treatment with the pin it button, but it pays off big for them and you can see how beautiful it looks, but it's just about getting the pin it button where people can easily do it from a photo which is awesome, and then the other thing everybody should have is we have something called rich pins which gives you data of when something is in stock and the price point on it or if it's an article, we have rich pin and as well as recipes and this is awesome because i was sitting backstage talking to someone and they said, look, i want to know if it's in stock and how much it is and if the retailer puts this rich pin they can do it. lots of different functionality around how effective a pin can be for you and when you do those things it gets a lot of information. this is conde nast traveler pin button integration and facebook which they consider to be the top two sharing tools for them so just pin button integration right on the page. so simple things some brands can do and then finally target has done an amazing job of building their boards and their presence and i always like to give a shout out to people that do great work on pinterest. >> these are the best scenarios, do you find that most of the brands when you talk to them, not that it looks incredibly complicated, but they're at that pointer and i imagine there are a lot of them who are -- pinterest, yeah. that's a huge deal. what am i supposed to be doing with it? >> it started off with two ways and there was either someone passionate in the company that was, like, i'm just going to do it and now what it does is it touches a commerce solution. it touches content teams, social media teams, media spending teams and it's very easy to do. it's lightweight and everything i just showed you is free. you can do all of those things and not spend a dime with pinterest and then if you'd like to make it better or scaled more you can buy promoted pins and we have a rich set of analytics which gives you information about what people are doing and where they're pinning their stuff to or where it came from and there are other interests. we spend a lot of time talking to people just talking about what they can take advantage on pinterest for free. >> so when you talk about -- as you said, that's all free. is there any tension there. when you came on, was it very clear this is what's going to be paid? this is what's going to be free or have there been sort of figuring out there? >> i think we always think about the business model and what's the best thing for us in the long term, and what's the best thing for pinners in the long term, and the things that we've shown, we are determined that are really good for pinners. so all of those things, like, the price, is it in stock? you know, that people can make their pins better and that brands can do better things on there. we think of those as helpful to pinners and so usually those will be forever. >> so you don't see any kinds of tension that if brands can get a lot of utility out of pinterest without paying anything, does that make it harder for you to monetize. >> no. i've worked in a lot of places in media companies and a lot of large companies where there is tension between that. we all, you know, like i said, a brand is welcome and it's not like we're trying to stuff a banner ad out in the middle of a story. this is very mobil and it's very organic to the experience and you can promote a pin that's doing very well. >> that tension doesn't exist and we're pretty careful about the quality of promoted pins and we look very closely at their performance. for us, it's all about that user experience and being creative to it. >> earlier, you were talking about this idea that when you came on, pinterest was at the stage of having been focused on product and on user growth. i think we've seen a similar art with companies like facebook and twitter and we have certain eyeballs and it becomes a serious conversation about revenue. where would you say that pinterest is in that transformation right now? we've been selling promoted pins for about a year. we have two offerings, cost per click offering and a cpm offering and we've learned a ton from that and we'll be refining those offerings as we go forward. we believe that we have a full solution for marketers and we want them to think about us having a full solution, that we think about partners and helping them plan their future and being more create offiive in their lid that's involved in consumers' future and people pinterest what they'll have for dinner, where they're going to go on vacation and what they'll shop for and buy, what their future will look like and what their dreams and aspirations look like. i had someone backstage tell me, excuse me, i wanted to tell you i started a secret engagement ring board. don't tell anybody. i don't know if she has a fiance or anything. >> you're not going to out her on stage. >> no, i'm not. i think she's laughing back there and the good news is there are a lot of women back there so you won't be able to figure it out. that's clearly an indication of your future. my daughters are going to summer camp. i built a board of summer camps they should go to and one will go to tech shop in san francisco to take a laser-cutting class and she picked it because i pinned it on a board and she went and looked at that time and found it. every day people think about their futures and whether they're looking for a fantastic handbag or looking to go on a vacation. i'm also going to, believe it or not, i saw the northern lights in iceland on pinterest and i'm going there this summer because i was, like, oh, that's cool. let's go and my taught or a back roads trip, you know? and i was inspired by that and then i ended up there. so pinterest has a much longer sort of life with a consumer than most other things. like when you're searching it's a little bit of a debate. i want this now. i want this answer and we think that pinterest is so much about your future and like putting some creativity into it and moving forward and that we can maybe help people do maybe more fun things in life and maybe things the way that they want to do them and unique and personalized. so -- and marketers really seem to love that and they have their brands as part of it. >> right. >> so in terms of what the marketers are doing on pinterest now. i mean, are they at the point where they're spending, you know, significant amounts of their advertising budget on pinterest or is it still in the experimental phase? >> we have many partners this year that committed a significant, up-front spend to us for the course of the year that went from independent counsel last year to a significant commitment this year and many of them have told us that we were the only partner that they made an up-front commitment to because they're happy with the engagement on the platform, and they're happy with the performance of what they've been doing. they're also getting an early look at our road map. we have a very aggressive road map for the rest of the year that includes lots of fun things that i'm not going to tell you about today and so, you know, we're working on measurement. we're working on new product offerings and so, we're pleased with their commitment and more importantly, we're pleased with not just the dollar commitment, but the commitment actually to the partnership. so we've seen people do marketing in store so we've had a bunch of people that nordstrom, target, walmart, that have done in-store promotion and have shown a significant sales lift because of that. nobody else can really be a merchandising partner to people and insight's partner and a promoted pin partner. so the conversations are really amazing that we're having and the time and quality of time that we're spending with the right people and those teams. i've sold lots of media over my life and never have the discussions been at such an integrated level. >> all right. so you're not going to tell me about the road map for the rest of the year, but maybe we can sort of drop some hints. maybe we can just talk about -- are there areas of revenue that you don't see that prin test in that is tapping into as opportunities for the future? >> there are things out there that we think about in making a pin more actionable. we think about targeting capability. we think about just, there are sort of three pillars of pinterest from a product perspective. the first one is discover that you did actually find things and visual search is very different than anything else and then save which is about the organizing principle and 50 billion pins have been saved to a billion boards and it's like 50 billion pages being torn out of a magazine and put in a place where you can find them and your friends can see them. it's pretty powerful and so we'll work on the organizing principles on how you save and then do and do as it comes down to, can you actually go do these things and we'll focus these areas. >> you also mentioned mobile. can you say anything in terms of where pinterest is in terms of mobile usage. >> we're 75% to 80% mobile usage. >> wow, okay. >> in the app which is the total base. a couple of years ago we decided to double down on mobile before i got there and within weeks the mobile usage had surpassed the desktop usage and so we focus on that first and foremost. we ship everything for that. we build everything for that, the desktop is still important, but with the numbers like that we see people pinning at all hours of the day. the other thing is everywhere you go, if i wear a pinterest t-shirt out somewhere people just stop you and then profess their love for the product and profess their passion for it and it's quite amazing. i've never been involved in something where people just, you know, just like -- i just love it and then i always sort of call them on it and i say, i don't see their board, you know? and it's usually always true and you can find out something amazing about them. i have a 16-year-old daughter and i didn't know that she had a passion for woodworking. i just thought she was taking it because she wanted an easy a, and it turns out that she really loves woodworking and she built boards on it, and she's not going to do it on facebook or snapchat because it's too geeky and the pinterest is really for you and it's very personal and it's about people's expression and it's about their vulnerability of what they want to do in their futures and people have a real passion for it, and so it's really exciting to be involved in that. >> so people didn't get quite as excited when you were walking around with a demand media t-shirt. >> you what? i have an ehow t-shirt and they did love livestrong. it was a brand that stood for something and even after the bad part of lance armstrong, the site is still doing well and it was a community that was super passionate about it. you know, and cracked was one of their titles which was humor. the cracked people were super passionate about cracked, but people weren't, like, crying on the street. >> so you have people crying in the streets when they see your pinterest t-shirt? >> they literally. people will tell me, oh, my god. oh, my god, i just love pinterest and i've sent people t-shirts and they've been really excited. people come into the -- does it ever get a little uncomfortable? >> i do have to say i literally was -- was in a city in the midwest and it was -- i finally got to the place where i don't, you know, people are so passionate about it that you are being like, okay, i've got it. they're really, really, really excited about it. >> one of the things i wanted to ask about beyond revenue is what do you see as sort of the next big growth opportunities for pinterest? is it international? is it getting more men on the site and something i'm thinking of? >> are you a pinner? >> i created a pinterest account because i needed to do a demo of something and literally every woman -- did you just create a pinterest account, and i haven't done anything. do you have suggestions? what should i be doing? >> well, i mean, so -- so pinterest is about anything that you're passionate about or -- anything that you're passionate about. so the idea started with you know, ben's bug collection and the last thing they want to do and it's the first thing you do and you want to save more of of it and do more of it so that was the principle of it. so if you have anything that you're passionate about, whether it's a hobby, an idea or a place, anything. >> do you think people will think i'm cool if i have a comic book board? >> yes. >> that's cool, right? >> absolutely. my pete from nestle he pins vintage ski posters. you know, people -- so if you love comics you can go find as many things on the topic of comics and collect them and save them and organize them and you can become, like, an influencer on that topic, if you'd like. >> do you have a lot of men on pinterest right now or the perception that it's primarily women accurate. >> so, in the united states we're, you know, about 70/30 and outside of the u.s. it's more 60/40 and we're seeing some countries at 50/50. so pinterest started by us reaching out to mom bloggers and crafters in the world. much like facebook started out with college students and in other countries in the world we're starting off with a different group of people and when we do that we see the mix here. >> are you saying what the international percentage is in terms of usage? >> no. >> okay. >> but we've expanded and we have offices all over the world now and international growth is a big focus area for us. >> awesome, thanks for join us. >> thank you. [ applause ] ♪ >> okeydoke. we're off and running and we're on time which never happens, so plus for us. our next founder is pretty much a genius. there say really good chance that you will not understand what is being spoken about on stage. she happened to sell a company equallogic for $1.4 billion in 2008 which was in the middle of the recession and pretty much, she's the biggest boss here and please welcome paula long of data gravity and our moderator, ron miller. [ applause ] >> all set there? >> these aptly called founder stories and paula has founded not one, but two companies and in doing such she sold the first one for $1.4 billion which is a pretty serious amount of money and to put that into perspective, i did some research and it was one of only 20 i.t. companies in the last ten years that soeldz for more than $1 billion so that's pretty good company. so i'm wondering when you were going back to 2007 and selling that company, were you actually looking to sell? were buyers pursuing you? who made that move and that dance? >> so this is sort of an interesting dance. if you go to fcc.gov you will see we actually filed. our s1 was approved. we closed the papers with dow on sunday night and if we had not closed the papers we were doing our roadshow on tuesday and we were minutes away from being a public company. the 1. 4 is an impressive number and i like to think about it a $52 million raise. we were profitable and we had 4,000 customers, and 98% customer sat rating and we were going public and we had no intention of selling. when the numbers started coming in someone said, un, i want to buy it for 500 million and we were, like -- that's a lot of money. that's a lot of money, but if you looked at our revenue it wasn't that amount of money compared to the revenue and you thought there was a b there and when someone offers you something with a b in it you should think about it. tip to folks, if someone offers you something with a b in it, you might want to think about it up . so it was michael dell that tipped me, because he was passionate about the product and he called me personally and wanted to know how we could make this happen and make this a great merger and that commitment from the company that was acquiring us helped tip it a little. >> when you were looking -- were there other companies that were also pitching you at the time? periodically, companies would come in and they would talk to you about buying you and there was one company that we would rather not buy it, which i think that was rude. it was like being at the hague and we had a bunch of offers and sort of people looking at us as we went along and we were really focused on growing the company. we've never discarded an acquisition, but we hadn't pursued it, either. >> so when you went to the negotiation table with dell and the numbers started floating up over that b number. what was your reaction of you and your fellow founders? were you, like, oh, my gosh? what happened with that? >> so it was sort of funny. i wasn't in the immediate negotiations. i was running product at the time and so i'm at -- everyone here as a founder knows they work all of the time. so i'm at my son's parents' weekend for his freshman year in college and they're calling me and they said it's over a b now, should we do it? i'm hearing my son present. >> priorities, it's, like, tell me when you guys decide what you want to do. anything over a b sounds like we should be having the discussion. i wasn't as engaged in it as i probably should have been. i was watching my son's material science experiment at cmu and learning about helicopter parents which i was trying not to be one of, right? so i remember at one point they called and asked me a question and said aren't there any other founders who can answer this? i got back on that sunday night and i started to be involved, but i wasn't in the last nuances of the details. >> maybe that was better that you were caught up in something else at that point, right? so you're ceo of data gravity. you've certainly held a lot of high-level management positions, but as you just alluded to, you weren't ceo at the first company. so how is it different being ceo of a start-up as opposed to being part of the management and founding team of a start-up? >> well, i got a little bit of a taste of ceo at equallogic. i was acting ceo for a couple of quarters and i really enjoyed it, but the company was growing faster than my ability to learn all of the roles. >> right. >> and so i decided that if i started another one, i would feel passionately about the company and passionately about our position in the market, and i understand the business and the technology so i said i would do the ceo role. what i found, though is in product, you care about product and people. as ceo you care about people and people. so ceo is much more a people-driven job and both jobs are focused on customer and utsch in more of a people-driven job than a product-driven job. >> as ceo, though, is there more day to day pressure in terms of making sure that all the pieces are moving and working in cohesion? >> um, for whatever reasoncohes? >> for whatever reason i felt that pressure as a founder at equallogic i felt like the equallogic success was failed by a lot of people, but if we failed it would have been my fault. so for me the pressure's about the same because you've asked your friends to join you. and you're responsible for their livelihood. and then you've asked people to invest in you. and, you know, they're limited with retirement funds and college funds, so you're very responsible for that money you took. and to make sure, you know, you're effecting people's livelihood. >> right. >> it seems like it's a race, but you're effecting people's livelihood by the decisions you make and i take that pretty seriously. >> so how does that fear of failure, how does that drive a founder? >> i think it's a healthy fear. if any founder's not worried every day then they're focused on the wrong things. you're playing chess and checkers at the same time. you're trying to figure out your next move but also worried about what am i going to do in six months or a year because you've got to set yourself up for that. so, you know, it's a lot of fun. but there's a lot of responsibility. so you've got to take it very seriously. >> so just going back to that sale for a minute. that was at the end of 2007. we were starting to get the first rumblings of the meltdown that was to come in 2008. some mortgage companies thrown up pretty big red flags and you were navigating a billion dollar sale in the middle of all that. did that have an impact that kind of economic climate? or what did the company want you and it didn't matter? >> so we were in a market that didn't get as effected as others. so data storage still is something you have to have. no one wants to delete their files. no one wants to delete their e-mail. everybody needed databases. so if you were to look at the companies that were impacted by the recession, the data storage companies weren't impacted as greatly and came back quicker. i think we were thinking dell wanted to get into this business and two other firms talking to us. did we want that kind of competition or do we want to cooperate with them? and we went for cooperation. >> so if you'd waited six months, do you think it would have been -- because everything fell apart. >> all three were bought for more than $2 billion. you could say we went too early. i think you have to decide what is a good point for you. i think it's all a balancing act, but all three of them were public at the time. and all three of them experienced the dip and came out doing just great. >> so data gravity is your second company. i'm wondering as a founder what was it like launching a company a second time? and just out of curiosity, as successful as equallogic was knowing what you knew the second time were there things you said i'm never going to do this if i get a chance to do this again? and what kind of things might those be? >> so launching the second time is pretty interesting. so i've been in start-ups that succeeded, i've been in start-ups that failed. success is more fun by the way. so when you're starting to think about doing your next one, you saying this is my legacy now. i just left with arguably was a home run. lots of happy customers. great culture in the company. good monetary exit for both the employees and the investors. it took me a long time to find an idea i thought was big enough. data gravity is going to change storage in a big way. right now storage doesn't know anything about the data it holds. for security, data privacy and just finding things and efficiency, storage needs to know about the data it holds. so i was pretty sure i was onto a great idea. i got a great co-founder in john joseph who i'd worked with at equallogic. the one thing i said i wouldn't do is i wouldn't, you know, as i started to raise money i would make sure that, you know, i picked the partners i wanted. i was very careful about how we went across. how are we going to grow the company that we would really focus on making sure -- you know, equallogic we focused on customer. we've doubled down with data gravity. with equallogic, we ramped aggressively but cautiously, data gravity we're ramping successfully but cautiously. i think the one thing we didn't do -- we had no infrastructure at equallogic. when we started selling, we had people manually putting in p.o.s and we couldn't put them in fast enough. so we put in more infrastructure but other than it's pretty much the same playbook. >> so when you sold equallogic, the cloud wasn't even on most people's radar. aws was still a small operation for amazon and there weren't a lot of cloud discussions especially in the enterprise. how has the storage market changed between the time you sold equallogic and the time you started data gravity in 2012? >> i think there's a few things that have changed. first of all, equallogic was one of the first companies that was going to sell to the mid-tier through the channel. now everybody's doing that. we were one of the first who was doing all inclusive. now everybody's doing that. you know, cloud was, you know, a term in 2007, 2008, but nobody was really doing it. and what you're finding is the cloud is a great place when the application and the storage are together. it's a great place for d.r. not such a great place that the application and storage are separated by some distance, hence the gravity comment. >> uh-huh. >> also depending on what regulatory information you have with the data or the amount of data, the cost of the cloud isn't as cheap as you think. so there's a balancing act. i think it's going to be a hybrid for a long time. >> so we're fresh off the trial gender conversation is definitely prevalent right now. i'm wondering given your experience, how has the conversation on gender changed from when you started in the early 2000s to 2015 when you're a female ceo? >> that's really a good question. i have sort of an unfair advantage in that i was responsible for the most part in coming up with the idea and the strategy. so i've been treat eed pretty equally. i mean, it's hard for everybody, but i don't think gender has hurt me. in some cases it's cool to be a chick right now in tech. you can take advantage of that a little bit. a little you can actually take advantage of, sorry, ladies. so i'd say at the moment it's more of an advantage than disadvantage. i get invited to all kinds of stuff because they need a girl. i shouldn't say that here, should i? but at any rate i haven't seen it as a disadvantage. but then, you know, i'm pretty forthright. you can't shock me. i say what i think. i'm not necessarily intimidated. and so i also started doing start-ups in my 30s. i don't know how i would have felt in my 20s. i was more confident when i came out of the gate. so i don't know how i would have felt if i started in my 20s. >> so getting back to data gravity for a second, i mean, you alluded to this a little bit about combined storage, protection, governance, search and a single appliance that you install in a data center. and in some senses that's bucking current trends, right? because as we talked about the cloud as a storage option which more and more companies are using. and there's even a movement away from hardware appliances to software appliances. so you don't even have a physical entity. so you're bucking those trends. why did you go that route? and how is that helping you as a company? >> so first of all software defined storage still has to ride on hardware. and what you find is a lot of companies start out with software defined storage and then they realize that the hardware compatibility list is so complicated they end up selling it on storage. and also companies that buy storage want one throat to choke. they don't want to go to one person for the hardware and have the software people sort of pointing fingers at them. they want just a solution. there's quite a bit on prem and it will stay on prem for the foreseeable future because of performance, security, convenience, because of -- storage has become much simpler to manage. so the amount of people to manage per ter byte. i think you're going to see as a -- so what you're going to see is a lot of the resellers are going to become service providers where they're a trusted partner to the company buying the storage and they'll host the storage. it's sort of like a private cloud but hosted by someone else. because frankly if your data is unavailable, people wonder whether amazon really cares. or wonders whether or not, you know, google really cares. they care, but, you know, you've got two terabytes and someone else has a petabyte. people want to know who's the custodian of their data. >> given the dime word push of the cost of storage in the cloud, and the increasing competition amongst amazon and google cloud, is it hard for a company like yours to compete with those numbers? >> you have to remember those numbers per month and don't include the cost to read it. you can check it out any time you like, you can never leave. it's expensive to go ahead if you're going to read all the data again. you're charged for reading at some of the sites. there's connection costs. so you really have to do the math on how active the data is. if the data is active, then leaving it on prem is likely less expensive. if it's inactive then putting it in the cloud is probably less expensive. it's going to be a hybrid. >> so last year at pc disrupt san francisco i interviewed the ceo of purell. i said what was the number that said i've got to do it and he said he started a number of companies and his quote was, being sold sucks. i was wondering what it was like after running your own start-up, you said michael dell was very supportive, but becoming a part of this huge corporation, did it take the starch out of your start-up energy? >> so i was there for two years after the acquisition. and i can tell you we were on the same mission with a better arms dealer. we went from, you know, like 140 trailing revenue to, you know, a number that had lots of zeros beyond that. after the two years. i saw a real passion to get this right. and i saw a real commitment. i would say 90% amazing and 10% welcome to a big company, sign-off on this, sign-off on that. i don't know if we're an anomaly or not. if you go in with the attitude we're going to make this work and then the trick is if the company that bought you actually makes money -- >> then everybody's happy, right? >> we had one of the best margins, one of the best operating incomes. so we got to be special because of those. >> so that experience, i mean, you obviously had a good experience. so with that influence in any way obviously we were talking backstage data gravity's only three years old. it's still very much in a growth phase. but would it influence how you would handle an exit from data gravity knowing what you know now? >> so we're going for lots of happy customers. we probably go public. it's just way too early to know those kind of things. customers will have choices. i wouldn't rule out either one, but we're going as if we're going to be a big public concern. we have a big enough idea to go public. that's the point you have to think about. if you're just a commodity, you need to think about being acquired because eventually you're going to get crushed. but we have a big enough idea and a broad enough roadmap that we can be a big public company. we're not a one-trick pony. >> we have less than a minute. i want to ask you one quick question. your company let's people have insight into their data. tell me one great insight a customer was able to get because they were using your product. >> so we've seen lots of different things. people have found privacy issues that would have cost them fines that were more than the product. people have found when people were leaving the company somebody was data dumping and taking their data with them. people have found, you know, old reports, old presentations they didn't even know where they were. people have been able to trend, you know, p.o.s against regions right from within their data. so they're learning about the good stuff and able to capitalize on it. and they're making sure that there's no downside in their data. so if they get audited they're clean. >> excellent. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> great conversation. [ applause ] >> all right. moving right along. i think there are lots of opportunities for me to make a joke. we're about to get into the cannabis start-up blaze up panel. so i'm not going to make a joke. i'm just going to get those folks on stage. i don't want to get in trouble. brendan kennedy, jeff lewis from founders fund and our moderator ryan lawler. big round of applause, please. ♪ >> all right. this is really exciting. i'm really glad you guys could be here this morning with me. so i'm not the only guy on stage who's probably high. >> you are actually. >> but you seem so relaxed. okay. any way, before you founded private privateer, brendan, you were c.o.o. of a subsidiary silicon valley bank. why did you decide to leave a lucrative career in a bank and grow pot? >> so about five years ago i was at a subsidiary of silicon valley bank. and we had about 3,000 venture capital back start-ups or venture capital firms that were clients. and the technology company in the medical cannabis industry came across my desk and i thought, well, that's certainly different than anything i had seen. and we started exploring the industry around the country and around the world and realized that the end of cannabis prohibition was inevitable. and that we could build companies that would help fuel the end of prohibition. so we quit our jobs and put together privateer holdings. >> okay. i was going to ask this later but you jumped right in. so prohibition's a strong word. when you talk about the end of prohibition inevitable at a point in time where, you know, cannabis is still, you know, not entirely legal, how do you justify that? there's all sorts of legislation and laws and whatever needs to be worked through first. >> sure. so we're in a period of transition out of state of prohibition to a state of legalization or re-legalization of cannabis. and we're at a point where the politicians and the bureaucrats are the last ones to change. and when you look at america, our fundamental pieces this is a mainstream product consumed by mainstream americans. 54% to 58% of americans believe that this product should be legal. about 85% believe that medical cannabis should be legal. and you can't get 85% of americans to agree on anything, but they agree on this. >> okay. jeff, you look like a guy who likes to party. is that why you made this investment? >> well, no. [ laughter ] from our end it always starts with a macro idea. we like to format a macro idea about the world that we don't think many agree with. for us this instance the high level macro idea is that for the last 75-plus years there's been this really crazy .ke that doesn't make much sense that was politically motivated for really range of bizarre reasons in this country. and that's been the war on drugs. one of the key tools over the last number of decades was the de-legalization of cannabis despite what medical scientists, millions and millions of americans would say cannabis has really been used as a tool to perpetuate the war on drugs. i think that's coming to an end, as brendan mentioned. and we think the war on drugs has been -- or at least i think it's been is really bad for our country on all these levels. even if you just look at, you know, who gets arrested for cannabis possession. it's bad on a racial justice level, more black americans versus white americans are in jail, it's bad on a social level. so the legalization of cannabis is we think socially good. it's going to be good for society. and we want to find the right company to invest in that space and one of the companies we found that we're really excited about was privateer. >> okay. so let's talk about that and the criminal justice and all that. how weird is it that you're a bunch of white guys that are going to make bank off this product that, you know, largely african-americans, largely hispanic people are still going to jail for? >> so they're certainly the most impacted by prohibition. last year we arrested 850,000 americans for cannabis possession or distribution. about 750,000 for possession. and those communities have been devastated by prohibition. someone goes to jail, they can't get student loans, they can't get home loans, they can't vote in many cases. it's important for us to create the brands that fuel change. we're starting to be able to recruit a more diverse workforce. it has been difficult. we're certainly one of the most diverse companies in this industry. and hopefully that's something that can change over the coming years. >> okay. from a political standpoint, are you doing any like lobbying around legalization or de-criminalization? >> we do lobbying in individual countries. so we do some lobbying in canada. and we do lobbying in individual u.s. states such as oregon and washingt washington, and here in new york where governor cuomo signed the compassionate care act of new york in july. then we do some federal lobbying more on an informal basis. >> okay. i'm kind of interested in the name. because historically privateers were pirates commissioned by governments that were allowed to operate, you know, in certain areas to ransack opposing navies and stuff like that. what are you trying to say about the company with that name? >> so we were -- it's a play on the war on drugs, it's a play on the war on cannabis. we believe that we can help fuel the end of prohibition. in our minds the war is lost by the u.s. government already. it's just a matter of timing until it ends. and we felt we could build a team of people, we currently have about 250 employees at privateer and our three sub si yars who are smart, professional, come from places like microsoft, amazon, starbucks, and they're motivated every day to end prohibition. that's really different. so we think that we've built a workforce that can help fight that war. >> okay. so are you pirates or not? >> we're not pirates. we're privateers. >> okay. >> during the american revolution privateers sort of ransacked the british navy to help in the revolutionary war. and that's the theme, that's how we think about it. >> okay. i don't think we love the privateer name. the subsidiaries brands have different names, i think the names of the brands and different businesses are really good. that's sort of what, you know, is the most important from a naming standpoint. >> let's talk about the different companies inside of privateer, the holding company. you've got three right now. leafly and marly natural coming up. give background on what each does. >> so leafly was founded about three and a half, almost four years ago. and it helps cannabis consumers and patients learn about individual strains of cannabis and their uses. so someone who has cancer and is going through chemotherapy can look at strains other cancer patients are using. they can research those and find a location near them where it's legal to obtain those strains. so we list about 1,200 strains of cannabis and about 2,400 dispensaries around the world. and last month we had about 5.5 million visits to leafly. it operates in english, french canadian and spanish. we operate internationally wherever our dispensaries and we have content on there related to cannabis. >> basically a search engine for pot. it's a search engine that answers two questions, what and where. so someone who's a retail consumer can find a strain that they want to use on a friday night where it's legal in the u.s. around the world. the second company is tilray which operates primarily in canada right now where they have a very different system. we have a federal license and operate one of the largest federally licensed medical cannabis grows in the world. it's technologically advanced. it's pharmaceutical grade. and we ship using the canadian model every day we ship hundreds of packages of medical cannabis directly to patients from this 60,000 square foot grow facility in british columbia. and the third company is called marley natural which we did in partnership with the family of bob marley. it's a retail cannabis brand based on jamaican cannabis strains. that we will launch at the end of this year. we have three different product lines. jamaican cannabis strains, topicals and lotions that contain hemp and cannabis. and then the third one are accessories. so products used to consume cannabis or store the product. >> what are the marleys like? >> well, there's a lot of them. there's 11 children, and his wife rita. so we got to know them throughout this process. you know, they'd been approached by lots, as you can imagine, they'd been approached by lots of people over the years to launch a brand in this space. for us it was -- they came to us about two years ago. and it was an obvious deal. you know, you can't think of a larger global cultural icon that's more tightly connected to this product. so it's -- it's an obvious play. >> the family itself i heard you had to basically go visit each one individually and get them on board. >> we probably had a thousand meetings over two years. not as many as i had with jeff, but it was a lot. and all around the world. and a lot of them came to canada to see the grow facility. last week i spent the weekend in jamaica. i have a very unusual job in that, you know, last week -- i'm here today. last week i was at a very large outdoor cannabis grow in jamaica. certainly things i never expected to do. >> okay. jeff, you've seen the grow facility, what's it like? >> it's mind blowing. not in a metaphor kal sense. it's one of the most state-of-the-art across any industry that i've ever seen. when i first -- we've been talking to this company for at this point over two years. we talked to them for a year and a half before we decided to make the investment. and when we went up and visited the facility, it really came together for me. the executional talents that this team has that really sets them apart. i believe in this market. when i first met brendan he's like we're trying to do something in canada, we think it's a good market, here's why. we're trying to find a company to invest in. they weren't able to find one so they built their own in like three months, they built this facility, created a brand and a few short months later, and in canada -- i'm actually canadian, but 24 hours after placing an order on the website the cannabis arrives at your door. it's just really incredible. so i think that business in and of itself is a stand alone business has a lot of room to scale. it's something that maybe that model will ultimately be inspiration for how medical cannabis is distributed in the united states as well. >> right. so you were sort of anchor investor but not actually the leaf. privateer raised $75 million which is a ton of money. what was the firm willing to put its name on this. >> maybe we don't care enough for something crazy like that, but you know, it seems to us like the type of thing that is controversial but that most people secretly agree makes a lot of sense. at least from a decriminalization or medical legalization standpoint. you know, we lif and die based on our founders. that's the whole ethos of our firm. so we wouldn't make an investment that we're not willing to talk about if it'd be helpful for the company and founders. we're proud of the investments we make whether the companies end up working or not. we live or die as a firm based on our founders. so we are okay sharing the fact we made this investment. >> i get this impression that having your name -- because you announced you were investing before the round was actually closed. so i get this impression that founders fund putting its name on the deal was actually able to help brendan get other investment firms or investors comfortable with this, is that true? >> i think that what ended up happening is when we made the investment it was this very contrarian market. people were really sort of ner voice about investing in it. and then very quickly shifted immediately to this extremely crowded market after the announcement came out. which is a little bit disturbing to me. but it's got a lot more crowded since it was announced, i think. >> i would say it gave other smart investors permission to look at this space. because founders was so willing to go public with this investment. and we started to see more institutional investors invest in other companies and certainly, you know, we've had eight-figure investments from other firms with us. >> okay. is snoop an investor? >> our investor list other than founders is confidential, but i can say snoop is not an investor. >> oh. >> not that i didn't try. >> not that he didn't try. i'm sure he would have loved to try the product. more seriously though snoop has a fund focused on making investments in the segment. we're seeing a few other funds pop up with the idea of investing solely in the cannabis market. jeff, as an investor, what do you think about that as a thesis? and, you know, just the idea of like going all in only on one particular market segment? >> somewhat skeptical that there is that much opportunity for like cannabis focused funds. i think maybe there will be a few that will work. i think there are some great folks that are starting these vehicles. our view on these things always tends to be that in the best markets there tend to be just a handful of companies that end up dominating over a ten-plus-year time frame. i think in this market there's going to be a limited number of really outstanding investment opportunities. we hope privateer is one of them. and there will probably be a few others. but i'm not sure that i would want to be an l.p. in a cannabis only fund that's forming now at this stage of the game. >> when you talked about founding privateer, that was kind of the idea originally, right? >> it was the original idea. what we realized is it's a really different industry than what i was used to in silicon valley in that especially five years ago it's very fragmented. there were no leaders. there were no standards. the companies weren't as professional. the managers, the leaders weren't as smart. that's changed. it's gotten better over the last five years. but i'm skeptical as well of certainly cannabis-only funds. a lot of people are out there building the monster.com of cannabis or a site where you can find dating sites for cannabis consumers, i just don't think those are good opportunities. >> to mainstream regular funds are going to invest in these companies too. if you're a cannabis specific vc, you'll compete with every other investor which is sort of negative competition angle of these vertically focused funds. >> so we talk about this as a mainstream product. it's going to become a mainstream product. full disclosure, i live in california, i recently got my doctor's recommendation to help treat my anxiety and insomnia, when do we stop pretending that this is medicine and just accept that people like me want to get high? >> i really disagree with that honestly. i think there are a lot of people like you. i also know people, part of the reason why we were inspired to invest in this company is a friend of mine dealing with a serious illness was using leafly to discover strains, her doctor had suggested cannabis. it really did help her with real problems like insomnia related to her illness. i do think people really do use this product medically. there's certainly a lot of recreational use as well, but it is fun to joke about. but one of the things i love about this team is they don't strike me as the type of people who use the product recreationally. they take this very seriously. they're one of the few teams i've met in this market that hasn't offered me more than a gram of product to sample. i've never sampled any of privateers products because i'm legally not able to in the jurisdictions in which they're selling cannabis. that's a positive thing. i should not be offered free weed in order to invest. >> i know you meant that as a joke. and there's some truth in it, but you couldn't look a mother of a child who has epilepsy in the eyes and make that joke, right? so this is a different product. and that consumers and patients are on a spectrum from irrefutably legitimate patients to, you know, more of wellness consumers to people who just want to consume cannabis on a friday night instead of a bottle of chardonnay. our thesis is that entire segment should be allowed to legally consume this product and that brands and companies will emerge to provide that entire market with products. >> okay. now that i'm schooled, we're out of time. thanks again for joining us. both you guys. >> thank you. [ applause ] ♪ >> he was perfect on time and they're being really strict about it backstage. so i'm proud of him for that. when i was growing up, being a reporter kind of meant you had a screen play stuffed away in your desk drawer secretly hoping to make it big. today that has turned into a start-up. take all that editorial knowledge, turn it into a viable company and that's exactly what our next guest did. that's what we're aspiring to do as reporters. welcome to stage emily. >> all right. there's a lot of diversity in this audience, but generally, you know, the tech crowd isn't really known for an interest in cosmetics and beauty and stuff. so emily is very, very well known in the beauty and fashion space. but could you just give the elevator pitch of what gloss is for anyone who doesn't know. >> sure. a new direct to consumer beauty company that launched in october 2014. >> and it's bourn out of into the gloss. we're going to spend a lot of time talking about glossier itself but i want to talk about where it all began with into the gloss. you started into the gloss five or six years ago. >> yeah. >> and at this time you had sort of this full-time job working as a stylist with vogue, how did you take the time to start a company in your spare time? >> i mean pretty simply. probably like a lot of entrepreneur who is are here or who are watch iing it all start with the seed of an idea and i worked on into the gloss, which is a beauty content destination with a little bit over a million unique visitors a month to date now. but back in 2010 i was a fashion assistant at vogue. and i worked on into the gloss from, you know, 4:00 in the morning until 9:00 a.m. it's like an online magazine, so writing, photograph -- photography, art direction. and the idea behind into the gloss then and still now is that it is a editorial plaid form th -- platform that focuses on beauty as an element of personal style. so many of beauty purchasing decisions today are made via friend-to-friend recommendation. and into the gloss is an editorial platform that really celebrates women sharing with one another very inspirational women like, you know, ariana huffington or isabel, but the takeaway is sort of recommendations from the sort of cool women in the world. >> when you started this it sounded like an idea that you're even passionate about or curious about and fun to peek into people's makeup bags, or medicine cabinets. when did you realize this was a business and not a blog or passion project? >> probably when i realized that you can make money on publishing through advertising. we were very fortunate with into the gloss to have lancome as one of our first advertisers. so grant it it was a check for like a couple thousand dollars, but that set us off. and now we have a very healthy, you know, publishing business for into the gloss. >> and you've raised some money first for into the gloss and now with the latest incarnation of glossier. september 2013 it was a $2 million seed round? >> yes. in 2013 -- so into the gloss was entirely self-funded for the first couple of years -- i could hear you. could you all hear her? >> made me feel really important though. >> so we raised $2 million because we were about to build glossier. and of course publishing online is -- can be something that you can do for very little overhead depending on what you're doing. but it's something that, you know, required very little resource. but creating a physical product line in the capital it takes to produce beauty products and create formulas from scratch and hire experts in the field. it certainly took a little bit of cash. that's why we raised $2 million. as a seed round back in 2013 it was led by kirsten green of course behind warby, dollar shave club. so she has a lot of experience in retail and now the branded e-commerce space. it was very important to me to have a female venture capitalist as our lead investor. it was certainly one of the more fluid natural conversations i had with venture capitalists because she, you know, knew what foundation was. >> right. >> and no offense to the guys out there, you know. yeah, so that was our first round. we closed a series a in 2014 right before glossier launched that's led by thrive capital. >> was there a difference that you saw at all in the response of investors from when you went out the first time to pitch a beauty-oriented company to the second time? has it gotten better? has there been more understanding in the investor community of how huge this market is? >> i wouldn't say there was a big change i noticed from raising the seed to raising the series a. i think there were a couple things that remain true throughout both experiences. one is that, you know, beauty is a quarter-trillion-dollar industry. it's had several billion-dollar exits just in the last, you know, ten years. so it's also an industry that hasn't changed an enormous amount. i would say in the last even 50 years. so i think it's an industry that is ripe for disruption. i think most venture capitalists recognize that. i also think they recognize the fact that into the gloss and, you know, our team had developed an enormous amount of trust with consumers around the world. we have a global following of women who never cease to inspire us. and who never, you know, who always kind of push the company forward. it's very much a two-way conversation we have. and i think the smartest beauty companies and probably some of the smartest brands recognize that brands'lg÷ today are builtu know, not just in a bubble. it's not kind of a one-way conversation. consumers have a lot to say. and it's so important i think to listen to them. >> in a lot of ways it seems like this is an inverted path, that glossier and into the gloss has taken because i think right now a lot of big companies whether they're in beauty or in other industries they've got the brand and then later they're thinking about how to have content or how to do content marketing or how to have a social presence. and you and glossier kind of did it the opposite way. you started with this personal brand you have and this brand and now you're making products. how has that path taken shape? >> really organically. i think, you know, something that i say a lot to our team is that, you know, the mission for us is the same. the medium has just changed. so i think the first part of i think what beauty needed was this place that editorially really made beauty personal and made it very much a conversation. and sort of enlightened and activated an entire cohort of consumers, of beauty consumers who otherwise might have been passive beauty consumers, may not have been super excited about their beauty routines or not really wanting to talk about. when we interview women i say what's your beauty routine and women say, oh, i'm really low maintenance. and it's funny that there's this natural inclination when you ask someone that for the woman to say, oh, i don't really spend a lot of time on beauty because it's thought of something i think that's pretty frivolous, or maybe if you spend a lot of time on yourself that you're not taken so seriously. so part of the mission with into the gloss was to really get rid of that, you know, perception. and really kind of bring beauty out into the open as somebody that any smart, stylish woman who's in charge of her persona or look can embrace and get the best information about. so into the gloss was, you know, sort of the first phase of that because it brought so much information out into the open and connected so many women from around the world. to give one another, you know, rejss in the comment section or even propel, you know, content forward that we were creating. and now with glossier it's funny because it's kind of anan incarnational beauty of message. formulas have changed. what women want have changed. has changed. and i think glossier really speaks to the fact that there's no overarching one look that every woman should ascribe to. and i think that's a message that so many brands have pushed forward over the years. like, you know, buy every single one of these things and then you can get to this look. and i think what we're trying to do is say here are the tools for you to really customize your own look. we're not going to tell you who to be. you can be whoever you want and you can change your mind. glossier products are also really affordable for women who are looking to get really luxurious quality products. that's another thing we want to do is alleviate some of the stress that comes along with beauty, be it from a brand image perspective or from a price point perspective, from a distribution perspective, we want to really make beauty modern. >> how did you think about what your first product was going to be? you have all of this data and years of interviews you've done about everything from perfume to soap to lipstick to mascara, how did you decide that your first products were going to be skin care products as opposed to all of the other types of things that are out there? >> it's interesting. that actually came super quickly to us. because skin -- and this is one thing i've learned from being backstage at so many fashion shows over the years, i think we're in a moment right now where women are really understanding the importance of sk sk skin, i think skin care is something that you develop a routine, i think. or a woman develops a routine. and it's a very intimate connection with your skin care. you'll change your lipstick, lose it or whatever, but skin care is, you know, kind of -- it's very serious. it's very important. so something we wanted to do is create this sweet of super essential core skin care products that made, you know, getting ready really easy in the morning, or going to bed and, you know, making sure you're taken care of, very easy and actually kind of fun. that's something that the market hasn't seen a lot of kind of like i think really cool skin care. >> how did you think about introducing these products? you did a lot of things on social, on instagram. >> we launched on instagram. >> right. how can a brand launch purely through social? or does there need to be some sort of traditional marketing to get the word out? how did you approach this? >> i can only speak to what was right for us. we didn't spend money on marketing. we didn't have money to spend on marketing. we decided that instagram is really i think where -- and this is totally, you know, i don't know if this is fact but for me this is the truth which is that i'm on instagram than i am any other social platform. i imagine a large amount of millenial women in america are probably using instagram a lot too. so for us it came natural to start to build the brand almost in realtime via instagram. we wanted to really invite her into our world and see maybe the messiness or the indecision. all the things that go into creating any, you know, body of work be it a brand or, you know, anything else. started to give us ideas and feedback and for us feedback has been so, so important on every single level in building glossier. >> how do you process that feedback? if you go to your instagram page, you just see tons of comments. and there's so much chatter out there about your products. >> yes. >> how do you sift through that? >> so we're working on that because i think we can be much more sophisticated. at the moment i sift through it literally manually every night going on # glossier and liking every everyone's pictures. but data, you're right, we have enormous amount of data across multiple channels. part of what we're really looking to do now in this next phase is as we're going into the second half of the year is really, really focus on our digital product. and think of what we're going to look like as we continue our -- i hope break down walls between content, community and commerce. so we have these three sort of pillars. and these are things i don't think i'm unique in trying to solve the content and commerce question, but i think for us there's -- it's almost not even a question. it's almost a request from our users because we're seeing so many behaviors from her and so many -- her demonstrate so many different behaviors that show she wants to do more. she wants to be more involved. she wants to communicate more with, you know, other glossier users. and so for us a big part of glossier will be, you know, data, and will be again breaking down those walls. >> what is your tech team like now? it sounds like if you're going to be building these products, you need a solid team. is that a big focus right now? >> it's a huge focus. so the way we wanted to build glossier has been very much -- i think we've been successful in doing what we set out to do which was first and foremost to create a brand that women wanted to switch to. and i think for beauty you have so many choices. i mean, yes, it's a very disaggregated market. but there are so many choices just on every single product. you can get a cheaper one, you can get, you know, one closer to home. but to get a better one, i think is something we were really, really very serious about. and so we spent the first, you know, six months of glossier really making sure that we created a brand that just was better. that women would try once and then they would repeat purchase. and we're already seeing that behavior. so now we're focusing on growing out our tech team. right now we have a fantastic agency called dynamo in montreal who helped work with us on our mvp. i think it's a pretty good looking mvp, but it's still a store. and we don't just want to be a really, you know, high performing e-commerce store. so, ya, we're looking. >> how do you convince -- or recruit, you know, technology-oriented people to come to a beauty side? if someone is out there and they're an engineer and don't think they're interested in beauty or cosmetics, how does that conversation go when you're looking for those people? >> it's an interesting conversation. i think something that's so important for our company has been hiring people who are passionate about our mission. it doesn't mean that if you're, you know, a dude just because you don't, you know, understand makeup at a fundamental level doesn't mean it's not the place for you. i think if you're, again, interested in data, interested in making women feel like they're building a company because so many, again, of our customers are co-conspirators with us in making this company happen, then you can be really excited about what we're doing. so i think it's just been -- and i'm not a technologist either. so it's been -- there have been some interesting conversations. but i'm learning a lot. and i think we're just looking for the right partner who really understands the opportunity. >> and i also -- last question here, the way that you launch glossier was so interesting. it was a great post that you all shall read because i think it's an interesting way you framed going from one level of your business to a totally different one. and you said, the sheer fact that there's a place on the internet that celebrates womens, brains and beauty, fosters community, brings to light the best products in the world is enough to make me retire, take up golf and sleep eight to ten hours a night. so you were already really proud of what you had done with into the gloss. >> uh-huh. >> how did you think about going and doing something else on top of that when you had already been so happy that you could just retire and take up golf? where did that itch come from? >> i wonder why i said golf too. >> i know. >> i think the itch came from the same itch when i started into the gloss, which is i just didn't love the way -- i felt sort of at odds with a lot of elements of the beauty industry from a personal level. like i don't see a brand i can call my own. i don't see one that i want to wear that brand's sweatshirt that identify as a woman with their values. i understand where it comes from. i understand who's behind it. i understand what went into making these products. and for me it was really exciting challenge. it was really exciting challenge to think if there were to be a modern, a truly modern innovative beauty brand, what would that look like? one i would be proud to have as a consumer and identify as. so that was glossier. >> great. well, em li, thank you for joining us at disrupt. >> thank you. thank you. [ applause ] ♪ >> good work guys. all right. pressing forward. my biggest technological achievement as a 12-year-old was killing about six tomagachis. now we have 12-year-olds learning how to build their own computers and generally outpacing me as a productive human being. that is due largely to our next gue guest. >> hi, alex. >> hi, natasha. >> thank you for joining us. >> you're welcome. no problem. >> for those of you who may not know what cano is, you're basically building a diy coding and computer kid. so it's for kids ages 7 to 14. they get a box of bits, they put it all together. and you use the -- as the key piece and build on top of that with an o.s. that's fun and accessible and designed for kids. this is a very multifaceted and complex product in some ways. but you're making it very simple and easy for this target age group of sort of 7 to 14s. i wonder, is it fair to label cano a toy? a toy sort of creative and educational potential, but essentially you're designing something for kids to play with, right? >> i would say, you know, cano is a computer. you just happen to make it yourself. it has the playability, the intuitiveness and accessibility of perhaps a toy, but it's powerful. kids around the world have used cano to make servers, automate the position of solar panels. kids using the cano kit have created and shared over 5 million lines of code. the idea behind the project is more to build a new kind of computer company, one that puts creativity in the front seat rather than consumption. it starts with a simple kit, but from there you're building, you know, a hardware system with speakers, servers, radios. you're hooking it up to the internet. i think it was inspired in many ways by the notion that making, learning and playing are all intimately connected and that all of us have this curious and creative spirit of a 9-year-old inside of us. all you need are sort of these simple steps, stories and affordable tools and you can break out. play can often become one of the greatest accelerants of invention. >> so is your goal here to sort of change computing behavior? i mean, is it a bit like teaching kids to cook so they eat more healthily? >> yeah. i mean, you look at the world today. about 30 months ago i encountered while i was working -- >> you've got everything in your pockets. >> i know. it's like a batman utility pocket. this little green brand called the raspberry pie, $35 and it's sold a million units. hackers, makers, hobbiests around the world were sending it into space. we took it and showed it to a 6-year-old, my little cousin. making a beowolf cluster or something wasn't immediately appealing to him. what he said is i want to make a computer. i want to build it myself. and it has to be a simple and fun as lego so no one has to teach me. >> are you really saying -- there's loads of pieces. is this really simple enough that any 7-year-old could come along and in ten minutes they could put together a computer and writing code? >> that's the idea. i remember in some workshops all we had were these hand folded cardboard boxes with bits, boards, brains and a simple book. a step by step illustrated story. we started taking these into schools first across the uk then south africa, the middle east, sierra leone. i'd stand up in front of the class and ask three questions. question one, who here has seen the inside of a computer before? the inside of a computer. we live in this world of 8.2 billion connected devices. most of them are these sealed sapphire screens. none of these kids had seen the inside of a computer. question two, who here can tell me how a computer thinks, how its brain works? tons of ideas. the computer sends magic waves to youtube, talks to instagram in a secret code. there's passion but no understanding. question three, who here thinks they could make a computer themselves? and no hands go up. >> silence. >> silence, like chirp, chirp, chirp. and then i said, okay, kids, guess what, in the next hour all of you are going to build your own computer, you're going to build a speaker, connect it to the internet and call it a video dell from youtube, make minecraft appear before your eyes and do it without me saying a word. which is difficult for me. and sure enough an hour later just with a simple story, open source tools and this really intuitive human plug and play hardware, they built it. and that was the beginning. >> and you were the most popular person in the class at that point. >> we asked kids how they feel after the workshops, right? and this one kid called kalid ,gsomething, he's 9, said adults, you know, they think we're incapable because we're so young. but today we made a computer. and powered it up with this like matrix code, so that makes us superchildren. i was like, yes, you are a superchild. and there needs to be a computer company built by and for you. this rise in creative generation, who want to do more than just swipe across prepackaged apps on a sealed sapphire screen. >> now, the name i think has this really nice ring to it and there's also a story behind that, isn't there? perhaps you could just draw that out. and also you touched on it but what was your original -- how did original -- how did you come up with this idea? i think that involves your cousin? >> yeah, again, the original challenge came from my 6-year-old cousin, he challenged us to create a computer he could build himself, as simple and fun as legos, so no one had to teach him. he started with a strange dream between misfits in a north london flat. we realized we could make this simple story filled computer kit. pretty low cost, $150. for me, the challenge came a bigger idea, you look out in the world today, these 8.2 billion connected devices, only 50 million of us know how to talk to them. most of the innovation, the magic is sealed away in a tiny 1% of 1% in the valley. we want to dem of course rah ties the ability to make technology, not just consume it, the name cana was connected to this. they were the founder of the marshall art juneau. they extended beyond a kind of small class in japan. the founder of juneau was a lifelong primary schoolteacher. we're trying to put that creative experimental power back in the hands of people. and when they're young as well. >> now, you're founding team including tamika, including a cousin, ventures, he's also investor and index investor, these are great contacts to have as a starter. i wonder how important it is for the starting blocks. >> the fact that wife known him since his bris, although he wouldn't want me to address that. added emotion for all of us. as for an incredible mentor, one of the greatest things he ever did was introduce me to my co-founder. we found a couple mad cat miscaps from around the world. an incredible designer from the north of sweden. all attracted to this simple computer that anyone can make that core mission has attracted a team of 36, we're working out of four countries in london. we represented 15 nationalities and we're trying to do something a bit different. a bit more creative and experimental with the world of the pc the pc sells 65 million units a year. why aren't people experimenting like they did in the 80s, hacking together with bits and parts, and inventing something new. the world of the pc has become too hom on annized. we want to bring it to places all over the world with a new sense of fun, narrative and experimentation. >> this is an ambitious project. i wonder. you actually started this on kickstarter, crowd funding, that was your first sort of funding. you raised 1.5 million on kick starter, that's got you going. shipping the first 40,000 kicks. i wonder, what's the next piece in your funding story. >> it's been an incredible journey to this point today on this stage, where we're really happy to bring many people, tinkerers, inventors from all over the world together to drive this core kit. for the next stage, we're really excited to welcome to the team jim breyer who is an astonishing individual, entrepreneur investor, he'll be leading our $50 million series end hoping to power up the project, bring it to new markets, continue to try to breathe this sort of magic back into open source making. you look at someone like ñjim, who we've had the pleasure of getting to know over the past couple months, this is a guy who helps drive the first pc revolution, he was one of the first pc investors in facebook, which started as a youth movement, but is now an indispensable platform for our discretion. we're happy to welcome jim o'neil to the team. he's a former chief economist of goldman sachs. we feel that cano needs to be a computer encoding kid for all ages all over the world. we need to untap potential wherever it's locked. jim o'neil is someone who understands this intimately and deeply. we're bringing collaborative adventures along. we'll be crowd funding $500,000 of our new series on the platform choir, which is an amazing place for your customers, your community to come together and actually put up some money and get a significant equity state in the company as well. not just buy a product. we'll be using that community as we use the kick starter community as a high mind for new ideas on the project. new ideas for development in business, and just for fun. we feel that the more places we can touch, the more participatory this company is, the more open and accessible the final product this will be as well. >> i'm curious who the users of this kit are at the moment. what does the gender balance look like? are you thinking about ways to design the kit so it's equally appealing to girls and boys? >> i think that was a corzine goal from the beginning. the kit should feel gender neutral, it should speak to fundamental human impulses, rather than ones -- we believe no matter where you live, no matter how old you are, has a couple shared urges. we all want to look inside, one of the first videos we did, we gave a sealed mac book air to lily, watched as she tried to piece it apart. everyone wants to look inside, everyone wants to take control. and everyone wants to make it play. the average age of a kid right now is about 9 1/2, about 60/40 male/female, what's interesting, the girls are among our most active users. we have 40,000 kids of all ages. we have 45-year-old veterans of operation desert storm, 81-year-old grandmothers who want to learn more about code. we have 9-year-olds, 15-year-olds, girls in kosovo automating the position of a solar array. families in oklahoma using it to create stop motion videos of flowers looming. artists, painters, using it to create code works of graphics, fractels. we think if you merge the computer arts and computer sciences, take the pc out of its traditionally techie mode of innovation, you bring lots of people to the table. >> i wonder who buys cano. who are you selling this too? >> we found at the beginning there was a ton of interest from parents, teachers, but as we started to take the kid around the world, you know, first to sierra leone, there's a sort of rising creative generation of kids who are pulling together available resources, modular hardware, open source software, a bit of nice design. and making things, things that perhaps the brains in this room as monumental as they are, could never have imagined. we went to freetown. we met a young man named kelvin do. this kid, when he was 13, he started pulling parts out of the garbage, went to an internet cafe, looked up what each of these components did. within a year he built a battery to power his house when the grid went down. we've had spoken word artists in north london use this to compose beats. we've had kids build servers and game con souls. the core audience now, obviously a lot of parents, a lot of teachers, we all know that in order to prepare the next generation for the future, they're going to have to be able to speak the language of computers, reimagine and re-create. but again, you know, the audience for this as a company, a new type of pc expression, one that is creative, low cost, physical and fun, we think that can be mainstream, mass market. >> do you see yourselves building an education company? you are obviously part of this very burgening movement. >> i think again we're building a computer company. you look at the early days of apple. apple always made education a really important channel. because if you can make something that is so simple and intuitive that a curious mind can walk, step by step, page by page through something that is immediate and human and teaches them something. you're going to have value to educators. apple is not an education company even though they still sell a massive amount to schools and teachers. i would say, you know, fundamentally, you look at kids today, they don't want to be educated. they want to learn. we don't necessarily need to teach these kids, we don't need to give them a prescriptive, learn to code higher arcy, so they can grow up one day and become billionaires or go work at google in a beautiful multicolored cafeteria with free quinoa. i love it myself, hopefully whether they work at google or become a generative artist or a musician or a butcher or baker or candlestick maker, having a chance to look inside the world around them, take control, and make something cool because it's fun, that's a more mainstream message, and that's one we think is going to bring this next generation up, to have the skills they need to really surprise us, to be a super child. >> that's a tough product design challenge, kids can be a tough crowd. how do you grab and sustain their interests and make sure it's fun, boring, tedious. >> i think the physical ailty of the kid helps. kids, especially with the new cano which is six times faster, filled with all these amazing creative projects, kids, they want to be given a lot of the benefit of the doubt. they don't want to be told what to do, they want to be given a simple series of steps and tools that they can reimagine and recapitulate. you look at mine craft, a global phenomenon, we took a lovely version that microsoft made free. we put in a simple coding arena step by step through these challenges, you drag and drop these visual jigsaw blocks. they have real code, by the way, job descript, and then that python gets pumped into the mine craft api. instead of playing by the rules, kids are remaking the rules. they're warping into existence a sky jail, a water slide, they're teleporting around the map. our intention is to make kids feel like neo in the ma terrorism, they're thrown into this incredible sort of artificial world, and they realize it's more human than they think, they can see the code, piece it together in new ways. and gaming, by the way, is a beautiful metaphor for this. >> i think you mentioned briefly the new cano. you have additional product needs today. what are you doing with a new

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