Transcripts For CSPAN3 TechCrunch Disrupt New York Conference Part 1 20240622

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] cspan3 programming today focusses on tech business and coming up shortly, several hours from the tech crunch disrupt new york conference, examining the latest Technology Startups. Entrepreneurs, investors and media hear from the heads of companies about their products and services involving ondemand 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 cspan literary sites hears from across the nation from authors and Civic Leaders every other weekend on cspan2s book tv and American History tv on cspan3. This month with congress on summer recess the city store is on cspan each day at 6 00 p. M. Eastern, and we continue monday with a visit to colorado springs. Well learn about explorers ebulent pike and treatment of tuberculosis around the 20th century and Nicolai Tesla who conducted experiments in colorado springs. Thats today on cspan starting at 6 00 eastern. Innovators and Venture Capitalists and members of the media look at new products and services in the Technology Startup world. This tech crunch new york conference features conversations with Company Leaders from the social Media Network pinterest, a startup 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 its 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, im sure were 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 its 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, whats 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, thats really hard and you know, its 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 youre having this much impact . I dont think its just their responsibility. I think its collectively the technology industrys responsibility to give back whether thats in terms of civic involvement and philanthropic involvement to help to make changes that could potentially be better and i think well talk more about it, and i think things like education and education reform and things like and making sure theres 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. Youre 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 citys 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 lets 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 heres 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 cant pay them a living wage that allows them to be able to find housing in San Francisco. Thats not a thing that volunteering necessarily solves and its 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 wellintended effect and is it a longterm 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 onethird 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 dont see a lot of the things that we see coming. And they get out ahead of the issues and they dont care about them enough and if the Tech Industry can say here are things you can do in your schools. Heres 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 citys 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 theres really two big pieces of it. Its the students in the Public School system and making sure that youre teaching them the skills youre going to need for this century versus last century and then the Adult Education piece, retraining and taking someone who unfortunately didnt get that kind of education growing up. The second one is harder. I think its critical. You cant 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 mayors speaking later today and i dont want to get out in front of him on anything and i dont 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 its an issue that ive written a lot about for tech crunch. I know no, i mean, every its, 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. Its 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 dont think its aggressive enough. Its definitely not enough, but ed lee is an unusual politician. He doesnt 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 hes planted a stake in the ground. This years 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 entrylevel 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 thats hired, theres four support workers who are entrylevel 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, couldnt 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 conjuredup argument that the opposition of air b b and people who dont 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 rentcontrolled 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 thats where it got its name because people in new york were going to be displaced and evicted from their homes and apartments if they didnt augment their income by renting out a room. And in San Francisco, the same thing is happening. We have elderly people who, if they werent 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 shouldnt be a cap . Why should the government be involved in that . Whenever the government gets involved in thing, pipa years ago. Youre 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 theyre trying to size that market theyron rating off of data that the new york State Government has subpoenaed and whatever the San Francisco chronicle has scraped off and you dont have actual transparency into how large the shortterm 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 bs hosts. Thats 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 . Thats not the free enterprise. If its aggregate and itemized if it was aggregate and itemized maybe thats 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 youve youve youre 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 theyre 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, thats a really i mean, what youre touching on, fred is a very, very interesting tension. Its 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 werent on the traditional 405 or whatever. I mean, do you have a rule of thumb around that . Im 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 cant 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 theyre not outing any specific person i think thats very, very valuable. So theres 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 its 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 companys equity and 1 volunteer time and then if, republicable, 1 of the companys product to philanthropy, and this was the founding principle of salesforce. Com. Its 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. Whats 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 startup founders whether its 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 dont 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. Thats one thing and a call out to the Legal Community and the second thing is that its important that each citys 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 dont know where they can use their skills for the highest advantage. For example, going into the schools and teaching Computer Science is something thats 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 thats because there are arent good systems like linkedin or indeed. Com or whatever to match people who have the skills with nonprofits or other causebased organizations that need those skills. Cool. The other thing were doing for adopting the pledge 1 is were 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, were 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 dont know im pretty gay and our next guest and i have a lot in common. Shes 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 dont 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 were 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 were really excited to have the Developer Community be able to access pinterest and our 50 million pins and millions of users in an appbased 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 broadbased 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[c 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 its usually pinned 11 more times and thats pretty good and thats 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 its 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 its 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 its 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 theyre at that pointer and i imagine there are a lot of them who are pinterest, yeah. Thats 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, im 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 its very easy to do. Its 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 youd 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 theyre 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, thats all free. Is there any tension there. When you came on, was it very clear this is whats going to be paid . This is whats going to be free or have there been sort of figuring out there . I think we always think about the Business Model and whats the best thing for us in the long term, and whats the best thing for pinners in the long term, and the things that weve 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 dont 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. Ive 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 its not like were trying to stuff a banner ad out in the middle of a story. This is very mobil and its very organic to the experience and you can promote a pin thats doing very well. That tension doesnt exist and were pretty careful about the quality of promoted pins and we look very closely at their performance. For us, its 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 weve 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 . Weve been selling promoted pins for about a year. We have two offerings, cost per click offering and a cpm offering and weve learned a ton from that and well 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 thats involved in consumers future and people pinterest what theyll have for dinner, where theyre going to go on vacation and what theyll 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. Dont tell anybody. I dont know if she has a fiance or anything. Youre not going to out her on stage. No, im not. I think shes laughing back there and the good news is there are a lot of women back there so you wont be able to figure it out. Thats 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 lasercutting 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 theyre looking for a fantastic handbag or looking to go on a vacation. Im also going to, believe it or not, i saw the Northern Lights in iceland on pinterest and im going there this summer because i was, like, oh, thats cool. Lets 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 youre searching its 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 theyre 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, upfront 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 upfront commitment to because theyre happy with the engagement on the platform, and theyre happy with the performance of what theyve been doing. Theyre 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 im not going to tell you about today and so, you know, were working on measurement. Were working on new Product Offerings and so, were pleased with their commitment and more importantly, were pleased with not just the dollar commitment, but the commitment actually to the partnership. So weve seen people do marketing in store so weve had a bunch of people that nordstrom, target, walmart, that have done instore promotion and have shown a significant sales lift because of that. Nobody else can really be a merchandising partner to people and insights partner and a promoted pin partner. So the conversations are really amazing that were having and the time and quality of time that were spending with the right people and those teams. Ive sold lots of media over my life and never have the discussions been at such an integrated level. All right. So youre 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 dont 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 its 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. Its pretty powerful and so well 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 well focus these areas. You also mentioned mobile. Can you say anything in terms of where pinterest is in terms of mobile usage. Were 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 tshirt out somewhere people just stop you and then profess their love for the product and profess their passion for it and its quite amazing. Ive 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 dont see their board, you know . And its usually always true and you can find out something amazing about them. I have a 16yearold daughter and i didnt 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 shes not going to do it on facebook or snapchat because its too geeky and the pinterest is really for you and its very personal and its about peoples expression and its about their vulnerability of what they want to do in their futures and people have a real passion for it, and so its really exciting to be involved in that. So people didnt get quite as excited when you were Walking Around with a demand media tshirt. You what . I have an ehow tshirt 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 werent, like, crying on the street. So you have people crying in the streets when they see your pinterest tshirt . They literally. People will tell me, oh, my god. Oh, my god, i just love pinterest and ive sent people tshirts and theyve 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 dont, you know, people are so passionate about it that you are being like, okay, ive got it. Theyre 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 im 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 havent done anything. Do you have suggestions . What should i be doing . Well, i mean, so so pinterest is about anything that youre passionate about or anything that youre passionate about. So the idea started with you know, bens bug collection and the last thing they want to do and its 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 youre passionate about, whether its a hobby, an idea or a place, anything. Do you think people will think im cool if i have a comic book board . Yes. Thats 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 youd like. Do you have a lot of men on pinterest right now or the perception that its primarily women accurate. So, in the United States were, you know, about 70 30 and outside of the u. S. Its more 60 40 and were 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 were 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 weve 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. Were off and running and were 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, shes 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 thats pretty good company. So im 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 thats a lot of money. Thats a lot of money, but if you looked at our revenue it wasnt 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. Weve never discarded an acquisition, but we hadnt 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 wasnt in the immediate negotiations. I was running product at the time and so im at everyone here as a founder knows they work all of the time. So im at my sons parents weekend for his freshman year in college and theyre calling me and they said its over a b now, should we do it . Im hearing my son present. Priorities, its, 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 wasnt as engaged in it as i probably should have been. I was watching my sons 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 arent there any other founders who can answer this . I got back on that sunday night and i started to be involved, but i wasnt in the last nuances of the details. Maybe that was better that you were caught up in Something Else at that point, right . So youre ceo of data gravity. Youve certainly held a lot of highlevel management positions, but as you just alluded to, you werent ceo at the first company. So how is it different being ceo of a startup as opposed to being part of the management and Founding Team of a startup . 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 peopledriven job and both jobs are focused on customer and utsch in more of a peopledriven job than a productdriven 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 pressures about the same because youve asked your friends to join you. And youre responsible for their livelihood. And then youve asked people to invest in you. And, you know, theyre limited with Retirement Funds and college funds, so youre very responsible for that money you took. And to make sure, you know, youre effecting peoples livelihood. Right. It seems like its a race, but youre effecting peoples 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 its a healthy fear. If any founders not worried every day then theyre focused on the wrong things. Youre playing chess and checkers at the same time. Youre trying to figure out your next move but also worried about what am i going to do in six months or a year because youve got to set yourself up for that. So, you know, its a lot of fun. But theres a lot of responsibility. So youve 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 didnt matter . So we were in a market that didnt 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 email. Everybody needed databases. So if you were to look at the companies that were impacted by the recession, the Data Storage Companies werent 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 youd 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 its 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. Im 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 im 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 ive been in startups that succeeded, ive been in startups that failed. Success is more fun by the way. So when youre 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 doesnt 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 cofounder in john joseph who id worked with at equallogic. The one thing i said i wouldnt do is i wouldnt, 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. Weve doubled down with data gravity. With equallogic, we ramped aggressively but cautiously, data gravity were ramping successfully but cautiously. I think the one thing we didnt do we had no infrastructure at equallogic. When we started selling, we had people manually putting in p. O. S and we couldnt put them in fast enough. So we put in more infrastructure but other than its pretty much the same playbook. So when you sold equallogic, the cloud wasnt even on most peoples radar. Aws was still a small operation for amazon and there werent 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 theres a few things that have changed. First of all, equallogic was one of the First Companies that was going to sell to the midtier through the channel. Now everybodys doing that. We were one of the first who was doing all inclusive. Now everybodys doing that. You know, cloud was, you know, a term in 2007, 2008, but nobody was really doing it. And what youre finding is the cloud is a great place when the application and the storage are together. Its 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. Uhhuh. Also depending on what Regulatory Information you have with the data or the amount of data, the cost of the cloud isnt as cheap as you think. So theres a balancing act. I think its going to be a hybrid for a long time. So were fresh off the trial gender conversation is definitely prevalent right now. Im wondering given your experience, how has the conversation on gender changed from when you started in the early 2000s to 2015 when youre a female ceo . Thats 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 ive been treat eed pretty equally. I mean, its hard for everybody, but i dont think gender has hurt me. In some cases its 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 id say at the moment its more of an advantage than disadvantage. I get invited to all kinds of stuff because they need a girl. I shouldnt say that here, should i . But at any rate i havent seen it as a disadvantage. But then, you know, im pretty forthright. You cant shock me. I say what i think. Im not necessarily intimidated. And so i also started doing startups in my 30s. I dont know how i would have felt in my 20s. I was more confident when i came out of the gate. So i dont 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 thats bucking current trends, right . Because as we talked about the cloud as a storage option which more and more companies are using. And theres even a movement away from hardware appliances to software appliances. So you dont even have a physical entity. So youre 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 dont 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. Theres 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 youre going to see as a so what youre going to see is a lot of the resellers are going to become Service Providers where theyre a trusted partner to the Company Buying the storage and theyll host the storage. Its 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, youve got two terabytes and someone else has a petabyte. People want to know whos 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 dont include the cost to read it. You can check it out any time you like, you can never leave. Its expensive to go ahead if youre going to read all the data again. Youre charged for reading at some of the sites. Theres 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 its inactive then putting it in the cloud is probably less expensive. Its 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 ive 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 startup, you said michael dell was very supportive, but becoming a part of this huge corporation, did it take the starch out of your Startup 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, signoff on this, signoff on that. I dont know if were an anomaly or not. If you go in with the attitude were going to make this work and then the trick is if the company that bought you actually makes money then everybodys 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 gravitys only three years old. Its 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 were going for lots of happy customers. We probably go public. Its just way too early to know those kind of things. Customers will have choices. I wouldnt rule out either one, but were going as if were going to be a big public concern. We have a big enough idea to go public. Thats the point you have to think about. If youre just a commodity, you need to think about being acquired because eventually youre going to get crushed. But we have a big enough idea and a broad enough roadmap that we can be a big public company. Were not a onetrick pony. We have less than a minute. I want to ask you one quick question. Your company lets people have insight into their data. Tell me one great insight a customer was able to get because they were using your product. So weve 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 didnt even know where they were. People have been able to trend, you know, p. O. S against regions right from within their data. So theyre learning about the good stuff and able to capitalize on it. And theyre making sure that theres no downside in their data. So if they get audited theyre 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. Were about to get into the cannabis startup blaze up panel. So im not going to make a joke. Im just going to get those folks on stage. I dont 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. Im really glad you guys could be here this morning with me. So im not the only guy on stage whos 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 startups or Venture Capital firms that were clients. And the Technology Company in the medical cannabis industry came across my desk and i thought, well, thats 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 prohibitions 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 . Theres all sorts of legislation and laws and whatever needs to be worked through first. Sure. So were in a period of transition out of state of prohibition to a state of legalization or relegalization of cannabis. And were 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 cant 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 dont think many agree with. For us this instance the high level macro idea is that for the last 75plus years theres been this really crazy. Ke that doesnt make much sense that was politically motivated for really range of bizarre reasons in this country. And thats been the war on drugs. One of the key tools over the last number of decades was the delegalization 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 thats coming to an end, as brendan mentioned. And we think the war on drugs has been or at least i think its 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. Its bad on a Racial Justice level, more black americans versus white americans are in jail, its bad on a social level. So the legalization of cannabis is we think socially good. Its 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 were really excited about was privateer. Okay. So lets talk about that and the criminal justice and all that. How weird is it that youre a bunch of white guys that are going to make bank off this product that, you know, largely africanamericans, largely hispanic people are still going to jail for . So theyre 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 cant get student loans, they cant get home loans, they cant vote in many cases. Its important for us to create the brands that fuel change. Were starting to be able to recruit a more diverse workforce. It has been difficult. Were certainly one of the most Diverse Companies in this industry. And hopefully thats something that can change over the coming years. Okay. From a political standpoint, are you doing any like lobbying around legalization or decriminalization . 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. Im 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 its a play on the war on drugs, its 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. Its 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 theyre motivated every day to end prohibition. Thats really different. So we think that weve built a workforce that can help fight that war. Okay. So are you pirates or not . Were not pirates. Were privateers. Okay. During the American Revolution privateers sort of ransacked the british navy to help in the revolutionary war. And thats the theme, thats how we think about it. Okay. I dont 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. Thats sort of what, you know, is the most important from a naming standpoint. Lets talk about the Different Companies inside of privateer, the holding company. Youve 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 its 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. Its a Search Engine that answers two questions, what and where. So someone whos a Retail Consumer can find a strain that they want to use on a friday night where its 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. Its technologically advanced. Its 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. Its 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, theres a lot of them. Theres 11 children, and his wife rita. So we got to know them throughout this process. You know, theyd been approached by lots, as you can imagine, theyd 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 cant think of a larger Global Cultural icon thats more tightly connected to this product. So its its 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 im here today. Last week i was at a very large outdoor cannabis grow in jamaica. Certainly things i never expected to do. Okay. Jeff, youve seen the grow facility, whats it like . Its mind blowing. Not in a metaphor kal sense. Its one of the most stateoftheart across any industry that ive ever seen. When i first weve 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 hes like were trying to do something in canada, we think its a good market, heres why. Were trying to find a company to invest in. They werent 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 im actually canadian, but 24 hours after placing an order on the website the cannabis arrives at your door. Its just really incredible. So i think that business in and of itself is a stand alone business has a lot of room to scale. Its 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 dont 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. Thats the whole ethos of our firm. So we wouldnt make an investment that were not willing to talk about if itd be helpful for the company and founders. Were 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 its 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, weve had eightfigure 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 didnt try. Not that he didnt try. Im sure he would have loved to try the product. More seriously though snoop has a fund focused on making investments in the segment. Were 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 tenplusyear time frame. I think in this market theres 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 im not sure that i would want to be an l. P. In a cannabis only fund thats 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 its a really different industry than what i was used to in Silicon Valley in that especially five years ago its very fragmented. There were no leaders. There were no standards. The companies werent as professional. The managers, the leaders werent as smart. Thats changed. Its gotten better over the last five years. But im skeptical as well of certainly cannabisonly 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 dont think those are good opportunities. To mainstream regular funds are going to invest in these companies too. If youre a cannabis specific vc, youll 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. Its going to become a mainstream product. Full disclosure, i live in california, i recently got my doctors 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. Theres 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 dont strike me as the type of people who use the product recreationally. They take this very seriously. Theyre one of the few teams ive met in this market that hasnt offered me more than a gram of product to sample. Ive never sampled any of privateers products because im legally not able to in the jurisdictions in which theyre selling cannabis. Thats a positive thing. I should not be offered free weed in order to invest. I know you meant that as a joke. And theres some truth in it, but you couldnt 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 im schooled, were out of time. Thanks again for joining us. Both you guys. Thank you. [ applause ] he was perfect on time and theyre being really strict about it backstage. So im 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 startup. Take all that editorial knowledge, turn it into a Viable Company and thats exactly what our next guest did. Thats what were aspiring to do as reporters. Welcome to stage emily. All right. Theres a lot of diversity in this audience, but generally, you know, the tech crowd isnt 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 doesnt know. Sure. A new direct to consumer Beauty Company that launched in october 2014. And its bourn out of into the gloss. Were 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 fulltime 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. Its 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 friendtofriend 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 youre even passionate about or curious about and fun to peek into peoples 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 youve 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 selffunded 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 youre doing. But its 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. Thats 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 ecommerce 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 thats 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 beautyoriented 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 wouldnt 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 quartertrilliondollar industry. Its had several billiondollar exits just in the last, you know, ten years. So its also an industry that hasnt changed an enormous amount. I would say in the last even 50 years. So i think its 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. Its very much a twoway conversation we have. And i think the smartest Beauty Companies and probably some of the smartest brands recognize that brandslg÷ today are builtu know, not just in a bubble. Its not kind of a oneway conversation. Consumers have a lot to say. And its 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 theyre in beauty or in other industries theyve got the brand and then later theyre 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 youre 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 whats your beauty routine and women say, oh, im really low maintenance. And its funny that theres this Natural Inclination when you ask someone that for the woman to say, oh, i dont really spend a lot of time on beauty because its thought of something i think thats pretty frivolous, or maybe if you spend a lot of time on yourself that youre 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 whos 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 its funny because its 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 theres no overarching one look that every woman should ascribe to. And i think thats 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 were trying to do is say here are the tools for you to really customize your own look. Were 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. Thats 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 youve 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 . Its interesting. That actually came super quickly to us. Because skin and this is one thing ive learned from being backstage at so many Fashion Shows over the years, i think were 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 its a very intimate connection with your skin care. Youll change your lipstick, lose it or whatever, but skin care is, you know, kind of its very serious. Its 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 youre taken care of, very easy and actually kind of fun. Thats something that the market hasnt 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 didnt spend money on marketing. We didnt have money to spend on marketing. We decided that instagram is really i think where and this is totally, you know, i dont know if this is fact but for me this is the truth which is that im 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 theres so much chatter out there about your products. Yes. How do you sift through that . So were 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 everyones pictures. But data, youre right, we have enormous amount of data across multiple channels. Part of what were really looking to do now in this next phase is as were going into the second half of the year is really, really focus on our digital product. And think of what were 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 dont think im unique in trying to solve the content and commerce question, but i think for us theres its almost not even a question. Its almost a request from our users because were 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 youre going to be building these products, you need a solid team. Is that a big focus right now . Its a huge focus. So the way we wanted to build glossier has been very much i think weve 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, its 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 were already seeing that behavior. So now were 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 its a pretty good looking mvp, but its still a store. And we dont just want to be a really, you know, high performing ecommerce store. So, ya, were looking. How do you convince or recruit, you know, technologyoriented people to come to a beauty side . If someone is out there and theyre an engineer and dont think theyre interested in beauty or cosmetics, how does that conversation go when youre looking for those people . Its an interesting conversation. I think something thats so important for our company has been hiring people who are passionate about our mission. It doesnt mean that if youre, you know, a dude just because you dont, you know, understand makeup at a fundamental level doesnt mean its not the place for you. I think if youre, again, interested in data, interested in making women feel like theyre building a company because so many, again, of our customers are coconspirators with us in making this company happen, then you can be really excited about what were doing. So i think its just been and im not a technologist either. So its been there have been some interesting conversations. But im learning a lot. And i think were 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 its an interesting way you framed going from one level of your business to a totally different one. And you said, the sheer fact that theres 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. Uhhuh. 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 didnt love the way i felt sort of at odds with a lot of elements of the Beauty Industry from a personal level. Like i dont see a brand i can call my own. I dont see one that i want to wear that brands sweatshirt that identify as a woman with their values. I understand where it comes from. I understand whos 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 12yearold was killing about six tomagachis. Now we have 12yearolds 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. Youre welcome. No problem. For those of you who may not know what cano is, youre basically building a diy coding and computer kid. So its 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. Thats fun and accessible and designed for kids. This is a very multifaceted and complex product in some ways. But youre 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 youre 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 its 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 youre building, you know, a hardware system with speakers, servers, radios. Youre 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 9yearold 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 youve got everything in your pockets. I know. Its like a batman utility pocket. This little green brand called the raspberry pie, 35 and its sold a Million Units. Hackers, makers, hobbiests around the world were sending it into space. We took it and showed it to a 6yearold, my little cousin. Making a beowolf cluster or something wasnt 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 theres loads of pieces. Is this really simple enough that any 7yearold could come along and in ten minutes they could put together a computer and writing code . Thats 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. Id 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. Theres 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, youre 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, hes 9, said adults, you know, they think were incapable because were 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 theres also a story behind that, isnt 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 6yearold 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. Were trying to put that creative experimental power back in the hands of people. And when theyre young as well. Now, youre Founding Team including tamika, including a cousin, ventures, hes 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 wouldnt 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 cofounder. 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, were working out of four countries in london. We represented 15 nationalities and were 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 arent 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, thats got you going. Shipping the first 40,000 kicks. I wonder, whats the next piece in your funding story. Its been an incredible journey to this point today on this stage, where were really happy to bring many people, tinkerers, inventors from all over the world together to drive this core kit. For the next stage, were really excited to welcome to the team jim breyer who is an astonishing individual, entrepreneur investor, hell 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 njim, who weve 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. Were happy to welcome jim oneil to the team. Hes 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 its locked. Jim oneil is someone who understands this intimately and deeply. Were bringing collaborative adventures along. Well 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. Well 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. Im 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 its 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, whats interesting, the girls are among our most active users. We have 40,000 kids of all ages. We have 45yearold veterans of operation desert storm, 81yearold grandmothers who want to learn more about code. We have 9yearolds, 15yearolds, 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, theres 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. Weve had spoken word artists in north london use this to compose beats. Weve 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, theyre going to have to be able to speak the language of computers, reimagine and recreate. 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 were 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. Youre 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 dont want to be educated. They want to learn. We dont necessarily need to teach these kids, we dont 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 its fun, thats a more mainstream message, and thats 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. Thats a tough Product Design challenge, kids can be a tough crowd. How do you grab and sustain their interests and make sure its 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 dont 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. Theyre warping into existence a sky jail, a water slide, theyre teleporting around the map. Our intention is to make kids feel like neo in the ma terrorism, theyre thrown into this incredible sort of artificial world, and they realize its 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