There is a new push to keep jobs local. Ford has canceled plans to open a plant this mexico and will break ground in michigan instead. Youre familiar with the carrier plant in ohio. Here in the Silicon Valley, its very difficult to keep midlevel jobs in town. The cost of labor is certainly high because the cost of living is even higher. Which is why i was surprised to see this facility run by legacy republic. It converts all video and films into dvd. You probably had this done with your old home movies yourself. Brian knapp is president at legacy republic. The insider lists him as one of the tech executives most likely to kick your butt. Well keep that in mind as we is join John Schwartz of usa today, Quinton Hardy of the new york times. Lets hold off on the butt kicking just is a minute if we could. Of all the places you could put a facility, santa clara, california has got to be the most expensive. We were founded in the Silicon Valley back in 1999 with our parent company, and its highly skilled manufacturing. Its your most precious memories. Its a very human endeavor. We have a lot of automation in the factory but we need that hi highend manufacturing. We have other highfacilities in norcross, georgia. Of course they have highly skilled workers here, but do they have highly skilled employees in norcross, georgia . Absolutely. We can go on the floor and see whats going on because youre dealing with peoples most precious memories. How does it compare with five to ten years ago . Do you see more and more more rockets robotics on the floor . Thats a good question. That handoff from the ups truck and into the factory and breaking down those memories and starting to get them con verted to a digital format. We have a direct link with ups because the security of these is absolutely paramount in this business. When these memories are done, using algarhythms in making sure its right. Its not just about workers, its about workers who are able to adopt to new machinery. Exactly. We bought just about every vcr we can on e bay so we can recreate this stuff. We have to get through all these vintage memories and we need to keep these factories open. How often do you train or retrain your employees, and is there a high turnover rate . Actually, there is quite a low turnover rate, and a lot of that goes to legacy republics mission and what were doing. If youre paying your employees well a number of Silicon Valley even the starbucks and the burger kings are paying way above minimum wage. I realize youre not paying way above minimum wage, but theyre paying way above minimum wage to hold onto these employees who can go so many other places. Our employment rate is 3. 8 which basically means anybody who wants a job can get one, right . Dont discount what were doing. Its very important to our employees to help families save these memories, bring them together through them. That mission is quite strong with our employees. Youre in a unique situation, because when you think about the rest of the country and you think about trump and his push for jobs and americans being employed, especially in the midwest, thats probably not as evident in the midwest with a o automated facilities and people who are qualified to run them, right . In a sense youre kind of an anomaly. I think what hes saying is really accurate. People dont just want work and wages, they want a sense of meaning in what theyre doing, and conveying that is important for the leader. And their memories are staying here in the u. S. You mentioned a sell point. You are sending some pretty personal stuff, old home movies and things. I guess it doesnt really make a difference who sees it, but there is something about keeping this thing safe. You mentioned the vcr. What is the strangest sort of material youve gotten . Can you convert anything . It seems like were getting desperate because theres vhsc and all these weird things from the 80s. I have a picture of my dad riding on a tricycle. I have my mom sitting on a rock when she was about eight years old. We digitized a photo album from 1890. These high quality bits are whats necessary to cherish. How many have you done over your history . Weve done millions over our history and legacy republic is public now. Vhs tapes in attics, in bam basements, and if we dont get to them, thats business weve lost. Are you digitizing them to the cloud . It seems like im constantly backing up. It is primarily in the cloud. Were focused on those moments that matter, so were not full photo storage. Were really focused on your legacy which is a small percentage of your memories, right, theyre really those moments that matter, those really special moments. We mentioned that you are what do they call you, the ceo most likely to kick your butt . Im a peaceful warrior. You won some medals in jujitsu. Yes, sir. Then you started an mma fantasy. Did i get that right . I did. That was a personal passion. I started it with one of my best friends. We ran it for about five years. Its like fantasy football for mma. Theres too many points for mma. How do you strikes down i can demonstrate. Go ahead. To him. No, to him. For people who are familiar with mma, maybe they saw he lost recently, maybe thats their exposure to it. How do you sell this to people . This is something you should be interested in, heres what you should be watching . The martial arts in particular is one of the Contact Sports in the world, martial ar arts, wrestling. Martial arts for me is an intellectual pursuit. Unlocking things, solving puzzles, dedication, discipline. So actually we have these huge kids classes because parents want their kids involved in jujitsu and martial arts to teach them to protect themselves. Heres a status thing against your status thing. It looks like raw violence. Do you see Something Different . Its professional. Its very professional. Theres a lot of technique there. I see a chess game, just with humans. And blood. Let me ask you, and well end on this. Let me ask you the most obviously cliched question. What does your knowledge in mma and martial arts bring to you as a ceo . Thats so cliche. Thank you for the question. At legacy republic, were looking to digitize you went right into sales. No matter what did you as ceo it took a lot of persistence to get there and theres problem solving in entrepreneurship and i think theyre similar. Do you combine the two . Brian knapp is ceo of legacy republic, and i want to acknowledge him. I shut him down. When he got off course, i shut him down. Hes going to kick your [ bleep ] after the break. Were going to try to predict 2017. If its anything like 2016, were going to have some trouble. When press here continues. Welcome back. We do not like cliches around here, in fact, we avoid them like the plague. But there is one old standby that really does work for us, and thats using our first show of the new year to try to predict whats going to happen in the new year. Not that we did very well predicting anything last time. We certainly did not predict donald trump would be the next president of the united states, or that Vladimir Putin would be tied up in our president ial politics, or that britain would vote to leave the eu. And the chicago cubs, who could possibly have seen that coming . Nobody. So it is with honestly great trepidation we launch ourselves into 2017. Were going to stick to the things we know best, which is tech and entrepreneurship, and b. J. Lackland is going to help us out. Hes an expert on china which no doubt will be a major factor in 2017. Thanks for being with us. What are you looking for in 2017 . What do you think the Big Investments are, what do you think the big trends are . First thing, one, i have young kids. Im trying to figure out if selfdriving cars are going to work because i dont want my kids to face the dangers i did in high school as a driver. Second, internet soft. People get into he esoteric technologies on the scene. Viewer fast is a software. Local software, you load it up in the cloud and sort of access it over the internet. Exactly. Number three is i think more and more businesses will understand there are different ways to finance their growth. Weve doubled our fundings in the last couple years, expect to double again, and weve seen more and more vps taking equity so taking safe routes and charging less interest. Are you going to ipo like crazy . Its always an interesting guessing game. I think well see more than in 2016. It was pretty disappointing in a lot of ways. It couldnt be worse. I think well see some that take off and go ipo. I think well see some that have down routes. Like uber or dropbox . Dropbox came out and said they might go public. Uber seems to want to put it off for a long time. People are are scared of the public markets. I was the ceo of a public company, so it doesnt scare me as badly. You have a degree in chinese studies. You speak chinese. Ill take your word for it because obviously i wouldnt know if you didnt. With trump in china thats going to be an issue. Is there any precautions we can take because of the strange waters . I think whats interesting is weve seen the Chinese Government be very adult in their reaction. Theyre sort of being obama about it, in a way. But i think that ultimately theres going to be a little bit of a tiff, and it will depend if anybody can get their arms around trump and calm him down. These things are usually involved in a crisis. At the other side you know who is who. What route will that take where china is concerned . It could be a trade war. Hopefully well back off from that. You think it will remain economic . I think it will remain economic, because thats trumps big push. Theyre stealing our jobs and things like that. What do you see in terms of Immigration Reform or Corporate Tax rates . Maybe in the sense of a give and take between trump and tech . He doesnt seem to understand that very well or the benefits of it. Youre based out of seattle. Weve watched Seattle House prices. Theyre phenomenally through the roof. Were very familiar with this problem. Were beyond phenomenal. Is there any effort in seattle not to become Silicon Valley . There is some awareness of it. Seattle is kind of a mini Silicon Valley. I drove around seattle and saw 58 cranes in the business area. It was just nuts. Seattle is going through a hypergrowth. Do they want to do that sort of thing with traffic and homelessness . Most people there own their houses. Are they saying, oh, no, dont let my house price go up . It is, theres no rent control there, theres a lot of Development Going on. House prices are going up, but its still reasonable and sort of a better place to make a wage and buy a house. San francisco has an attitude of an activism that seattle maybe doesnt have. Oh, its got its fair portion. Fair enough, yes. Its concentrating on broadening out, though, in a nice way, because it was an amazon town with microsoft on the side. Now its a cloud town, lots of cloudbased businesses. Maybe its the cloud city. Our offices are about four blocks from awss headquarters. Theres a ton of stuff around there. Oracle has like three offices in town. Facebook has close to a million square feet. Do you think when it comes to acquisition, we might see more mergers . Im thinking like tmobile . You could. Youre not going to have as many antitrust issues. Im not sure that will help with startups. B. J. , we started the conversation with you give capital to companies but in a very different way. Banks loan them, Venture Capital gives money in exchange for equity, and youre somewhere in the middle. Can you give me the elevator pitch on what it is you try to do . Absolutely. Were a technical Financial Company thats revolutionizing the business for our clients. What do you do . What we do is we Fund Companies with gross capital in small amounts in a highly technical way. We evaluate them from a distance. We funded companies and did over a hundred deals last year. But not in exchange for equity. Not in exchange for equity. Youre running this computer model all the time and say, hey, wed like to loan you money . Do you call them up . Sometimes we call them up. If its not equity and its not a loan, what is it . We give a company, say, 500 grand. They pay us a percentage of the revenue until theyve paid us back. Its flexible payments as their cash goes up and down and such, and it acts kind of like the best of net equity, right . We make more money if they perform really well. B. J. , we got to the top floor. B. J. Lackland, thank you for being with us. Our next guest left a company to run a startup. Around the bay area and give us an hd view of whats happening. This is our mobile doppler radar. Theres the scan right there picking up on some very heavy rain just offshore. This will be moving in within the next 30 to 40 minutes into the coastal areas of the bay, and we will see this moving in with some strong wind and some heavy rain, and we are seeing the bright reds and the yellows there once again as our storm ranger scans around, picking up on some heavy rain. Just to the north of san francisco, weve also gotten word that both northbound and southbound 101 just north of windsor near arata lane has been closed because of some flooding over the roadway. Also some cars in the water. Just some reminders that if you see standing water, do not drive over it. Well have more updates coming up here. Welcome back to press here. There is a predictable path for successful people in Silicon Valley. They start out as entrepreneurs and end up as Venture Capitalists. Marcus reason in vents and now runs his own company. Reed hoffman creates linkedin and now runs a company. These are their normal path which means my guest is doing it backwards. He was a Venture Capitalist, and a darn good one. He was some of the first money into that super hot startup anthem. Rubric is a Silicon Valley company that has something to do with data management. We care less about that than his odd past. Thank you for being with us this morning. Thanks for having me. Have you ever been a ceo . Parttime ceo. Are you any good at it . Why go from Venture Capitalist youre clearly good. Why go from that youre good at it, youre making money at it. Why go to this . It was like a passion project. I mean, i was a Venture Capitalist helping people earn money in their business, but i wanted to manage people in their product, and i found a market for an opportunity and felt why not . Ive done that in the past. I know how to build product and how to take it to market. You have a background of managing, you say, 50 people at oracle, and you studied in this area, so in a sense it was something that was probably inevitable, perhaps . It is a very interesting thing that i talk about because im a Computer Systems guy and i in the last 10 to 15 years, the Computer System is exploding with facebook, google. But its less about the technical and more about the people. Very good observation. My skill was how to manage people. And i also figured out that im better in more of a team than an individual. Did you find this company or did the company come to you and say we need you as a ceo . I actually came up with the idea and went to my friend. Youre the founder as well . Exactly. How do you get Venture Capital out of vinod khosla . We have to talk to you how not to approach this on the subject of that interview. How do you go find Venture Capital . I actually venture out and talk to vps about this idea and how it can make a huge impact and create a large company. I had my business line, i had a good Market Strategy in how to expand the business, and its killer. Youve been on the other side of a lot of pitch meetings. What surprised you about pitching the vp that you hadnt been ready for . What surprised me was that on the other side i was always skeptical as a Venture Capitalist. As an entrepreneur, im more optimistic. Between the intellect, which is Venture Capital, and vil, when people ask you questions, i am shocked. Theyre asking me questions. Its a big psychological shift as much as anything. Exactly. As an entrepreneur you always think above site. It must be kind of fun to be an optimist every day. As long as its going well. What you do is so unusual. We couldnt think of anyone who made the jump that you did. Are you looking at someone that perhaps we dont know in tech that did this, or another industry . A good example was a Venture Capitali capitalist, and he started the model of going out. That is a good model to look at because he applied all his learning from being an operator, being a Venture Capitalist. You obviously have access to the money to make it happen, and you create this company. You have to have said to yourself, there is no better ceo out there. You could have found a ceo. You know lots of ceos, you could have had access to them to run the company that you created, and you chose you. Which means you think you are the best ceo to run this company, right . Again, thats a very good question because i was thinking about that. What i thought about is i wanted the entrepreneurs to go run their company so is they can express their vision. As long as they are on top of where this company should be and what this company deserves, if youre performing at back level, you should work with the ceo. If youre not back level, you should take the company where it can go. How long do you see yourself doing this . I want to take it all the way. This is a massive opportunity. We grew 1,000 persons a lot in years. How many employees do you have now . 150. How many do you want to have at the end of this year . About 400. Oh, my gosh. Well be back after this message. Thats our show for this week. Thanks to my guest. B. J. Lackland gave us a forecast for 2017. The last time he was on, i mentioned this, he talked about things you should never say to a Venture Capitalist if you want money. To see that interview and any other interview, check out kntv. Com. Recent shows are also available through itunes. Im scott mcgrew. Thank you for making us part of your sunday morning. Damian trujillo hello, and welcome to comunidad del valle. Im Damian Trujillo, and today we celebrate hello and welcome to comunidad del valle. Im Damian Trujillo and today we celebrate the 40th anniversary of a dancer. Theyre celebrating 40 years of dancer all across the area. Were going to begin actually with my little girls, the peewee version. They are dancing from the region of mu