Test. Test. Test. Youve said that Silicon Valley is actively hostile to diversity. How has that not affected the way that things work at slack . A sort of blind admissions test you do up front or has it affected . Its the intentionality that people at flak from stewart has. We have conversations at flak ive never had any other place how were doing hiring and who were hiring and we could care less if you went to cal, stanford, san jose state or university of miami. We dont care. We want you to work at these companies and we dont care about that and i think that has been a huge part. What has also been a huge part, once you start at a very early age and very early element in your company, it makes it easier because youre not stopping from way back. Google, twitter, thousands of employees and so far behind and then they have reputations. People walk in and they dont see anybody that looks like themfthem f why would they want to work there . How does one solve that problem . Because things are so bad in Silicon Valley. And they are, if you look at the diversity numbers from any of the Top Tech Companies here, its really bad and when you look across at what happened in the American Education system, if you look at what happened with american manufacturing, there were actually like people put in place quotas and thats what managed to change the game in these companies, these Big Industrial companies and in American Education. Why would Silicon Valley not look at that as a very simple solution to what is in fact an ind indimmic problem . I dont think quotas work and i think its another way of saying that we wont lower the bar. It plays into the exact same argument. Well get people who arent qualified and that is not what anybody is saying. What im saying and other people are saying, we want one, a level playing field. You need a level playing field. You dont go o tto places like m. I. T. And cal and cmu. Places that dont have diversity. Right . So thats not about quotas but leveling the new playing field. You look at the Ethnic Diversity of any of the new universities and thats a quo that for people who are white. Thats a quota for people who are asian. I dont believe in quotas. I think theyre inherently wrong and Realistic Solutions that dont have quotas attached to them. I understand that and theres got to be a better system, thats a blunt instrument. But ive seen other interviews with you where you talk about the indemmic and systemic and nature of privilege and how people need to step back to make room for other people. You talked about that in the interview. And i think that, i dont know, maybe, this is a really tough issue to talk about, but i think its important to do so, and i just wonder what the space looks like, how that stepping back works when privilege is so institutionalized that its not something people recognize. I have a data point to bring up. Theres an Organization Called forward. Uf. Its fwd. Uf. And you look at the page, its probably looking much like diversity looks like and they are looking to raise h1b. I think its a great thing. Lets do that. But the lobbying firms for these companies that are supporting anywhere between 3 million and 4 million per quarter and so you look up to 12 million a year on raising the account. Why do we have Something Like that for increasing diversity and increasing inclusion . I think thats a place where you can start. You get the people who are doing Something Like that, and apply it to, you know, the united states. Apply it to less diverse areas and you can take the, another data point, ill try to tie two things together. Facebook, 37 of their Engineering Team is asian. Google, upwards of 47 and twitter, 20 . The money they spend in asia overall anywhere between 25 million and 50 million per year since 2012. Is it any wonder they have those percentages of asians . No, its not. What if we were to spend that here . In detroit or in richmond or in washington, dc . Would we have a more diverse workplace . I think so. Isnt that a matter of Market Expansion . These companies are trying to go abroad and grow, and the way to do that is to set up research haves to reach out to those countries. Maybe im conflating two issues and confusing two interviews. I did a lot of research for this, im sorry. But if the market is so saturated in the u. S. , do u. S. Companies need to set up shops to reach out to these communities . They dont need to set up shop at the same scale. You want to put 2,000 people . You dont have to, could you put 200 . Definitely. Its a drop in the hat for google. Its a drop in the hat for facebook and its actually cost competitive. These are two areas in india and areas in china. Ive had teams and i know what the cost structure looks like. You could do the same thing here at a lower scale. That does something interesting. Imagine if you did go to detroit or richmond that have large diverse population. All of the sudden, you see people in the neighborhoods, people see their neighbors in the well paying jobs and start to aspire to that. You have people going to Mountain View and when you crave an inclusive environment, they talk to their friends and networks are going to look like them and theyre going to hire d look like them. Its what these companies spent the last 3 years and tens of millions of dollars and made virtually no impact whatsoever. So weve been beating on large tech companies. Lets go down a level and beat up on other people. Criticism, a healthy criticism. Is the same true of the entrepreneurial community. Entrepreneurship and investment from tech startups. Would you advise young entrepreneurs to stay in the valley . To build their companies . Good question and probably not. Its hard to encourage to someone to stay in a place thats hostile. When you walk into one of the offices in sand hill road and people have a preconceived notion based upon where you look whether its a Woman Entrepreneur like morgan up here a moment ago who talked about her struggles in fund raising. She has an amazing Market Opportunity and difficult for her to get funding. There are smaller markets and private equity firms. A shoutout in new orleans and startup detroit. There are communities there but a year or so ago, if i was going to create another startup, go to detroit. For detroit, i mean, a male cofounder, you need to get more white people in your team because having a team of six black people doesnt look good. I have heard these stories from people and things never said to an asian or white person ever. Should one try to ignore that capital or is a solution or so entrenched here that people should not worry about it at all. Silicon valley follows, and whether or not, and i hope it is, theyll show up. And this is what needs to happen and i hope it does. Because i think thats the fast track. This is an incredible conversation. I hope we get to continue it over many other events like this one and just in heard. Raise for gaming on the pc. You guys seem really engaged. Sam, whats up, man . From razor. Thank you for having me. Razor, you guys have built razor as big peripherals, hardware company, for gamers by gamers. Gamer is your thing. Now you are doing something a little bit different. Tell us about your, youve got some news today. What are you doing . Sure. So very quickly, i think in the past couple of years, weve got a bit of a longer pedigree of sorts, so around 10 years since we were founded. And everything from hardware. So we shipped over 20 minutes and weve got a Massive Software platforms with gamers, 20 minutes and come online every single day to connect with us. And i think one of the questions that was on our minds is whats next . What else can we do . Today, were announcing the fund that were calling it z ventures. 30 million fund from razor on a balance sheet. Really focused that early stage startups that razor with the kind of structure and the start of the investment. Would you say its razors way of trying to diverse itself. Robotics but also ecommerce and supply chain management. Its a real soup to nuts investment thing. So what are you guys doing . A couple of different focuses. The first of which, looking at startups that razor can bring value too. And a lot of startups with a whole lot of Exciting Technology or solutions, products. So for us, really focused on companies that razor can help and a traditional bc by any means and for example, a user base that we bring across to startups out will. Over and above, weve got a lot of experience in the hardware and software. And its hard, typing, evt, we want to bring it across to startups and the other end of the spectrum, you look at software and finally, specifics, weve got a Global Distribution network to bring across startups too. So a third of Business Today is in north america, a third of it is in europe and in asia. And we work with, for example, retail chains like best buy and the u. S. In europe and china. These are some of the benefits that we try to bring to the startups as opposed to a traditional bc that may be focused on a financial return. Razor is your target audience are gamers. Do you see yourself as a Mainstream Company or really niche specialized gamers . Do you want to be a Mainstream Company . For ourselves, weve created a cult of sorts. Gamers that with the razor logos themselves, set up a huge following and thats the core of what the company is. For gamers by gamers and thats what we want to continue focusing on. The segment of the gamer whos passionate about design and technology and that is really what we want to focus on. What weve realized, however, is that what we dont necessarily want to go mainstream, mainstream is coming to us. From the premise of if you see things like, pokemon go for that matter, people who dont necessarily identify themselves as gamers are slowly looking at gaming being one of the most engaging forms of entertainment. On top of that and maybe the segue back to the conversation on ventures, the Gaming Community or the Gamer Community is also the perfect user base to test new technologies. You look at it historically, youve got motion sensing. The nintendo wii. Gamers tend to be tech savvy. Comfortable beta Testing Technology and more importantly, evangelizing it to the entire Gaming Community and probably more gamers in the future than any other segment. Okay. You mentioned pokemon go. A huge success. John is on stage tomorrow, i think. Are you gouys, do you want to build something as successful as that . A pokemon go ever, is that in your sights . Could you do it . I think traditionally for us, we want to continue doing what were good at which is focusing on gamers building create products, software, and services for gamers. And thats what were going to continue doing. When we first started 10 years ago, gaming wasnt a buzz word. Try pitching anyone 10 years ago and hardware, thats not something were interested in. Today, hardware is in a renaissance of sorts and game time in a prime time because of pc gaming, its bigger than movies, bigger than music. A huge amount of interest in gaming right now. For ourselves, we are in an opportune position to take advantage of that and while the masses come into gaming today, these masses will probably leave when theres something bigger and newer, shinier to look at. Ourselves, we know what were good at which is designing with gamers and always doing that. Whether the industry is big or small, thats what were good at and what well do. Does that mean you dont want to build a pokemon go or yes . I think if it comes along, yes, and something we can build for gamers everywhere and 2 billion gamers right now. Do you think, damn it, we could have done that . Did you have a moment like that or think, thats so cool. Its filled a communication layer on it. I think we just build stuff we like. We started off as a peripherals company and candidly, because i travel so much and i was looking at, for example, gaming laptops in the past and werent really gaming laptops. Big, heavy, and thick, so we built a team in the past couple of years and made probably some of the best gaming laptops in the world and thats what we do. Its great. And really taking over the world in the sense where there are gamers out there and we are really hyperfocused on the gamers and thats what we do. Okay. What do you think the next generation of games is going to look like . We could be here all day. In ten words or less . You guys are doing really amazing stuff. Is it all going to be in vr or are we going to be, obviously, mobile games are massive right now. But, you know, weve still got a lot of consoles. Where is the the hockey puck going . Where are you going with that . Gamers, as a demographic, its not just going horizontally. In the past, it was u. S. , europe, korea, china, southeast asia. Gaming is going really quickly everywhere but also seeing gamers are getting older as a whole. Gamers are more familiar playing different types of games and even today, a 2yearold is swiping on a tablet right away. So given the whole proliferation of the entire stack, we think gaming is going to go everywhere. Its going to be a lot more pervasive and definitely, i think really the key. Vr is about having the most immersive gaming experiences out there. Be it whether its an mmo that you play on the pc that gives you a call on your mobile phone to go back to your game or, you know, different players of vr, i think immersion is the key. To go back to z interest for a few second, one of the categories is robotics. Are you guys building a robot . We are excited about robotics. At razor, weve got, we tend to be at cs in a big bang of sorts. Yeah. And were always looking at new things, looking at new interfaces of sorts. We think robotics is an exciting new area that theres a huge amount of innovation and i think for us, because we see it as a confluence between software, firmware, and hardware, and thats something that we can as a company, thats one of the areas we look at. Ill take it as a yes. You mentioned all of these new areas. Theres also a lot of new companies coming into the space. Who do you see now as your biggest competitor . Thats an odd question of sorts, because i think we are pretty much a Different Company in the sense that we represent probably a company on a newer wave of things that everyone is kind of seeing at this point in time. So traditionally, Companies Back in the day would be great at a certain thing. So, for example, great at making peripherals or laptops or what have you. And these Traditional Companies would then say, okay, im going to carve out a segment for productivity. Im going to be doing productivity mouse, or a gaming thing or something for designers or for, i dont know, sports people or what have you. But that has changed. Weve evolved to the user and with greater affluence and focus on getting great experiences. And were focused on one person and thats just the gamer. The thing is, do we have competitors in the laptop space . Yes. We have competitors, for example, in the Software Platform says but there isnt a Single Company that is just hyperfocused on the gamer, so we dont have a competitor of sorts today. What about amazon . Theyve made a massive investment and acquired twitch. They are now finally finding success with hardware. You know, with their echo and everything. So do you think that might be a company that could keep you up at night one day . I think for us, the entire industry of gaming is so big. We are a huge fan of what amazon is doing with twitch. We work closely together with them. And what theyre doing at lumberyard, for example, the studios that they have, thats a company we have a huge amount of respect for. Got it. But because the entire industry is massive, if you look at the Movies Industry or the music industry, theyre large companies, they go throughout the entire ecosystem without competing. Its true. We see gaming being larger than movies and music. Theres just this massive upswing of opportunities for all of us. The key is not what we want to do with opportunities presented. Lets talk about investment for a second. Youre a startup too. 18yearold startup. So some of your investment you just closed, some havent. Some has been reported and then you confirm it. Are you guys raising anymore money now . Not right now. So were not raising anymore capital at this point in time and we havent raised a lot of capital in the past couple of years. For us, weve been really focused on doing investments through our own that we built through the last couple of years and we talk about startups investing startups. Thats one of the things that i do see coming up as a new trend of sorts because a lot of us are staying longer and this is an opportunity to tap up into the Startup Ecosystem and contribute back to the community at the same time and then i expect to see more of the startups do that. I think so too. The strategic Investment Funds for sure. But, you guys are like, Opening Stores everywhere. Youre building more hardware and building different kinds of hardware and youre investing in startup. Are you funding all of that yourselves from your current coffers or are you going to need more money for that . So we did a recent i think reported on tech crunch, but what were doing primarily for these are for our own coffers and we see a continuous need to fund new startups because i dont believe that well be all things to all gamers. We see a lot of incredible talent out there. We see a lot of startups that could help them bring their services to our users and give a leg up immediately for 20 million new active users for that matter and say, still distributing through a small platform. Why dont we get you global, immediately, through all of our channels everywh