>> Hello World and Welcome to Microsoft Unboxed.
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>> I'm here onsite at Microsoft Build,
which to be honest,
happened a couple of weeks ago by
the time you're watching this video.
I'm one of your host, Colleen O'Brien,
and you're probably wondering where Sonia.
I'm wondering that too,
but I'm sure she's doing something really important.
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Build may have happened a little while back at this point,
but I didn't want to miss
this awesome opportunity to talk to you about
something that's near and dear to my heart; startups.
We're here at the Startup Gallery
where eight startups are battling for
the Attendee Choice Award which is
a co-sell package worth up to one million dollars.
Four of these startups have received investment from M12,
Microsoft's Venture Fund, and the team that I work on,
and the other four companies are
affiliated with Microsoft for Startups,
a program that offers technical resources,
free Cloud, and access to Microsoft co-sell opportunities.
In their quest to become the Attendees Choice Award winner,
each of the startups is pitching all of
these Build attendees on their great startup solutions.
Because this event actually occurred in the past,
I'm going to tell you by the end of this episode,
who won the Attendee Choice Award.
I'll be doing that back in the studio, hopefully with Sonia.
Let's go meet some of these companies.
>> The concept of DevOps is that you'll want to make
sure security is part of
the development of the lifecycle of your application.
>> We help developers monitor,
troubleshoot, and aid security on their products.
>> Awesome.
>> Helping you manage your entire pipeline from
code after deploying into a production cluster in Kubernetes.
So an end-to-end visibility for
developers and operational folks, and ease of use.
>> Awesome.
>> Developers come to us to discover and connect to public APIs,
and Teams use rapid to share all of
their internal APIs to better collaborate on that well.
>> I hope you-all enjoyed
those great conversations with those amazing startup leaders.
I personally, I'm feeling very inspired.
We're going to go ahead back into the studio and reveal who
won the Build Attendee Choice Award.
Of course, I have to go pick up Sonia.
Word on the street is that she's playing with some puppies.
So got to go find her.
All right, everyone, I found Sonia.
>> Sorry.
>> I changed my shirt,
and now we're ready to talk about M12 and Microsoft for Startups.
Those are the two programs that were sponsoring
the participation of all of those startups on the floor at Build,
and now we're going to learn a little bit more about them.
>> Yeah, we are.
>> Are you ready?
>> Yeah, I'm ready. So Microsoft is really aiming to try to be
a great tech partner to a lot of
these startups that are working
on great projects around the world.
So Microsoft will work with select accelerators, incubators,
VCs to offer exclusive opportunities
to these businesses that are looking to scale.
Microsoft for Startups was designed to
provide startups with the things that they
tell us are most valuable when building a hyperscale company.
We provide free of charge and with no equity stake,
access to technology and support
and access to customers and partners.
So on the technology front,
qualified startups in the program can receive
up to 120K of three Azure Cloud for two years,
Visual Studio Enterprise Cloud Subscription,
Office 365 Business Premium,
Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement and Talent,
and Enterprise Grade Azure Support.
So on the business front,
we also designed a streamlined way for startups to
quickly scale by selling alongside Microsoft.
So one, they'll get a dedicated success manager,
they'll get bidirectional lead sharing with our sales team,
targeted account planning,
facilitated introductions to reseller and services partners,
and international market expansion assistance.
>> That is huge.
>> Yeah.
>> Microsoft has one of,
if not the largest global sales force,
and co-sell really enables startups to tap
into that muscle, that sales muscle.
>> Yeah. So how can startups take advantage of these benefits?
Any startup can apply to the program regardless of where
they are located or what size they are,
you can go to startups.Microsoft.com to learn more.
We do a ton of evangelism work around the world,
and we have a team of startup advocates.
A great example is James Turnbull.
James was the CTO at Kickstarter,
VP of engineering at Venmo,
and then VP of Service at Docker.
He is currently conducting a series of startup events,
and if you're interested,
check out createstartups.io to see if they're coming to your city.
>> So I'm going to talk a little bit about M12,
which is Microsoft's venture fund.
>> Where she works, by the way.
>> Yeah, it's very near and dear to my heart because
I am the marketing manager for the fund.
So Microsoft has had a venture fund for three years now,
and M12 is empowering B2B entrepreneurs through investments,
insight, and unparalleled access to Microsoft.
We invest in early-stage startups transforming
the enterprise with a focus on AI and Machine Learning.
>> Our favorite topic.
>> Big data and analytics,
business SaaS, Cloud infrastructure,
security, productivity and communication, and emerging trends.
>> It's a lot of stuff.
>> That has a lot of stuff.
Our incredibly diverse and experienced team
is working out of Seattle,
San Francisco, London, and Tel Aviv.
So we have a very global team looking at
investment opportunities and all of those markets.
M12 is supporting startups around
the globe with founder friendly terms.
Go to "Market Expertise" and access to
that same co-sell program that you described earlier.
>> Nice. So when you say
founder friendly terms, what exactly does that mean?
>> So earlier this year,
the head of M12 really put a stake in
the ground that M12 is a founder-friendly fund.
As part of that, we would always have
terms that really benefit the founder,
that benefit the startups.
They're empowering them in building a great company.
>> More friendly, you could say.
>> Part of that was that we don't have any rights of
first refusal in the terms
that we give to the founders of the company.
>> That's awesome.
>> So if despite our investment,
a founder wants to take their company
and be acquired elsewhere, that's okay.
We don't have any rights of first refusal that would
prohibit the entrepreneur from doing that.
>> So it sounds like we're just trying to make it so
they can do the best thing for their business.
>> Yes we are all in on
supporting entrepreneurs and building their startups.
>> So I'm sorry,
I got distracted by the dogs.
>> Tell me about it.
>> You met with a couple of the startups, right?
>> I did. We actually did a tour of the Startup Gallery.
We spoke to each of the startup representatives on-site,
and got some really great insight
into what it's like to work at a startup,
what life on the ground as an entrepreneur is like,
but ultimately they were competing.
They were competing to be
the Attendee Choice Award winner at Microsoft Build.
>> Cool.
>> I attended the award ceremony
right after our interview sessions with them.
>> Nice, and who won?
>> The winner was Codefresh.
>> That's awesome. I wanted to say Codefresh,
but I didn't know who it was because I asked you. Go Codefresh.
>> Congratulations, Codefresh, on being
the Attendee Choice Award winner. Well done.
>> Yay.
>> So Microsoft is really invested in supporting startups.
We've spoken about a few ways here.
If you want to learn more about Microsoft for Startups,
visit startups.Microsoft.com,
and for more information about M12,
visit M12.vc, and now let's get into Outside the Box.
>> Doing it first?
>> Yeah, so I'm going to ask you.
>> Okay.
>> So Colleen and I have never seen these questions before.
We have 30 seconds to answer.
Usually, it's embarrassing for both of us.
>> Sonia, what's your most unusual talent?
>> Oh, I can touch my left ear with my left hand around my head.
>> Do it.
>> Okay, I haven't done this in a while.
I might rip it too. I can touch my ear.
>> So I got wingspan.
>> You've got some wings down there, cool and gross.
You rejoice going on there.
>> Give me the box.
>> What animal would you want to have a conversation with?
>> All right. I'm going to go with a starfish.
>> What? A starfish?
>> I saw, he was giving us the five-second until the time's up,
and I was like, "Starfish."
>> If you have any questions you'd like to submit
for In the Box or an upcoming segment,
you can e-mail them to the e-mail address below,
or you can comment on the video below.
>> Please remember to subscribe.
Hit that red "Subscribe" button right over there,
and you will get a notification
every Thursday at 9:00 AM when we go live.
Thanks for watching this week's episode. Bye.
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>> Hey, everyone. If you can't get enough of us,
I would highly recommend subscribing to our podcast,
Women in Business and Technology, available right here.
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