>> [Narrator] From the SiliconANGLE media office
in Boston, Massachusets, it's theCUBE.
Now, here's your host, Dave Vellante.
>> Hi everybody, Dave Vellante here
coming at you from our East Coast studios in
Marlborough, MA just outside of Boston.
What I wanted to do is give you a little recap
of 2017 and what's happening and give you
an update on SiliconANGLE Media.
So as many of you know SiliconANGLE
Media INC comprises three brands.
TheCUBE, which as most of you know is
we call it sometimes the ESPN of tech,
it's our live and on demand video broadcasting element.
And of course we have the research arm
which is Wikibon and Wikibon.com
And then, SiliconANGLE is our news site.
And so I want to just, as I said,
recap what went down in 2017 some of
the things you may not know about.
>> Last February, February first, actually
we opened the new studio in Palo Alto, California.
It's at 989 Commercial ST, you should check it out.
It's sort of near the mountain view line
but it's in Palo Alto, it's a great
location, we have a large studio there.
And throughout the year, in 2017
we held events, we had launches,
but most importantly John Furrier,
my business partner, is really running
editorial content programs out of that studio.
>> So every Thursday Furrier has high level key guests come in
CEOs, VCs, in customers, and they just riff on
what's going on in the industry and what's happening
It's been an absolutely awesome resource for us
and I really encourage you guys to go check it out.
We did 135 show days last year.
TheCUBE is run by our general manager, Jeff Frick
and 135 show days meaning we broadcast live at 135 days
at events last year, which is just incredible.
>> It was our first year we ever did anything in China
We did the Alibaba conference,
the cloud show there that was very exciting.
We did a number of shows in Europe
and of course all the big shows in the United States as well
>> We launched three websites last year.
TheCUBE.net is the latest one.
You know, a lot of times we talk about data driven media.
If you go to theCube.net and check it out,
you'll see something called theCUBE Alumni database.
And theCUBE Alumni database contains virtually
everybody who's ever been on theCUBE.
So you can search CIOs, CEOs, developers, bloggers, analysts
all the folks that have been on theCUBE you can see
and they've got a profile page on each one of those
so, we're collecting all that data
SiliconANGLE.com we launched the new website
>> SiliconANGLE is run by Rob Hof, who is our Editor-in-Chief
Rob was the Silicon Valley beuro chief for business week
for the better part of a decade,
so we're really proud to have Rob on.
He's been on for the last couple of years
and just doing a great job with that site.
>> And then Wikibon.com is run by Peter Burris
he's our Chief Research Officer
He's been with us now for the better part of 2 years
and he's got that team cranking on all
kinds of research in cloud and AI
and data orientation, the edge, and
infrastructure for emerging applications like AI.
>> One of the areas we're most excited about that we
launched in 2017 was a new capability called Clipper.
So we have this tool called Video Clipper
as you know, John Furrier and I, when we met
we had this vision for data driven media and innovation
and we launched this tool we call video clipper
that was developed by Kent Libbey and his team
one of our newer executives that we brought
in last year on the product side.
>> What Video Clipper does is we transcribe every video
now that we do, we'll transcribe this video,
and then we synchronize the transcript with the video
and we're able to then search video, highlight a text,
a paragraph let's say, push a button
and boom we've got a clip and that clip is
ready to be shared throughout various social media platforms
like Twitter, and LinkedIn, and Facebook and the like
So very, very excited about that tool
you're going to be hearing more about that
We don't sell it as a separate tool, we integrate it
as part of our offerings and got some new offerings
that we're bringing to customers in 2018.
>> One of the other really exciting things in 2017
we brought in a new chief revenue officer his name is
Greg Theriault, I'm going to introduce you to him today
Greg Theriault is with me here in studio, Greg,
it's great see you, thanks for spending some time with us.
>> [Greg] Thank you, Dave, thanks for the opportunity
I've never been more excited.
Let me tell you a little bit about myself
I live in Concord, MA right around the studio here
and I came from the IT industry.
I've been there for a long time.
I used to be at a small systems integrator,
kind of the size of SiliconANGLE Media,
building client servers, computing, got certified
in Novell, and then I jumped into sales.
I worked most recently at Forester Research
and was there for almost 18 years, two decades,
building the sales capabilities,
always wrapped around the customers,
but I am thrilled to be here today
>> [Dave] So, Novell, when our network
goes down can you help us fix that?
>> It was about 20 years ago but,
you know the history with Novell
>> Yeah, another Utah company that somehow didn't make it,
but for a while they were a little monopoly.
So you've been in the business now for a couple of decades
maybe, you know, think about what has happened
over the last 20 years, what kind of changes have you seen?
Share with us your perspectives.
>> I've never seen so much disruption
from client server, to social computing,
to AI, now it's digital disruption in everything
and you hear about this all the time in the news
that companies are becoming software companies
look around the corner, GE is now GE digital, they're
trying to reinvent themselves, very, very exciting times.
AI machine learning, autonomous computing,
and then right around the corner there's block chain
I mean that's the big buzz these days
Also there's the autonomous vehicles,
and let em give you a quick story
About two years ago my son was born
and I was fortunate enough to have a breakfast
with the CEO of Tesla, and I asked him
"Hey, he was born, what's going to happen in 16 years?"
and JB said to me quite candidly, he said
"if your son is driving a car that's not autonomous
it won't be safe and he won't need a license"
So, things are happening at an epic speed
I don't know I these prediction will be true but it is Telsa
>> [Dave] Won't need a license, you know it's funny,
I mean, I don't know how you feel about it but
when I turned 16 it was one of the most exciting
days of a young person's life.
You wonder what the social implications of that is
if you don't need a license, I don't know
maybe they can start driving at 14 or 13, you know whatever
but you know what I'm saying? >> [Greg] Yeah
That was a really exciting time
we couldn't wait to get our permits
and "Dad can I drive you to the dump?"
Right? It's like... >> Self driving cars and
self driving refrigerators, I mean, it's moving fast
it's at an epic speed right now
>> Well everything, and again, you take that business
it's all about the data, as I said in my intro
we always talk about data driven media
we got so much data, you talk about digital transformation,
philosophy is digital meets data
>> Right >> and you talked about GE
you're seeing all these companies now
getting disrupted because digital allows
people to move so fast, it allows companies like
Apple to get into financial servies
and you're seeing Amazon become a content company
and it's really all around the data, isn't it?
>> [Greg] Absolutely >> So, I wonder if you could
share with our audience, SiliconANGLE Media, small company
you came from a much larger firm, a big brand,
Forester, your former company.
What attracted you to SiliconANGLE Media?
>> I think it was the fact that I jumped on airplane and
went out to Palo Alto and met with your general managers.
I think the innovation and the speed,
the speed around it's in your DNA
and then you took social computing,
combined it with really computing power.
And then I saw the Video Clipper tool.
It's the fastest application I've ever seen to clip video
and that innovation, the speed really attracted me
to the company, to build really powerful content
>> [Dave] Yeah it's been quite a ride
since I met John Furrier in 2010.
You know, John at the time, said
"Dave, whatever we do we have to innovate.
"We have to continue to invest in R&D"
And those R&D experiments they don't always pay off
but when one hits, like the Clipepr tool, it can be
a home run so we're very excited about that.
Share with us your philosophy,
what can we expect from Greg Theriault?
>> [Greg] Sure, I appreciate that.
Well I'm happy to be here I actually blogged on LinkedIn
over the weekend about my transition here, and I think
it starts off with my family, my son and my wife
they helped me, they grounded me, but my philosophy
on business is to really be customer focused
to hire the right people, train and coach, and build
a different mindset which I call the growth mindset
the sales rep of the future is being disrupted right now
just like very other function.
And that is absolutely pivotal.
I think the buyers change, Dave.
Faster in two years than the past 100 years
the buyer is in control, you have to build systems,
processes and technologies wrapped around
how do you help the customer be successful at drygrowth
and that's the biggest shift going on right now
I mean sales right now, again, is being disrupted
so social selling and things like that,
I want to bring that kind of discipline
and processes to SiliconANGLE Media
>> [Dave] Well, what about social selling?
A lot of people will, when social media really started
to come into play, a lot of people say "well, we sell
to IT people, and IT people, they don't have time
to go on Twitter, they don't do Facebook"
What's your perspective, has that changed
you know and what about that?
>> It's changed faster than I could ever believe
buyers buy differently but they also need
to see the different presence in social
that's Twitter, that's LinkedIn, and that's
also you have to be on the phone, you have to be in front
of customers but it absolutely is pivotal that
the new, let's call it a digital rep,
needs to understand the tools to listen.
Listen to the customer first and foremost, and it's
a new channel but it's a channel here for a long time.
Again, it's disrupting sales at an epic pace
>> [Dave] So what are your priorities,
looking out, say, near term, mid-term, long term?
>> [Greg] To wrap my hand around the customer base you
have to innovate with them, with the team we build
And also to build the collaborative culture
I'm really into culture and the ability to kind of game-afy
the culture, grow the business, accelerate the business,
and also develop the team that we build.
I mean, the aspirations to where do they want to be
in a couple years will help build the business
and that's a global business as well
>> Well, of course, a lot of the action in the
tech business is out in Silicon Valley, and you and I
are based here in the East coast, What can we expect
in terms of your presence in Silicon Valley?
>> I'll be on a plane a lot, and I don't mind that at all
I mean, it's a flat country right now
So I'll be on a plane, but also the heat is in
Boston, New York, Chicago, but the Valley is where it's at
so I'm going to be jumping on plane in two weeks
to meet with the team, I can't wait
>> [Dave] Well, we're excited Greg, to have an
executive of your callabor join our team.
>> [Greg] Thank you, appreciate that
>> Congratulations, and look forward to many,
many years of productive growth and adding
value for our clients with you
>> [Greg] Likewise, thank you >> Alright, you're welcome.
Thanks for watching everybody, this is Dave Vellante
with Greg Theriault, we'll see you next time.