>> Narrator: From Menlo Park, California,
in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE
covering CloudNOW awards, 2020, brought to you
by SiliconANGLE Media.
Now, here's Sonia Tagare.
>> Hi and welcome to theCUBE, I'm your host Sonia Tagare
and we're on the ground at Facebook headquarters
in Menlo Park, California covering CloudNOW's
Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards.
Joining us today is Geeta Schmidt, CEO of Humio,
Geeta welcome to theCUBE.
>> Thank you, thanks for having me.
>> So just give us a brief overview of your background
and more about Humio.
>> All right, a brief overview, let's see.
I'll start off that I've been in the industry
for some time now since '97 which I used to actually work
at this campus that we're here today at
when it used to be Sun Microsystems.
So I started out in technology in product management
in marketing mainly when Java was coming out.
So early days and really learned a lot about what it takes
to take a product or a concept out to market,
very exciting in those early days and sort of move towards
looking at industries and since we were focused
on financial services and did a lot
around financial services marketing also at Sun.
And then I moved to Denmark which is sort of a surprise
but I'm married to a Dane and we decided
we'll try something different so I moved to Denmark
working at a consulting company, software consulting company
based in Denmark, fairly small and I was part of
sort of building out sort of the conference
and business development business they had over there
and that was a way for me to understand a completely
other side of the business consulting aspects
where you really build software for a customer
and really understand sort of the customer solution needs
that are required versus when you're working
at a large enterprise company kind of are separated
away from the customers and that was there where I met
the two founding team members of Humio,
Christian and Kresten at Trifork and so,
essentially we've been working together for 10 years
and we sort of all felt like we could really
come out with the world's best logging solution
and this was out of some of the pain we were running into
by running other solutions in the market.
And so we took a leap into building
our own product business and so we did that in 2016
and so that's really what brought me here into the CEO role.
So we have a three person leadership or executive team
or founding team which is two fairly technical folks,
so the guys that really built the product
and keep it running and take it to the next level
every single day but what was missing was really
that commercial kind of leader that was ready
to take that role and that's where I came in
so and they were very supportive in bringing me on board,
so that was in 2016 where I started that.
>> That's awesome. >> Yeah.
>> So how do you think having like a business
and marketing background versus a technical background
has helped you become a successful CEO?
>> I think it's really, really hard if you don't have
different profiles on your founding team to be able
to run a successful tech business.
So there's technology that you could have
the world's greatest technology like an example would be
my co-founders were building an amazing product
but until I came into the room, they hadn't thought
about going out and trying to get a customer to use it
and essentially, that is one of the issues there
is that you can sit and build something
and build the best product out there
but if you're not getting feedback really, really early
in the design and the concepts of product development,
then customers are sort of not built in
and so a lot of the thought process around Humio
is we like to say, customers are in our DNA,
we build our product for people to use six to eight hours
a day and they're in it every day.
And so it keeps this feeling of a customer feedback loop
and even if you're technical, it's really exciting to know
that you built something that somebody uses every day
and looks at every day.
And so that's the kind of energy that we've tried to instill
or maybe I've tried to instill in Humio
that our customers really matter and I think that's one
of the ways that we've been able to move, let's say,
really, really fast in building the right features,
the right functionality and the right things
for people who are using it on the other end essentially,
so yeah. >> It's okay.
>> And so you're here to receive an award
for being one of the top female entrepreneurs
in cloud innovation, so congratulations.
>> Geeta: Thank you.
>> And how does it feel to win this award?
>> Super exciting, I mean, I'm glad that
there are organizations like CloudNOW that are doing
amazing things for women and also making examples of folks
that are doing interesting roles in our industry,
especially around B2B software, I think that's a real area
where there's not many CEOs or leaders in our space
where there should be and I think part of it
is actually kind of highlighting that but the other side
is sort of an event like this today is bringing together
a lot of other profiles there are women or diverse profiles
together to sort of talk about this problem
and acknowledge and also take, let's say,
more of an active stance around making this place
not so scary.
I mean, I think I remember one of my early events
when I was raising our series A where I walked
into a VC event where there were no other female CEOs
out there and there was a hundred CEOs
and I was the only one and I think one of the hard parts
is I walked in there and felt a bit uncomfortable
but there were two amazing VC partners at the company
that I first started talking to and that just really
eased the sort of like I guess uncomfortability.
So I think the the main focus at things like today
or the people that are here today
is I think we can help each other and I think
that's something that I'd like to see more of
that we actively sort of create environments and communities
for that to happen and CloudNOW is one of them, so.
>> I think a lot of women have had that experience
where they're the only woman in the room
and it's just really hard to like, figure out your path
from theirs so, as the company, as Humio, how do you,
what's your strategy for inclusion?
>> So like, I like to call it active inclusion.
I think part of this is like having a diverse workforce
which is obviously including women in different backgrounds,
other things but one of the big things we think about
at Humio is we really like to, let's say,
celebrate people's differences.
So like that you're able to be yourself and almost eccentric
is a good thing and be able to feel safe
in that environment, to feel safe that you can express
your opinions, feel comfortable and safe
when you're coming with a opposite viewpoint
because the diversity of thought is really what we're trying
to include in our company.
So it means bringing together folks
that don't look like each other,
wear exactly the same clothes and do the exact same hobbies
and come from the same country.
So we have a very global workforce.
So we have folks in Denmark, we have an office in Denmark,
we have an office in the UK and we have folks
all over the US so we have a lot of backgrounds
that have come from different cultures
and I think there's a beauty to that,
there's a beauty to actually combining a lot of ways
to solve problems.
Everyone from a different culture has different ways
of solving those and so I think part of this
is all around making that okay, right?
So active inclusion is a way to sort of put it into term so.
So we're definitely looking for people actively
that would like to join something like this, so yeah.
>> I love that.
>> That sounds good.
>> So, if you were, personally if you were to have your own
board of directors, like who would they be?
>> It's not really the who it's almost like,
the profiles or the people, I mean, I may already have
a personal board like I call it, I mean, it's something
that I actively started doing.
Once I started with a company board, I realized,
I probably need my own personal board,
my own sort of support infrastructure.
That includes folks like my family, my sisters and my mom.
It also includes some younger junior folks that are actually
much younger than me but I learned so much from
so one of my good friends, Cindy who is brilliant
at describing technology concepts and I think
just some of the conversations I've had with her
just open my eyes to something that I hadn't seen before.
And I think that's the area where I like to say
the personal board isn't exactly people, it's profiles.
So along the way, as you grow, you're looking
for new types of profiles, let's say you want to learn
about a new concept or a new technology or get better
at running or something.
So it's part of bringing those profiles
in to learn about it and then back to this board concept.
It's not as though it's a LinkedIn network
or it's actually sort of a group of people
that you start to rely on and then it's a two-way street.
So essentially, there could be things that the other person
could gain from knowing me and ideally,
those are the best relationships in a personal board.
So I encourage a lot of women to do this because it builds
a support infrastructure that is not related to your job,
it's not your manager, it's not your coworker,
you kind of feel some level of freedom
having those discussions because those people
aren't looking at your company,
they're looking at helping you.
So that's some of the concepts >> Right.
>> Around the personal board idea.
>> And I think as women like having a support system
is so necessary especially
in this like male-dominated industry.
>> Well, I think it's back to that whole feeling
like you're the one person in the room.
>> Right. >> Right
>> You're not the one person in the room.
And I think we need to change that and I think
that's like all of our kind of roles,
to fight for all the women in tech.
I mean, it's sort of like something
that we could help each other with.
Right and if we don't do it actively,
I mean, you know the numbers and we know the percentages
of these things.
If we want to change that, it does require
some active interest on our part to make that happen
and I think those are the areas where I see like
the support infrastructure is the events like this
really kind of engaging us to be aware
and doing something about the problem, so.
>> Geeta, thank you so much for being on theCUBE,
love having you here.
>> Thanks for having me, really appreciate it.
>> I'm Sonia Tagare, thanks for watching theCUBE,
stay tuned for more.
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