[Narrator] From the heart of Silicon Valley, it's the Cube.
Covering Cloud Now seventh annual Top Women Entrepreneurs
in Cloud Innovation Awards.
(techno music)
>> Hi, Lisa Martin on the ground with the Cube
at Facebook headquarters
at the seventh annual Cloud Now Top Women
in Cloud Innovation Awards.
We are here for our third time
with the founder of Cloud Now,
Jocelyn Degance Graham.
Jocelyn, it is great to have you back.
Great to be back here for your seventh annual Cloud Now.
>> We are just so delighted to be here with you Lisa
and the Cube and all of the support and wonderful help
that you've given us through the years for this event.
>> So you have a lot of firsts that I wanted to cover
and I know we've just got a few minutes of your time.
Seventh annual, as I mentioned.
>> Jocelyn: That's right.
>> Your Cloud Now community now boasts over 1500 members.
There's over 300 attendees here tonight.
>> Jocelyn: That's right.
>> And tell us what was really unique about how easy it was
to attract this audience.
>> Well this, we've never had such a great response
for this event Lisa.
And some of that could just be the timing.
It is finally an idea who's time has come, right?
And so there just seems to be such a groundswell
of understanding the importance of inclusion and diversity.
And beyond that actually creating belonging, right?
So more and more,
I feel like there's such an actual enthusiasm
that we hadn't seen before.
So this year, we didn't actually publish tickets
or let people know that tickets were available.
Everything was essentially sold through word of mouth.
And so, we never even published any tickets.
And we sold out of the event.
And that was definitely a first for us.
>> Another first is being here.
>> Yeah.
>> Not only being here at Facebook headquarters
in Menlo Park California,
but also having Sheryl Sandberg as one
of the keynote speakers this evening.
>> It is such an honor.
You know she is one of the women
who has just been so important in terms
of the Seminole movement of women in tech.
Like many women, I read her book, Lean In, years ago.
And the fact that she's here with us tonight
at the event, after having inspired an entire movement,
is really significant and we're just thrilled.
>> Another thing that's really interesting
and a unique first for Cloud Now this year
is you're recognizing 10 female tech entrepreneurs
who are technical founders.
>> Jocelyn: Technical founder, venture backed.
>> Of venture backed businesses.
>> Jocelyn: That's absolutely right.
>> Tell us about how you've been able to achieve that
because their backgrounds are diverse and the technologies
that they're designing and driving are really incredible.
>> This is one of the most, I think, exciting firsts
about the event this year is
in past events, we were recognizing women
that had made major contributions in a technical field.
And we were recognizing women regardless of the level
or role or responsibility in the organization.
Now we had largely done that
because there were so few female founders
of venture funded startups.
This year was an absolute breakthrough year
for many different reasons.
There are organizations now like Allraise.org
that are supported by women VC's.
And there just seems to be an entire groundswell
of female founders and we were able to,
this year for the first time,
align the criteria around female technical founders.
And I'm really hoping that moving forward
we'll be able to continue with that
as more and more women realize
that they should be starting businesses
and they can get venture backing.
>> And we're excited to talk to those winners tonight
and ask how did you go about doing that?
What were your inspirations
and how do you kind of combat those fears
and just the history of the challenge
of getting funding there?
Another thing that I noticed on the Cloud Now website is
one of your taglines is together we can make a difference.
In, you know, just the last minute or so
give me some examples of how you're helping
to make a difference that really resonate with you
and that give you inspiration for your 2019 goals.
>> That's such a great question.
So for me, really one of the most heartening things
about the organization is that the work we're doing together
and through our scholarship program.
So we're identifying the next generation of both female
and minority leaders in tech and we're investing in them
through our stem scholarship fund.
This year, we have funders.
Our funders include Google, Intel and Facebook.
And we're really hoping to be able to expand
that scope next year, Lisa,
to increase the number of students we're helping.
This year we're also, in addition to women,
we are helping minority students as well.
And for next year, we're wanting
to expand those categories even further
and being able to support people with disabilities.
So we're really hoping that to create this kind
of very strong fabric of the community coming together
and really giving each other support.
>> Jocelyn, thank you so much for having the Cube back
for the third year in a row and congratulations
on the groundswell that you're capitalizing on
and that you're helping to create.
We congratulate you and we appreciate your time.
>> Lisa, it's always a pleasure.
I love speaking with you.
Thanks so much for coming.
>> Likewise, we want to thank you for watching the Cube.
Lisa Martin on the ground at Facebook headquarters
at the Cloud Now Top Women Entrepreneurs
in Cloud Innovation Awards.
Thanks for watching.
(techno music)