>> Woman: From the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE;
covering CloudNOW's Seventh Annual Top Women Entrepreneurs
in Cloud Innovation Awards.
(dramatic music)
>> Hi, Lisa Martin with theCUBE
on the ground at Facebook Headquarters.
We're here for the Seventh Annual CloudNOW
Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation event.
Welcoming, one of the award-winners tonight, to the program,
we've got Sce Pike, the founder and CEO of IOTAS.
Sce, it's so great to have you here,
and congratulations on your award.
>> Thank you so much, Lisa.
>> So IOTAS's cool software. >> Mm hmm.
>> Tell us about that. This is for the Smart Apartments.
These days we're so used to being able to talk to any device
and have it control things.
Smart cities are our big thing, smart everything.
Tell us about IOTAS.
What do you guys do when the impetus for the technology.
>> Sure, I really believe
that the future of smart home is actually something
that is not just four walls and a roof,
but actually something that is aware of you.
So, aware of you and knows your preferences and settings,
and actually knows everything about you
and wants to actually be an ally to you,
and actually can differentiate between you,
and your family and friends, and potentially an intruder.
And so, the only way you're going to get there
is to actually work with early adopters of technology.
This is when we start identifying the real estate industry
with multi-family where all the early adopters were living,
right, because only 30 percent of Millennials own homes.
And so, we thought about this and said,
"Okay, well, how are we going
to actually get to those millennials?"
And then a real estate developer actually approached us,
saying, "Hey, I want technology differentiation
for my building that I'm creating,
200 units in Portland Oregon," which is where I'm from,
and said, "I want to have something different."
And that's when I was like, "Oh, this is the opportunity
to actually work with the real estate industry
to put it into the fabric of the buildings."
And that's when I got really excited
when we can actually make a true smart home
that has all the lights, all the outlets,
all the locks, voice as you mentioned, and everything
that is an experience versus just on, off.
>> That's so interesting.
I looked at your Web site and saw the journal
and how it's talking about something that you mentioned,
this awareness and learning the individuals
and being able to have the intelligence to distinguish.
>> Is it called stories on the website?
>> Those are stories, those are the automations,
so that you can have a good night story,
good morning, welcome home;
so everything just works for people
who are moving into our apartments.
They download the app within 30 seconds.
They can see everything that they can control,
but they can see also,
all the pre-programmed automation as well.
But the other notion of what we are creating
is something called a living profile.
And this is really relevant from a CloudNOW perspective,
is that the living profile travels with you
from place to place to place.
So we are not only doing smart apartments
but we're also working in student housing,
military housing, senior living,
and starting to go into single family home as well.
So for us, the notion is that these smart homes,
all your settings preferences, your routines, your habits,
travel with you from place to place to place,
eventually to hotels, to cars, working spaces, hotels,
short term vacation rentals and such.
>> Wow! That's phenomenal.
So this is an interesting kind of collaboration
between the real estate industry
and some technologists. >> Exactly. Exactly.
>> I love that you were approached by a real estate developer
who said, "I want to have a differentiation
for my business." >> Exactly.
Was that sort of a surprise to you thinking,
you understand tech, you have a really cool background
in anthropology as well as electronic arts,
but there must have been sort of
an interesting opportunity going,
"Well, there's a huge opportunity in the market here
>> Yeah.
>> that we can help tech really kick the doors wide open
on real estate. >> Yes. Exactly.
My previous company, Citizen,
which I sold to Ernst and Young,
is known for connected technology.
So we were developing connected technologies in cars,
in healthcare and fintech,
and we were looking at smart homes for single family home.
And so, for us,
when that real estate developer approached us,
looked at the market, saw that the market is huge.
It's $500 billion to a trillion dollars,
just for multi-family home alone,
it's an absolutely a large market, and then realized
that this was truly an opportunity
to scale smart home and IoT devices in a meaningful way
because you're not just selling one device, one home,
not even one building, but you're selling entire portfolios
of companies like Prudential or JP Morgan.
All the funds that you hear about,
they're all real estate funds, right?
And they're changing hands 40% of the ...
A 40% of the fund is changing hands every year.
That means they are buying and selling,
and as they're buying and selling,
they're adding technology into these buildings.
>> Wow! That's so interesting.
So, I want to kind of pivot a little bit into your background.
I mentioned anthropology degree and electronic arts.
And you have,
I was asking you before we went live,
I love stories like that where there's a ...
I hear it wasn't a STEM kit,
but you have some really cool influences
that your anthropology background has delivered to,
not just your career but also the technology
that you guys are delivering.
Tell us a little bit about that.
Sure. So, anthropology is a study in human behavior, right?
There's physical anthropology and cultural anthropology.
Physical anthropology is now considered
almost like evolutionary psychology.
And so that actually allowed me
because I've always been curious about human; human nature,
why people do things, and that actually led my career
into this interesting path of user experience design.
And electronic arts actually taught me
how to code as well as design on the computer.
And when I graduated from college in the late '90s
and moved to Silicon Valley, everybody's like,
"I need somebody who could code
and design all these Internet sites."
So I ended up actually designing
the first GM e-commerce site,
the first HP's e-commerce sites,
and that actually was not a direct path.
I never thought I'd be making websites
or working in an Internet,
but it was an interesting path to get there.
So you're right, it doesn't have to be this straight
and like you got to be in computer science.
There's so many different avenues to think about
how technology needs a different point of view, right,
from an art background or an anthropology background,
and I think that's where there's an opportunity
to bring in women or girls in a different way
that still goes into STEM.
So steam is a huge portion of what I support.
>> Yes.
And you talked about, it's just different points of view,
it's thought diversity, even. >> Yes.
>> Tell us a little bit about the culture
that you're building at IOTAS and where,
maybe even some of the softer skills
>> Sure.
>> are key to enabling you guys to do market expansion
and accomplish some pretty big goals?
>> Yeah. I mean, culturally, I love my team.
I think one of the things that we always strive for, though,
is the ability to always give back to the community as well.
So we have like, events, as well as like, once a month,
everyone has like, a give-back Wednesday, right?
So they can go and volunteer and do other things
that is outside of just their work life, right?
And so that's just one of the things that we do
and that allows them to just step away
from their daily activity of being driven
by just the startup mentality or the startup life
and just go build something, and we do this a lot,
Habitats for Humanities, right?
We go build homes, real homes, and we always think
we should offer these homes as smart home technology.
But those are the things
that I think really impact who we are.
The other thought I had was I travel a lot.
And I had this moment where I was getting on a plane.
I was looking at the pilot, I was going, "Oh gosh!
So much of my life is dependent on white men,
and, unfortunately, like, my investors, my board members,
all my executive staff, my husband, and I was thinking,
"I need to change something. I'll keep the husband."
(Lisa laughs)
But we (chuckles) recently added a female board member
who has a cybersecurity background.
I'm recruiting for a female CFO and COO as well,
and I'm trying to change up my executive staff,
change up my investors, change up my board
'cause this is not something that you think about,
coming from my generation which is a little bit older.
You just need to do what you need to do to get it done,
you don't think about yourself as a female entrepreneur.
I thought of myself as an entrepreneur.
I think of myself as a CEO.
I don't have this like, "I'm a female entrepreneur."
And so you sometimes forget to support other diversity
in this environment, and that's kind of this moment
of realization as I was getting on the plane,
"I got to change something." Right?
And so, our staff is more than 40% female.
I'm trying to change that a little bit more.
That's one of the key things
that I think is a strength of having just representation.
>> And maybe one of these days, you said your point:
It won't matter, you will just be able to be a CEO,
an entrepreneur. >> exactly.
>> One more thing, since you're recruiting, where can people
to go to find out more information about the opportunities?
>> Sure, they can come to our site,
reach out or contact at iotashome.com.
That would be the best way to reach us.
>> Excellent. Well, Sce, congratulations on the award.
>> Thank you. >> And for what you're doing
to help revolutionize the real estate tech industry.
It's such interesting technology
to make it aware and personal.
Thanks for your time. >> Cool.
>> Thank you so much, Lisa.
We want to thank you for watching theCUBE.
I'm Lisa Martin, at Facebook Headquarters.
Thanks for watching.
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