Real-time documentary embroidery is basically a traditional technique put into a new context which means we go in public space and we embroider what we see. Usually we do it in a group, we invite people to join us and it's a way for us to make notes, to document the social reality usually of some sort of neighborhood that's in mid-transformation a neighborhood that's going through an urbanistic plan or gentrification or some sort of degradation. So we go to these neighborhoods and we create a social moment which is just sitting outside and embroidering. Embroidery is an ancient technique that people used to do not so long time ago still. Now when we are doing embroidery, nowadays in this suburb neighborhood somehow people recognize this. Immediately we have this connection. We don't have to explain too much what is our idea and what it's like. Lots of people, especially women, come to us and ask, oh you're embroidering, what can I do something? So we have, even if initially this idea seems strange nowadays when you have all these cameras and all these new technologies. If you have a camera you can go somewhere, take a picture and leave. So you have this sort of power that you can impose on to the place where you're going, the reality that you're documenting. But here no, you have to stay. This presence creates a situation where idiosyncrasies come out, the different realities that you don't expect come out. So it sort of breaks your preconceived notions about what you're going to document. Until now we did a workshop in Cairo, in Bristol. Two workshops in Barcelona. One with the neighbors that were already gathering in Bario Gautico, the central part of Barcelona.  And another workshop in Barcelona, Suburb. And now in Calujerica, in Belgrade, Suburb. We've been opening an office there as part or attached to the government office or the city hall's representative office in the neighborhood. So we have a table right outside, we open the embroidery office and we've been talking to people and embroidering and embroidering with people and documenting the reality there. So it's just been a very surprising experience because it's a neighborhood that people have a lot of preconceived ideas about and the reality we've discovered is very different than what we thought we would. So this is similar to other experiences we've had and also in surrounding neighborhoods in Barcelona or in Cairo or in Bristol. So it's been interesting in that sense.


What's going on YouTube? So today's video is gonna be a little different because I just wanted to get on here and just kinda chat a little bit about spirituality, religion, my background with all of it and how I kind of ended up where I am today. If you're new here, I'm Sarah and I created this channel to teach you how to live a happier, more positive and loving, fulfilling life. And today, we're gonna just kind of talk very loosely about spirituality. You know, the way I see it is that it's kind of a luck heart, if you will. And there's no set right or wrong way to do anything. And I think what's tough about this topic is that there are so many people out there that preach that their way is the right way. No, this way is the right way. And they're throwing all of these things in your face and like, no, this is the best method to manifest and this is the best method to do this and this is the best way to do this. We're all so different and we've all grown up and had different experiences. We've grown up from different backgrounds, different religions, different cultures that there really is no one size fits all. And the thing is, a lot of times when we're on the spiritual journey, we can kind of feel like we're doing something wrong which is really the opposite of what spirituality is.   Like there's so much that goes into it that it's not like you're doing things wrong, you're just exploring. There's a lot of exploring in spirituality. Here's the thing, I grew up Catholic. I grew up, now I didn't go to Catholic school, I went to a public school growing up, but not only did I go to church on the weekends, but I also went to what's called CCD during the evenings. I think we were like Tuesday or Wednesday night and all the way through eighth grade. Disclaimer, I'm not trying to upset anyone or offend you, which might end up happening, I don't know. But I just kind of wanna explain my experience and hopefully some of you can relate to it and maybe we can start a discussion in the comments below about what you're confused about or what you feel like you're doing wrong or whatever. That's the whole thing about spirituality is you're supposed to be able to talk about it and explore different people's ideas and experiences and all that kind of stuff. So I grew up Catholic and while I always believed in God, there was never any question about that for me, I just didn't resonate with it. There were so many things that I learned in the church, in the Catholic church that I just, I hated it. I really dreaded going to church. I dreaded anything that had to do with Christianity because of my experience and being, I felt like I was forced it growing up. And it's not that my parents are like crazy Catholics or anything, but there was just something about it that I just couldn't align with. And then as I got into my later teen years, I totally dropped it. Now I still believed in God, but I didn't really have any type of solid relationship with him and it really wasn't something that I thought about really ever. It's funny because one of my best friends and I were hanging out over Christmas break a few months ago and she was telling me that she felt like I always did have a really big connection. So it's interesting how we feel on the inside versus how people that we know well perceive us in the way that we view things. But I just never felt that really deep connection with God which kind of bothered me, but then I just, I just like pushed it out of my life. You know what I mean? So then fast forward to May, 2020, right after the pandemic started, and I began going through my spiritual awakening. And if you haven't caught that video, I will link it in the description box below and in the card up here just to explain how that happened, but you know, that day was wild because I was on a phone appointment for work and I'm in real estate. And this woman and I just really hit it off and she ended up telling me that I was an empath. If you're not sure what an empath is, I will also link that one in the description below and in the card up here. And I had no idea what it was and all of a sudden I started diving into research on that day. As soon as I hung up the phone with her, I was so intrigued by what she was saying. I literally felt like the cells with my body changed. Like I always relate it to kind of like when Spider-Man, when Peter Parker gets bit by the spider and all of a sudden like his whole body changed. Like that's what it felt like that day. And something just changed in me and I started going down this spiritual path. It was more of like a new age type thing where I just really started researching all these different things and experimenting with different things. I bought crystals. I had sage. I was really into tarot card readings. I have a pendulum, which I actually think is a really cool thing if you've never seen one. Okay, so here's some of my goodies. So I have some sage here. As you can see, I've barely used it, but I have. You know, I've got like my whole, oh, my whole crystal box here and the pendulum is really neat. If you guys want me to do a video about them, I definitely can do that. But basically you connect energetically with this, which as you guys all know, everything's made of energy. So this is a very, in my opinion, and you know, you can disagree with me. That's totally fine. I won't be offended. But I think it's a very real thing that you know, you can connect with this and you essentially will connect with it first and then you can ask your pendulum questions and it'll give you yes or no answers. As I was kind of experimenting with all this, doing egg cleanses and learning manifestation techniques and vision boards and doing new moon and full moon rituals, learning about numerology and astrology and there's just, you know, recently I've been learning about quantum physics. Like there's so much to spirituality that it's impossible to know everything. And the more you know, it's almost like the more that you don't know. About a year ago, I actually ended up finding my way back to Christianity.  Ever since then, I've been going to a non-denominational church regularly, you know, I'm reading the Bible now. I made it a goal that I wanted to read it front to back all the way through. And while I do feel there's plenty of room for me to deepen my connection with the Holy Trinity, I feel so much more connected than I ever did just because I was in a different point in my life where it just felt right and it felt more aligned.  I feel so behind, especially when I go to church, I feel so behind compared to all of the people there. But the bottom line is like, this is my journey. And whatever you're going through on your spiritual or religious journey, like that's your journey. That is your relationship with yourself and God and the source creator of all the universe and life. And it's just such a beautiful thing. You know, at this point where I'm at is like, I am a full-blown Christian. I am a believer. That's never going to change. Like I know it with every fiber of my being. I believe in God so deeply. However, there's such a stigma with Christianity and specifically Catholicism. That is hard to say. And so the Catholic church, in my opinion, is very fear-based, where I feel like true Christianity is very love-based. And so even now as I go through and I'm experimenting with different things, you know, I've come to realize like, I wanted to be that girl so bad. I wanted to be the sage girl and the crystal girl and doing all that crazy stuff. But, you know, it just doesn't really do it for me. But on a different note, this pendulum, which I haven't used in a really long time, I really always felt connected to. So it's like, you know, this is a rose quartz. I feel more connected to this than I do with my regular like rose quartz crystal. And do I know why? No, but it's like, for so long, I tried to force myself to be connected with the sage and the crystals and all this stuff. But like I'm not and that's okay. So I'm at this weird point in my spiritual awakening journey where I'm trying to figure out like what it is that I truly align with within my Christianity. But simultaneously not going through the fear of am I disobeying God? Am I doing this wrong? Because again, God's source creator is love. So in all, in that sense, you're not really able to do anything wrong as long as you believe in that higher power. And I just feel like there are so many lines to cross and to draw.  And this like really triggered me. Like this was like a very triggering video for me. And I didn't think it was at first, but days later I was still thinking about it and still just like, what the hell? I think where I'm at now is that I'm learning a more unconventional Christian way of living with meditating and yoga and connecting with angels and my higher self and God, which some people believe are all the same things. Some people believe are different things. Like it's really again up to you what you think. And my whole point in getting on here and talking about this stuff is because one, I feel like people don't talk about it. Like everyone just gets on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram or whatever. And they're just like, no, this is the right way. And it's just like, how can you say that? And how can you agree that with the infinite amount of things in the universe, you know, the different planets and the different galaxies and different life forms like extraterrestrial creatures, you know, and if you really look into some of these things, they're present, you know, here on earth. And you look at things like numerology and signs and things like that. So much of this stuff is based on what's going on in your mind where I think I talked about this in one of my previous, oh, it was a TikTok I made. Where like if you see, for example, a specific bird or a specific repeating number and you think that that has meaning for you, then it does. But that meaning that it has for you doesn't mean it has that meaning for every single other person, whether they're on a spiritual journey or not. And I just think that there should be some more open conversation about spirituality in general. You know, there's people out there that do Reiki and like that's something I definitely believe in. Like Reiki and Chakras and things like that. There's a lot of people that do psychedelics, you know, psychedelics to connect to their higher selves and to God's source and you know, mother nature and all of these things. And who's to say any of this is wrong? And I think that spirituality is just so, it's so a la car and it's so specific to you that you should never feel like you're doing anything wrong unless you're harming yourself or harming another human being or another creature.  And the thing is going back into the Christian stuff, you know, I've been learning a ton about the law of assumption and you know, it's different than law of attraction, which is also another universal law. And there's a lot of this type of stuff in the Bible. And the thing is, is when you go to these churches, even the non-denominational churches that I go to, they don't really teach you this stuff.  Oh, and check out my shirt that I have on today. I didn't even do this on purpose, I swear. Which is funny because I don't really vibe with sage and crystals, but check it out, sage crystals and trap music. Trap music though, yeah. If y'all know me, you know I love my idiom. I just really wanted to get on here and do kind of like an informal video and just talk a little bit about spirit. You know, I feel weird, I feel weird sometimes getting on here and talking about spirituality because even though I've been on this journey for a few years now, it still feels like the outside world hasn't caught up with my inside world as far as like how important this stuff to me and how much, like how this is really the biggest part of me now is my spirituality side. And so sometimes I feel kind of weird getting on here because I feel like people always knew me as a fitness girl, which is cool, you know, whatever. I mean, I still train at the gym six days a week but I just don't resonate with that type of label anymore. And I think that's a thing that we get caught up in in spirituality is labels and what's right and what's wrong and how to do this and how not to do that and you're doing that wrong and you're doing this wrong. And it's like, I'm on here to just tell you if you're into any type of spirituality, just explore it because that's why we're here. We're here to explore ourselves and explore life and nature and just see the beauty in things. So you're not doing anything wrong. I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on all of this in the comments below. I mean, this stuff is just like so interesting to me and I really don't have many people to talk to about it. So maybe that's why I'm getting on here and making this video. I know it's very unstructured compared to what I typically do on here, but I just gotta get it out sometimes, you know? So I don't know if you necessarily found this video valuable. I hope you did. I hope it like sparked a, oh okay, like I can just be free, be free. Find the freedom and spirituality.  You know, fold up a piece of paper and put it under your pillow at night or freeze a banana in the freezer with someone's name on it. I don't know. There's so many like things out there that you can do and try and you're never going to know what resonates with you and what aligns with you until you do try these things. I know that like, I friggin' believe that crystals have energies and things to them, but I just don't, I just don't really resonate with them and that's okay. But you don't wanna be so judgmental about other people that do. There are other people out there that feel super energized and connected and protected by these crystals. And I think that's so beautiful. I think that's such a cool thing. And just because it's not for me doesn't mean it shouldn't be for you and vice versa. So just go explore life and enjoy yourself and have fun and enjoy spirituality because that's what it's meant for, is just feel connected. You know, not divided. Don't divide our, you know, we can't divide ourselves by judging others and how they practice their own spirituality. Let's come together in conversation and you know, you never know what dots will connect when you're talking with others. So I love you guys so much. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, don't forget to give it a thumbs up and subscribe so we can hang out again next week. I love you guys and don't forget, be limitlessly yourself.


Bemidji State University has been recognized as one of the nine recipients of the Green Ribbon Schools Post-Secondary Sustainability Award. The U.S. Department of Education reviewed the school's reduction of its environmental impact, how it improved the health and wellness of its staff and students, and its sustainability education offerings. The department noted several eco-friendly initiatives at BSU, including the construction of a LEED-certified building and a fossil fuel-free fish house, among other things. It's a wonderful recognition of decades of effort, so even though the Sustainability Office was creating 2008, our activities around environmental stewardship and environmental education go way, way back. Among the other Minnesota recipients of the Green Ribbon Award include Edgewood Early Childhood. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


Hey everybody, what's going on? It's your man, Kory. Welcome to The Digital Dash where I'll be giving you guys tips on how to market your songs and get those numbers booming. Now for those of you who don't know who I am, I'm a digital marketer myself. I specialize in helping artists like you guys get their songs heard through platforms like Spotify, Instagram, YouTube, and various others. If you want to learn a little more about me, you can check out me and Sean's interview. I'll make sure to put that link in the description below. Now today what I want to talk to you guys about is how to find and build your audience. This is really a crucial step in any marketing campaign as you'll want to figure out who you're going to be targeting your marketing dollars towards. You don't really want to cram square pairs in the circular holes if you know what I mean. Now one of the easiest ways to do this, or should I say some of the easiest ways to do this is by building a fan profile and figuring out which artists are similar to you, whether it be in content, style, music, or just similar types of movement. Now what exactly is a fan profile? A fan profile is pretty much a picturesque description of what your ideal fan would look like. It pretty much includes things like demographic, what they may or may not be interested in, and just any other things that may define your brand that you think their fans would like from you. As a matter of fact, I want to show you guys how to build a crude version of a fan profile so that you can do it for yourself. All right guys, so here we have a very basic and crude version of a fan profile. As you can see it lists out some characteristics such as age, race, education, hobbies and likes in the preferred social media. If you would like you can definitely get as in depth as you would want to. Like I said this is just a crude version to get you all started so that you can get the ball rolling on your own in. So what you will want to do is go through and fill out each of these characteristics to the best of your abilities based on things that you think will make up your ideal fan or common characteristics that you've seen amongst fans that you already have. You know maybe based on the people that you see popping out at your shows or the types of people that you already see supporting your music on these streaming platforms and these social media platforms. Then what you will want to do is give this plan to a marketer like myself and say hey these are the people that we need to be targeting. This is my target demographic. We need to be figuring out what Spotify playlist they're listening to and getting me placed onto those playlists. We need to be figuring out where Instagram pages they're following and seeing how we can create content that makes sense for that page. We need to be figuring out where YouTubers they're watching and saying how we can connect with these YouTubers and get something going. Or if you're doing it all on your own this is pretty much your stepping stone to figuring out where you need to spend your marketing dollars and in what manner towards what people. So yeah like I said guys this is pretty much just the first step that you want to take in your marketing plan is building one of these fan profiles. I would love to check out the ones that you guys make. You can send them over to me on my Instagram page or feel free to drop some comments in the section below talking about what you think would be included in yours. So like I said building a fan profile is one of the easiest ways to figure out who you want to target. It helps to give you an idea of what your fan looks like and makes everything a lot easier in that aspect. Now the next thing that you guys will want to do is find artists that are similar to you whether it be in music content style the way that you guys dress or even the types of movements that you have going on. Now this in my opinion is one of the hardest things for artists to do as it gets hard for you guys to compare yourself to other artists. I hear you I understand there's nothing like you under the sun you're new but trust me guys to someone who's never heard of you before you sound like someone. It's in your best interest to find out who these people are so that way you can kind of build upon already established fan bases and start to kind of poach fan bases away from these people and bring them on to what you have going on. This is one of the easiest ways to do it as it's kind of proven that there are people out there who like your music they already listen to other things and you just have to kind of go figure out where they are and figure out how to bring them on board with what you have going on. Now if you really do have trouble in figuring out who you could be similar to think of it this way let's say that a promoter calls you up and is like hey I have this artist that's coming to town and I want you to come open up for them. Who in your mind do you think will have an audience that will be receptive to you and your music? If you're making music that's more on the conscious level more like a J Cole like a Kendrick site that you think you could open up for a little pump that type of artist. If you were making more of the trap music that you think you could open up for an area in the grand days thinking of it in this term does help you figure out like okay what groups of people are out there that like the type of music that I make and who are they already listening to. So like I said guys finding and building your audience is easy there are people out there who like your music you just have to go out and find these people. The best way to do this is by building a fan profile so that you can figure out what your fan looks like and by finding artists that are similar to you whether it be in style music content or whatever it is just so that you can build upon already established fan bases and start to steal away people who would like what you're doing. Now if you feel like you learn anything today guys please like and share this video once again my name is Kory and I'll see you all next time.


Listen to Herbert Marshall as the man called X. Wherever there is mystery, adventure, intrigue, in all the strange and dangerous places of the world, there you will find the man called X. The disaster was the worst to hit Italy since World War II. The raging waters of the river Poe, swollen by torrential rains, overflowed their banks and brought death and destruction to thousands of Italian families. And when the flood receded, it left in its wake hunger, disease, a desperate people. And the minds of desperate people provide fertile ground in which to plant the deadly seeds of revolutionary propaganda. Listen to this, Ken. Americans go home, fascist American pigs, capitalistic war-mongering Americans. Read the rest for yourself if your stomach can stand it. No, thanks, chief. I've heard enough. But how do you account for it? You'd think that after all we've tried to do for those people, money, flood engineers, food, relief shipments, that, well, you'd think we'd get something a little better than this in return. I didn't know we were asking the Italian people for anything. No, of course we're not. We don't want thanks. We're only too glad to help, but, but confounded, we don't want any kicks in the teeth either. Chief, that wave of un-American feeling is coming from the flooded areas. The people there are hungry, desperate. There they are. But that's no excuse. We're sending them help. Well, are they getting it? Well, of course they're. Hmm. You mean the village of Chiori? Yeah. Our main relief distribution center. That's where most of the propaganda's coming from, isn't it? According to these reports from Bob Cunningham, our relief administrator, it is, yes. And Cunningham also reported that he's been having trouble there. A warehouse full of relief clothing burned to the ground. Boats bringing American food upriver have been hijacked. Disappeared. Hmm. Sabotage? That's my guess. But why? Doesn't that propaganda give us the answer? Yeah. Sure it does. Italy's been a prime target of the Kremlin for years. A disaster like that flood is made to order for them. They'll do anything to capitalize on it to, to... What are we going to do about it, Ken? Suppose I let you know, Chief. From Chiori. Well, you wish it to go to Chiori as in yours. That's right. And you are Americano. Yeah, why? Alberto, do not think it the wiser for you to journey to Chiaris in yours. No, not the wiser. Well, why not, Alberto? Oh, the signor has not heard of the flood. Sure I have. What's that got to do with it? Yeah, to make a travel in this country very dangerous. Very dangerous. You don't seem to mind it. Alberto Rienze has driven his boss from Milano Airport to Chiori for many years. He knows this country like the palm of his hand. For him, it is not dangerous. But for an American passenger it is, huh? Si, senor. The senor wishes Alberto to turn back to Milano. No, thanks, Alberto. Well, perhaps the senor will believe senor Conningham. Robert Conningham, the belief administrator? He will be able to convince the senor how dangerous it is for Americanos in Chiori.  What argument is that? Senor Conningham is a dead murderer. So, senor, we have arrived. The relief for headquarters. This where Conningham lived? Si, and where he died. Yeah. If the senor wishes to change his mind, Alberto's boss is always for hire, for a return trip to Milano. Thanks, Alberto. I'll remember that. Arrivederci. Arrivederci, senor. Good afternoon, senorina. Ericano. Si. I am Teresa Rienza. Who are you? My name's Ken Thurston. You related to Alberto's senorina? What is it you wish here, senor Thurston? Speak quickly. I'm quite busy. That's hardly a friendly greeting. No liberty-loving Italian would ever descend to friendship with fascisti americano. Well, some of your countrymen were friendly enough in 1945 when we relieved you of a nasty little man named Mussolini. That was only because they did not know your true intentions. What are they supposed to be? You helped us fight the fascisti only because you wished to enslave us in turn. To fatten your own purses at the expense of the blood and tears of the Italian people. Oh, come off it, Teresa. You know better than that. I know it is true. Then what are you doing here? Working at the American Relief Station. I do not work here. Cesare Tolini has appointed me administrator since the unfortunate accident to Senor Cunningham. Who's Tolini? The new mayor of Ciori. Does he feel about Americans as you do? He's the one who opened my eyes to your capitalistic wall-mongering. Oh, wonderful man. Yeah, I bet he is. So Tolini's decided to take over operations here since Cunningham was murdered. Is that it? Well, someone had to take charge. There's no one else in the village who could be trusted here. Is that your idea, Teresa? Bill. Oh, Tolini's. I thought I told you not to come around here again. Oh, it wasn't to see you, my sweet. I've got business with Thurston here. Oh, who are you? Bill Desmond. The guy there holding for Cunningham's murder wants to see you. To see me? Why? Says he's an old friend of yours. Name of Pagan Zelschmidt. That's right, Thurston. It's a Zelschmidt character, so you drive into town from his cell. He's on permanent vacation in the village Huska. How come, Desmond? Well, they find him hiding in a storage room right after Cunningham's body was discovered. No better evidence than that? What else did they need when they started yelping that he was an American? What gives with Americans here, Desmond? I can answer that with one obscene word. Tolini. Tolini. He's the big wheel in the hate America crusade. You named it. What's he got for ammunition? American promises made and not kept. The relief shipments? Sure. This was going to be a big deal, America's helping hand, food, clothes, material for new homes. Cunningham arrives and sets up a relief organization, and then nothing comes through. It's burned, lost, stolen.  That's it. Right out of the Kremlin's book. Well, he's giving him proof. He's supplying him with food and clothing out of his own warehouse, and the crates are all stamped, shipped from Moscow. I see. Yeah. Well, there's the village pokey, Thurston. As far as I go, I hope I got you squared away on the lash up here. Except for one thing, Desmond. Oh, what's that? Where do you fit into the picture? Simple. I used to be Cunningham's right hand until he fired me. Huh? What for? Stealing relief shipments, selling them on the black market. Well, so long, Thurston. See you around. I'm innocent, Mr. X. Believe me, I didn't have nothing to do with Mr. Cunningham getting bumped out. The people of Chiori say differently, Pego. Oh, it's a frame. I was just an innocent stand-byer. I swear it by the father of my father and my father. All right, all right. When you decide to tell the truth, let me know if you're not on the gallows by then. No, no, Mr. X, please, wait, no. Don't leave me on the perch in this pokey. I'll tell you the truth. Honest. Okay. Let's have it. It was all my Uncle Ahmed's fault. He sent me here. For what? All to help the poor-starving people who got bailed out by the flood. What? Oh, sure, he figured they'd be hungry with given food to eat at cost. Black market cost, you mean. Well, there were certain expenses involved, June. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what happened? Well, that no good Thurlini threatened to run me out of town. So I went to see that Cunningham gives her for a job. Only somebody had just bumped him out. And I was just looking around to see if there was anything worth stealing. I mean, looking for clues. Well, the police character walked in. Okay, Pagan, I'll go talk to Thurlini. And believe me, getting out of jail will only be incidental. Oh, thank you, Mr. Thurston. So, Signor Thurston, you're here to see me concerning this man, Sir Schmidt. Among other things, Signor Thurlini. Mm-hmm. Then let us dispose of the minor difficulties first. He's free to go any time you wish. Well, then you don't think he killed Cunningham? Naturally not. I kept him in jail merely to chastise him for attempting to operate a black market here. Precisely. The people of Chiare have no need for black markets or relief. They know worth a turn for help. And that's not to America. As you say, Signor Thurston, it is not to America. You know, Thurlini, there's something pretty strange going on here. So? What do you have in mind? An American belief shipments will run into a lot of trouble getting through. Unfortunate accidents, Signor Thurston. Then how come your crates of food and clothing shipped from Moscow haven't met the same accidents? You believe this concerns you? I like to get answers to questions that puzzle me, Thurlini. Yeah. See. And, uh, do you have other questions, also? Yeah. Such as? What happened to the American belief shipments that were stolen? Who killed Bob Cunningham? And why? What could be done about the anti-American propaganda here? Uh, Signor Thurston. The people of Chiare have learned that their destinies are entwined irrevocably with that of the Soviet Union. Oh. Therefore I would advise you to leave this village at once. And if I don't? The consequences of attempting to halt the march of destiny are not always pleasant. Signor Cunningham was one who learned that lesson. You could most easily be another. Well? Sorry, Thurlini. I kind of like this place. I think I'll stick around. We'll return to the man called X in just a moment. The price of prejudice is high. In America, we pay for racial and religious prejudice in the currency of smashed principles, disrupted unity, and weakened democracy. Unreasoned hatred eats away at the very foundation of our country, the Constitution, which guarantees equal treatment for all. Don't let yourself be a target for un-American ideologies. And when you do hear the vicious words of group hatred, speak up against prejudice and for understanding. The men who wrote our Constitution knew that freedom and prejudice cannot exist side by side. If you choose freedom, then help to fight prejudice. Now act two of the man called X starring Herbert Marshall with Leon Balasco as Pagan Zellschmidt. A vicious wave of anti-American feeling is swept over the flood-battered village of Ciori in Italy. Ken Thurston believes it is all part of a far-reaching plan to turn the people of Italy against the Western democracies. Boy, it sure feels good to be out of the clings again. Well, where do we go now? Milan, Rome, Venice? We're not going anywhere. Well, that's just me fine, Mr. X. Anyplace just as long as we're not going anywhere. That's right, Pagan. But they don't like us here. They just leave, cut our throats, leave, or even... Only because someone sold them on hitting Americans. They're going to try to straighten them out. Hey, who lives here anyways? Probably the only ally we have in town. Huh? Ah, it is the senior Thurston. That's right, Alberto. Maybe come in. Oh, Perfebore, please, Senoris. You have become a senior to hire the boss for return travel to Milano? We're not leaving Giori, Alberto. So, then you are not frightened by these savage villagers who hate old Americanos? I think the Italian people are pretty much like you and me, Alberto. They're not born to hate. But sometimes, if they're frightened badly enough, they can be taught to hate. Thank you, Senor. We shall drink a bottle of vino to your deep understanding. Boy, that's the first thing I've heard around here that makes any sense. I'm going to work fast, and I need your help. So what is it you wish Alberto to do? Before I left Milan, I made arrangements for another boat, though, to relieve supplies to be shipped here. I want you to meet that boat up river before anything happens to it. Bring the supplies back here to the relief headquarters with your bus. You can depend on Alberto, Senor, for it will indeed prove to Maya people that the Americanos are the true friends. And do you, Senor Thurston? I'll try to prove that... Tolini is their enemy. There's Tolini's castle, Thurston, on his own private island in the middle of the pole river. He's got his supply warehouse out to here, too? Yeah, that works. Want to ride over and pay a visit? Not yet, Desmond. Crew's around the river for a while. I'd like to study the layout. Why not? I've got nothing better to do.  I've got some information about you. Like what? Why Cunningham fired you. I told you he thought I was stealing supplies for the black market. Were you? No. Did he have any evidence? Sure. Some of the supplies that were aboard the last boat to be hijacked. They turned up in my quarters. Who framed you? Tolini? Can't think of a better guess. So you've got no job?  Why? Theresa? You've got enough, Thurston? Yeah. Might as well head back to the dock. Looks like we've got a little reception committee. The dock, Thurston. Half the village at Shiori at a rough guess. Yeah, we might be in for trouble. Want to pull out again? No, but if anything happens, remember what I told you. All right. Tie her up, Desmond. I'll see what's going on. Check. Joy, it's your river trip, Cunningham Thurston. This is all I told you, ain't it? What makes it happen? In some respects, people here are no different than in your country, Sr. Thurston. They too can be stirred up into the fury of a lynch mob. Lynch mob, why? You capitalists, do you dare to ask this? Then the answer I give you is this. Oh, that was plain enough. There's hardly an answer to the reason. Then allow me to give it to you, Sr. I'm placing you under arrest for the murder of Theresa's father, Alberto Rienza. I should be thankful, Sr. Thurston, that I am a man who believes in the orderly process of justice. Otherwise, my good comrades of Jari would have torn you to bits long before this. Oh, sure. My denies it, you told me. What happens after you've put me in that mud hut you call a jail? If my countrymen wish to take the law into their own hands and remove you from it forcibly. I see what you mean. What happened to Alberto Rienza? He lost his life attempting to defend the river about bringing relief supplies to Jari. Where do I come in? With his dying breath, Alberto informed me that you were the leader of the band, the one who had personally dealt him the mortal wound. Naturally, it was my duty to inform the villagers. Got it all tied up in one neat package, haven't you told me? I think I may say without undue pride that this situation remains under my control. With one exception. Oh, and what is that? This way. Right over here. This way. All right, Pagon. Let's go. You're on the spot, eh, Mr. Rex? Sure, genius, Pagon. Where'd you get the car? Well, I was getting tired of hanging around that Jari joint, so I hasted it.  And when you saw me coming down the street, you figured you could use a paying passenger. That's right. So how's about forking over on the line, eh, Mr. Rex? Be glad to. As soon as we make a little detour. Detour? Yeah, back to the dock in Jari. Mr. Rex, where is my neck sneaking back to Jari to steal this potpot, and for what? So we can visit a warehouse. Warehouse? Where? I'm told in his island.  Let's get out of this place. What's your poking around in all those boxes for? Just wanted to prove something, Pagon. Mm-hmm. Look at those crates. Not shipped from Moscow. And take a look at what's in there. Sugar, butter. So what? All the packages they already came in are piled up over there in the corner. American packages. All that food's part of our relief shipments. It is? Hey! Hey, then the Torlini joker must be the guy who stole all that stuff. Then he repacked it in those boxes so he could give it to those people and be a hot shot. No. Congratulations, Mr. Zelschmitt. You've figured it out perfectly. Oh, that's all right, Mr. Torlini. Looks like you did some figuring yourself, Torlini. It was not too difficult to find a reason for your exploratory river trip earlier today. And now? That answer is rather obvious. You have come to the end of the road. Do you have all the answers now, Signor Thurston? I got them, Torlini. Good. Then there is no need to delay the execution any longer. Exit. Oh, no. You better listen first, Torlini. To what, Signor? What is there for me to li- That's odd. What is it? Your comrade from Chiori.  The villagers? That's right. Bill Desmond and Theresa had a little talk with them. They're on their way to examine this private warehouse of yours. I wonder what they're going to think of their wonderful saviour from the east when they get a good look at it. No, you're lying. They could not possibly be coming here. Take a look out of the window. See for yourself and give me that gun. No! You can climb out of that crate now. Boy! What a smoker room, Mr. X. He sure made a mistake trying to look out that window. His mistake was made long before that, Pega. When he thought he could make suckers out of the Italian people. But, uh, but he did, Mr. X. Oh, some of them fell for those phony promises for a little while, sure. Like the people in China fell for them. And in Russia. But one thing's for sure, someday if we work hard enough at it, we can wake them all up. Just like we did in Shiori. Now, here's our star, Mr. Herbert Marshall. Thanks for being with us. And my thanks to Veronica Pataki, Will Wright, Stan Waxman, Paul Richards, and Joe Duvall. Next week, the Middle East, where the peace of the world is threatened by a hapenous stamp, a third green eye, and Leon Bolesko will be along as usual as Pagan Zelchman. So join us, won't you, when next I return, as the man called X, good night. The man called X, starring Herbert Marshall, is a J. Richard Kennedy production with music by Milton Charles. Tonight's story was written by Sidney Marshall. This program is directed by Jack Johnstone. All characters and incidents on this program are fictitious. And any resemblance to actual characters or incidents is purely coincidental. And now, until next week, same time and station, this is Hal Gibney saying, good night for the man called X. This is NBC, the national broadcasting company.


Mammalian cells and tissues produce hydrogen sulfide, H2S, which plays a role in various biological processes such as regulating blood pressure, inflammatory responses, and immunity. Recent research suggests that certain drugs may affect the production of H2S in mammals, suggesting potential therapeutic applications. This article was authored by SRAR-Alciti, Simon Wellum, Peter Rose, and others.


The United States remains the world's largest national venture capital industry, but its share of global venture capital has declined from 80% to 50% over the past 15 years as the venture capital model has been globalized. Yet U.S. data is the gold standard for evaluating venture capital because it is the only data that is not self-reported. It comes from the limited partners, the ones who put up the capital, not the general partners, the ones who invest it. Over the past 40 years, the history of the U.S. venture capital industry is still dominated by the shadow of the great tech-internet.com bubble of the late 1990s. Funds committed to American venture capitalists increased by a factor of 10 in just five years to peak in the year 2000 above $100 billion, and they've only barely reached half as much since then. The surge of funding was motivated by the outstanding returns recorded by venture capitalists in the previous decade. Now, this measure of performance, the public market equivalent, PME, has become the gold standard for all evaluation of private investing. For each fund, when capital is transferred from the limited partners to the fund, invest the same amount in the index, in the NASDAQ index, the index of your choice. When a distribution is made from the fund back to the limited partners, take the same amount from the index. Note that since the year 2000, the weighted average of venture capital returns has approximately equaled the public market. But average venture capital returns are misleading. There's enormous skew in these returns. It means that a power law distribution characterizes venture capital returns, not a normal distribution. And here, note that only the venture capital funds in the top decile of performance, that's the top 10%, outperformed the public market. This is another stylized statistical fact of venture capital in addition to the limited scope of venture capital investments. Now, there's a historical, remarkable fact here. Tom Nicholas of the Harvard Business School published in 2019, venture capital VC and American history going back through risk investing in the United States for 200 years. He shows that the skewed distribution of profit echoes with remarkable precision the distribution of profits from another domain of high risk investing, the whaling industry. My own work from a decade ago documented the skew across 205 funds from data provided by two of the leading limited partners in venture capital. Now note the extraordinary contribution, again, of the top decile, the top 10%, to the statistics for the full sample with internal rates of return reaching more than 200 plus percent. Also note the monotonic progression of returns with time from the 1980-1984 period to 1995-2006. Is this a function of venture capitalists learning how to play the game better or does it relate to evolving market conditions? Harvard data matches the data of Harris and his colleagues and Steve Kaplan and Antoinette Shore in showing correlation of venture capital returns with the public market. Note that the median terminated fund exactly matches the return generated by the NASDAQ index, again using that public market equivalent calculus. Using the top decile, the average fund is just slightly better than the NASDAQ. So it was not learning by doing that improved venture capital returns from 1980, it was the stock market. A broader sophisticated analysis confirms the correlation. First, look at the scales on each of the axes. NASDAQ is on the X, the horizontal axis, and the scale runs from minus 5% to plus 40%. venture capital, the venture capital index is on the Y, the vertical axis, and it runs from minus 20% to plus 120%. Now this equation here is mathematically quadratic because it's capturing the fatness of the tails that would be missed in a normal distribution. The R squared, the correlation is extremely close, 93%. Now third, the right-hand tail of this chart represents the years of the great internet bubble. The NASDAQ public market equivalents that exceed 25% are the venture capital venture years, 1993 to 1997. The one major outlier is vintage year 1998 when the venture return was up 33% and the NASDAQ was only up 8%. In addition to the extreme skew in venture capital returns and their correlation with the public equity market, a further stylized statistical fact is that uniquely among asset classes, venture capital returns are persistent. That means that the performance of fund one from firm A predicts the return for fund two and so on. And this persistence has persisted post 2000. Here's the data. The columns show the quartile distribution of previous fund. The rows show the quartile distribution of the next, the following fund. So almost 50%, 48.5% that were in the top 25%, that's the first quartile in the previous fund, our first quartile in the next fund. If it was random, it would be 25%, 25%. 38% of the firms that were fourth quartile, the lowest 25% in the last fund were also fourth quartile in the next fund. You wonder how they keep raising money. Virtually the identical degree of persistence can be seen post bubble since 2000 as before 2001. That's by the way not true of buyout funds, where virtually all investments, all deals are subject to public auction. Unfortunately, the LBO market has become efficient, unfortunately for investors. But the message here to limited partners is very clear. A blind allocation to venture capital, just allocating a fixed proportion to venture capital runs the major risk of what's known as adverse selection. The funds you want to invest in, the persistently successful ones, don't need your money.  Let's consider the state of the US venture capital industry today. There has been a fundamental change over the last 10 years since the global financial crisis characterized by a flood of new investors funding private companies that have taken much longer to go public, if at all, almost 20 years now from the peak of the internet tech bubble of 1998-2000 and 10 years from the global financial crisis. Despite a huge increase in the value of exits in 2019, 80% of which were accounted for by a relatively small number of IPOs, there actually has been a very substantial decline in the number of initial public offerings, public market entries for venture capital backed ventures since 1980-2000. Then the average was 120 per year. In 2018, there were only 88 venture capital backed IPOs and only 80 in 2019. The context needs attention. We're now into the 10th year of zero real risk-free rates of interest. Plus, enormous concentration in the investment banking industry. The size of initial public offerings can be expected to rise as the number of investment banks competing for them falls and each of those investment banks becomes larger and needs a bigger deal in order to answer the telephone. In addition, an act of Congress, cutely known as the jumpstart our businesses, otherwise known as the jobs act, allowed private companies to have more shareholders without having to register with the Securities Exchange Commission. In addition, FOMO on the next fang, fear of missing out on the next Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Google, institutional investors frustrated by the lack of relatively risk-free returns have begun to play venture capitalists. The result is the unicorn bubble. Now let's start with the past two years. In 2019, as I showed in slide four, only $50 billion was raised by venture capital firms. But in 2019, $133 billion was invested in venture capital deals. Where did the $83 billion come from? Unconventional capital. This private equity, mutual funds, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, the National Venture Capital Association calls them tourists. They have driven a mega increase in mega rounds. In 2018 and 2019, there was a huge increase in investment rounds, the number of investment rounds greater than $100 million. About 200 such rounds per year with a total value of about $60 billion. With pre-money valuations for the late runs averaging more than $300 million, this indeed is the unicorn bubble, enabled by the unprecedented and persistent decline under non-inflationary conditions of real risk-free rates of interest. All over the world, rates have declined to where the rate realized is lower than the very low rate of inflation. The net present value of expected cash flows increases exponentially with the decline in the rate at which they are discounted. And the further out those cash flows are, the greater the increase in relative value. Companies which offer any potential for replicating the super growth trajectories of the digital giants will benefit most. As those tech leaders have come to dominate the stock market indices, the impact on investors in private companies is reinforced. But my analysis of the unicorn bubble from five years ago remains relevant. Investors are paying premium prices for unregistered illiquid securities. This is an extraordinary anomaly. There should always be a discount for illiquidity. Since there is no trading market in the securities, the investor is locked in without the implicit option when buying listed liquid shares to sell to an even more optimistic investor, also usually known as a greater fool. Now volume has grown through 2019. The volume of these deals, of these investments, these unicorn investments, as the premium has increased. So that's the signature of a bubble. It happened in the late 1990s when the price goes up instead of choking off demand increases. Now every bubble has a plausible story at birth and in fact, in one key dimension, this time is different in the fundamentals on the supply side of the venture industry. Very low cost to develop new software-based services, open source software, cloud rentals, friction-free deployment and usage, potential scale global, unbounded. This is an example of that aggressive exploration of new economic space created by technological transformation which we'll examine in lecture six. On the demand side, institutional investors are hungry for yield. As I said, we're in the 10th year of zero to negative real risk-free interest rates. The supply of IPOs remains limited, very constrained access to those that take place and that means that we've moved from a world where historically what really mattered for venture capital returns was IPO exits. Back to the work I did with Michael McKenzie some 10 years ago and I go back to this because no one else has actually directly examined the relationship between venture capital returns and the state of the IPO market. This goes behind the public market equivalent to relate venture capital fund performance to the IPO market directly, not just the overall performance of the public equity market. We mapped the quarterly cash flows of each fund, each of our 205 funds in and out with respect to the quarter in which each fund received funds and distributed funds and we gave them a cash flow weighted score. On average, through this period, there were 30 IPOs per quarter, 120 a year. The standard deviation was 10 so that meant that if there were less than 20 IPOs, we gave that quarter a 1. It was a poor IPO market. In the range of 20 to 40 around the mean, we gave it a 2, a normal market. More than 40 IPOs, well that was a 3, that's a hot market, and more than 40 IPOs with more than half of the company's going public, still not profitable, that's a bubble. The market conditions score for each quarter is defined by what the exit conditions were minus what the entry conditions were. And when we look at venture capital performance relative to the market conditions score, it's ambiguous. The median for neutral conditions actually shows higher return than for favorable conditions. But the exit conditions alone, they appear to be highly significant in driving venture capital returns. The funds that managed to distribute and sell their positions in hot IPO market time were the ones with the best return. Now recall that the number of IPOs since 2000 has fallen steeply. And acquisition by established buyers now dominates venture capital exits. In this context, providing capital to private companies, the Soft Bank Vision Fund became the poster child for the unicorn bubble. A fund of $100 billion plus managed by investment bankers with no venture capital experience. Bankers who in fact had played key roles in rendering Deutsche Bank one of the least-solving global financial institutions over the previous decade. Remarkable institution. Now, here's a genuine slide from the pitch deck for what was supposed to be the second Soft Bank Vision Fund. That was before the fiasco over WeWork, the We company, and a number of other embarrassments. It seems that Soft Bank's investment team has retreated to transactions closer to their core competence, complex option structures of the sort that they executed back in their Deutsche Bank days. But the Vision Fund is not the only venture capital fund exposed to unsustainable valuations. This is a chart that shows the returns reported by venture capital firms in aggregate relative to what has actually been distributed in securities or cash back to their limited partners. Reported returns have been inflated by marked to illiquid next round valuations, not marked to market liquid transactions. This chart quantifies the unrealized portion of reported returns. The yellow line is the value actually distributed as a percent of the original capital of the fund. The orange line is the value actually distributed as a percent of the value reported. So as of late 2019, funds raised in 2013, now seven years ago, had distributed slightly more than a third of paid in capital, but less than 20% of reported value. And the 2015 vintage, raised five years ago when now should be at a mature point, had distributed only 14% of paid in capital and less than 10% of reported value. Now 2019 was a banner year for the value of venture capital exits. There were a number of very large unicorn IPOs. And the COVID-19 pandemic promises to extend the unprecedented unicorn bubble as the Federal Reserve commits to lower for longer and a wave of unicorns has filed for initial public offerings led by Airbnb and Palantir. Now reflecting back on this phenomenon, the unicorn bubble, it's challenged what I learned during my 35 years sabbatical as a venture capitalist. My first theorem of venture capital is what I refer to as cash in control. The venture capitalist's joint hedge against the radical uncertainty of funding startups at the technological frontier. The cash means unequivocal access when something bad happens to enough cash to buy the time to find out what's going on and enough control to do something about it. Bear the chief executive officer, sell the project for what we can get, repurpose the technology, restart the venture. Venture capitalists and follow on investors today certainly have the cash, but too often they lack control. And the consequences of surrendering control to founding entrepreneurs while giving them unprecedented amounts of investment dollars has been predictable. With the unicorn startups funding their growth by selling illiquid securities to unconventional investors and extreme valuations, my second fundamental theorem also appeared to be irrelevant. Corporate happiness is positive cash flow. When customers pay more in cash than it costs to deliver the service or product, they are both demonstrating the economic value of the venture and they're liberating it from dependence on external funding. The economic impact of the pandemic has demonstrated the relevance of the cash flow constraint on growth. Now from the beginning, the unicorn bubble has been exposed in two ways. For the time being, the pandemic has ensured that the unicorn bubble is still insulated from the macro threat of rising interest rates. But the micro threat has become real on a case by case basis as business models come under scrutiny thanks to the full disclosure required by U.S. security laws, a testimonial to the wisdom of their authors some 75 years ago. While venture capital has become institutionalized as a pillar of the innovation economy and the unicorn bubble dramatizes beyond reason the potential for value creation, at least transiently, a very recent authoritative review by two leading scholars at the Harvard Business School, Josh Lerner and Ramana Nanda, identifies three strategic sources of concern. First, the disproportionate role of a few deep-pocketed investors. The top 50 investors they write, or about 5% of the total of 1,000 venture capital firms raised half of the total capital raised during these years of the unicorn bubble. Next, they highlight the very narrow sociological and geographic traits of venture capitalists themselves and they put it this way, the non-representative nature of the decision-makers at these firms is important because of the growing evidence that a lack of diversity among venture capitalists has an impact on what businesses get funded. And finally, they raise the question embedded in my first theorem of venture capital, the cash and control issue. The fundamental engine driving the venture capital industry has shifted from the narrow focus on a hot IPO market to the systemic consequences of the secular decline in real risk-free interest rates to zero or negative levels. Once capital was pulled into venture capital by the outsized returns generated relative to the public market, but that performance has not been seen since 2000 for the industry as a whole. Now capital is being pushed to VC by the meager returns available elsewhere. Even as the scale of the venture capital industry has reached new heights, approaching $500 billion assets under management, the compensation model has remained the same, 2 in 20, 2% annual management fee plus 20% share of investment profits taxed to capital gain rates. Learner and Nanda point out the perverse incentives that are thereby created. Venture capitalists have incentives to raise larger funds with lower likely returns. There is a clear correlation. The larger the fund, the more likely it is to underperform the industry as a whole and the public markets. Invest rapidly. Put the money to work in order to be able to raise another fund with less due diligence, less vetting of each deal. And choose safer investments since the compensation from the 2% on very large funds can actually approach the compensation from the returns, the share in the profits the fund generated. Collectively, these incentives produce individually rational but socially perverse results. And they may in turn, over time, serve to undermine the extraordinary role that has been played by professional venture capital in the American innovation economy.


Live from San Francisco, California, it's theCUBE at VMworld 2014, brought to you by VMware, Cisco, EMC, HP, and Nutanix. Now here are your hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Okay, welcome back everyone here live in San Francisco, California for VMworld 2014. This is theCUBE, our fifth year at VMworld, Dave Vellante and myself, my co-host, a really, really great event. Certainly all the innovations happening here within the enterprise. Our next guest is a disruptor of that enterprise creating value, D. Raj Pandey, CEO of Nutanix, one of the hottest companies here in VMworld. We just had the CEO of Docker on on the app side. Nutanix, certainly getting all the ink these days in terms of success and also with EVO Rails highlights this new model. Congratulations and welcome back to theCUBE. Thank you, thank you. This is my third time to theCUBE and fourth time probably. Yes, theCUBE alumni, we love having you on because your experience, you've been through many in a patient cycles, you've seen them come and go and this one is really different. It's got a big inflection point happening very fast. And so I just want to get some quick things out of the way.  Congratulations. Thank you. Was it a hard sell or were they like lining up to hand their cash over to you? Yeah, I mean this time around we've said we got to just go and build a relationship with the best investors who will buy into the IPO as well. And it was about the character of the investors more so than just trying to get another 10% better valuation or something, you know. I said you let the East Coast guys in. So thank you for that. Yeah, absolutely. It was good to get a little love to the East Coast. They need some help over there because it's all the action is. I hate to say it, it's true. Yeah, Boston has character. They're long investors and they actually want to go and build a long-term disruptor as well, you know. We had a big conversation with Greylock, NEA when they were on here, Steve Herrod at General Catalyst and also Frank Artali, all VCs. This pre-IPO financing trend is huge. It's like a pre-IPO IPO where there's a lot of action going on. I mean, that's a lot of cash you raise. You could probably raise more. I think it's the headline we're going to run with the Silicon angle. That's good cash. That's like an IPO. So everyone's kind of getting liquid. So I got to ask you the question, did the employees sell? Did the first stock sell mean Cloudera? They had liquidity from the investors on their kind of pre-IPO liquidity. Talk about the liquidity, did you guys sell? No, none of us sold actually. In fact, none of the existing investors sold and none of the founders or commoners actually sold. This was, I mean, people believe in this company. No one sold. No common, no preferred, no one sold. Yeah, Common just added more and said, you know what, sorry, could the company just added more? Hot deal though, you could have structured it that way, I presume, he shows not to.  It's titled, The Baton is Passing. And I talk about what it really means to build a large business and how we are scratching the surface of it actually. So what people think of us today is basically boxing us in with a category like hyper-converged and, you know, converged infrastructure and so on. But what we're really building is a company that's much bigger than that actually. Yeah, now we've had previous CUBE conversations where we talk about how to build a company versus a quick flip and you guys, hats off to you guys, congratulations. I know it's been a hard road. It looks easy from the outside when you get all the financing. But I got to ask you about the hard part now which is, you know, sustaining the performance. You're on a $200 million run rate. You have Docker out there, fully Dockerizing on the app level. Certainly developers are buying into their model. Love containerization. It's got an open source with a twist. The more you contribute, the better the platform ecosystem gets. But the whole idea is a shield infrastructure from developers. So you're on the other side. So how do you guys look at that? Are you guys the other side making Docker easier? Can you explain your role in that trend? Sure. I mean, you know, if you look at two years ago, three years ago, AWS was the hottest trend for developers. And now it's in the private cloud. What can Docker do for you or something? And then we were looking at AWS. We said, you know, we've got to integrate AWS with the rest of the infrastructure, the rest of virtualization that people, IT does actually. And it's about seamlessly integrating everything together. I think if people want self-service apps with Docker, they'll need self-service ways to debug performance issues, debug faults, and things like that. So there's a lot of analytics that needs to be done on top of that stuff. I mean, Docker is an orchestrator. You can go and do provision. You can figure out a way to box things up together and move things around as a container. But at the end of it all, once you've provisioned it, now what? I mean, once the app has taken a life of its own, there is a lot of hand-holding to really figure out why it's running slow. Does it need to move? There's a ton of analytics to be done on top of that. So provisioning used to be a hard thing, but now it's almost table stakes. Look, I had provision easily stand-up infrastructure, load apps with the container, whatnot. So provisioning, check the box, innovation's done. But now with the lifecycle of apps in a dynamic environment, you need policy, you got to be programmable. What does that do for the infrastructure? So is it a big data problem? Is it the software stack? What's the enabler for the developer not to worry that the infrastructure's going to break? And how do they do policy?  So you can't get rid of hardware simply because software-defined data centers are software-defined. Similarly, when you actually decouple the app from the infrastructure, you still have to live with infrastructure because an app will not just run in a vacuum, right? So those integration points, those touch points are exactly what Nutanix will bring to the table. Like, you know, you look at this new way of sandboxing something. How do you actually go and meld it with the rest of the infrastructure? You know, starting with configuration management and policies because Docker provides a good mechanism, but how do you really put policies on top of it so that it's about security and performance and monitoring and fault analysis and things like that? So there's a lot of big data to be done on top of it. So everybody's talking about sort of hyper-conversed the show. Steve Herrod said, well, it's interesting.  On the other hand, everybody's starting to wonder, okay, what does this all mean? What does it all mean? Is VMware essentially taking a Larry Ellison type of approach, trying to create through an ecosystem, sort of an integrated system? What does it mean for you guys? How should we be thinking about Evo Rails? Yeah, I mean, to us, it's about end of the sand. You know, it's like when VMware starts talking about hyper-converged and the array vendors start blogging about where you need hyper-converged, where you can't have hyper-converged, it actually is a problem for them. Because now, exactly. So now when a big company like VMware starts talking about no need for a sand, I think it's actually a bigger trouble for the arrays. And I mean, I talk about this in another metaphor, talking about when Android and iPhone collided, they were competing, but the thing that they were really kind of sucking out the life out of was a PC. And that's what's going to happen with hyper-convergence. We all visually look to be kind of colliding with VMware, like, oh, Evo Rails is going to be death to Nutanix and so on. But the first thing that will die is the sand. And that is what's going to be common about what we do and what VMware does. I mean, the more power we provide to the application guy, the virtualization guys, the more we can do top-down selling of storage, which is very tightly coupled with applications, I think the more power it will give to this market as well. So you're saying it's okay to be the Android or the iPhone, just don't want to be the X86 desktop. Yeah, absolutely.  So share with us some performance metrics, you guys, whether it's headcount, can you share with us revenue run rate, customers, you know. Yeah, so it's one of the things that we actually do really well, not just on the outside, but also in the inside. We talk about that with our partners like Dell, for example, we have the city of Dell sitting here, Sam, and we are very comfortable with Dell actually carrying an EVO rail kind of platform and also carrying a Nutanix, because eventually the dust will settle and the true character of technologies and products will come out. And if you're not a good enough product, then we don't deserve to be actually being talked about at all. So this is a marathon and we talk about that with Dell like that as well. So that's how we talk to partners, we talk to our employees about things like dilution and things like outstanding shares and stuff like that. To the rest of the world, we actually talk about the business, you know, like everybody is like, no, we are a private company, we can't really talk about numbers. We go and talk numbers as well. Now someday it'll actually come to a little bit more guarded communication because of SEC and stuff like that. But until the time, we won't let the lawyers actually run this company. It sounds like Sergey and Larry like Google when they went public, they wanted to do things differently. You guys got that same vibe there? Like, hey, you want to run away? Yeah, and customers love it because when they see the size of the business, when they understand that we're open about revenue, open about number of customers, average deal sizes, repeat business, all the stuff. I mean, NPS scores. I mean, we are one of the rare few companies that really talk about NPS scores and customer sat and things like that. Because we're proud of those things actually, you know, and there's nothing, in fact, if there's something that we can't talk about, that must be something weak about us. And even that is out in the open. I mean, the Nutanix Bible, as a case in point, is a website that is maintained by one of our architects. And it's one of the most heavily hit Nutanix assets. And it has every strength, every weakness of Nutanix technology. And we know that only with that kind of a transparency, we can actually be a better product, better company. So flex some muscle a little bit for us. Actually the financing speaks for itself in terms of the bubble and the hype and everything, but that's validation. You have revenue, run rate. How many customers do you have? How many customers over a million dollars do you have in the company? Sure. We actually talked about this in our press release about 15, 20 days ago. But as of July 31st, we had about 800 customers. We're adding about 200, 250 logos a quarter. And we have a lot of repeat customers. So about 70% of our customers actually come back and buy two times more in the first 12 months. And this has resulted in about 29 to 30 million plus dollar customers for us. So give us your take on VM where we had Pat Gelsinger around talking about getting an offensive strategy. You're obviously a ship that's out there getting stronger and bigger, floating out in the waters. Eventually, right now I'm not in here VM wearing the Ecos as of for sure. What's your future look like relative to some of the other players? If you continue to go on this pace, it starts to get competitive. How does it go? I saw Cisco's booth up there. It was a pretty big booth. And Cisco and VMware have coexisted. Now it's going to be conceded of me to even compare Nutanix to what Cisco is and what Cisco, VMware look like. But I think good companies know how to coexist.  So I think just like geopolitics, this is the geopolitical environment that you see in the VM world here. And I think good companies know what it means to really put partitions and boundaries and still be respectful of each other. Well, it's a growth market. Growth cures all problems. When it starts to get slower, maybe, but right now we're in a massive growth phase. And I think the way I look at what VMware is doing is, as I just told Dave about it, that it's the beginning of the end of the sand. And that's what we will rejoice together because the enemy here is- What do you mean by that? That's a good point. Would you describe why that's happening? Well, the big reason for that is empowerment and liberation. So if you go back to the days of NetApp, it was selling empowerment and liberation to the line of business per single. Here is a really easy, fast-to-deploy appliance that will give you liberty over corporate IT so you don't have to beg, borrow, and steal, block storage or something. And it's sold like hotcakes. You know, then came VMware and said, look guys, you don't have to wait for budgets. You can really start going and doing things like test and dev and pilots and things like that without really worrying about getting more servers. Microsoft did this in a big way with respect to the other Unix vendors and with respect to systems management and so on. Liberation sells a lot. So when we go and go and- Especially when it makes money for the customers. Absolutely. Because, you know, there are different words for it. It's time to value, speed to market. But the real way to explain all of this phenomenon is human beings want empowerment, you know. And hyperconvergence empowers the application user, empowers the virtualization user. The folks who really consume storage are the guys who actually end up buying it. So I think that's a big phenomenon and it's more tied to the right brain of humans as opposed to left brain. It's not speeds and feeds. It's more about I can make my own decisions. I don't have to beg and borrow storage from a server. There are technical tailwinds too, right? I mean, you saw Function move out of the server and offload the CPU for good reason. And then this whole infrastructure built up around it. But it's clearly moving back. Oh yeah, absolutely. And I think- Cores, you know, cheaper memories, flash. I mean, there's three things that we look at. One is virtualization became mature. So you can now run any and every app, not just the business app, but storage of an app, for example, can now run inside a hypervisor. 10 gigabit ethernet could now converge networks. So you don't need a separate front plane and a separate back plane. You could converge them and use software-defined techniques to really still keep them separate. And lastly, the advent of flash. I mean, there's so much silicon on the server that it can get hundreds of thousands of IOPS without really having to worry about going to an array itself. So you're- I wonder if I could talk a little bit about the TAM. Some of the trade press pickup this morning said, you got the potential to become the next Oracle. Now, of course, one of your investors perpetuated that. But nonetheless, the market's enormous for you guys, we have pegged it of TAM of about 400 million, which it is, if you add up all the storage and server- For a billion, I mean? And networking, 400 billion, sorry, did I say million? 400 billion, yeah, so enormous. So how should we be thinking about your approach to attacking that TAM? You've got everybody talking about the same benefits of converged.  So help us understand the real difference and why you can continue to grow faster than some of the legacy guys. So, you know, TAM is historically a very lagging indicator of anything, you know? If you look at analyst reports, talking about ServiceNow, for example. Ah, absolutely, good example. Analysts still think that the- Eight billion. ITSM market is actually, in fact, ServiceNow is only a billion and a half dollar TAM or something. Yeah, right, right, right. And you know what? I would take that any day than having to go and please an analyst to say, look, the TAM is really big. Rather go and have my sales force go and do the talking and say, well, you guys will know over time what the TAM really is. So I think the space that we are in, the TAM is growing every year. It's all about workloads and use cases. If you keep expanding the scope of applications and the use cases and the workloads, all the TAM will come to us. And that's the way we look at it. I mean, it's about platforms. So, you know, going after OEM model, for example, grows our TAM because we can be everywhere Dell is. So there are places where we'll have to go and do what Dell does, for example. And still be the piece of software. Because the place when you start to limit the TAM of any company, when you start to have religion, this is the one and only way you actually do things. Like, sun did this to itself. And when it saw x86 actually ramping up, they're like, oh, it's a toy. We actually are serious guys. We actually go and do big applications. Let the toy actually go and run. Can also kind of made that mistake too. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Free role guys in the audience. So the point is, you know, you keep growing the TAM by disrupting yourself. By doing an OEM deal with Dell, we sort of disrupted ourselves. But then we also said, if we don't disrupt ourselves and someone else will, right? And that has massively grown the TAM of this company. Now we go after new workloads. We're going after, you know, exchange workloads and Microsoft and Oracle and all that stuff, you know. We'll go after no SQL workloads relatively soon. I think there's all that stuff around workload expansion is what TAM really means. So help us understand why you guys are different. Because everybody's using the same words, same marketing messages. What makes Nutanix different? I blogged about this today as well. So it's fresh in my mind. I think the two things that we do, I mean, and this is on the product side, you know. Obviously there's more on the business side that I think we do okay and can do even better over time. Execution stuff you're talking about. Yeah, so on the product side, the two things that we've done well and have passion for is consumer grade design and web skill engineering.  Can you meld these two together and bring it to the enterprise, actually. And we are a very well-balanced company at that. You know, we have tons of people who just think about design, design, design. There's tons of people who think about how do you make it scalable and available and reliable. So on the product side, we actually do a pretty good job of that. Now on the execution side, you know, we have our VP of support and ops sitting here. David Sanxter, we really own support. We absolutely own support, better than most companies ever can. And if there's an escalation or two or whatever, I think all of us are equally involved in that. NPS scores are pretty big. I mean, when we lead with Nutanix story, we talk about the product and technology, but we also talk about support. And together, they actually become a really good combination. I talked to a couple of customers this week. One was the CIO of San Mateo County and the other one was from Australia. I forget it was Langs maybe. Langs maybe, yeah. And both of them sort of underscored that. So, you know, props to being a partner and not just that. And I think on the internal, I think, you know, we at least strive to value employees and value customers and value partners. I think if we have empathy for these stakeholders, I think eventually things work out. I mean, a lot of companies start to go the other way when they start to just empathize stockholders and not the other stakeholders, like employees and customers and partners. And that's when things start to go wrong. I want to ask you about the culture around the company, obviously, and how it relates to some of the trends. You mentioned that people are aware and transparent. And fear of being paranoid as Andy Grove would say. It sounds like a little bit of Andy Grove mentality here. So, with that in mind, I got to ask you, you guys were one of those companies that no one understood, you know, the misfit toys at the beginning of the financing journey. What is this new ton? It's will it work? And you know, I've talked about that now. Obviously, the success is proven and everyone's trying to be like you. In an era of automation, orchestration, things go away, jobs go away, things are displaced, they're automated and the shift goes to other places. So where do you see the shifting happening? If the software stack continues, if the DevOps continues to happen, the containerization, some of the intelligence around analytics, where does the shift go to? Where will the innovation happen that's unique, that's not yet seen by people? What's your vision? Is it going to be security, other problems? I mean, no one really gets fired, they just shift to other places. Yeah, you know, phones were also an invention for the longest time. For decades, we kept tweaking on phones, became cordless and you had these big satellite phones and then 3G arrived in the scene and people started talking about smart phones and so on. So anything that we use on a day-to-day basis will continue to get better. Today we have tons of people in a data center. Tomorrow we won't have as many people in data center because you use big data techniques and machine learning and artificial intelligence to do more and more. Managing volumes, the little thing, administrating stuff. Those things you take away, I think you know, as a company we believe that storage should become an invisible resource in the data center and how do you take that away? But the way we're approaching this whole thing where humans are less and less involved with machines is a very humane approach around education and enablement because the same people can now do better things. Like the storage guys can uplift themselves to do more application work, more virtualization work, more hybrid computing work and so on. So Nutanix is a massive investment in education. It's a pretty big part of our overall, I would say, initiative. It's not just product and technology and support. What can we do to uplift and elevate the lives of people who jobs might be taking away today? Where do you see some of the early signs there in terms of job shifting and job retraining? Is it the DBA moving over to something else? Is it big data? I mean, what early indicators can you point to now that's saying this is actually happening now? People are moving and shifting. Well, you just look at the v-center plugins around storage and networking and you know that there is a convergence of responsibilities going on right now. I mean, the big fight between Cisco and VMware is about who owns networking because East-West is like, okay, VMware says we own it and North-South is like Cisco is like, well, we actually own it. So until you have the North-South, you can get East-West to work together. How about that statement by Pat? We love Cisco gear, kind of a little T-positioning there. Oh, it's kind of interesting. Yeah, so I think I mean, both are equally important. Well, that's a gear company. But you know, coming back to your question on how the responsibilities and the roles are actually converging, I think that's a pretty good indication of where things are going now. D Raj, always great to have you in theCUBE. It's a pleasure to talk with you. I mean, you've had such a great success and you really built a great company. Congratulations. I think this is the beginning. Great to hear the stories and the insight around the success of new Thomas. And again, congratulations. Great to follow you guys. This is theCUBE live in San Francisco. We'll be right back with our next guest after this short break.