You know I think one of the things that's common in you know every entrepreneurial journey is that there are ups and downs And you got to be able to bounce off the the downs and then get back on the on the ups as quickly as you can You know here is an idea We can achieve this together. Thing about failure is that you have to be in the environment that is supportive of you Experimenting and trying things from CMC markets. This is the artful try Is it something that was wrong in the process or is it something that we didn't follow that the process told us? Hello and welcome to the artful trader. I'm Michael McCarthy chief market strategist at CMC markets Asia Pacific In our third season we talked to the experts in their own fields to uncover what gives them the confidence to succeed We uncovered confidence Unlocking the secrets behind resilience preparation and growth and how it can make you a better trader It's not often you sit in a room with three people that have had the confidence to disrupt industries To disrupt people and the way they view the world to even disrupt their own ways of thinking in this first of a two-part disruptor Special we're speaking to three CEOs about their journeys to start up success Stay with us as we speak to Tim Fung from airtasker Oleg Vornek from drone shield and Drew Bilby from next bar about how they've used Their confidence to overturn industries Tim Fung founder and CEO of airtasker welcome to the artful trader. Thanks for having me Tim Were there early life experiences that fostered your entrepreneurial spirit when I was a young kid? I used to you know when I put my mind to something I usually try and you know go out and get it and I'd go to various lengths to To be able to get what I wanted so I remember, you know There'd be like some specific action figure that I would want and I would actually go and look through the yellow pages call up You know the 20 toy stores and then you know ask my mom to go and drive me out to that toy store And it was really like specific that was probably like one of the early experiences And then I remember when I was young my dad used to pay me my couple of cents to pluck out each of his gray hairs So he'd sit in front of the TV and I'd sit behind him playing his gray hairs And usually he'd pay me two or three cents per hair that I pulled out But I remember once he offered me ten cents per hair And then he actually fell asleep in front of the TV and I ended up picking 250 hairs out of his head And getting $25 which for a 10 year old was like an incredible amount of money and I was super excited So I guess that was one of my first entrepreneurial Okay, so you had a lot of determination obviously and when you saw an opportunity you're prepared to take it Yeah, yeah various various nature Outstanding before you moved into a task you worked in various places including at Macquarie Bank You came there straight from University. I believe how did that inform your approach to the startup world? Well, one thing is that I think it's really good to get a basis of learning in a really high performance organization So I think Macquarie was a great learning ground for for getting the basics right and some of these things I think we might take for granted like you know being able to write an email Set up a set up a meeting You know all of these things that seem to be seem to be basic But I remember when I was at Macquarie there were little things like typos like you know sending an email out without checking Your spelling and rechecking your spelling and they're all just basic things that I think were a really good foundation for Later moments my career and you were also a founding team member and an investor amazing Yeah, so in 2009 so I was at Macquarie from 2004 to 2009 and and after that I was watching a lot of the show entourage And I wanted to be like Ari gold the Hollywood agents so I went out and tried to apply to work in a few talent representation agencies So I actually made like this really embarrassing now Calibration about myself and I sent it to all of the talent-repping agencies in Australia And I was really lucky I got picked up by an agency called chic management, which is run by quite a famous model scout I'm called Ursula Huffnagle So I went there I started working for her for free doing all her PowerPoint presentations because I was really good at that from my days investment banking Right, and it was actually her partner in the modeling agency happened to be a really senior telco executive and entrepreneur And he offered me the opportunity to work with him on building a mobile startup, which was amazing What personal characteristic has been the biggest asset to you in building a tasker? my wife tells me that One of my greatest strengths is probably that I can you know take a beating get up and go do it again So, you know, I think one of the things about That's common in you know every entrepreneurial journey is that there are ups and downs And you got to be able to bounce off the downs and then get back on the on the ups as quickly as you can I guess it's a combination of confidence and hutzpah to to keep going So yeah, I don't think there's any specific skill around like numeracy or speaking or language or anything like that It's just I think I'm I'm willing to put in the grit and put in the effort So we've spoken with all kinds of disruptors in this series Tim But when you started up airtasker there wasn't an existing industry to disrupt instead You changed the way people thought about local services What were the challenges in bringing that to to bear? Well, I actually think So it's quite interesting the parallels between something like a me sim, which was a more I guess traditional challenger Opportunity, you know, we were looking at Telstra had a certain amount of market share in in mobile sims and so did optis And we were coming into You know very specifically I create a simpler product with a lower price and and try to grab some market share doing that When you're right with airtasker we weren't doing that In fact, the biggest competitor that we had was really like apathy or jobs just not being done You know people thinking oh, I've got those boxes over there that I really should be throwing out But I'm just not going to do that. I'm very familiar with Sort of familiar with that, you know, I guess the biggest competitors the couch So I think that's everyone's secret so that's why that's probably why it's interesting problem but it did make it actually more difficult because you actually had to go out there and in a way frame the problem for people and then and Then actually, you know offer them the solution to being able to solve that problem The way we went about doing that is by building airtasker as a demand-driven open marketplace And that's I guess I guess a fancy way for saying rather than us thinking about what do you need? Like us thinking we're gonna find cleaners and plumbers and electricians and carpenters We actually started the platform out as simply an open box that said what do you need done? And you could actually type anything into that box that you wanted And that was a signaling for the customer to say this is what I need And the great thing about that is that because so many people have various different kinds of skills They were able to go. Oh, wow, someone's looking for that. I can do that I've got the skills to be able to do that And that was a really different approach compared to what was traditionally done, which was yeah I do these things. This is all I'm offering and if you know, you don't need what I'm offering then Nothing's gonna happen. I've heard airtasker described and please tell me if this is unfair as a dating site for services Well, we have had a few love stories On the platform, you know, we've had a few. Yeah, there's been certainly romances has been a bunch of like wedding proposals So there's definitely some great stories The that are happening there and I guess yet to a certain extent. It's a similar thing. It's somebody saying hey I I need this service down or I need this problem solved and another person saying yep I can do that and it's about matching the most relevant people together to get that done in the in the best possible way And in the process creating new industries new opportunities and and getting more done for sure I mean, you know, we have 30,000 Active workers every month using the platform and they're earning close to 120 million dollars a year doing this kind of work So it's something that sort of started out as you know a side hustle for a lot of people But over time has been able to become a professionalized full-time job and what gave you confidence that this would work Well, I think probably a moment of lapsed thinking perhaps and I and I say that jokingly But also I think that there is some truth in that which is that I think When you go and start a bench show if someone was to ask you to write a document laying out exactly What are the probabilistic chances of each step of the journey kind of working out? I'm almost certain that you know, you would back right out and go that's insane Why would I go and do this the chances of me being able to do something else and and then come doing that a way? Way higher So I do think to some extent it's an irrational thing where you're like I just want this to happen. It would be really really cool if it happened So that's where it kind of started But I think throughout the journey one thing that we found is that When we went out and we saw the task is who are doing the the jobs and earning an income doing it And we heard about their stories. It really was quite inspiring. It was quite emotional Actually, and and that's the thing that really gets us out of bed now the opportunity to create really good jobs for humans And I think, you know in the age of things like AI Coming and automation of jobs like that's exciting stuff We want that to happen and we want a lot of these kinds of jobs to be you know automated and make progress in that way But on the other hand, we want humans to be able to find the next What's the next thing that only humans can go and do and I don't think there's any danger of there not being jobs for humans to do You know if you look a couple hundred years ago in America, you know 20% of the country was employed in agriculture and farming and now it's only a very small percentage in agriculture and farming But you know, there's new jobs. There's Snapchat market art. There's AI data scientists. There's all these other kinds of jobs So we're really excited about being able to create those opportunities for for humans Have you ever hired anyone off a tasker?  I've had my air conditioning moved. I'd have my tiling done Yeah, I use a task a lot. I get some free credits though I'm pleased to hear it and I can see that there's a lot of satisfaction that comes from Being able to see the changes that air tasker has brought to people's lives But you've described the first three to four years of it is quite grueling. What kept you going through that? Well, I think there are there are a couple of things So I think definitely the inspiration of working with the people on the platform was an important part of it Another part of it was that we raised money early on to build the a tasker platform And we kind of had to do that because it is definitely an infrastructure type business You've got a kind of like a layout this network and invest this huge amount of money into building the platform Building all the communication the payment system all of this stuff And you know when you're doing 20 jobs a day, you're bringing in about, you know $15 of revenue a day or something you need to raise money to be able to do that and do it Well, and so one thing was the responsibility that we'd taken on I think me and my co-founder John. I both took that responsibility really really seriously and Yeah, I think that that was one thing it was kind of felt like we jumped out of a plane You know and make a parachute you got to figure this out or at least go down trying Tim Thank you very much for joining us on the Artful Trader. Thanks so much for having me Drew Bilbig CEO of Next Bar, welcome to the Artful Trader podcast series. Thanks for having me Mike. Very pleased to be here Drew, Next Bar went from an idea on a beach in Mexico to one of the leading brands in Australia Can you tell me the story of Next Bar? Yeah I can, it's how have you got? Short version please So in a nutshell I was lucky enough to spend about a year on exchange in Mexico whilst I was studying my degree back here civil engineering When I was over there, you know as you do when you're in a different environment you see things in a different light and I really noticed that that you know the better for you beverage space was much more well developed in Mexico than it was in Australia. You know I focused on the iced tea category at that point and it was about one to two percent of the market back in Australia but in Mexico it was about 12 to 14 percent So I saw you know a real opportunity to come back to Australia you know start this your better for you beverage company and really see you know and try and you know show Australian consumers what we can do and what we can drink this better for you in Australia So you found a gap in the market but what made you confident that it would work in Australia? I think you know when you're 22 and a little bit sort of unfamiliar with the industry and a little bit naive you can often see things like that as just a real challenge and a real opportunity you know absolutely throughout the process we've had huge speed humps and different things but one of the things I did when I first came back to Australia was tap my brother-in-law Troy Douglas on the shoulder He wasn't your brother-in-law at that stage? No he was my brother-in-law at that stage So I tapped him on the shoulder and said mate look I really believe in this opportunity we looked at it together and we agreed that it was a really big potential in Australia having that business partner to go through the whole entire process together really gives you that confidence and it's basically a shoulder to lean on and a team to go into the process together What was Troy's reaction when you told him your idea? He's about as crazy as me so he's super passionate about health and wellbeing he's incredibly passionate about business as we both are so it was almost like we gave each other the strength and passion and motivation to jump on board together it really made us stronger as a team to go into this and give us the confidence to think here is an idea we can achieve this together Nedra I've got to say a lot of people say you should never work with family but that wasn't the case for you Well as you mentioned it wasn't family to start with I think the biggest thing when kind of looking at a business partner relationship is making sure that the person that you're partnering with has really contrasting complementary skillsets to yourself One of the biggest things about Troy and I is that I'm really passionate about the operational side of things the running of the business, innovation etc Troy is really passionate about stakeholder management the finance of the business, the marking piece so given that we've got such different skill sets it's really easy to kind of work on different things in a collaborative way and you know you find that you're clashing less whereas if I think if you get someone that's absolutely like-minded to you and wants to work on the same things you're probably in for a bit of a tougher ride So you started with a canning machine that you bought sight unseen off eBay? We did so the product we wanted to produce there was no one in Australia that could produce it for us so we jumped on Alibaba which is kind of the Chinese eBay and bought a 2,000 an hour canning line in a 40 foot container, sight unseen rocked up with no English writing on it so we had to kind of muddle our way through together, took us about six months and finally got a machine or developed a factory in Hornsby in Northern Sydney that was functional and could produce canned iced tea and then spent the next three months pulling in all family and friends, favours from everywhere working at 18 hours a day whilst still working at our jobs and basically produced a whole warehouse full of canned iced tea naturally sugar free without a customer So you talk about chucking yourself in the deep end that's absolutely believing in what we're doing and believing we can go out there and the opportunity exists So you had your production facility you had your factory full of goods then you had to sell it That must have been a tough part of the business Absolutely and I think jumping on the road and knocking on doors and hearing firsthand from owners of retail outlets and customers about what they thought about the brand was incredibly powerful because that was our very first product that we brought to market and it was never going to be perfect So hearing that feedback and understanding where we should go next and where we should take the portfolio was a really important stage of the business So that feedback, I've heard to a story how a customer let you know that they'd lost 15 kilos by switching into next by our products away from soft drinks That's a story that gave you the confidence to keep pushing Yeah, I think the whole next proposition is our products are naturally sugar free So we in 2015 developed a blend of natural sweeteners which is now patented globally and it allowed us to create a whole range of soft drinks sparking waters, kombucha, functional beverages that were naturally sugar free So hearing stories when people approach us on social media, give us a call or email us and let us know that what you guys created has a real impact on my life and in that instance that person lost 15 kilos from just making a simple switch of a full sugar soft drink into naturally sugar free next by products Absolutely, it gives you the confidence to say we're on the right path here What we're doing is having an impact and he's making a difference We absolutely committed to completing this journey and continuing on the path we're on And you're close Next bar will make a profit next year We've been in business coming up to 10 years and we've invested heavily throughout that process in our portfolio, in our people and it's not until I guess FY20 that we'll turn our first profit which is really exciting for us It's something that is a really big milestone but also something which shows us that for the last nine years of business the investment we've been making into product innovation marketing is starting to really pay off But it's not the money that kept you going If it was the money we would have been out five years ago We are so passionate about what we're trying to create We are so passionate about genuinely making an impact and having a difference in people's lives with a particular interest in diabetes and obesity And it's that that I heard really on that diabetes is the sixth highest cause of death in Australia is mind boggling And a major cause of diabetes is all these high sugar soft drinks that we have in the market So we felt compelled and we felt that we had really an obligation to create something which was going to give an alternative to those people and have a better impact on the wider health of the community You're obviously a very positive person Tell me about the tough times Did you have any long dark nights of the soul? In the last nine years there have absolutely been times where you're down to your last $20 or you have a major, major invoice coming in for goods that you can't see how you're going to pay that and you don't have the money in your bank account And in the last two years in particular there's been times when you're not sure how you're going to get to the next stage of the business and you're staring down the barrel of a significant debt if the business was to fall apart because at the end of the day there's no doubt that the company obviously the debts fall on you if the business was to go under I think to get through those stages you have to remain positive you have to be passionate about the cause that you're trying to achieve and passionate about the business and the direction of the business There's no doubt that having a business partner that I have in Troy as well and the ability for both of us to you know, you can't be up all the time and sometimes you get to rely on the other person to bring you back up and then as well as that, having a fantastic family beautiful wife who's incredibly supportive a wider family as well which was supported throughout the whole journey is such a crucial element that foundation gives you the confidence to keep going I think without that it'd be very tough to continue to take all the blows yourself and not be able to share that and look after your mental health as well You took on the giants I mean, you're taking on people like Coca-Cola in this space Was that foolish? I think it's, you know, looking at it now it's a bit of a Dave Vesca life type story What we wanted to do was be everything that they want So we wanted to be the naturally sugar-free brand When you look at the behemoths of the multinationals you know, they are still full of sugar or artificial sweetness So that naturally sugar-free space was something we wanted to invent We wanted to completely invent another category of beverages So in our view we weren't actually trying to take on the Coca-Cola's and the Pepsi's of the world We're actually trying to recreate what people drink as beverages and give them the opportunity to really take advantage of the anti-sugar sentiment that's happening You know, give people an option when they have diabetes or obesity give them that naturally sugar-free option that didn't exist in the beverage world So we wanted to create something that they weren't and everything that they weren't and I think that's where we're carving out our niche, which is now turning into a mass-market product Right, so you're often described as a disrupter in essence you're trying to help people find what it was they were looking for anyway Yeah, and like everything this is a ten-year-ever-night success, right? So it's, you know, formulating that strategy has taken a really long time but I think we're certainly on the track of that really nice little sweet spot of getting a loyal consumer which is fiercely passionate about Next Bar which is actually now creepy into the mass-market So what's next for Next Bar? A lot of exciting stuff so we domestically is our core business and we're really passionate about continuing to expand that beverage portfolio We're also looking at, you know, snacking and naturally sugar-free snacking and the functional space as well so I think we'll see in the next 12 months, Next Bar, Enter you know, maybe the functional protein ball space or different things like that which would be really exciting but you know, I think that there's a huge market and we actually entered the UK about 12 months ago and have had a hugely positive response to that so that market for us will grow significantly over the next sort of, you know, one to two years We launched over with a major retailer over there with our Spark and Water range and it's taken off really well and that whole portfolio over there will sort of triple in the next 12 months so you know, really exciting global expansion and really focused on continuing to develop that household penetration and brand awareness in the domestic market as well Drew, I want to thank you for sharing your experiences and insights with the Artful Trader podcast audience today Thanks, Oli Mike And now it's my pleasure to introduce Oli Vorney, the CEO of Drone Shield. Oli, thank you for joining us today. Thank you Mike, good to be here You haven't always been in the defence industry Oli, you've got a background in investment banking, you work with VC, you work with Brookfield Asset Management you work with Layton you've had many different paths to where you are today and in fact even at Drone Shield you didn't start a CEO, you started as a CFO That's right. How do you find this stepping up to the CEO role? I think there is a major difference between being a CFO of a business and being the CEO that said in a small company perhaps the difference tends to blend a bit more here and there so there are different types of CFOs in different companies even in the public space where naturally some tend to be more project management oriented almost blending in the chief operating officer space so that's kind of what I was from day one in any case where you start to flow into the sales side of things and to even product development side of things so for me the step was probably a little easier but look, being a CEO you are fundamentally in charge of every major stream of the company so you are looking after the technology side of things after the sales side of things being public company after the investment side of things so you basically have to be good at all of those now you are assisted by your team and every one of them but at the end of the day your name is what people see and how they react The buck stops with you Before you started with Drone Shield you were a frustrated investment banker too long. What was going on for you then? Well, I have to say that investment banking was very different pre-GFC and post-GFC in the sense that the environment was different the volume of things, volume of deals was quite different teams were different so the industry has fundamentally changed from GFC onwards and also perhaps what tends to happen is a lot of people go through more junior roles within the banks and you get amazing talent that goes there and you form great relationships with people and you learn great skills but it does take a very particular kind of person to remain within the walls and invest in banks into your senior career and I don't think I was one of those people so all the time I started to think well what else can I do where every day I get up energised and I want to move on with my day and right now I'm certainly at that point. Dranshield has about 35 employees, is that right? That's correct. So that's not a large company and Dranshield punches well above its weight. We certainly do so a lot of it and that's one of the things I learned from investment banking is team is critical so every one of our people are consistently good so right across the teams from the engineers to our sales guys to the rest of the crew. You leverage as much as you can so today we're present countries around the world mostly through in-country partners so we do have our own offices in the three key countries being US, UK and Australia of course but then a lot of other places like for example you look at Saudi, you look at French, France you look at Columbia we don't necessarily have the relationships speak the language or know how to do the business so we rely on experienced representatives to work with us on effectively success only basis of in-country agents and then we train them we go together into demonstrations to various customers they have militaries law enforcement etc and they become our force multipliers so a lot of it is about leverage and basically making sure that you build a business in a way that you get exposed to a lot of customers. The other thing that came a lot into our favor is we caught the momentum on number of fronts so the defense industry in Australia is very much a new thing it hasn't always been that case so if you look at maybe 10 years ago there was really not as much focus on buying Australian developed Australian built defense products and now from about 2 or 3 years ago Australian government is undertaking a major focus on building up domestic industry both from the export point of view and also for use by the Australian military in law enforcement so we very much experience the benefits of that so whether you get taken around the world with support of defense overseas, Australia etc for example you speak with the French and a very easy conversation to have as well Australia buys a whole lot of things like the French submarines attack helicopters etc and also on the other end of it is counter drone industry itself so when we started 5 years ago people were saying well what are you guys doing nobody can actually do anything bad with drones to start with a drone can fly 50 meters smack against nearest tree and that would be the end of the drone so you couldn't do anything bad with it even if you were a intending terrorist but we said just wait things are going to change as every technology drones are going to get better payload is going to get better flying distances, batteries, navigation etc and sure enough all of that happened swarms of drones so probably about 3 years ago we started seeing terrorists deploying drones in the Middle East to inflict terrorist attacks we started seeing people disrupting airport flights so Gatwick most famously last year but now we are seeing drone attacks or flights around airports almost on weekly basis disrupting flights and you may ask why is it such a big issue the reason for that if a drone gets sucked we are talking about small consumer drone that's what we deal with gets sucked into an engine of a plane while engines of planes got built they are not so good at plastic objects with lithium ion batteries inside of them so that can cause blow out of the engine and take down the airplane so today if an airplane sees a drone approaching into its territory it just holds all planes imagining convenience the cost etc so we are working with customers like that to effectively make sure these things don't happen and the market is enormous so part of the reason why we punch so much above our weight is we are very much going to tell winds of both Australian government support but also counter drone industry rapidly rising and us being there right from the start five years ago so like many emerging technologies drones have been used for evil as well as good and as you rightly point out that some people using drones to disrupt you are disrupting the disruptors that's great so we often see ourselves as an anti virus almost kind of approach where with all the good applications of drones like you said there is all the good applications and drones themselves evolve all the time so new communication protocols come around all the time drones get smaller or faster you think of racing drones the payloads get better distances get stronger or larger so with all of that in mind we have to constantly refine our technology so at the heart of our team is a couple dozen engineers who are basically constantly working to continue refining those technologies and make sure that we stay in front of the developments of drones as they have and what gives you the confidence that you'll be able to stay ahead of those threats that people want to deal with with drone shield it's a good question so we have very much been successful with it up to now we see the quality of our team and one thing that I have to say is that in Australia you get the quality of both engineering talent and sales talent which is world class so I just spent two years living in the US and I've seen a lot there and US is a little bit like in the defence a bit like in acting the world capital of the industry and still very much so in Australia we see similarly if not better talent as we're seeing there so I look at the world class standard of our team I look at all the success we've done and with that is the confidence that we'll continue pushing forward so in 2016 you bought drone shield to the share market you launched an initial public offering and became a public company what did that mean for drone shield and what did it mean for you personally? Great thing about being public when you're dealing with government customers which is majority of our customers for number of reasons is you get high profile so in a lot of cases assessing the company itself or assessing the manufacturer is a very big part of the assessment not just the products for the customer and being a high profile public company our sales helps approach towards the customers because we're definitely seen as more credible than perhaps similar sized similar profile company but there'll be privately held and it certainly helps the marketing look I think our kind of technology is great for public markets because it's relatively easy to put out interesting things that people intuitively understand I think the issue with defence industry generally is that due to the nature of the products due to the nature of the customers there's not a lot that you can productively put out and educate investors with which is also why I think a lot of these companies are not public but I think counter drone is a bit of an exception where there's enough that you can put out so people get their heads around what you do how big the opportunity is and why it's so exciting all the growth ahead for me personally it certainly means high profile but look over time you get used to it and in some ways again it helps sales you go to some pretty high profile customers and they're like drone shield you're famous we heard of you So being willing to experiment and try new things must mean that as well as successes there are failures and in fact you've been quoted as saying Oling and I do hesitate to bring this up but you've been quoted as saying that you don't necessarily know the right way to run a business but you know a hundred wrong ways to run a business I think I might have caught a thousand wrong ways to run a business there look we had a lot of successes so far and I'm very happy with the way business is traveling right now but that said I think there's nature a lot of experimentation that goes with running the business so you're looking at the nascent industry nascent for a lot of customers when they buy products from us this is the very first time they ever buy this kind of product so in terms of the go to market strategy in terms of building the technology itself it's inevitable that you try a whole lot of things and some things work and some things don't and you just have to do this so whether it means appointing new agents in the country and then swapping them and there are some places where we had spectacular good agents from the get go and we're really happy about that but then we also had cases where we had to change multiple in-country agents because for whatever reason they were just not doing what we're expecting of them to do and look similar thing with tech so some products become widely more popular than others over time you can get a little better at predicting what the customers want right now we're very fortunate in that most of the new products will bring to market in response to the end customer demand where you basically don't bring the product to market until you get customers to say okay well here is specifically what I want and also when you refine the product in the beginning we used to think okay well what could be things that the customer could possibly want and a lot of that led to trial and error now things are becoming a lot more refined where customers tend to adopt you again they trust and they say okay well this is great but I want this switch in this way this design in that way so your I guess error making starts to reduce and you become more and more on point with with the customers okay but certainly at least in the early days you've factored failure into your business model was it ever discouraging look I have very understanding board and great chairman Peter James who chairs a number of large and smaller companies and I have a great relationship with him so thing about failure is that you have to be in the environment that is supportive of you experimenting and trying things so both from perspective of the team and from the board and from the investors I was very fortunate in ability to try a whole lot of things now that said the idea is that you try a whole lot but you need to have enough successes for the business to continue moving forward and evolving they must be balanced so the balance has to be net positive even if some things don't work out as much as you would like them to be does intuition play any role in your continuous experimentation? I think it certainly does but there's a question well how do you see intuition so I think to me intuition is subconsciously absorbing a lot of things that you've seen in the past so once you see a lot you kind of start making connections between things so for example when you when you look at the product and you think what could be the features and you look at different customers who suggest different things you reflect on the situations like that in the past when you have different in-country agents who want to represent you and you basically want to make a decision which one you want to go with and you assess them based on your discussions again you reflect back in the past and think what has worked and what hasn't so I think intuition as in decision making under uncertainty kind of happens all the time Trader's are very familiar with it but I think in many ways it's just the product of your brain making connections between how the current situation related to what you've seen in the past and just kind of extrapolating from that I was once told to never confuse smarts with experience as it's slightly different ways of making right judgments but the idea is that whether you can or cannot build smarts to a separate thing but as you get more experience you certainly judge better based on reflecting on similar things in the past Oli, thank you very much for being part of the Artful Trader today. Thank you, Mike. That's the end of part one of our Disruptor Special but make sure you tune into the next episode of the Artful Trader as we bring our three disruptors into conversation together and unpack how confidence can turn an idea into a thriving business.


It was the President's order. See you. Well, come in, please. Good morning. We received him on the 28th of January. It wasn't. Well, it was May of 74. He was, I don't know. Prepared for a very lunch. I got him. That's the way the schedule works. It looks like there's a lot of stuff over there. Oh, yeah. If there isn't, I'll leave him with you. All right. You know, you've got to go to the table. Oh, okay. Did you want the report in the mail or the summary and everything? Okay. Excuse me a second. I think it's Andrew. I mean, that's kind of... That's what I've always said. What there seems to be that he's very sharp. Yeah. I said that. Time chatter sounds great to me. Yeah. This is the kind of a thing that... It sounds great to me. I'm letting myself to the soup. You have one personal matter to take care of before we get on with any affairs of state. Back in September.


My life has recently intersected, in a most personal way, two of Mark Twain's famous quips. One I shall defer to the end of this essay. The other, sometimes attributed to Disraeli, identifies three species of mendacity, each worse than the one before, lies, damned lies, and statistics. Consider the standard example of stretching the truth with numbers, a case quite relevant to my story. Statistics recognizes different measures of an average or central tendency. The mean is our usual concept of an overall average. Add up the items and divide them by the number of sharers. 100 candy bars collected for five kids next Halloween will yield 20 for each in a just world. The median, a different measure of central tendency, is the halfway point. If I line up five kids by height, the median child is shorter than two and taller than the other two, who might have trouble getting their mean share of the candy. A politician in power might say with pride, the mean income of our citizens is $15,000 per year. The leader of the opposition might retort, but half our citizens make less than $10,000 per year. Both are right, but neither sites a statistic with impassive objectivity. The first invokes a mean, the second a median. Means are higher than medians in such cases because one millionaire may outweigh hundreds of poor people in setting a mean, but he can balance only one mendicant in calculating a median. The larger issue that creates a common distrust or contempt for statistics is more troubling. Many people make an unfortunate and invalid separation between heart and mind or feeling and intellect. In some contemporary traditions, abetted by attitude stereotypically centered on Southern California, feelings are exalted as more real and the only proper basis for action. If it feels good, do it. While intellect gets short shrift as a hang-up of outmoded elitism, statistics in this absurd dichotomy often become the symbol of the enemy. As Hilaire Baloch wrote, statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method and the quantitative method is the victory of serility and death. This is a personal story of statistics, properly interpreted as profoundly nurturant and life-giving. It declares holy war on the downgrading of intellect by telling a small story about the utility of dry academic knowledge about science. Heart and head are focal points of one body, one personality. In July 1982, I learned that I was suffering from abdominal mesothelioma, a rare and serious cancer usually associated with exposure to asbestos. When I revived after surgery, I asked my first question of my doctor and chemotherapist. What is the best technical literature about mesothelioma? She replied with a touch of diplomacy, the only departure she has ever made from direct frankness, that the medical literature contained nothing really worth reading. Of course, trying to keep an intellectual away from literature works about as well as recommending chastity to homo sapiens, the sexiest primate of all. As soon as I could walk, I made a beeline for Harvard's Countway Medical Library and punched mesothelioma into the computer's bibliographic search program. An hour later, surrounded by the latest literature on abdominal mesothelioma, I realized with a gulp why my doctor had offered that humane advice. The literature couldn't have been more brutally clear. Mesothelioma is incurable, with a median mortality of only 8 months after discovery. I sat stunned for about 15 minutes, then smiled and said to myself, so that's why they didn't give me anything to read. Then my mind started to work again, thank goodness. If a little learning could ever be a dangerous thing, I had encountered a classic example. Attitude clearly matters in fighting cancer. We don't know why. From my old style materialist perspective, I suspect that mental states feed back upon the immune system. But match people with the same cancer for age, class, health, socioeconomic status, and in general. Those with positive attitudes, with a strong will and purpose for living, with commitment to struggle, with an active response to aiding their own treatment, and not just a passive acceptance of anything doctors say, tend to live longer. A few months later, I asked Sir Peter Mediwar, my personal scientific guru and a Nobelist in immunology, what the best prescription for success against cancer might be. A sanguine personality, he replied. Fortunately, since one can't reconstruct oneself at short notice and for a definite purpose, I am, if anything, even tempered and confident in just this manner. Hence the dilemma for humane doctors. Since attitude matters so critically, should such a somber conclusion be advertised, especially since few people have sufficient understanding of statistics to evaluate what these statements really mean. From years of experience with the small scale evolution of land snails treated quantitatively, I have developed this technical knowledge, and I am convinced that it played a major role in saving my life. Knowledge is indeed power in Bacon's proverb. The problem may be briefly stated. What does median mortality of eight months signify in our vernacular? I suspect that most people, without training in statistics, would read such a statement as I will probably be dead in eight months. The very conclusion that must be avoided since it isn't so, and since attitude matters so much. I was not, of course, overjoyed, but I didn't read the statement in this vernacular way either. My technical training enjoined a different perspective on eight months median mortality. The point is a subtle one, but profound, for it embodies the distinctive way of thinking in my own field of evolutionary biology and natural history. We still carry the historical baggage of a platonic heritage that seeks sharp essences and definite boundaries. Thus we hope to find an unambiguous beginning of life, or definition of death, although nature often comes to us as an irreducible continuum. This platonic heritage, with its emphasis in clear distinctions and separated immutable entities, leads us to view statistical measures of central tendency wrongly, indeed opposite to the appropriate interpretation in our actual world of variations, shadings, and continuum. In short, we view means and medians as the hard realities and the variation that permits their calculation as a set of transient and imperfect measurements of this hidden essence. If the median is the reality, and variation around the median just a device for its calculation, the I will probably be dead in eight months, may pass as a reasonable interpretation. But all evolutionary biologists know that variation itself is nature's only irreducible essence. Variation is the hard reality, not a set of imperfect measures for a central tendency. Means and medians are the abstractions. Therefore, I looked at the mesothelioma statistics quite differently, and not only because I'm an optimist who tends to see the doughnut instead of the whole, but primarily because I know that variation itself is the reality. I had to place myself amidst the variation. When I learned about the eighth month median, my first intellectual reaction was, fine, half the people will live longer, now what are my chances of being in that half? I read for a furious and nervous hour and concluded, with relief, damned good. I possessed every one of the characteristics conferring a probability of longer life. I was young, my disease had been recognized in a relatively early stage, I would receive the nation's best medical treatment, I had the world to live for, I knew how to read the data properly and not despair. Another technical point then added even more solace. I immediately recognized that the distribution of variation, about the eight month median, would almost surely be what statisticians call right skewed. In a symmetrical distribution, the profile of variations to the left of the central tendency is a mirror image of variation to the right. In skewed distributions, variation to one side of the central tendency is more stretched out. Left skewed if extended to the left, right skewed if stretched out to the right. The distribution of variation had to be right skewed, I reasoned. After all, the left of the distribution contains an irrevocable lower boundary of zero, since mesothelioma can only be identified at death or before. Thus, there isn't much room for the distribution's lower or left half. It must be scrunched up between zero and eight months. But the upper or right half can extend out for years and years, even if nobody ultimately survives. The distribution must be right skewed, and I needed to know how long the extended tail ran, for I had already concluded that my favorable profile made me a good candidate for that part of the curve. The distribution was indeed strongly right skewed, with a long tail, however small, that extended for several years above the eight month median. I saw no reason why I shouldn't be in that small tail, and I breathed a very long sigh of relief. My technical knowledge had helped. I had read the graph correctly. I had asked the right questions and found the answers. I had obtained, in all probability, the most precious of all possible gifts in the circumstances, substantial time. I didn't have to stop and immediately follow Isaiah's injunction to Hezekiah.  I would have time to think, to plan, and to fight. One final point about statistical distributions. They apply only to a prescribed set of circumstances, in this case to survival with mesothelioma under conventional modes of treatment. If circumstances change, the distribution may alter. I was placed on an experimental protocol of treatment, and if fortune holds, will be the first cohort of a new distribution with high median, and a right tail extending to death by natural causes at advanced old age. It has become, in my view, a bit too trendy to regard the acceptance of death as something tantamount to intrinsic dignity. Of course, I agree with the preacher of Ecclesiastes that there is a time to love and a time to die, and when my skein runs out, I hope to face the end calmly and in my own way. For most situations, however, I prefer the more martial view that death is the ultimate enemy, and I find nothing reproachable in those who rage mightily against the dying of the light. The swords of battle are numerous, and none more effective than humor. My death was announced at a meeting of my colleagues in Scotland, and I almost experienced the delicious pleasure of reading my obituary, penned by one of my best friends. The so-and-so got suspicious and checked, he too was a statistician, and didn't expect to find me so far out on the right tail. Still, the incident provided my first good laugh after the diagnosis. Just think, I almost got to repeat Mark Twain's most famous line of all. The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. Thanks for watching.


So that was my worst nightmare. It was either a snake had bit in her or the dog and Was she drowned in the dam or like the waterways? We'd been here for maybe two to three weeks. So I didn't know the area that well either And I was lawnmowering for about ten minutes and I went in just to see what she was up to She wasn't in in the house at all So I looked in the horse paddock and I looked in the the shearing shed paddock where we are now and where the dam is So I checked all the waterways that I knew of and she I couldn't find her in either place And she wasn't anywhere to be seen so I'd about 40 minutes I had to ring the police because it was getting a bit worrying. We only had a few hours of daylight left We probably went down to the last hour and I had a spotter plane looking for a We finally got in contact with the neighbor that used to live here before us And he sort of knew the area a bit more So he come over to help and he ended up finding Charlize up in their second lot of sheep yards Let's throw it around two K's from the house So she travelled a quite distance She'd let the dogs off at their chains and she was just following them around so I Don't know if she led the dogs astray or the dogs led her astray So it's a bit of a guessing competition, but the other two come back It was just her and the pup that didn't because the pup's head was stuck in the sheep yard She was just sitting up there waiting for the dog's head to get out So she could come home and being in such a big area You don't know what place to look to look for first So from being inside to taking off you could be looking in the wrong Spot so then that gives them more distance to get away. That's in my case That's what had happened and looking in the wrong spot and she'd gone in the opposite direction Just with the like the fencing because the fencing around here is not that flash like if we owned it We'd have like parakelebon fence up where she couldn't climb the other side or just other fencing that prevents Climbing children if the the gates have latches to be locked Or if they have like a dog clip to if they aren't child safety and they can flip them up or something just to have a latch or something where it makes it a little bit more complicated for kids to undo


Hello and welcome to the session. In this session we are going to discuss the following question and the question says that the given number line represents an interval, write the interval in, interval notation and set notation. Now let us start with the solution of the given question. Here we are given a number line that represents an interval. Now let us write this interval in interval notation. On this number line we can see this red shaded portion from minus 2 to 6. It means all the real numbers ranging from minus 2 to 6 are included in the interval. Here we can see at minus 2 we have a dark filled circle. It means minus 2 is included in the interval and at 6 we have a hollow circle which means that this point is not included in the interval. Now for included point that is minus 2 we use square bracket and for excluded point that is 6 we use round bracket. So from the given number line we get the interval as semi closed interval from minus 2 to 6. We know that in this notation the end points used are always written from left to right that is the smaller number is written first followed by comma and then the larger number. Thus the interval notation for the given interval is semi closed interval from minus 2 to 6. Now let us discuss about set notation. In set notation we write the given interval as a set of points from the given number line from minus 2 to 6. We have set of all real numbers greater than equal to minus 2 and less than 6. So for the given interval set notation is set of all real values of x such that x is greater than equal to minus 2 and less than 6. Here less than equal to sign indicates that minus 2 is included in the interval and less than sign indicates that 6 is not included in the interval. So this is the required set notation for the given number line. This completes our session. Hope you enjoyed this session.


Hello everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's presentation of the AWS startup showcase. This is season two, episode four of the ongoing series covering the exciting startups from the AWS ecosystem. Talk about cybersecurity. I'm your host, John Furrier, excited to have two great guests, Ed Kazmer, founder and CEO of Cloud Storage Security, back CUBE alumni and also James, John's an AVP of research and development, iPipeline here talking about cloud storage security, antivirus on S3. James, thanks for joining us today. Thank you, John. So the topic here is cloud security, storage security. Ed, we had a great CUBE conversation previously earlier in the month. Companies are modernizing their apps and migrating to cloud, that's fact. Everyone kind of knows that, been there, done that. Clouds have the infrastructure, they got the OS, they got protection, but the end of the day, the companies are responsible and they're on the hook for their own security of their data. And this is becoming more prominent now that you have hybrid cloud, cloud operations, cloud native applications. This is the core focus right now in the next five years. This is what everyone's talking about, architecture, how to build apps, workflows, team formation, everything's being refactored around this. Can you talk about how organizations are adjusting and how they view their data security in light of how applications are being built and specifically around the goodness of, say, S3? Yep, absolutely, thank you for that. So we've seen S3 grow 20,000% over the last 10 years and that's primarily because companies like James or Thive Pipeline are delivering solutions that are leveraging this object storage more and above the others. When we look at protection, we typically fall into a couple of categories. The first one is we have folks that are worried about the access of the data, how are they dealing with it? So they're looking at configuration aspects. But the big thing that we're seeing is that customers are blind to the fact that the data itself must also be protected and looked at. And so we find these customers who do come to the realization that it needs to happen, finding out like asking themselves, how do I solve for this? And so they need lightweight cloud native built solutions to deliver that. So what's the blind spot? You mentioned there's a blind spot, they're kind of blind to that. What specifically are you seeing? Well, so when we get into these conversations, the first thing that we see with customers is I need to predict how I access it. This is everyone's conversation. Who are my users? How do they get into my data? How am I controlling that policy? Am I making sure there's no East-West traffic there once I've blocked the North-South? But what we really find is that the data is the key packet of this whole process. It's what gets consumed by the downstream users, whether that's an employee, a customer, a partner. And so it's really the blind spot is the fact that we find most customers not looking at whether that data is safe to use. It's interesting, you know, when you talk about that, I think about like all the recent breaches and incidents they call them. They've really been around user configurations. S3 buckets not configured properly. And this brings up what you're saying is that the users and the customers have to be responsible for the configurations, the encryption, the malware aspect of it. Don't just hope that AWS has the magic to do it. Is that kind of what you're getting at here? Is that the similar? Am I correlating that properly? Absolutely, that's perfect. And we've seen it. We've had our own customers. Luckily, iPipeline's not one of them that have actually infected their end users because they weren't looking at the data. Yeah, and that's a huge issue. So James, let's get in.  Talk about your relationship with these guys and what's it all about? Yeah. Well, iPipeline is building a digital ecosystem for life insurance and wealth management industries to enable the sale of life insurance to underinsured and uninsured Americans to make sure that they have the coverage that they need should something happen. And our solutions have been around for many years in a traditional data center type of an implementation. And we're in process now of migrating that to the cloud moving it to AWS in order to give our customers a better experience, better resiliency, better reliability. And with that, we have to change the way that we approach file storage and how we approach scanning for vulnerabilities in those files that might come to us via feeds from third parties or that are uploaded directly by end users that come to us from a source that we don't control. So it was really necessary for us to identify a solution that both solved for these vulnerability scanning needs as well as enabling us to leverage the capabilities that we get with other aspects of our move to the cloud and being able to automatically scale based on load and based on need to ensure that we get the performance that our customers are looking for. So tell me about your journey to the cloud, migrating to the cloud and how you're using S3. Specifically, what led you to determine the need for the cloud based AV solution? Yeah. So when we looked to begin moving our applications to the cloud, one of the one of the realizations that we had is that our approach to storing certain types of data was a bit archaic. We were storing binary files in a database which is not the most efficient way to do things. And we were scanning them with the traditional antivirus engines that would have been scaled in traditional ways. So as our need grew, we would need to spin up additional instances of those engines to keep up with load. And we wanted a solution that was cloud native and would allow us to scan more dynamically without having to manage the underlying details of how many engines do I need to have running for a particular load at a particular time and being able to scan dynamically and also being able to move that out of the application layer being able to scan those files behind the scenes. So just scanning when the file has been saved in S3, it allows us to scan and release the file once it's been deemed safe rather than blocking the user while they wait for that scan to take place. Awesome. Well, thanks for sharing that. I got to ask Ed and James same question next. It's how does all this factor into audits and self-compliance? Because when you start getting into this level of sophistication, I'm sure it probably impacts reporting, workflows, can you guys share the impact on that piece of it for the reporting? Yeah, I'll start with a comment and James will have more political things to say but we're seeing two things. One is you don't want to be the vendor whose name is in the news for infecting your customer base. So that's number one. So that you have to put something like this in place and figure that out. The second part is we do hear that under SOC2, under PCI, different aspects of it, there are scanning requirements on your data. Traditionally, we've looked at that as endpoint data and the data that you see in your on-prem world. It doesn't translate as directly to cloud data but it's certainly applicable. And if you want to achieve SOC2 or you want to achieve some of these other pieces you have to be scanning your data as well. James, what's your take as practitioner? You're living it. Yeah, that's exactly right. There are a number of audits that we go through where this is a question that comes up both from a SOC perspective as well as our individual customers who reach out and they want to know where we stand from a security perspective and a compliance perspective. And very often, this is a question of how are you ensuring that data that is uploaded into the application is safe and doesn't contain any vulnerabilities? James, you don't mind me asking. I have to kind of inquire because I can imagine that you have users on your system but also you have third parties, relationships. How does that impact this? What's the connection? That's a good question. We receive data from a number of different locations from our customers directly, from their users and from partners that we have as well as partners that our customers have. And as we ingest that data from an implementation perspective, the way we've approached this, there's minimal impact there in each one of those integrations because everything comes into the S3 bucket and is scanned before it is available for consumption or distribution. But this allows us to ensure that no matter where that data is coming from that we're able to verify that it is safe before we allow it into our systems or allow it to continue on to another third party whether that's our customer or somebody else. Yeah, I don't mean to get in the weeds there but it's one of those things where this is what people are experiencing right now. Ed, we talked with this before. It's not just siloed data anymore. It's interactive data, it's third party data from multiple sources. This is a scanning requirement. Agreed. I find it interesting too. I think James brings it up. We've had it in previous conversations that not all data is created equal. Data that comes from third parties that you're not in control of, you feel like you have to scan and other data that you may generate internally, you don't have to be as compelled to scan that, although it's a good idea. But it's, you can kind of, as long as you can sit through and determine which data is which and process it appropriately, then you're in good shape. Well, James, you're living the cloud security, storage security situation here. I got to ask you, if you zoom out and not get in the weeds and look at kind of the boardroom or the management conversation, tell me about how you guys view the data security problem. I mean, obviously it's important, right? So can you give us a level of, how important is for iPipeline and with your customers? And where does this S3 piece fit in? I mean, when you guys look at this holistically, for data security, what's the view? What's the conversation like? Yeah, well, data security is critical. As Ed mentioned a few minutes ago, you don't want to be the company that's in the, because some data was exposed. That's something that nobody has the appetite for. And so data security is first and foremost in everything that we do. And that's really where this solution came into play, making sure that we had not only a solution, but we had a solution that was the right fit for the technology that we're using. There are a number of options, some of them have been around for a while, but this is focused on S3, which we were using to store these documents that are coming from many different sources. And we have to take all the precautions we can to ensure that something that is malicious doesn't make its way into our ecosystem or into our customers' ecosystems through us. What's the primary use case that you see the value here with these guys? What's the aha moment that you had? With the cloud storage security specifically, it was really, it goes beyond the security aspects of being able to scan for vulnerable files, which is there are a number of options and they're one of those. But for us, the key was being able to scale dynamically without committing to a particular load, whether that's under committing or over committing, as we move our applications from a traditional data center type of installation to AWS, we anticipated a lot of growth over time and being able to scale up very dynamically, literally moving a slider within the admin console was key to us to be able to meet our customer's needs without overspending by building up something that was dramatically larger than we needed in our initial rollout. Not a bad testimonial there, Ed. I mean, this is really highlights the applications using S3 more in the file workflow for the application in real time. This is where you start to see the rise of ransomware, other issues and scale matters. Can you share your thoughts and reaction to what James just said? Yeah, I think it's critical. I mean, as the popularity of S3 has increased, so has the fact that it's an attack vector now and people are going after it, whether that's to plant bad malicious files, whether it's to replace code segments that are downloaded and used in other applications, it is a very critical piece. And when you look at scale and you look at the cloud native capability, there are lots of ways to solve it. You can dig a hole with a spoon, but a shovel works a lot better. And in this case, we take a simple example, like James, they did a weekend migration. So they've got new data coming in all the time, but we did a massive migration, 5,000 files a minute being ingested. And like he said, with a couple of clicks, scale up, process that over a sustained period of time and then scale back down. So I've said it before, I said it on the previous one, we don't want to get in the way of someone's workflow. We want to help them secure their data and do it in a timely fashion so that they can continue with their proper processing and their normal customer responses. Yeah, frictionless has to be key. I know you're in the marketplace with your antivirus for S3 on AWS, people can just download it. So people are interested to go check it out. James, I got to ask you, and maybe Ed can chime in over the top, but it seems so obvious, data, secure the data. Why isn't it so hard? Why isn't this so obvious? What's the problem? Why is it so difficult? Why are there so many different solutions? It just seems so obvious. You know, it got ransomware, you got injection of different malicious payloads. There's a ton of things going around around the data. Why is this so obvious? Why isn't it solved? Well, I think there have been solutions available for a long time that the challenge, the difficulty that I see is that it is a moving target as bad actors learn new vulnerabilities, new approaches and as new technology becomes available that opens additional attack vectors. That's the challenges keeping up on the changing world, including keeping up on the new ways that people are finding to exploit vulnerabilities. And you got sensitive data, iPipeline, you do a lot of insurance, wealth management, all kinds of sensitive data, super valuable. You know, it just brings me up, reminds me of the Sony hack Ed years ago, companies are responsible for their own militia. I mean, cybersecurity is no government help for sure. I mean, companies are on the hook, as we mentioned earlier at the top of this interview. This really is highlighted that IT departments and I have to evolve to large scale cloud, cloud native applications, automation, AI machine learning all built in to keep up at the scale, but also from a defense standpoint.  There's also just a pure lack of understanding when we look at Amazon S3 or object storage in general, it's not an executable file system. So people sort of assume that, oh, I'm safe. It's not executable. So I'm not worried about it traversing my storage network and they also probably have the assumption that the cloud providers, Amazon is taking care of this form. And so it's this aha moment, like you mentioned earlier that you start to think, oh, it's not about where the data is sitting per se. It's about scanning it as close to the storage spot. So when it gets to the end user, it's safe and secure and you can't rely on the end users, the environment and system to be in place and up to date to handle it. So it's really that lack of understanding that drives some of these folks into this. But for a while, we'll walk into customers and they'll say the same thing you said, John, why haven't I been doing this for so long? And it's because they didn't understand that it was such a risk. That's where that blind spot comes in. James, it's just a final note on your environment. What's your goals for the next year? How's things going over there and your side? How do you look at the security posture? What's on your agenda for the next year? How are you guys looking at the next level? Yeah, well, our goal as it relates to this is to continue to move our existing applications over to AWS to run natively there, which includes moving more data into S3 and leveraging the cloud storage security solution to scan that and ensure that it's, that there are no vulnerabilities that are getting in. And then ingestion, is there like a bottlenecks, log jams? How do you guys see that scaling up? I mean, what's the strategy there more? Just add more as S3. Well, S3 itself scales automatically for us. And the cloud storage solution gives us a leverage to pull to do that. We've, as Ed mentioned, we ingested a large amount of data during our initial migration, which created a bottleneck for us as we were preparing to move our users over. We were able to make an adjustment in the admin console and spin up additional processes entirely behind the scenes and broke the log jam. So I don't see any immediate concerns there and being able to handle the load.  We have antivirus native coming soon. And I mean, this is what we're, you're basically doing is making it native into the workflows, security native.  We're starting to see the rise of these new solutions. Can you guys share any thoughts or vision around how you see the industry evolving and what's needed? What's working and what's needed? Ed, we'll start with you. What's your vision? So I think the notion of being able to look at and view the management plane and control that has been where we're at right now. That's what everyone seems to be doing and going after. I think the, there are niche plays coming up. Storage is one of them, but we're going to get to a point where storage is just a blanket term for where you put your stuff. I mean, it kind of already is that, but in AWS it's going to be less about S3, less about work docs, less about EBS. It's going to be just storage and you're going to need a solution that can span all of that to go along with where we're already at at the management plane. We're going to keep growing the data plane. James, what's your vision for what's needed in the industry? What's the gaps, what's working and where do you see things going? Yeah. Well, I think on the security front specifically, Ed's probably a little bit better equipped to speak to that than I am since that's his primary focus. But I see the need for just expanded solutions that are cloud native that fit nicely with the Amazon technologies, whether that comes from Amazon or other partners like cloud storage security to fill those gaps. We're focused on the financial services and insurance industries. That's our niche and we look to other partners like Ed to help be the experts in these areas. And so that's really what I'm looking for is the experts that we can partner with that are going to help fill those gaps as they come up and as they change in the future. Well, James, I really appreciate you coming on, sharing your story. Ed, I'll give you the final word. Put a quick, spend a minute to talk about the company. We know cloud storage security is an AWS partner with the security software competency and is one of, I think 16 partners listed in the competency and the data category. So take a minute to explain, you know, what's going on with the company where people can find more information, how they buy and consume the products. Put the plug in. Yeah, thank you for that. So we are a fast growing startup. We've been in business for two and a half years now. We have achieved our security competency, as John indicated, we're one of 16 data protection, security competent ISV vendors globally. And our goal is to expand and grow a platform that spans all storage types that you're going to be dealing with and answer basic questions. What do I have and where is it? Is it safe to use? And am I in proper control of it? Am I being alerted above it? You know, so we're building this storage security platform very laser focused on the storage aspect of it. And if people want to find out more information, you're more than welcome to go and try this off. We're out on Amazon Marketplace. That's basically where we do most of our transacting. So find it there, start a free trial, reach out to us directly from our website. We are happy to help you in any way that you need it, whether that's storage assessments, figuring out what data is important to you and how to protect it. All right, Ed, thank you so much. Ed Casper, founder and CEO of Cloud Storage Security and of course, James Johnson, AVP, Research Development, iPipeline customer. Gentlemen, thank you for sharing your story and featuring the company and the value proposition certainly needed. This is season two episode four. Thanks for joining us, appreciate it. Thanks, John. Okay, I'm John Furrier. That is a wrap for this segment of the cybersecurity season two episode four, the ongoing series covering the exciting steps from Amazon's ecosystem. Thanks for watching.


The following file concerns Project Damerung. Level 5 slash Damerung clearance is required. Item number SCP-3448 Object Class Thaumule Special Containment Procedures SCP-3448 is to remain active at Site-2718. Files are to inspect SCP-3448 daily for additional messages from SCP-3448-A. Project Damerung is to research any method of escape proposed or indicated by SCP-3448-A. Description SCP-3448 refers to the communication developed and used by Project Damerung, utilizing technology used in MRIs, particle accelerators, and anomalous rituals. SCP-3448 is capable of allowing an individual to die while remaining in contact with the world of the living. SCP-3448 resembles an MRI machine, however, as additional anomalous components are connected externally through the use of jumper cables and custom circuit boards. SCP-3448 is the primary tool used by Project Damerung to complete its objective, to contain the Damerung Class Cognito Hazard known as death. Subjects are introduced to SCP-3448 through its main opening. Once the subject has fully entered the cavity, the anomalous components in SCP-3448 transfer the subject into a half-death state in which all bodily functions cease. Any subject occupying this conceptual state is referred to as SCP-3448-A. This allows the consciousness to roam free from the body after it has entered the state of death, henceforth referred to as SCP-3448-1. Unfortunately, most documentation about the nature of SCP-3448-1 has been lost. See Addendum 3448.1 When the consciousness leaves the brain in this manner, anomalous electrical activity continues, despite any source of energy. This activity is referred to as residual signals, which replicate how the brain would react should it be introduced to SCP-3448-1 while it was alive. By interacting with these electrical signals, the Foundation is able to establish two-way communication with SCP-3448-A. In order to better understand the residual signals, they are interpreted by an additional anomalous component of SCP-3448. This component will generally produce an image, although individual words have been observed. Agent Anthony Michaels, the only successful subject to have utilized SCP-3448 outside of preliminary testing, is the current SCP-3448-A. As of this writing, SCP-3448-A still exhibits standard residual signal activity. Addendum 3448.1 Below is a series of records from the usage of SCP-3448. Due to the destruction of formal testing documentation, as per the instructions of O5-4, the majority of recovered documents take the form of lab notes or residual signal communication reports. SCP-3448 Preliminary Subject Interview Please state your name for the record. Agent Anthony Michaels How long have you served the Foundation? Fourteen years. What is your next assignment? The one that'll make sure I don't serve for fifteen years. You know this is for the formal record, right? Yeah, but you know how it is. I gotta get a joke in sometime, and we both know I only have so many jokes left. I know I know, but let's get back to the interview for now. Why did you volunteer for this assignment? I did it for my family. Can you elaborate? Well, my dad's been on his deathbed for a while now. I spoke into him, though, and once he comes around, he talks about the things he was going to do when he gets out of the hospital. He told me he was going to hike the Appapalachian Trail. That thing goes all the way from Georgia to Maine. This man brought up three kids by himself, and all he wanted at the end was to go on a nice hike. That doesn't quite answer the question. Yeah, I guess it's not a super explicit answer, isn't it? Please, we need to do this for the report. It has to be more professional than this. Sorry, sorry, I meant to say that, well, I want to give my dad another chance. Sure, he might not make it all the way through the trail, or up the mountains, or wherever, but I don't want him to die. He deserves more than what he's got, and I'm willing to sacrifice myself instead. He's practically done the same for me. And you do recognize that the Foundation is not required to adhere to your wish, thus meaning that, in the case that your mission succeeds, we are allowed to choose your father for selective termination. I'll take the chance, if we're containing the Reaper, I trust the Foundation will make sure he's only let off his new leash when it's really necessary. Furthermore, I don't believe my dad is one of those cases. Do you have anything else to add? I guess I'd like to thank you for giving me this opportunity. Well, um, it's been my pleasure, Asia Michaels. As working with Project Dam Rung was mine. Okay, that will conclude our interview. SCP-3448 preliminary testing lab notes. Alright, breaking in the first page of the lab notebook, just a bunch of scribbles of my thoughts during the official test for later. So, to future reader person? Yes, that means you, future Emily. You should probably take a look at the formal report instead. We've confirmed that this thing works as well as it's ever going to. I mean, the animal test of the individual parts worked. That's the best confirmation we're going to get without throwing someone in there 100%. So the current plan is this. Send in Michaels and have him look around. Get him to investigate and learn what this place is like, who else is there, etc. Then we will use our newfound understanding of the Reaper to figure out how to contain him. And finally, we'll do our job, I guess. It's our Dam Rung Class Moby Dick, after all, except without the killing it part. Michaels finished training to use SCP-3448 a few days ago. Not sure how quickly he'll be able to adjust to being dead, which means that we don't know how long it'll be until he can actually talk to us right. But now's as good as time as any. Worst comes to worst, I love the guy, but he's already going to be dead. We'll just let the man rest in peace. Too bad we couldn't use a Class D, but the higher-ups don't trust that they'll listen to orders. It's not like we could threaten termination. I caught Tony clearing out his quarters today. When I asked him how he was feeling, he made some joke like, it's not like it's going to kill me twice, and then he threw out a box of personal mementos, including a teddy bear I gave him at the Foundation Christmas Gift Exchange. He can't be doing too well, but then again, he's probably as ready as he'll ever be. That teddy bear is now in my office. SCP-3448 Day 1 Imaging Results 8 hours 30 minutes to 9 hours. Intense flashing and flickering. 9 hours to 9 hours 5 minutes. Image resembled rough seas. 9 hours 5 minutes to 12 hours 5 minutes. Intense flashing and flickering. 12 hours 5 minutes to 12 hours 48 minutes. Formed 3 hours after the previous image, appears to be a humanoid figure surrounded by hundreds of insects. This continues for 43 minutes before the insects disperse, but now considerably swollen humanoid falls to the ground. 12 hours 48 minutes to 18 hours 48 minutes. A shade of gray. 18 hours 48 minutes to 23 hours 52 minutes. Used to resemble the rough seas from the 8 hours 30 minutes to 9 hours image. However, the water is replaced with the insects from the 12 hours 5 minutes, the 12 hours 48 minutes image. SCP-3448 Day 1 Lab Notes It's working. It's not going well, but it's working.  We knew that death was supposed to get worse and worse as it went. At least that's how the recording described it. We thought that preserving the body would reduce some of the perception issues, but I don't think it's working as well as we wanted, but it's just the first day. Our plan gives us 10 days before we jump ship and move on to another subject. Also, we need to move Jared to a different station. He vomited over the floor during his monitoring shift.   SCP-3448 Day 2 Imaging Results 2 hours to 2 hours 3 minutes, an emaciated man lying in a desert. There appears to be an oasis far in the background. 2 hours 3 minutes to 10 hours 3 minutes, static. 6 hours to 12 hours, a man in a fetal position, lying in the corner of a room, made of compacted dirt. Various bones and roots can be seen protruding from the walls. 12 hours to 18 hours, insect wings emerge from the walls and begin fluttering. SCP-3448 Day 2 Lab Notes Okay, looks like he's calmed down. Not entirely coherent, but it's something. We're going to see if we can talk to him tomorrow. I say talk, but I really mean mess with his brain waves in a meaningful way. We know it works, but we have no clue what it actually feels like. Hard to get that sort of feedback from lab rats. But, if these tests work, we're on to something. We'll get him to start exploring, I guess. I don't think that's the right word. Or maybe it is. We don't know if this is a place or state of mind or what. The recording that O-5-4 showed us makes it sound like he's still here, on Earth. Just experiencing things in the most terrible way possible. I'm more picturing a hellscape aesthetic. SCP-3448 Day 3 Imaging Results 6 hours to 6 hours, 3 minutes, a caterpillar crawling up the trunk of a tree. 8 hours, 3 minutes to 8 hours, 13 minutes, leaves blowing in the wind. The direction of the breeze alternates rapidly, so the leaves appear to be waving. 9 hours, 13 minutes to 9 hours, 15 minutes. The caterpillar from the 6 hours to 6 hours, 3 minute image eats some of the leaves from the 8 hours, 3 minutes to 8 hours, 13 minute image. 9 hours, 15 minutes to 13 hours, 15 minutes. Various shades of red. 13 hours, 15 minutes to 13 hours, 15 minutes. An emaciated man punches the wall. 15 hours, 15 minutes to 15 hours, 29 minutes. Same scene from the 9 hours, 13 minutes to 9 hours, 15 minute image, except the caterpillar has stopped eating, and the leaves have all been replaced by hands of the same size, which continued to wave in the wind. This continues for 10 minutes until the wind stops. All hands except for one hang limply. The remaining hand makes an okay sign. The caterpillar begins to wrap itself in a cocoon. 19 hours, 29 minutes to 21 hours, 3 minutes. The hands from the previous image move frantically to swat away insects. Insects do not resemble a single known species. They have stingers resembling those of bees, and legs resembling those of spiders. The caterpillar has fully formed a cocoon, and is undisturbed for the duration of the visual. SCP-3448 Day 3 Lab Notes. He's finally becoming coherent, so thank God for that.  He's as together as the consciousness floating through space could ever be. He waved to say hi, I think. So this is fine. In other news, I talked to Tony's sister Joyce. Apparently she works in the biology department at Site-23. I didn't tell her about what's up with Tony, of course, but I did manage to bring up insects. I think Tony has some sort of insectophobia, but it's not too bad you'd call it a phobia, like they just freak him out. Either way, it makes for some interesting interpretations of Tony's visuals. I can't tell if SCP-3448-1 is full of bugs, or if it's full of whatever you're afraid of, or if that's just Tony's interpretation of it. I am leaning towards the last option, though. If anything because of an ideological standpoint, death being what you make of it sounds kind of poetic. Not that any of my poetry will show up in the formal report. I wonder what I'd see. SCP-3448-4 Imaging Results 10 hours to 14 hours 22 minutes. A man searches through a garden. It is unclear what he is looking for. The garden extends indefinitely in all directions, and exploration takes the man through large groves of daisies. For the majority of the trek, the man stays on a path outlined by two hedges that run alongside him. At one point the man stops, looks at a batch of daisies, and steps over the hedges towards the flowers. Image changes after his foot hits the ground. 14 hours 22 minutes to 17 hours 22 minutes. Various shades of green and purple. 17 hours 22 minutes to 17 hours 27 minutes. The man from the 10 hour to 14 hour 22 minute image has uncovered some of the dirt and stares into the ground with a look of awe and terror on his face. What the man is staring at is obscured by daisies. After three minutes, a thin wrinkled hand is seen reaching into frame and taps the man on the shoulder. 17 hours 27 minutes to 18 hours 27 minutes. Static. 18 hours 27 minutes to 18 hours 39 minutes. The man is standing behind the hedges now. A small girl is covered in the patch of land with dirt using her hands. A large quantity of insects swarm around the girl. She appears content. It is unknown if the girl acknowledges the insects or not. The man's left hand appears to be swollen from stinging. 23 hours 39 minutes to 1 hour 2 minutes. The man walks back through the garden the way he came in image 1. Left hand remains swollen. He is carrying a tulip in his right hand, which he looks at during the walk. No other individuals can be seen. After an hour and eight minutes, the man suddenly looks back over his shoulder, shrugs and continues walking. SCP-3448-D-4 Lab Notes Exploration started today, and by exploration I mean Tony actively figuring out how to convey this place to us. I don't think it's actually all flowers and sunshine. Luckily he seems to be mostly coherent at this point. Although I think his communication is still more cryptic than we'd like. I'll take it over how he acted a few days ago. We don't know who the girl is. Can't tell what she's supposed to represent. Most of us think that she's not a person caught in his half-dead state. But we don't have any confirmation. Although on the off chance for a right, the higher up started an operation to infiltrate the usual suspects, C.I., S.H., G.O.C., etc., to make sure none of them have beaten us to the punch. Assuming Tony understands us well enough, we're going to give him to go ahead to interact more with the girl and report back. SCP-3448-D-5 Imaging Results 5-520 A sky covered in grey clouds. No precipitation observed. 5-20-10-20 Static 10-20-10-30 A teddy bear, a stuffed animal crow, and a girl all sit around a table. The girl offers tea to both the teddy bear and the crow. Neither party reacts. She proceeds to pour tea for the two regardless. 10-30-13-30 A warm shade of yellow 13-30-14-16 Same as the 10-20-10-30 image, except the teddy bear somehow has a grip on the tea cup, and the crow is facing the teddy bear. The girl appears to be conversing with the stuffed animals, despite their lack of responses. 14-16-15-16 A light shade of red 15-16-15-38 Same as the 13-30-14-16 image, except the crow has started to fall apart the seams. Insects crawl out from between the stitching. Neither the teddy bear nor the girl appear to notice. 15-38-16-38 Flickering between dark red and black 16-38-16-44 Formed at 1600, same as image 4, except the insects have eaten parts of the teddy bear. The girl appears surprised and upset. After five minutes she glares at the stuffed crow, which is now mostly covered with insects. She then sets down her tea and leaves. 19-44-20-04 A man in the corner of a room, curled into the fetal position. He rocks back and forth. His body appears to be swollen and covered from small insect bites. SCP-3448-5 Lab Notes I think half of our group is starting to get more and more uncomfortable with their creepy crawlies. I can only imagine what it's like for Tony. We're giving him a day to recuperate from whatever the hell today was. No exploration or interviews or whatever. In other news, we made some progress on the girl today. She looks almost identical to Tony's younger sister Joyce from when she was eight. Keyword, almost. I can't tell if it's Tony's not quite getting the image back right, or if this thing actually just looks like Tony's sister, but with slightly elevated cheekbones and a slightly darker shade of brown in her hair. Or maybe that's how Tony remembers his sister?  Honestly, those details probably aren't super important. I bet tomorrow our talk with Tony will clear things up. Day 6 Imaging Results 10-10-05 A man sitting with his back against a dirt wall. Plant roots and bones protrude from the wall and ceiling. He appears to be tired and sweating. 12-05-1208 A single question mark. 1308-13-14 The man from the 10-10-05 image is holding a doll of a small girl and a doll of a crow. He positions them next to each other, with the girl's arms around the crow and the crow's wing around the girl. 14-14-14 The man shrugs. 2300-2313 The man is sitting with his back against the wall of the room again.  He quickly gets up and rushes out of the room through the opposite direction.  He's fucked.  Breather. Sorry, future me. I shouldn't use these notes for venting. Luckily it won't show up in the formal report. Anyways, Tony was… well, he didn't learn much about the girl. At least not much that he told us. I think she's friends with the bugs. Or with the crow thing, at least. Or maybe they're the same entity. They're definitely connected. Now we're all waiting for Tony to get back to us. Luckily, we've got coffee. SCP-3448-7 Imaging Results 1600-1643 A man running through the Garden of Daisy's. He appears to be limping slightly, and checks over his shoulder at regular intervals. 1643-1907 Flashing between bright red and black. SCP-3448-7 Lab Notes That was it. He's just… he's just still running. We've been trying to think of something to help him. Jared flowed the idea of sending him some bug spray. I know he was joking because Jared can't help himself from bringing a wise-ass when he's stressed out. Or maybe he's onto something. Going to look into how to send Tony a care package tomorrow. SCP-3448 Day A Imaging Results 2243 A man is running through a garden. After thirty minutes he passes by a girl, who appears to be planting something. He calls out to her. The girl turns around. She is planting another Daisy. The man rushes to the girl and takes her by the hand. The girl begins to say something, but is cut short as the man pulls her back to the path that resumes running. The newly planted Daisy remains the focus of the image for another two minutes before it is overrun with insects. 243-1056 SCP-3448 Day 8 Lab Notes Okay, we've got something. It's a little out there, but it's all we've come up with. So Tony's in a half-death state, right? But it's not like this is a conventional afterlife deal. It was built around a more abstract conceptual representation of death. So that means that all half-dead things could end up there, right? Well, okay, the dead things end up there too. But we're less sure what exactly that looks like. But I can't believe I'm even writing this. What if we half-kill a thing? Okay, yes, that is as dumb as it sounds, but we want to send something in there to help Tony. We don't have another agent who was as willing as him to take up this assignment. And I'll be damned if we lose our best shot at exploring this place. I don't know if Tony has things or how inanimate objects really work on the other side. Over grasping at straws anyways. Jared figured if we're going to send him something, we should send him some form of self-defense. Unfortunately, we're a little short-handed in terms of weaponry, so we're going to send him the next best thing. A lighter. Bugs don't like fire, right? I mean, maybe they're not literally bugs, but fire is generally effective against things. Either way, it'll work fine to test it. Procedures. Partially disassembled a lighter. This lighter in SCP-3448. 3. Activate SCP-3448, and at the same time try to finish disassembling the lighter? Maybe use like a firecracker for this? Or like a mousetrap? I don't know, we'll figure it out.  SCP-3448 Day 9 Imaging Results. 4-to-404. Formed to 0400. A man running through a garden carrying the lighter in one hand, and pulling a girl behind him with the other. As the man runs, he looks confusedly at the device. After four minutes, he pockets the lighter. 1004-1029. A teddy bear the size of an average human sits against the door of a room. The walls consist of mud and dirt, with bones and roots sticking out. The girl from the 4-to-404 sits at the opposite end of the room with her legs pulled against her chest. She rocks back and forth slowly for three minutes before walking to the teddy bear. She begins to speak as she tugs on the teddy bear's legs. The girl appears to age rapidly the more she begs. The teddy bear does not move. 1629-1631. A man is standing in a garden. He is constantly stung, bitten by a thick swarm of insects. A girl screams at him from nearby, ignored by the insects. The man looks at the girl, screams something back, and then reaches into his pocket. 1631-1731. Red static. 1731-1754. A bonfire. 1754-2054. Gray. 2054-20354. A girl repeatedly stabs a man lying on the ground with a sharpened femur. They are surrounded by burnt insect corpses. SCP-3448 Day 9 Lab Notes. Holy fuck, it worked. And then he, fuck, I don't know what really happened. This entire past week it's felt like I've been watching someone's acid trip. Okay, we still don't know what that girl is, but stabbing Tony means she's hostile, which means we need to do something. I called in a favor and got a handgun delivered here. Same procedure as with the lighter. SCP-3448 Day 10 Imaging Results. 154-301. An old woman beats a man lying on the ground with a femur. They are surrounded by burnt insect corpses, some of which are moving. 301-401. A little girl is straddling a man with her arms in the air. The man aims a handgun at her. They are surrounded by teddy bears, all of which are looking at the girl. 401-403. A cocoon sits on a tree branch where all the leaves are replaced with hands. The cocoon breaks open and a moth exits. 5-502. Same as the 301-401 image, except the teddy bears are all grasping lighters with the flames exposed, and all the guard is on fire. A bullet can be seen halfway between the handgun and the girl's head. 502-6. Bright red. 6-6. Same as previous image, except the flowers are replaced with chains, which are still burning. The girl has been replaced with a skeleton, but her hair remains. The man has become further emaciated and also resembles a skeleton. A chain wraps itself around both the man and the skeleton of the girl. The teddy bears look on from the darkness. 6-7. Dark red. 7-702. The bullet penetrates the girl's head. 702-1302. Static. 1302-1316. A man stands in the middle of a garden. All the flowers that can be seen are blooming. Insect corpses rain from the sky. The girl is no longer present.  After 13 minutes, the following words appear at the bottom of the screen. I hope you enjoy your hike, dad. SCP-3448-10. Lab notes.   I don't think I've ever been so torn over one of my experiments working twice in a row. But still he… he's shodder, I mean, of course he would. We gave him the gun, but I can't believe it, like… I didn't actually think that was going to happen. Again, what else was going to happen but just… fuck. Then like 5 minutes later the call started. First it was from Joyce talking about how her father wasn't dying. I told her to contact me if anything strange started happening with her family, which might be related to Tony, but this wasn't a calm and formative call. She was just so excited, panicked, ecstatic, terrified.  After that was the call from O5-4, only council member that knew about our little project signed off on the funding and everything. He congratulated me on our success, and then told me to burn it all. That's probably when it sunk in. It really should have been apparent from the start. It was in our contracts, it's what we told people on their first day. This project has a single objective, contained a damper-run class cognitive hazard known as death. We did it? No, we really didn't do it. All those years of theorizing and studying the data, scouring anomalous burial sites and halls from MTF raids, and finally, we come face to face with the Reaper, and what do we do?  Now all we have is a tombstone reading rest in peace, resting in peace.  We didn't contain death. We neutralized it.