We had three studios and we had 80 teachers and like we had a hundred and fifty people working for Skyting and we were like That's not really doable to like keep going in this big way And the first step really was people in France in London and like how can I practice skyting? I can't find your methodology anywhere here So it really was like how do we reach more people without going to the people physically? So we were like instead of opening a studio in LA or Austin, which we seriously considered We're like let's pour our resources to trying skyting TV This is start up a storefront the podcast where we inspire entrepreneurship through truth Today's guests are Chrissy Jones and Chloe Kernahan co-founders of sky tang yoga Chrissy and Chloe began with a single brick-and-mortar studio in New York City But they're following quickly outgrew their studios capacity. So naturally they expanded into more locations But just as it's difficult to keep expanding into new studios It's also tough to find great teachers to staff them to be fair This is a great problem to have the only real solution was to leverage their instruction style and name into an online platform And in a moment of unpredictably brilliant timing, they launched this platform a few months before COVID hit and Everything switched to be an online platform So listen in as we cover everything from how taking a hit in video quality during the pandemic actually taught them how to create more engaging Videos how they plan to compete with industry Titans like Peloton and how switching from an analog studio to a digital space Wasn't exactly as straightforward as they'd hoped Hang on hang on If you're not subscribed Can you go ahead and do that right now before we get on with the video helps us out tremendously? That's all we ask and we're back All right guys welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to sky Ting Thank you guys for joining Chrissy. Please tell us a little bit about your company. Thanks for having us first of all Very thrilled to be here sky Ting is a yoga center was a yoga center in New York City We opened in 2015 and grew our physical locations to three studios in New York City and Tribeca Chinatown in Brooklyn and then we were like, what else are we gonna do? Let's try this online thing So we launched sky Ting TV in 2019 Which is our online platform with a bunch of yoga classes And that was our way to reach more people without opening a bunch of brick-and-mortar studios and luckily We had that set up for 2020 March hit and sky Ting TV, which was our side hustle became our only hustle and That's kind of still where we are now We haven't opened our physical locations yet in New York City as of now We can have 30% capacity So to turn on the whole yoga studio machine at 30% It doesn't really make sense for us and we're keeping on with the online platform for now I love it. We're gonna jump into that, but let's go to the beginning So when you guys first decided to move into brick-and-mortar, what was let's say like if I were to walk into a sky Ting location What would be different? What were you guys trying to solve in the market that you guys weren't seeing? What what was your special take you were trying to bring to the market? I think probably the the biggest differentiator for sky Ting especially when we first opened which was 2015 So that's you know a few years ago now. Okay, so we get older. We put design as one of our like primary foundational principles as to like how we wanted the studio to run and so that Translated into the actual spaces into you know our Instagram into our newsletter basically any communications sky Ting had with the world We had a lens of just creativity infused into it I think in a way that other studios weren't necessarily considering so much at the time and so a sky Ting space our first location in Chinatown It was plant-filled. We had really big windows. It was very light-filled as well We were at the back of kind of like a nondescript building in Chinatown like two doors down from a Popeyes so not necessarily like Area that you would expect a studio like this to even exist But you'd go into an elevator go up and our studio was like two floors and to get to the second floor You had to go through an external fire escape That had like plants all over it as well And so it was just like really special and and I think a different experience for most New Yorkers Because a lot of yoga studios at that point because of the real estate market were like basement studios You know or kind of like not the top tier pick but we were able to find this little gem of a spot and Then all of our other studios after that as well as you know our website and how we try and Gear even teachers now filming in their homes in the pandemic We always try and steer them towards this sort of similar kind of base very clean aesthetic That's become kind of signature for us. I like that And there's also something about disconnecting if there's like a journey involved in getting to a space And so that fire exit wall seemingly crazy It's probably an opportunity for you to like literally disconnect from your job or your phone And now you're into like you're transformed into this Place where you can have some peace. Is there anything very early on that you guys learned about your customers that maybe surprised you a Lot of our customers were people that weren't yoga people at all Like they're like, oh, I never liked yoga until I tried sky-ting and we're like we always say well You just haven't found the right teacher like if it's not fun or exciting then it's boring Like there's nothing worse than like going to a yoga class and like being like what was that or like that wasn't very fun I don't really know what I was doing. So we kind of created our own method based on accessibility and like teaching to a Normal person that just uses yoga for tools to handle life with more ease Rather than teaching yoga for like yoga fanatics. So I think that style really Invited a wide range of humans to our studio. So we were teaching like older people young people kids Artists. Yeah, a lot of people who've never done yoga before but then became addicted to this methodology So that's kind of our special sauce is like Accessibility and like making the practice more fun and light and enjoyable if all these people were formerly non Yoga practitioners, how did you reach them? Were you involved in a community outreach program? Was it advertising was it word of mouth because for me? That's the hardest thing is like if these people have never done yoga before What's the incentive to get them to start? How did you overcome that obstacle? I think because of our studio's original location I think that was like, you know in a way a boon for us because we were down in the chinatown neighborhood, which At that point didn't really have much as far as fitness boutique fitness even gyms There were very very few six years ago when we opened and so We didn't do any kind of paid advertising for the first basically like five years of being open, right? Chrissy all of our brick-and-mortar spaces were all super organic and how they grew and You know, we did get some very generous write-ups in nice magazines that were like try this space out Which of course helps to a degree, but I think also just the the community feeling that was like Inherently embedded in our spaces Let the word of mouth be our strongest asset as far as community growth and just getting people in the door And like tagging on to what Chrissy said in the last question. What was interesting I think also is like most studios it's like the pre-work or the post-work that are the most popular classes, right? It's like people that have a nine to five job usually try and fit it in around their busy schedules But especially at our chinatown location We always had people in the midday classes as well Which just I think speaks to like who was living in the neighborhood And who it was interested in checking this out and so that really I think also helped grow Who was coming in because like Chrissy said we had like artists that were you know Just freelance that could come in at any time of day We had like old people that didn't work anymore that were from the neighborhood that were just popping in for a class And so it was really like just a beautiful organic growth that happened I've taken some yoga and my favorite line is always a drop of water is enough to curve a stone or something like something like that Like a drop of water a day is enough to I'm gonna use that next class I teach. Thank you. I say it all the time like when people are upset or like I'll say it to my wife if something's going wrong about like, you know, how just keep the action going and She's like that's the dumbest thing no one believes that and I'm like, you know, I don't know I don't know if it's true, but it's I love it.  That's very true. What's the name? What's in the name? What does sky Ting mean? Sky Ting is an homage to our neighborhood. It's a Chinese word That means the room of or the place of the sky So our first location was in the sky with skylights on the seventh floor very like ethereal feeling And also our methodology is a little bit different. It's based in Katona yoga, which is, you know, a yoga term You guys probably don't know it's a little methodology in New York proper Our teacher Naveen Mashaan developed her own style of yoga that she taught Chloe and I And it's more based in Taoism and Chinese medicine than anything else So we didn't want to use a name that was like Christian Chloe yoga or an Indian name Which is you know, what most yoga studios are named after the Indian lineage So we wanted to pay homage to our teacher and the neighborhood we were in and It just made sense with our space Was the hard part of this the teachers like getting them to organize or just the repetitiveness of maybe getting multiple teachers To just kind of do the same thing like what was the hard part of scaling it from the brick and mortar side? I mean the first studio we were lucky like we were yoga teachers before we opened a studio And so we had a network of teachers that we were, you know, very close friends with and so we invited them to Start our space, but of course that was one space with you know, maybe six classes at most a day But when we started expanding our second location, we had two classrooms So that meant basically we were tripling the number of classes total And then of course we'd opened a third space And so I think what we did with our second location was we started a yoga teacher training program Which then helped us to not only, you know, support the business obviously because that's another source of income But also really train and prime teachers that were fluent in our methodology and like what we, you know Really wanted to support and teach in a fresh new way. And so While we constantly were definitely auditioning teachers from outside around New York City It was also really nice to create not like a totally closed ecosystem loop But at least be able to like bring people through like the journey of advancing your yoga practice from being a student to a serious student to then A trainee to then fully teaching and we still have on our schedule A lot of those teachers like that are now a few years in and are really amazing That says a lot about you guys. I mean, that's kind of that's the hardest part I think is just keeping these people on your side and with you in the momentum Especially as you guys grow you guys remind me so much of the soul cycle story in some way New York Based except they had a kind of a breakup with one of their teachers that created the methodology from the business partner foundation So as you guys are up, you guys 2015 everything's moving forward 2019 you decide A genius move to spread covid to everybody while you're launching your wonderful online program But no, but no, let's go back to it. So how did you guys decide? Okay, because brick and mortar is a slow strategy That's the issue with it like i'm a tech guy used to be in tech and so brick and mortar is like it's you're talking about decades And they just drive you crazy But moving online you can you can create some repetition you can create some videos And so what was the idea that made you want to go online? And then what was your first step right? Everyone thinks oh, let's go with an app Maybe for you guys it might have been youtube But the people was like the first thing you guys said, okay, let's try this in an online setting I think the first thing for us was like we had three studios and we had 80 teachers and like we had 150 people working for sky ting and we were like That's not really doable to like keep going in this big way And the first step really was people in France in london and like how can I practice sky ting? I can't find your methodology anywhere here Like we love your blend of katona yoga and vinyasa So it really was like how do we reach more people without going to the people physically So we're like instead of opening a studio in la or austin, which we seriously considered We're like let's pour our resources to trying sky ting tv and our angle was to make The videos really cinematic and beautiful and designed forward Just like the rest of our studio because a lot of online yoga things at the time were like A camera at the back of the room and like quality super low So we were like let's just make like 20 highly beautiful videos and launch A little online thing. So we started with 20 gorgeous videos 2019 and then we were like, okay We got to film these from home qualities going down just for covid And kind of like did that for a few months and then got back in the studio eventually But yeah, our goal with it was to spread these practical wellness tools and techniques that we love so much and have changed our lives To more people because we know how accessible our methodology is what you said there I can sympathize with so so much because We had a similar thing. It's like we used to film these things in high def beautiful contrast and lighting and then we go to covid times and we're Stuck with zoom and webcams and all this stuff. So you definitely take a hit We were filming on our iphones during like the pico quarantine Yeah, you make do with what you have and that's the beauty of it is that I think the world Understands especially now like they just get it. They're okay With a loss in quality as long as the content is still there Because everyone gets to your home and you're you're not going to have access to everything and all these high-end studio cameras and microphones and whatnot But I wanted to ask you about when you scaled to a digital platform I'm sure there were some challenges that came along with that that maybe you weren't prepared for I mean going from a brick-and-mortar. You don't have to deal with server space or Uploading and tagging and and just running a website. Did you have to figure this all out on your own? Did you bring on a partner to help you with this? Like how did you guys tackle going from analog to digital? I think we're still kind of tackling it. We're still figuring it all out but We you know for better for worse We made a decision before the pandemic before even skyting tv to create a custom website And we're lucky enough to work with a good friend who does website building And so they've been not necessarily like an official partner But I'd say probably like an unofficial partner because they definitely work hard for us and probably don't charge us as much as they would Somebody they didn't know But they've helped us tremendously on the back end just with figuring out and like also Refreshing our website because of the initial skyting tv was like a first pancake And then the pandemic came on and all of a sudden subscriptions were skyrocketing And it was like all of a sudden all the little like Things that were glitchy and like didn't quite work were like oh, we need to fix this quick And so we've gone through a few you know redrafts of it so far And we're actually about to launch a bit of a rebrand starting next month Coming may 1st 2021 wherever you're listening this from yeah, wherever you are Hello from 2025. Um, if you're listening two years from now No, but so they've helped a lot and we've also started working with outside marketing people who have gotten us into more of the digital ad space and like Upped our game as far as like just overall communication with our students and our customers and also acquiring and reaching Bigger audiences, which I think for us has been the biggest Learning curve is just like we are competing against giants right like big corporate Entities that have unlimited ad spend For digital subscription spaces. And so it's like for us. We're just trying to really carve our niche and Show people what we're doing. That's different So to that point and as Chrissy is joining us from stand from business school at the moment. I feel you don't help me Is there any funding like how did you guys go? Did you raise capital? Did you bootstrap? Where are you guys at in that whole process? We definitely bootstrapped up until now and I think now we're at a place.  I think was 400 million dollars Guess what ours was not that but Yeah, like we're in the place now where we're like, okay, we have enough subscribers. There's obviously a churn rate So we have to keep acquiring new customers But at the ad spend we're going it's like we can like maintain the same number So we're at a place now where we're like maybe interested in funding and like also Perhaps trying out something else so We're always wanting to grow and change it up and like keep it fresh and right now we're at a position We're at a crossroads where we're just like Figuring out our next move. I don't think the path is very clear yet. It's interesting So during this time we I've seen like a lot of companies. I'm sure you guys have to like equinox They they created their own app and on their separate app They have like all this amazing fitness training that they were offering for free for a little bit But it was free if you remember and it was like literally some of the best training ever But the issue I thought was it's a complex problem because one you're changing behavior, right? So you're moving somebody to an online setting Which covet has helped significantly with but it there's still a barrier there and then two the class better be damn good And that's the hard part, right?  And so it creates this It's hard. It's hard to keep that energy high In terms of how you guys view it. I just think about it like it's also an opportunity for young companies to almost show The behemots how to do it, right? So if you guys like it sounds like in your case, you're on to something you know You're on to something and so the funding opportunity I would say is now Because you have the right market signals at the same time It's a cool maybe opportunity to partner with a bigger player And say like look don't reinvent the wheel. We've already kind of figured this out Yeah, we have the methodology and like the fun and like community Dialed in we need a diago We need a tech person to partner with to just take care of all of the back end stuff that you have to Continue to update. It's a never-ending thing. Like technology changes so quickly And you really do have to keep up or if your load time is slow people will go somewhere else Even if you are the coolest most fun yoga teachers in the world Yeah, no, it's so true. I'll say something to that I was gonna say was interesting with the pandemic and what it brought for us, you know, christy said our early iterations of skyting tv videos that we launched with were like Beautifully directed had two cameras, you know and like different shots all edited like really really clean We did voiceovers for the audio so teachers weren't speaking live on camera It was all like a really clean audio done in a sound studio, etc, etc And those videos are great and you know, obviously they're still on our website But what we got as far as feedback from students when the pandemic started they were like I kind of like these iPhone shot videos in your home better because you're like more yourselves. You're like laughing You're making mistakes and it feels like you're practicing with me as opposed to like Being on this like pedestal of practice and I think that's something that we've always done Well, it's skyting is like really humanize The experience and it's not about like us being your guru or your ultimate teacher It's just like we are Like you we're figuring our shit out just the way you're figuring your stuff out And like we're happy to go through this journey with you Which I think brought like especially during the pandemic and like the realities of the situation like christy said we like You know live on levity and we live on bringing joy and trying to spark that within the yoga practice And so that was an interesting learning lesson for us too So now when we're in studios doing these classes, we are trying to keep it still A little more light a little more real because the perfectionism that I think has existed for a long time in Pre-recorded video space, especially with fitness. It's just kind of like okay. That's cool for a while But then it's boring and like I don't want to take somebody who doesn't make a mistake And who's like, you know at a perfect angle with every posture I want to see somebody that like flubs or needs to modify or like Yeah, I don't know just is a human being That's me. I'll flub all day You can be our next model I'll be like the most the most approachable yoga teacher right here. Exactly How to get all the moves kind of right? Yeah, no, I'm in I'm in I'll embarrass myself. I don't mind at all Chloe what you were saying about people commenting on the the change in we like the iphone videos because you're more yourself I mean that's kind of what we've been preaching on this show is like you don't have to be perfect like that to me What that shows is growth like we were talking about earlier You're hitting your stride and you're growing into this platform and you're getting better at it You don't have to be perfect right away You can allow time to figure things out as you go The important thing is just to start whatever you're doing just begin And learn along the way that's part of the process And it's a scary part because it's a big unknown But by allowing for growth, you can really I mean You guys could come out of this and go back to the super interesting multi-camera angles shot in beautiful high definition And bring along with you the experience of shooting it at home on your iphone relatable content that everyone's going to just digest with Further and really just hit a new level So like looking forward, how do you think you guys can can capitalize on this? And do you have plans for going back into a actual studio sometime in the future and kind of Rolling back with the the multi-camera angle productions Yeah, I mean that is what we're doing now We're in studio with our our fancy camera guy Derek shout out. We love him But we laugh because we're really one take wonders We were like, let's keep the mistakes. Let's keep the cursing and no more voiceover So that is what we learned and looking forward. I think we'll just like Keep refining and listening to our customers. Like we really are Engaged with our people and our lifetime value of our customer is very very high compared to other Subscription based models. I think because you feel like we're talking directly to you We're listening to what you say your requests on instagram and they can like talk to the teachers directly We're always like on camera like hey guys DM me. What class do you want to do next month? So that's a thing and also we want to keep the sense of community and Are doing these low-fi Zoom classes weekly just to like see who's actually practicing with us that are just more for fun and not Not anything else.  And we're all psychic it makes me connect and so to your point around like voiceovers like I think that's great Don't do it. Don't be the guy ross of yoga. Don't get the orchestra Just be you just do it live and it connects and it's so right it feels so much better Like I'm always like yeah, she understands how hard it is like when she's losing her breath And I'm also sweating. It's like yes She can't sound perfect because then it would just be demoralizing to me Like how is she doing this while teaching and sounds perfect when I'm over here dying And I'm not talking anybody. I'm just in my own room. It's weird has to be fresh I mean we we teach these classes as if we have a live audience We're trying to recreate the live studio experience through Digital which is was tricky, but I think you're right. We found our groove now. It took us, you know A year of learning but we're in a good place I think what strategies do you guys use for like social media with instagram and stuff? Have you guys done any influencer work? Do you feel like any of that actually helps? Do you feel like like what is the thing that you guys have found besides maybe just educating your viewers or your new followers on your approach? What has been like your lane that you guys have stuck to on social media? Well, our social media like when we first started was was really really wacky like Very fun very weird very little about yoga So like maybe somebody coming from the streets would be like what is this now? Of course, we have streamlined a little bit But you know, we've been shifting gears for social media and just testing out new things as of late Just to mix things up because it's like With anything when you stick to a formula for too long I think it starts to get a little stale or especially on instagram It can get you know just expected and then you lose the attention and so We're mixing up our formula as far as like what the content we're featuring But I think for us some of the biggest things that have helped have really been like Partnering with brands that are of a similar Like-minded audience like we did a big partnership with Sakura life, which I don't know if you know them But they're like a meal-based service across the u.s They do you know healthy meals that you can order for like a short plan or a weekly plan or even a monthly plan And that like initiative was great because it just exposed us to an audience that would definitely jive the sky team But maybe hadn't seen us before So I think that has been really like a keystone for us We were doing instagram lives when the the pandemic first started and like I think those go through fluctuations of people being interested in being on instagram more and then people being like I hate instagram I don't want to you know be on it any longer than I have to like my little monster scroll is going to let me And so I don't know I think you just have to be in constant pivot on social media because like the wants and the needs are Ever shifting now we're trying to get into tiktok and like it's Chrissy and I like grandma's trying to figure out how to do all of the cool things on tiktok that we really don't understand But we're gonna try we're we're still we're still in learning mode for that and I think to add on the Same thing applies to instagram in that like The more real we are the higher the engagement is like when we have like pristine Photography, it's it's like Cute photo, but like when we're ourselves and we're making jokes and we're like Doing like bloopers behind the scenes like those are the things that really work for our audience That's so true. All that stuff being authentic is so much better. It's such a weird thing So much better. It's like my wife will post pictures with like funny faces on construction sites on her stories And I'm like that's so great. Like I'm like Because it's so true. I'll follow that. That sounds fun. It's just it's great. It's hilarious How much is your subscription? What do you guys charge on a monthly basis? We're actually launching with our like rebrand at the very start of may It'll be shifting to a sliding scale for pricing between 20 and 30 dollars So you can pick your mark in that range and the initiative we're doing with that is that at the 25 or over mark We're going to be doing a give back subscription So for everyone who subscribes and chooses 25 dollars or more for their monthly subscription We'll be giving a subscription away in tandem with that So, you know, it's like we've been trying to figure out. It's like we're a yoga studio We have values that like kind of supersede the capitalist system. We want to Build in, you know, things that are important to us Which includes getting wellness and getting these tools and techniques to larger groups of people that have been left out of the conversation And so we're about to launch it. We'll let you know how it goes How many classes do I get for 25 or 30 a month? Is there a limit or is it just the whole library? No, it's all of them. The whole library as well as our zoom classes We have four zoom live zooms a week plus we upload That seems cheap classes every month. It's like a blockbuster. It is like it seems very cheap very affordable I guess is the word Considering one class in new york before this was 25 dollars So for 25 dollars a month you're getting access to 200 videos in our library plus the live zoom classes Plus you're giving a subscription away to someone who doesn't have wellness practices So we think it's a great model and you guys should subscribe 100% this is masterclass did that during the pandemic They were giving away a subscription if you signed up and so it was like such a smart thing because I was a genius Our masterclass and for you guys to be doing it. So you guys must be getting ready to raise capital I would imagine I mean you launch this you're I would imagine your very next step is to Say look our user has our users have tripled. I would imagine. Yeah Yeah, we thought we were like watching the numbers rise like may whatever it was 15th we're like Okay online seems to be going well So we just yeah, we have to keep going with it and pour more energy into the online thing But we do want to get back We're such live in person people And we used to do retreats all over the world in classes all over So we are going to be doing some in-person stuff if you are based in and around New York But that will be now our side hustle. Yeah switched That's really smart. I mean I think about this from like a different type of strategy from a strategy perspective It's almost like we saw brick and mortar. We know the limitations of doing that. It's slow It's hard to scale now. You're moving to tech While you guys build out the platform What's really cool is like you can just have these like pop-ups almost where you can literally say hey guys We're going to be in Chicago this week and all of a sudden you're like in the most beautiful spaces in the country Putting on these events that speak heavily to your user base But are also just super cool, right? And so you can record it and now you have better content You can do like a fun class and it's just like hey yoga outside instead of yoga in the studio But obviously the audio like nix an audio guy and so the audio would be not as good. He would go crazy However, it's that honest transparent layer of like yeah, there is traffic But here we are a drop of water is enough to carve a stone, right?  Like is there I'm just thinking from branding Is there like a certain maybe some clothing you guys send or like a welcome thing? Is there something that people get as members? We've thought about doing that We don't have the bandwidth right now to like have a big merch component But that could be next to we thought about doing like a starter pack Like you get your skyting mat and your two blocks and like your subscription So that could definitely be something that maybe is already Out there depending on when you're listening to this, but yeah for sure like a water bottle. I don't know I mean, there's so many branding opportunities here for whatever it might be like just like D I was saying like pay for the subscription and then a week later in the mail Comes a skyting yoga block or a water bottle or yoga mat It's kind of in line with like what peloton does like, you know, you're using the peloton app But you also got the peloton bike. It's just all vertical integration as they say Love a vertical Oh Yeah, it's the sexiest thing there is So hot Looking forward, are there any lofty goals that you guys could be willing to share with us as for Where you see skyting and maybe five ten years from now? I mean our vision for skyting continuously changes as we change and our Proclivities change, but we want to reach more people. We really want to close the wellness gap We want to reach people like chloe said who are not always included in the conversation of wellness And so definitely continue on with our online stuff, but I have dreams to create a retreat center one day. I love design. I love spaces I love creating communities So that could perhaps be something That you'll see down the line Just off top of my head and piggybacking off both what you and Diego was talking about earlier about doing these pop-ups I mean Why settle on one retreat when you could have retreats all over the country that you just kind of come in You set up for a month and then you move on like set up in some beautiful locations Like, you know park city, utah in the summer or boulder, colorado or aspen I mean aspen, you know, you go to the cat skills in new york Just you know really explore the country and invite your user base to join you for these retreats and everyone can tune in for the live Zoom sessions. We do those retreats. We used to do 12 a year and that was like It's the most fun way to teach yoga. You're like on vacation. You have time You know, no one's in a rush class could be 45 minutes or two hours. It doesn't matter So we love hosting retreats and and we will definitely be doing some more pop-ups But yeah, that's like for teachers the big bonus of being a yoga teacher is like having the freedom to explore the world And get paid to teach Well, listen guys, this has been amazing great talking to both of you Can you just let everyone know where they can find you? It's just real simple sky ting skyting.com Or on instagram at sky ting and you're venturing into tiktok at sky ting as well Chrissy chloe. Thanks for coming on the podcast. This has been great. I appreciate it. Thank you.  Thanks for having us. Yeah, pleasure talking with you both


Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell EMC World 2017, brought to you by Dell EMC. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live at Dell EMC World 2017. This is our eighth year of coverage of formerly known as EMC World, but it's now Dell World first year of the combined company. Some say Dell bought EMC, some say EMC bought Dell. Either way, the merger and the acquisition or combination, how we want to call it. I'm certainly working out this CUBE coverage of the first year, I'm John Furrier with my co-host, Keith Townsend, CTO advisor. Our next guest is Turin Thacker, co-founder and CEO of Datto's IO, Big News, and as well, Peter Schmelz, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, a former EMC-er, been in the industry. Guys, congratulations, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, John. Thank you Keith. Thank you so much. So, big bang news at the Dell EMC. There are tons of stories here. Obviously the big story is the combination, but you guys have some really amazing news. Funding, traction, give us the update on the hard news. Excellent, thank you John. First, thank you guys. Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here. The last couple of weeks have been just amazing for us. Last week was all about product, which Peter's going to talk about. Our journey from our one-dollar to two-dollar. Our journey is all driven by customers and where the market is headed. But this week was all about enterprise adoption. It's about enterprise record industry. You have these two industries, all the words, $200 billion of market cap, recognizing the value of what we have been doing. And so the hard news is what Cisco and NetApp have invested. Cisco and NetApp, both are investors in day two today. So this is a round of funding from corporate investors, any VCs coming in as well? Both, you know, the investors were already in the company. They want to maintain their ownership. Okay, so they did their pro rata, they re-upped. That's correct. Okay, so new corporate investors, that's validation. Yes, yes. Why are they investing? I mean that's what we want to know.  Why don't they just do it themselves? Yeah, so you know, look, I think it's very, very clear that this industry of the data management or this industry of enterprise adoption to the cloud is this massive pace right now, right? The acceleration is at its highest gear, so to speak. And you know, we've been working with both those companies for the last few months and they recognize at fundamental level what we have built, right? The application-centric nature of the product built it fundamentally for cloud-native applications, helping existing customers mobilize their applications to the cloud. You know, we have now three-year lead into this space, right? And it's best to join forces. Well, we had our CUBE conversation in our studio in Palo Alto.  But you were really kind of coy about not sharing the news to me, which I thought was cool, but kept the secret. But you guys have shown- Also no other reasons. But the cloud certainly is accelerated.  But if you look at the VC funding landscape, we were saying yesterday on our opening that it's a canary in the coal mine. It's a really leading indicator of what's going on in the marketplace.  They're repivoting always. You see, I got scale-out, scale-out storage. Pivot, pivot, pivot. But all these companies, data management, you know, data backup and protection are all booming, massive, out-rubric, cohesity, billion-dollar valuations. Why are these companies getting such big funding? Why are you guys being successful? Is cloud just creating massive scale? But was normally a white space? No, so, you know, the answer, I'll go first. Go for it. I'll jump in. Because you come from this world of, most recently. Look, John, there has been no innovation in the space of backup and recovery for the last 20 years. Like, we've been still living in the world of four-wall data center, media-server-based architectures, and backup and recovery products that were truly written for tape architectures. That world ain't exist in this cloud world, right? There has been no innovation. And now you're seeing companies that are cohesity-grade companies, great fellow companies to be part of. And all of us recognize the disruption opportunity and recognize what we can go all do for the next 10, 20 years. And I'll jump on that. So, if you net it out, there's really two things happening. You know, 70% of CIOs have a cloud-first strategy, right? So, enterprise, one of the reasons we're here, you know, enterprises have a cloud-first strategy. Okay, they're moving to the cloud. They're doing two things. One, they're either building that new applications in the cloud. Geodistributed, you know, highly scalable applications. You need a fundamentally different approach for protecting those applications. That's number one. Number two is, those same customers are saying, I want to move as many of my non-recovery workloads from my traditional four-wall data center off-prem. I want to leverage the cloud. I want to put my data where I want to put it when I want to put it there. There's no, there has not been any good solution to do that. So, for us, that's cloud data management. We're about protect. If you have stuff in the cloud, we'll protect it. If you want to move stuff to the cloud, from the cloud, within the cloud, that's mobility to us, that's what we do. And ultimately, this is why there's so much attention being paid to cloud data management, because everybody's moving the cloud, and the one thing we have heard consistently is they're not taking traditional tools to the cloud. Simple quick. You know, go to the website. I don't see anything about backup. I don't see anything about, you know, there's data protection. But in enterprise, when we go to the cloud for the first time, a couple of things we figure out first. Backup is hard, because, you know, I can't point my data domain to S3, in backup S3, or some type of object storage. I also find out that these traditional architectures within the data center just don't translate to the cloud. So, where are you guys at in the education cycle of the enterprise, and helping them understand the value of an application-centric model? And where do you need to go? Yeah, so Keith, that's a great question, right? You actually hit the nail on the head. You have these proprietary backup appliances. We used to call data domain really a PBBA appliance. You had these media-server-based architectures with the likes of Veritas and Commod. Perfect for four walks, right? In the cloud, geo-distributed applications, right? And you look at those sort of that scale, the application-centricity, and we started what we did in our strategy. We started with absolutely green field. What does that mean? That means the cloud-native applications, the non-relational databases, right? The analytics, the IoT applications. So you go towards the use case where the world and the customers are already thinking cloud-native, right? You don't, coaching and training customers, as you rightly called, is very hard journey. It is the crossing the chasm. It takes time, right? You need to start with early adopters, the innovators who will then latch on to you and take you forward, right? So our strategy of picking a space which was completely green-field and blue ocean couldn't have served us better. So what's that next step after we've figured out backup, because we have to back the data up? Data management was way more than backup. Now, as I've blown away the limits of my data center and I can access data from anywhere in the world, what have you helped customers understand that they can do with their applications and data now that I can access it from anywhere in the world? Yeah, so I can take that to your point. If you look at protect, our three pillars, protect, mobilize, monetize. You'll hear us say that over and over again. We started with protection. It's a business critical use case. You cannot have a cloud-first strategy if you don't protect your data. Got it. Second piece around the mobility piece is, like you said, giving what have we done by being application-centric data management. What we do that nobody else does is we enable you to very intelligently and very efficiently move data sets in native format wherever you want to any cloud that you want. We don't normalize data. We don't change formats. So for example, to give you one great example of application-centricity, I have a non-prem workload. I want to run a query against that, star.peterstar. That resulting data set, that's all I want to move to the cloud because I want to run BI against it. I want to do something that helps me monetize my data in the cloud. That data set I want to move. One, you can run a query against that database. Two, will intelligently and efficiently only move that data in native format, spin it up in the cloud as native data set. All your metadata is there. Do whatever you want to that data. When you're done, move it back if you want. Do whatever you want. So essentially we've eliminated any silos from a cloud standpoint. So what we've done is we've given people complete cloud freedom to move what they want when they want to, where they need to. That's the essence of what we've done. Let's talk about the monetized portion of it because you guys have been curious. If I can move the data to the cloud natively, that's great. That's really value add. But on top of that, I need to figure out really tough problem, which is metadata. I have global data worldwide. I have data scientists wanting to pound against that in a completely new way. Do you guys provide a new way to access this data other than my legacy tool? Absolutely Keith. So I want to hit on those two points in the statement you made. Moving data efficiently to the cloud, Keith, is a very hard problem. What we have done by being only protecting what you need to protect, why back up an entire database when you only care about a couple of tables? Remember, we're going from traditional monolithic architectures to microservices in the cloud, right? DBAs and admins, they only care about a couple of tables. I want to run a BI query against a certain part of the data. What we have fundamentally done to the first part of your question moved data very highly efficient, which is 10x DDo of what data domain could do. We have a significant amount of IP protected around that technology. The second piece around the metadata question. What we've really done, Keith, in our sort of scale out elastic data protection to the tune of elastic compute and elastic storage, you need to extend that to elastic data management, is you're metadata catalog back up at the end of the day has a catalog. The golden nugget. Right. That catalog used to be siloed. If I had 10 media servers, I had that catalog siloed around that. No value there. No value there. Our catalog is now distributed and stretched across cloud boundaries. If I have a Datos running on-prem and I have a Datos running in Amazon, those are two instances of the same software, two nodes. The metadata catalog can see each other. You back up here. John can see that back up in the cloud. He can spin up his SQL server in the cloud. You couldn't do that past. You couldn't do that back in the old world. The golden nugget, you need to stretch your metadata catalog and you need to make it distributed across cloud boundaries, which is fundamentally what. What's the impact to the application developers? Because now, are you freeing up? I mean, what is the ultimate value to the customers? I mean, you're basically freeing up the hassles for the app developer to say whatever. Give us the bottom line. So, you know, absolutely, John. Look, I'll give you a customer real scenario, okay? A world's leading e-commerce platform where we go and our wives go spend a lot of money buying clothes. I'm going to just leave it at that, right? They are moving from a monolithic architecture, the Oracle DB2 to the cloud-native architecture, right? Application developers want to take their CICD. I'm writing new code. I want to bring new catalog items on the website. I want to test my code changes. An hour ago, from the day and not two days ago, which was the old backup world, every day you're doing a backup. Now they want what we call, to your question of, we don't call it backup, we call it versioning. I want a version one hour ago because I want to test my code changes. I want to deploy those code changes on the e-commerce platform, driving a billion dollars in revenue. So what do we say? More coolness for the developer. From a data stale versus fresh data. Yeah, to a certain level. But I only jump on that as well, because it's the thing that sometimes goes overlooked is that one of the things that the cloud has done that people don't always acknowledge is created. We've pushed the silo problem from on-prem to the cloud. Clouds don't talk to each other. The notion of that, so the notion of the universal file system or such in the cloud, which some of the competitive landscape tries to address. Wait a minute, we're supposed to have multi-cloud. No, but to your point, we do have multi-cloud. But it's amazing how difficult it is to deal with that. So to your point. And the future, some day, they might be talking to each other, but today they're not. But, but my point on that is that we enable you to do that. So the ultimate value to the customer? I'm the marketing guy, yes, but the notion of cloud freedom is a direct business value to the customer. So that's legit from your standpoint. Cloud freedom. Put it where you need to put it when you want to put it there. Bring it back when you want to bring it back. So it's from an app standpoint, a lot more flexibility, a lot more agility in terms of app development. From a cost standpoint, from an IT standpoint, I can dramatically reduce my cost because I can leverage the cloud versus having everything on-prem. And from an operation standpoint, I ensure everything's protected. So there's a lot more. And we know cloud-native developers are very like, they won't tolerate a lot of the old baggage and dogma of IT. Right, right.  That's actually, can I take that one? Yeah, please, please, please. That's actually, if you see how many hours we have to talk with you, because that's a fascinating topic. Just pause, can I pause you for a second? Yes. Since he left EMS, yeah, I'll touch you. Anyway, the point is that, no, but the problem isn't new. But there's a persona, what I prefer to do is basically like a persona innovator's dilemma that we're also helping address. Because there's a convergence of personalities and people involved in the protection and management of data. So to your point, we've been dealing with a lot of the new personas going after cloud-native data protection. But you're watching the organization, the enterprises, they're going through it and they are rapidly transforming these personas. So part of our job to your education point earlier is making sure that the left-hand knows what the right-hand's doing and marrying those two different pieces, because that's ultimately, and that's value to the customer. And we help drive that process. Well, Taruna and Peter, congratulations and good to see the journey and continue to accelerate. Thank you. Entrepreneurial journey. And we'll keep in touch. Love the name, data OS. We believe and Wikibon believes and their firm on this, the business value of data is ultimately going to be a major, major disruptor for business. Not necessarily a technology, but having that data operating system, that data OS, as you call it, is going to be fundamental. Congratulations. Thank you, John. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Cube, live here at Dell EMC World 2017. More live coverage. Stay with us more after this short break.


In his book, Flickering Pixels, Shane Hips writes that Christianity is fundamentally a communications event. God communicated God's love and mercy through Christ, and as the body of Christ, we are meant to continue to extend and embody that message. Christianity and communications are not two separate things. They are inextricably linked. Hips writes, God wants to communicate with us and his media are many. Angels burning bushes, stone tablets, scrolls, donkeys, prophets, mighty voices, still whispers, and shapes traced in the dirt. Today, a couple thousand years later, that also includes the internet, mobile devices, and social media.


oh hey welcome back to our bluntly Today we are doing a little video by asian boss. We've done one video of them before it was our indians really good at math Yeah. Remember that? Yep. And they are? They are. Mate, not all of them. Obviously I'm sure. Well, compared to us, everybody's better at math. Everybody's better at everything educationally. Yeah. Compared to us. We ranked 50th in the world in education. We ranked like 50th in terms of freedom. We are. That's true. Somebody from Germany recently was asked, like someone said, we want to know what you think in other countries about what's going on in America. This is like a week ago. Yeah. And one of these things this German woman said was, we think it's funny. You guys still consider yourself a democracy. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Yep. Yep. But this is called how foreigners react to traditional Indian greetings, say this pranama, which I believe is the feet touching in the heart. That's the word for it. I believe so. I could be wrong. Let me know if I am. But I know, obviously we know, we see it all the time in films and stuff like that. Yeah. We now know enough to know what that means. But I remember, I would be weirded, like it would be strange for me if, and I think somebody did. I think it may, I don't know if they did it as a joke, but at a meet and greet. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Cause one, I have a thing with you. I don't like feet. And being touched. Yeah. More people touching my feet. And so it's very strange. I get it. Also, we know that it's not done for everybody. No. Nobody would randomly go to a random person on the street and touch their feet. It's for elders and people with honorarium respect. And so like, obviously an Indian would just, hi, meeting an American for the first time. How you doing? How you doing? But I remember early on when we saw it was in some of the music stuff where people started to touch the feet and we hadn't seen that before. And I remember thinking, what's that all about? Yeah. Namaste is all over the place here in the world of yoga. I've seen, I saw the word namaste has been on everything here for ever. We've, we've known that. That's probably the first Indian word. Any American. Any American. They probably don't even know that it's Indian. And many of them probably still call it Namaste. Just based on the spelling. Here we go. Hey guys, it's Steve from Asian Boss and I'm here with my friend P.K. who comes from India. He's Tim C. There's a form of respectful salutation in Indian culture that's been in existence for centuries. What's it called? Do you want me to say an Indian accent? Yeah, just give me a real Indian accent. It's called pranam. Pranam. What's interesting is the fact that most people outside India have absolutely no idea such gesture or practice exists, right? So the question is, how would non-Indian people react if they were on the receiving end? That's a stranger. Everybody's going to be like, weird. Just give us a feedback. I would love to know how you feel. This guy looks like a douche. I would be confused. I just love that we've been picking something off. Had I seen that booth before? You can't be serious. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe, maybe. The first time I saw it, I was like, whoa. I'm not going to do something like that. You can't. What would happen if you didn't probably just try to get off with it? If you did it to like a random person, then some people would be like, they'd freak out. How do you think that people in Taiwan, you know, they'd be like, some people in Taiwan would react if somebody came up to them and did this? That's strange. He's holding his entire mic back. That's only mic. He's got some kind of coming in and date or person. We have a big thing with personal space here. That was before COVID. Now it's even bigger. What does it say in respect to a gesture? A younger person would know it's someone elderly. I am respectful of Jesper. My younger person would do it to someone elderly. Yeah, it would just be a random Jesper person. In Australian culture, what would be the equivalent of Jesper? There's no equivalent of Jesper. What level of respect are you sure to? Back in the day, it would have been calling them by their surnames. It would have been Mr. Smith, Mrs. Smith. We're serving here. I can only say Mr. Smith. More personal than a handshake. Yeah, that's a baby. Well, and it's also to be the recipient of the blessing as well. Yeah, I think you're supposed to go like... Touch their head. Why are you touching their head? Touch their head. I feel people's responses are quite interesting. They were. They were really interesting. Now you know what to do when you go to India next time, and you get someone more respectful of them. I'm just gonna like... You know what I'm realizing? He's a bit... He's a bit... Alright guys, make sure you just squat to our channel, and so you guys... We probably should have done that with a Staju secure. I think you probably would have been weirded out at two Americans who did that. I know, but in hindsight now, I guarantee if we were to meet him for the first time now, he would be one of the people who it would enter my mind of, I feel like I need to do that to show him a level of respect. No, I still feel like it would be weird for... I would... You know who else would immediately come to mind? Big B. Yeah. No. I wouldn't do it to anybody. Come on. No. Really? It's not... There's nobody that you would do that to. It would seem more like cultural appropriation of me if I did that, because it doesn't even... That's not how I grew up showing respect, so it would be just weird for me to do that. I understand your point. I don't... Also, once again, we know you just wouldn't randomly go up to people. No. Actually, I want to think of my... Before India, because obviously it's not weird to me now. Right. Like to see somebody do it. Not at all. In a film, it's actually very normal. It's normal and I realize it's an endearing thing to do now. Yeah. But actually what I see most of the time when it's in film or television is the recipient usually tries to pick them up and stop them. And stop them from... No, no, no. I think I asked once. I was like, dude, people... Does anybody accept it? They do, because the opposite is to give the blessing. It's a customary thing. I'm sure you have too.  I'm taking an exam. I really could use and would love to have your blessing. And I believe that's the same spirit of... I'm not only honoring you as the elder, but I'm hoping that you'll give me the blessing on me. I remember if I'm not mistaken that when Michael did his concert in Mumbai, there's an image of somebody going to touch his feet and him having a natural response to not do that. Was it a problem? I cannot tell you who it was. That would have been if you saw that video back in the day. I know. It was a problem. It probably was if he was in Mumbai. And probably was it. There were a lot of other people around Michael too. But it was probably a problem. What's interesting growing up in the United States of the different cultural greetings that are outside of America, the one that I knew from this little was what the Japanese do. Balloon, right? Balloon. You knew that in Japan they bow as a sign of respect. Yeah, it was pretty early because cartoons would do it. Constantly. But I didn't learn about this until two years ago. Yeah. I might have seen it before, but I can't recall. But yeah, it's interesting. And there is no equal to this in Western. This is a very personal way of showing respect. Because I feel like in India, especially the older culture, there's a respect for elders even more so than there is here. There's respect for elders, but it's more of like, call them sir, call them ma'am. Sir and ma'am. And that's basically the extent usually. But it's not really an equivalent of this type of respect showing. As well as back talking. Yeah. Like if you get in a disagreement with someone who's your elder, you don't have back talk to them. Yeah, unless they're being real disrespected. But nothing like this. I just, any time if it was ever done to me, I don't feel worthy of that type. I've never felt that way. When I was a kid, like my parents or other people, people look up to you like kids that were younger than you look up to you as an older kid. I was like, why? Why do they care about me? I don't want anybody to look up to me. Right, but at the same time, I don't think you have a problem signing an autograph. I do. Oh, you do? I will do it, but I don't like it. Okay. Because I don't, in my mind, place myself, I don't think of myself enough to warn anybody wanting my autograph. It is a strange sensation to think somebody, my signature is valuable enough for them that they want me to just sign to prove that they have an account. Pictures as well.  It was lovely, but it's still weird for me because it's like, I don't, even if I'm like the status of a Shahrukh Khan, I won't understand it in terms of me, because I personally, I'm not saying I don't hold myself in any esteem at all, it's just I will never be able to think of myself that way. No, the only thing for me about signing things is that it makes me happy to know I'm making them happy. Like when we did the Partridge Family 50th, there were a bunch of people who wanted to sign pictures of Ricky, so I went over to this gentleman's house who had photos, and I signed like 25 pictures, and it, it's strange. I mean, I've been doing that on and off since I was four, and it's always struck me as strange, but underneath the only thing, because like, there's none of that. It's the, how wild is it that my just signing that is going to make them happy? Yeah, right? Yeah, it is strange, but yeah, this is, this is really interesting, because I, I like it more, feel that they're teaching more about Indian culture than, because obviously, once again, this guy would never do it to this other person who is basically their same age. No, that would never happen. It's, but I will say I, I far more loved that there's nothing about this I don't like, and I wish we had more things like this in culture, because if there's anything our world is lacking, it's one physical touch right now, and second, really demonstrative expressions of respect, that, that if you saw it happening, you knew that's being done purely out of a motivation of respect and honor, and we could use a whole lot more of that. Absolutely. Let's know what other videos we should react to down below. Thank you.