Red Hat OpenShift In the Clouds | Red Hat Livestreaming, 18 Nov 2021

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From YouTube: In the Clouds (S2E15) | Cloud computing meets open source

Description

Should people be thinking of cloud computing as a business model, and not just a technology? The advantage of the cloud business model is that it promises cost savings and allows you to scale quickly. But how should people look at investing in the hybrid cloud? And what other questions are important? Jerry Chen from Greylock joins host Stu Miniman to discuss the evolution of the cloud computing business model.

Learn More: https://greylock.com/castles

Across industries and business sectors, senior leadership has to execute at an ever-increasing pace, and today's technology decisions must balance short-term risk with long-term gains. Join host Stu Miniman as he leads insightful and candid discussions with a broad spectrum of experts, executives, and decision-makers on diverse and hot technology topics.

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Stu Miniman https://twitter.com/stu
Jerry Chen https://twitter.com/jerrychen
Greylock VC https://twitter.com/GreylockVC
OpenShift https://twitter.com/openshift

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About OpenShift:
Red Hat OpenShift is an open source container application platform based on the Kubernetes container orchestrator for enterprise application development and deployment.
Openshift.com http://red.ht/3nJ6AKX
OpenShift on github https://github.com/openshift/
OpenShift on redhat.com http://red.ht/34xQoER

#RedHat #OpenShift #Kubernetes

A

Good morning good afternoon good evening and welcome to another episode.

B

Working on open shift and sometimes.

A

This is subtle.

A

Everybody has something that they need on top.

B

Of the red hat portfolio.

B

Welcome to in the clouds, I'm your host, stu, miniman and happy to have a special pre amazon, re invent, show we're going to be talking about cloud computing, of course on in the clouds going to be digging in specifically to open source. Open source has been around for a number of decades. I remember when it first came out. It was the the transition from free software uh to talking about open source. It has gone through a lot of changes over those decades and the big question we're going to look at today is with cloud computing.

B

What does it mean for open source and really happy to welcome to the program? My first external non-red hat guest, jerry, chen jerry, and I have both lived through a lot of these changes. Just in case you don't know jerry he's a partner at greylock. uh You know very, very well-known uh venture capitalist, firm and jerry's resume. Just is one of those things that you know. If you had drawn up, you know a successful tech person. Well, you start with your undergraduate at stanford.

B

You get your uh mba at harvard, uh and uh then you know he worked at vmware. uh The the term virtual desktop infrastructure started with jerry cloud foundry he open sourced it. Then he goes on as part of the v mafia. Investing in all the companies he's the guy that funded docker. So you know I would not be sitting where I am today working in the cloud group at red hat.

B

If it wasn't for what docker had done and he's invested in a number of companies, I've had the pleasure of knowing jerry for a long time have interviewed him many times back at you know: dockercons and amazon re invents and the likes so jerry. Thank you so much for joining me and uh great to see you.

A

Stu, thank you for having me, I don't know who you're talking about with the intro, but it's pleasure that I could be here and not that other guy.

B

Yeah yeah well uh now that is awesome. So jerry we've got a lot to talk about. um You wrote a bunch of articles. I I've loved. uh You know, since you've been a vc, you know every once in a while. You put out these. You know nice thoughty pieces with the framework and how you're thinking before we get into the all the cloud and open source discussion. Maybe tell us a little bit. You know your your role today. What's you know? Where do you invest? What's your investment strategy at a very high level, sure.

A

Thanks to, um like you, said, partner greylock, I typically do early stage enterprise software, so we're talking series a's to recede. I try to give an early back rate founders in amazing markets sounds easy, but it's actually really hard, because markets are and we'll talk more about their debate.

A

Their dynamic they're, changing a lot and just finding these world-class founders that either have a point of view of what the world should look like, or have some deep technology or an open source project which I'm sure we'll talk about as well and then try to go in early, be a partner to these founders, and so I do earth through cloud software like docker, cato networks um rock set in the database space chronosphere in the observability space, then sas applications blend mortgage software gladly customer support software, insta-based kind of document workflows.

A

So all things up and down the stack. I look for, and you know it's been fun. It's been a great lock. uh Eight and a half years now feels like uh just yesterday. You and I were at vmworld. You know.

B

Yeah yeah, I know it's amazing so, and you said it it's easy to say just find great people, you know bet on them and and everything, but you know the technology, the open source piece. You know what let's get into the big topic of open source. uh You know, I think back. uh You know talking to palmeritz. You know many years ago, uh when you know pivotal, got moved out of uh emc and vmware and was like. Why are you doing open source and his response was you know we can't it's moving so fast?

B

We have no choice but to be there- and I mean paul- was long-time microsoft guy and was not necessarily like yay open source. It was like hey, you know, that's the way it is today and that that's how we're going to do things. You know what what what's your general thinking about the role of open source in the it world- and you know, how's that been changing in the last decade or so.

A

Yeah, I think paul had this insight that he repeated to me at vmware. When we were building cloud foundry was you know, open source, more or less? Has natural network effects right, like all platforms, had natural network effects and so to get cloud foundry as a piece of software that's relevant in the world, and you look at docker, you look at database software or operating systems like linux.

A

Getting more developers means more work on the project, which means the project, crews, more value to the customers and has that virtual cycle. So the insight there was open sourcing cloud foundry was needed in order to build natural network effects to kind of win that piece of open source platform of service. So I think you know fast forward.

A

You know, 10 years later, gosh has been over 10 years, since we did cloud foundry and look at what's happened now, both in open source as a way to build software and more or less open source has one right open source. Is your browser? Is in your iphone or android phone? It powers the cloud powers, your database, so one open source as a way to build software has one the number two, the great transition.

A

The past couple years is cloud and mobile cloud as a distribution mechanism to get software into your hands has one right, and so you know these things aren't necessarily two separate trends or they're they're related and tied, so close together that both open source as the final way software is built today and cloud as the main way software's distributed today are the trends of the past 15 years.

B

Yeah uh it it's been fascinating to watch jerry. You know back when I just get to sit back and watch all of these players. Here I mean you watch microsoft. Who was you know the definition of a proprietary company um now is, you know, very active in open source. You know, over half of uh azure is now running on linux. They partner with us at red hat.

B

uh You know, google, of course you know open sourced a number of technologies and amazon has had an interesting relationship uh when it when it when it comes to open source um there's there was a narrative a few years ago that like well, you know yeah open source from a development standpoint, but cloud has killed the monetization um of open source because just you'll make something open source and they will just deliver it as a service.

B

It feels like that has changed in the last year or so, but you know, let's love, to get your input and thoughts as to that relationship with the cloud players against the cloud players, their participation in both the creation of open source and the monetization aspect.

A

Look, I think, open source is the way software's built. It's not a business model right. It's like, I think, people kind of lump these things together. So, let's separate the two, so open source is the way software is built. Shared distributed. Collaborate on the business models are different ways to sell the product to the market and there could be things like support for on-premise software. It could be things like distributed through the cloud as a sas service, so it's not just open source that had to change the business model.

A

It's all software stu right, it's you know, look what happens siebel in the crm space to salesforce.com. You know that's cloud and arguments. You know there's open source underneath salesforce.com, but the way sas has changed application. Software, like crm, has changed as well vmware a company I worked at for almost 10 years. That was proprietary software.

A

The way vmware needs to monetize has changed the past 10 years now, working all the big cloud providers, so open source, again, companies like red hat or um my sequel, the oracle ball or more recent companies like kafka, confluent, hashicorp, docker, etc. Now the way those companies monetize either a selling on-premise open core products or support right depending upon your, your flavor of prioritization or number two selling a cloud hosted version of your product. So all sudden, you know the flywheel that I described in um some of my blogs.

A

Thank you like castles.com or greylock.com, is there's a problem. Awareness solution, awareness trial before you had a problem in an open source solution, and you tried it by downloading the software and you ran it on your own, laptop or own own data center. That can still happen a lot of open source right, discover the product and github whatever or slack or discord community.

A

Now you get from discovering the technology learning about it on discord or whatever downloading it, but oftentimes downloading or running it. You just click, run it in the cloud. There's a free or cheap version hosting the cloud. So all of a sudden stu, the the line between open source and cloud hosted. Proprietary sas blurs like look at um mongodb as a great example started as open source still is open source, but you were downloading. You know container of mongodb now atlas their cloud. Hosted version, is you know entirely in the cloud?

A

Is your cloud servers still got a lot of open source, but you know there's a lot of non-open source stuff around mongodb atlas, because that's how they actually run the software, and so the value quite frankly, has changed. Not so the software bits itself, but a lot of value in cloud is how you operate it, how you run it, how you scale it, how you secure it? How you support it and a lot of that stuff in in in the open source world or the cloud world today is not necessarily open source.

A

A lot of that's proprietary closed or, or you know, ip.

B

Yeah, I wanna you made a really good point, something that we actually say at red. Hat too. You need to separate that you know what are you creating and then what's your business model, uh you know our our ceo paul cormier says we are an enterprise software company. We just happen to have an open source development model um jerry when it comes to. You know understanding that that nuance between how I develop and how I sell you know for years, everybody would said.

B

Well when is there going to be the next red hat of something uh we were the first billion dollar? uh You know open source company, we're still the only multi-billion dollar open source company. We had some. You know amazing ipos, peers of us in the industry. You know gitlab and hashicorp. uh Both went ipod both sent in around 200 million dollars of revenue, which is great and at a great growth rate.

B

But you know we always felt you know, and I talked to red hat for years and now being here, we are so focused on being open source, uh hoshi and git lab are very similar in that aspect, but, as you said, a lot of other companies, it's like well there's some open source and then I wrap around it. It's open core or I create different models. uh You know some of our largest growth areas. Right now are the cloud services where we have.

B

You know an sre team and we manage all that, but the software is all open source. So how? When you're working with the companies that you have? How do you help them work through that? You know what is free? What do I pay for you know. Freemium is tough. You know your friends at docker, you know had you know millions and millions of people using it, but that monetization path was a challenge.

A

Yeah it's interesting. I mean you could argue that red hat was the first, maybe only a billion in revenue. I think there'd be multiple companies out there that will be billion. Students. Do you argue? Amazon cloud is open source company and well over a billion revenue right. Look at you know what underpins you know: s3 ec2, you know elastic, search, etc. On amazon is all open source, so I you know. I think that the you mentioned red hat's own business model, managing open source. Now for your customers. Those models are starting to blur right.

A

So what is an open source company? What's not an open source company? It's on some spectrum from you know pure support and download the bits and write me a check to like hey, I'm going to write it for you in the cloud- and you know amazon's all over here and increasingly more and more of the software companies and startups. I work with are over here right and the key is like. You got to look more like a cloud service, not just because um you're trying to compete against amazon right.

A

We talk more about how amazon, google, azure and the rest are now monetizing open source like you like we talked before, but also it's how customers want to consume the software. You know, and it's all sudden, the api vacation of the cloud right. Everything now isn't just a repo that you download. Now everything wants to be an api. So all of a sudden he had this.

A

You know programmable cloud for lack of a better term where there are a bunch of open source bits right in the cloud you can call v an api or whatever and just run your database run security software run analytics software. So look at companies, I'm involved like chronosphere and rock set both have tons of open source rock sets. A real-time database call it like real-time snowflake chronosphere is observability at scale like data dog, prometheus, etc.

A

Both have a lot of open source in them, but their main form of monetization is running as a service like a sas company and increasingly we're directing most of startups in that direction, not always right. Certain companies, regulatory industries, insurance, finance, et cetera.

A

A lot of that still has to be on premise in my data center, etc: more more or less they're, like government clouds, there's vpcs, and so that model again is blending, but more or less we're guiding our companies look more like a cloud company than it is call it um red hat circuit 2004. If that makes any sense, yeah.

B

No, no, it absolutely does make sense. uh You know he heard red hat. We've been talking about open, hybrid cloud for about 11 years now, but you know you're right. You know. Where did linux start? Linux started in the data center? You know it jerry. I said you know, red hat might be the company that is most associated with linux, but you know you would not have google if it wasn't for linux. You sure amazon. If it wasn't for linux, where I I might you know, parse with you a little bit as to your character.

B

Races from an amazon standpoint is amazon is probably one of the best at monetizing open source. You know how many billions of dollars have do they do a year that is open source related. They contribute we partner with them. We love to see them embracing open source, more, I sure, wouldn't call them an open source company. Nor would I, if I, if I talked to you, know the new cd ceo adam. I don't think he would characterize them as an open source company, but that is as it may.

B

um You talk about how you partner with the cloud providers, the your castle's article, really have some good discussion of this point, because you know going into re, invent it's what's immigrant going to announce, what are they going to? You know blow up a certain category, or will there be some key partners that are now less relevant? So how do you make sure? Where do you? Where do you attack? Where do you partner? Where do you, you know, stay away from the the giant castles of the big three, uh as you.

A

Write yeah, oh city, that amazon keynote every year, their vcs and founders, waiting for to see what their, what what shoe is gonna drop this year. You know and um I'll be honest, I'd, say: amazon getting into a category today is good and bad right. It's competition is complicated. They own they own, the top of funnel right. They own the developer credit cards, but in many ways amazon in a category is validation. This category is legitimate right because amazon, as you know, google azure included, are so customer focused, so customer oriented.

A

So the fact that you know aws or azure or google, saying hey um analytics matters or real time, databases matter like snowflake, it's kind of validation that yeah customers out there. So I think, there's a couple ways you you work in in compete. So it's always this. um You know complicated dance. If you will in many ways you have to kind of leverage the strength of the clouds you're, probably built on the clouds right.

A

So as all the startup you're, probably using you know, s3 ec2 or whatever services at google azure, equivalent um you're trying to get into their marketplace as distribution. Right because, again, that the cloud folks have top of funnel- and we can talk about how open source lets you have top top a funnel, because if you, if you own an open source project, you own a community, then they start with you not with amazon, so I think open source as a community strategy, the community does have to be open.

A

Source community can be closed source or whatever, but if you own the community, that's uh even better top of funnel to monetization, um so one you got to try leverage amazon, strength there and number two. You know you compete head-on in different ways right, I'm like I'm, not afraid to fund companies competing head-on against companies or services, amazon, azure or google. Look at snowflake versus redshift right. Look at confluent versus kinesis. There's examples of companies out there that are building services that are complete competition to amazon and doing well.

A

uh We talk about atlas versus document db right, so there's plenty of space out there to either a innovate around intellectual property. Deep ip be owning a community, an audience the developer. It doesn't need a developer. It could be a practitioner right.

A

A data science persona right, I'm involved in the comic code, true era, if you own the data science persona, maybe you can monetize them or see, trying to do some jujitsu, where basically say hey, I'm gonna, basically own uh the distribution from amazon and leverage their technology to get to my my customers and it's it's an awkward dance and it's fun because it changes every year and change every quarter, and so the ways you compete with amazon today, leveraging them competing with them, avoiding them um that's going to change year to year, and so I think, the the pace of innovation, the pace of startups as university from your you know, time on you know: in your seat, just watching founders, being founders and speaking, ceos come by the pace of innovation has accelerated, the dancing is going faster, the pivoting is faster and um I I'm excited because I still think there's plenty of white space to compete against the clouds.

B

Yeah, it is exciting times uh it feels a little different than some of the other waves that we saw jerry. You know there were certain times where you know. Are you going to get escape velocity and go public? Are you going to go? Get acquired? uh You look at somebody like amazon. They are very judicious as to where they make acquisitions. It's it's not like you, look at it and say: oh hey, we built something great that is incremental. What amazon is doing.

B

It would feel like there's more of a chance that amazon will find some way at chipping away your value proposition rather than uh buying you uh at the same time, valuations I'd, love your comment on these because I don't know I look at some of these valuations and I'm just like, like hey just to take it out of our space, so we don't get in trouble.

B

You know look at the evs uh that that are going on right now, tesla stock, you know a complete rocket ship, you know, rivien came out and you know in its first week of trading is worth 160 billion dollars and I think there's 16 of them. Actually, on the roads right now so and it's an amazing cool truck and even a partner of amazon's, I got to see one in person at an amazon show and it it is really cool. But you know I can't wrap my head around it. Maybe it was my econ professor.

B

When I did my mba, you know taught me certain practices that aren't in place anymore. um So you know what is you know the the path for the startups, the you know going public versus getting acquired some of that dance. That goes on. As you said, that's a little bit different in this cloud era than it was in the past.

A

Yeah look um valuations in both private and public are higher than they have before. Multiples are higher than that before they haven't. Like you know, I can't really comment intelligently on the public market like used to. If I could talk about the stock market in the multiples, I would have a different job. You know uh I'll be behind a bloomberg terminal trading stocks. I I say the following on the bull market: why the valuations are high.

A

um It's because the investors in wall street can argue are coming to realize how valuable the cloud is in sas is right, and so remember when um the first sas comes when public work day, sales for servicenow, et cetera, the street didn't really understand the power recurring revenue, uh the advantage of sas had and all sudden, I think as sas companies and cloud companies now are going, probably increasingly, both private and public. We see that these markets are a bigger bigger than we've ever imagined.

A

Two, the model of sas and cloud is stronger and more resilient for a bunch of reasons. Right, you're collecting, more better data.

A

You have more intimacy with the customer and so the valuation, the multiples going up, because we realize that these cloud companies and sas companies can keep growing and growing the past two years during covent has showed that, like what's been the most anti-fragile part of the economy the past two years, it's been tech right all of a sudden, we're working behind a camera on zoom or teams all day we're ordering food via instacart or ubereat, our doordash right all that stuff's based on the cloud and all of a sudden.

A

You know when you're buying products through e-commerce and shopify or or amazon retails business. You realize holy cow one. These, the technology powering these business models is incredible and two these markets are bigger and bigger. So the bold case, do you would say: is investors myself, included wall street investors as well and in the public markets are realizing that these markets are bigger.

A

These business models are better more resilient, more sticky when they're subscription, based and therefore going higher in price. That said to your other question, going public versus m a et cetera. You know some of the old line companies do not have the same 100 times, multiple that some of these startups do, and so uh can they do m a at these prices. I don't know or is there's going to be all ipos of this prices.

A

I don't know you know it's, it's not for me to decide and figure that out my job as a series c series, a investor is trying to cr get at the inception moment the idea moment the ideation moment of these companies and get them on the right track towards an ipo. And hopefully you know the street recognized the value, but like all things, it does takes time to come to bc. You know, connect the story of the company to the wall street perception of the story um and who knows um I'm bullish?

A

Clearly you know I'm still holding on to my stocks right, be it roblox in in the metaverse or gaming or coinbase and crypto. You know I'm still bullish on these companies. um You know I've been a long-term holder of amazon stock myself right from years and years ago, vmware as well from years and years ago, so I'm so excited and that's also. This is not stock advice. um Video, so please do not take anything.

B

No, absolutely jerry, I I hear you there, one one of our audience member did put post in there stonks, uh so uh you know requisite to uh you know.

A

Our wall street bets um blog or vlog will be like at the five o'clock hour, we'll move to that.

B

Awesome uh yeah, we'll have uh uh you know the bar at the uh the venetian of the palazzo, we'll have some discussions as to where we should put our bets down, uh and hopefully it's better than the roulette wheel. um You you mentioned in uh some of the articles. You wrote about some of the technology areas that that are really getting a lot of tension, so the ones I'll call out and you're welcome to go. Where you are. uh You know artificial intelligence and machine learning. Definitely something you know.

B

I've seen we've seen at red hat as big growth tends to be very vertical focused. You know, as opposed to you know, back in the big data world it was, I mean you were a board member for for cloudera. It was seemed very broad as to where it was going. Ai and ml like every industry and sub-industry, has their own solutions.

B

So there's just so much proliferation there and then the area with, I believe you said, unlimited opportunity is security because we know at the end of the day, there's always room for more tools and more areas to help us, um because there is no shortage of attacks out there when it comes to security, so I'll leave those as the two starting or any place else that you think kind of the the hot technology areas, especially you know, if it's open source and cloud related.

A

There's only a few trillion of market cap out there to talk about stu, easy question. um You know security for sure. We can start and just comment quickly, because it's so broad in the surface area, it it increases right. So there's always going to be more bad guys trying to get at information. Be it you know. Sovereign hackers, or you know commercial hackers, and so there's always going to be need for more tools.

A

Right is, is uh and when you talk to csus and cios, there's an infinite budget appetite for security for obvious reasons and throwing compliance through and everything else there. It makes sense, um but that's kind of been an evergreen market for, for you know two decades, I would say ai to your points too is super interesting because you know there was a horizontal category of big data.

A

Be it cloud era, or you know you can argue redshift snowflake rocksat are all horizontal technologies in terms of data, big data, real-time database et cetera, horizontal categories like chronosphere and analytics and observability, but then machine learning gets more vertical, like you said on purpose, because the the data and the models you build have to have some domain to train on, and so one way to compete against. The big cloud guys, who are going to be very good at horizontal, is go vertical, so you mentioned like verivian right in terms of evs.

A

um You can argue self-driving car companies via waymo or aurora or whatever that's the ultimate vertical in terms like the knowledge they have around roads and autonomous driving is hard to replicate in a horizontal fashion. So I think companies in healthcare have evolved. One called notable health.

A

That's focused on on healthcare machine learning, so I think machine learning breaks down to two categories: one generic tools like a data robot to help you out or a company like true era in ai quality control, that'll help you out or verticals like healthcare, financial services, consumer personalization, where you have specific models trained around a problem set, and um you know I think right now. Both markets are great. I think you'll see ai baking to every single company security companies will all have ml right. Sas comes all all ml.

A

Observability companies will all have ml so pretty soon. I think it becomes um uh ingredient in all these technologies, so we're super bullish on that. um I don't know what other areas technology we look at. We look at ai. We look at security, we look like next-gen sas companies right all aspects of you know: crm, hr productivity, like next generation of you, know the notions, the air tables the world. Figma is a company that greylock's been lucky to be involved with right.

A

Those guys are doing great, so we're super excited about um some of these next gen productivity tools as well me. Personally, I love cloud. I love data. I love big sas companies.

B

Yeah and as you said jerry, you know we're talking about trillions of dollars of opportunity there so uh that that's pretty awesome. um I saw uh there was an analyst uh recently that said that uh you know we always look at what percentage of applications live in the cloud we were sitting somewhere, 20 25 the prediction was by the time we hit the middle of this decade. We could hit 50 percent of it in the public cloud.

B

So one of our audience, members uh greg nierman, uh said uh hey, there's an interesting article that uh you know somebody you and I both know.

B

uh Martine casado um wrote an article looking at you know what is the opportunity cost of doing it in the public cloud versus doing it in your your own data center, so you've touched on some of the reasons why people keep it in their data center, but you know I have plenty of thoughts on you know repatriation and some of those financial arguments, but I would love you know your take on on that. You.

A

Know martin's great and the work he did there I think is super insightful, but it's not really a paradox per se. He admits, I think, in in a blog or twitter that um growth is rewarded, above all out. So the reason why a lot of startups go cloud first, even though it could be expensive, is a dollar. Growth is rewarded better than a dollar a margin right now by the street, and I think the argument is at some point in time and scale.

A

You can actually reduce your costs um if you repatriate it to your own data center and if you had better margins wall street would also reward that as well right. So I think it's it's a question of in your life cycle as a company, you know, when does it make sense for you to at some size or scale, repatriate your workloads into the data center and is that possible?

A

So I'd argue that for some companies at some scale that totally makes sense, dude right, you're, not growing as fast and you're trying to you know so, a dollar growth you know like you are your growth stock or your income stock right, there's nothing in between, and so I think at earlier livestock you're focused on growth at some point in time on a focus on margins and maybe repatriation or or cutting costs or automating workers away is a way to do that. um You know.

A

There's some companies, I don't think that's possible increasingly, if you're building your cloud company first on amazon, google or azure and you're using things like lambda or services built there, it's going to be very, very hard to repatriate, and I know amazon and google and azure are all having versions of their technology stacks on premise, for you to do that for your data center, but you know cloud isn't just where it's also how you know it's not just I'm located in you know: ec2, east or ec2 west, or you know, google zone in northern europe.

A

It's also. I have an advantage to your point of sres and folks at google running supporting the back end of the stack, and so I think, um for some category, companies totally makes sense repatriate for a bunch of companies, never makes sense to repatriate. You know it's just you're, not the scale you're relying too much on cloud services to build your thing and you rather spend your dollars in employees launching the next product versus optimizing.

A

The cost of the second one and all these companies have this life cycle, and you know once you hit some isotopic ceiling of your first life cycle. If you're running out of growth, maybe but you know, dogs or donuts, I think most ceos rather find the next curve to ride.

A

You know hyper growth curve to ride then try to optimize costs. There.

B

Yeah, I I I agree jerry one of the reasons I've been so bullish for for many years on cloud. Is you get to tap into that that innovation and that ecosystem that is built around it and to your point, it's less about the where? But you know what could you be doing instead, so we do see, you know all the big players extending their reach so that the public cloud isn't just you know us east and west and the like, but it's now coming closer and closer we're seeing them extend their reach.

B

You know, yes, their hybrid solutions getting into the data center have been a little bit of a long uh growth to actually mature and as edge comes into the play. More and more, can I access the same services? uh Can I live in those environments? So it's an area to watch. um It's it's definitely interesting times uh in that space um boy, jerry. uh We've covered a lot of ground. um What wonder and just step back for a second, you know you've now been a vc for eight years.

B

You said you spent about a decade uh at vmware. um You've worked for some consulting companies in the past. um When you look at you know new people coming to the market, um you know what advice do you give them? You know I love being back at a big company.

B

um You know we hire interns and many times we convert those interns into full-time people, and I love spending time with them, because they're just out of school and they've used cool new technologies and often they don't have the baggage that you and I have for being around for decades because, like I need to be able to unlearn much of what I've learned so that I don't get stuck in my ways.

B

So you know what's exciting you about the next generation, what advice do you give people as to like hey here's, some areas where you know you need to gain experiences in these sorts of things, to work at a startup or be you know, really valuable in your later in your career.

A

You know I I love working in tech, you and I both have spent our careers here because I think working technology is is living in optimism. You know, and I think you have to be an optimist- to be working technology into to invest in startups. Most of these companies won't work, and you know my job is saying no more than saying yes and I love to say yes to every company, but fundamentally from the moment, I stopped being optimists about things workings do and taking on amazon or red hat as a startup.

A

Then I I gotta find something else and so number one I think we're lucky and I'm very lucky and grateful to work in the job. I have uh number two for for young folks coming into new jobs or technology. I always say the following is find the smartest people and follow them. You know I joined vmware because it was a small company, but it had brilliant people right.

A

Smart engineers, smaller product people, smarter sales, people smartest marketers, not just like technologists, but the smartest freaking people that I've ever worked with and follow them number one just follow all the smart people that led me to greylock and number two is don't be afraid to take risks in your career. You know and um yeah it's every day. You have a opportunity to you know not just do dumb risks but like if you want to make your way in a red hat or or amazon or google um or a startup. Is you gotta?

A

Take some risk because there's no risk there's no reward right both in your career as a founder as executive. You know and be intelligent about the risk you take and have some framework or or or or decision criteria. But you know if you want to get ahead. Take risks right, because if you get noticed, um you'd be successful and I was lucky enough at vmware early in my career stu to take a bunch of risk, speed, build vdi, build cloud foundry and every investment I make now greylock's a risk and some work.

A

Some don't work, but you know follow the smart people and um don't be afraid to take some risks.

B

It's great advice, I wonder jerry. One of the challenges with taking risks is at many big companies. If you fail that could be detrimental to your career. You know you work with startups. You know in the valley all the time it's you know, do I have to do the pivot. So what's the role of failure in that whole discussion.

A

Well, two things I'll make the plugs to do a startup, because the risk there's a risk-taking is tolerated. um You know, I think, for big companies it's. I understand the whole risk of your career failure because, and I think start bigger companies and smaller companies. You need to create a culture for risk-taking. You know, you know we talked a lot about amazon the whole any you know uh not ingesting the jeff business is always day one philosophy right, so one companies, big and small, should always reward risk. Taking and that's a whole separate conversation.

A

You know I have around leadership and culture um number two. Quite frankly, I wouldn't worry too much about that and it's easy to say for my seat. But if you're, smart and you're talented, you're not gonna, be unable to find a jobs dude right I mean the number of open wrecks in our portfolio is along as my arm times a thousand right. So if you're, a smart, talented person, you're gonna find an opportunity out there. If you're around smart people and they see you're talented, they will give you more and more opportunity.

A

Even if you do fail, I failed a lot of vmware there's a bunch of products that never worked. Vmware ace early product, my first product great product, really didn't work out. You know I lived um beyond that because dying green, a mentor of mine figured out like let jerry take more risks. You know, let's create vdi, let's take a risk there, so one I get the risk-taking. I get the theory of career if you're, talented and smart there's plenty of jobs, opportunity for you out there.

A

If you're, not talented, not smart or not, cable whole separate question, then that question is how do I get talent? How do I learn how to build my skills, so I'm a level of competence that I can take risks and we talk about that separately too in career building. But um you know if you're working technology and we're in this incredible boom of startups big companies, market cap, you know, etc. um I wouldn't be too afraid you know, so don't take a risk tomorrow and blame jerry, chen or stu.

A

That blames dude, not blame jerry, but um you know if you're taking smart risks and you're doing um decisions, and you have some rationale around it and how and why they think people will get it.

B

All right so jerry final thing uh right after uh thanksgiving here in the u.s uh amazon reinvent, I heard it it has sold out, which means there will be 20 000 in person uh which is about what it was in 2015, which is hard to believe how many years ago that was, I remember, going to the early amazon re invents and talking to you there, I'm looking forward to being there in person. So hopefully people come, find me I'll, be by the red hat booth, a bunch, and uh you know open for some meetings.

B

Jerry love, give you give a quick plug which of your portfolio. Companies are going to be there and what are you looking for.

A

uh I'll be there, so I just got my ticket so uh two things one plug for. I guess uh my company's rock set real time database kind of road time. Snowflake will be there. uh You know a couple. Other greylock companies would be there as well. You should go to you know greylock.com castles, to read more about my thoughts, um find me on twitter at gerry chen.

A

You know my dms are open, so if you have great startup ideas or have friends or great founders feel free to reach out to me and then my emails on the website at greylock as well jury.channelgrowlock.com. So please look me up. Follow me for more my random amusing thoughts about cloud or tech or or bourbon. If you will and then stu, I will see you at amazon revan in a couple weeks.

B

Awesome well jerry. It's always a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and yeah. Definitely looking forward to seeing you at the show all right and thank you for joining me. We will have one more episode here in uh 2021 hard to believe we're almost to 2022. So uh join me. We're gonna, take a break for for reinvent, uh so it'll be uh four weeks from today. Actually gonna have brian gracely, a good friend of mine, uh also here at red hat the strategy.

B

uh If you know him from the cloud cast so hope you will join me, then let me know what guests you'd like to see in 2022 and thank you for joining me in the clouds.

B