(upbeat music)
>> Narrator: From theCUBE
studios in Palo Alto and Boston,
connecting with thought
leaders all around the world,
this is a Cube Conversation.
>> Hey, welcome back everybody.
Jeff Frick here, with theCUBE.
We're in our Palo Alto studios,
continuing our leadership coverage,
reaching out to the community for people
that we've got in our community,
to get their take on how they're dealing
with the COVID crisis, how
they're helping to contribute
back to the community, to
bring their resources to bear,
and just some general good tips and tricks
of getting through these challenging times
and we're really excited to
have one of my favorite guests,
who used to come on all the time.
We haven't had him on for three years,
which I can't believe.
It's Abhi Mehta, the CEO of
Tresata, founder of Tresata.
Abhi, I checked the record.
I can't believe it's been three years
since we last sat down.
Great to see you.
>> Jeff, well, first of
all, its always a pleasure.
I think the only person to
blame that is you, Jeff.
(both laughing)
>> Well, I will make sure
that it doesn't happen again.
So, and just to check in,
how's things going with the family?
The company?
>> Thank you for asking.
Family is great.
I've got two young kiddos
who have become video conferencing experts
and they, now, teach me the tricks for it,
which I'm sure is happening
in lot of families
around the world, and the team is great.
We went remote, at this point,
almost two months ago
now, and can't complain.
I think we are in an
intellectual property business,
like you are, so it's been a little easier
for us to go remote compared
to a lot of other businesses
in the world and in America.
But, no complaints.
We're very fortunate.
We are glad that we have
a business and a company
that can withstand the
economic uncertainty,
and the family's great.
I hope the same for theCUBE family.
I haven't seen Dave and John,
and it's good to see you again,
and I hope all of you guys
are happy and healthy.
>> Great, I think-
and we're good, so thank you for asking.
So, let's jump into it.
You know, one of the things
that I've always loved about you
is, really, your sense of culture.
And this constant reinforcing of culture
in your social media posts,
in the company blog posts at Tresata,
celebrating your interns,
and you really have a good pulse for that,
and I think we may have even
talked about that before,
about the CEOs and
leadership and social media.
Those that do, and those that don't,
and I think, it's probably, for many,
a risk-reward trade-off.
I could say something stupid
versus what am I getting out of it,
but really, it's super
important, and in these times,
with a distributed workforce,
that the importance and value
of communicating and culture
and touching your people frequently,
across a lot of different
mediums and topic areas,
is more important than ever before.
Share with us your strategy.
Why did you figure this out early?
How have you adjusted your method
of keeping your team up and communicating.
>> Absolutely.
I guess I owe you guys a
little bit of gratitude for it,
which is, we launched our company,
and I'm sure you remember on theCUBE,
it was a social media
launch, if you say like that.
I think there are two or three things
that are very important, Jeff,
and you hit on all of them.
One is the emphasis on
information sharing.
It becomes more important
in times like these
and we, as a society,
value the ability to share
a positive conversation,
a positive perspective, and
a positive outlook more,
but since Day Zero, at Tresata,
we've had this philosophy
that there are no secrets.
It is important to be
open and transparent,
both inside and outside the company,
and that our legacy is going to be defined
by what we do for the community,
and not just what we do
for our shareholders.
And, by its very nature,
the fact that I grew up
in a different continent,
now live and call America,
now, a different continent, my home.
I guess it's very important me
to stay connected to my roots.
It is a good memory, or reminder,
that the world is very
interconnected, and fortunately,
the pandemic is the best
or worst example of it,
in a really weird way.
But, I think it's also a
very important point, Jeff,
that I believe we learned early.
And I hope coming out from this
is something that we don't lose.
The point you made about kindness.
Social media and social
networking has a massively,
in my opinion, massively
positive binding force
for the world.
At the same time, there
were certain business models
that tried to capitalize on
the negative aspects of it,
whether they are the commercialized
versions of slam books
or not so nice business models
that capitalize on the ability
for people to complain.
I hope that people, society and
us humans, coming out of it,
learn from people like yourself,
or the small voice that
I have on social media
or the messages we share.
And we are kinder in what we do online,
because the ability to have
networks that are viral
and can propagate, or self-propagate,
is a very positive unifying force.
And I hope, out of this pandemic,
we all realize the positive natures of it
more than the negative natures of it.
Because, unfortunately, as you know,
there are business models
built on the negative
forces of social media,
and I really, really hope
that, coming out of this,
our positive voices drown
out the negative voices.
>> That's a great point and it's a great-
I want to highlight a quote
from one of your blogs.
Again, I think you're just
a phenomenal communicator.
In relation to what's going
on with COVID, and I quote,
"We are fighting fear, pain, and anxiety
"as much as we are fighting the virus.
"This is our humble attempt to-"
We'll get into what you guys did.
"to help the thousands
of first responders,
"clerks, rock stars."
But I just really want to
stick with that kindness theme.
You know, I used to-
or I still joke, that the
greatest smile in technology today
is Arijit from SignalFX.
The guys are going to
throw up a picture of him.
He's a great guy, it looks like
everybody's favorite uncle.
(Abhi laughs)
I love that guy.
But, before SignalFX,
and actually, it's funny,
SignalFX also launched on
theCUBE, that Big Data,
a Big Data show.
I used to say the greatest
smile in tech is Abhi Mehta.
(Abhi laughs)
I mean, how can you go wrong?
And when I reached out to
you, I consciously thought,
"What more important time do we have
"than to see people like
you, with a big smile,
"with a great positive attitude,
focusing on the positives."
And, I just think it's so important.
And it segues nicely into
what we used to talk about
at the Strata shows and the
Big Data shows, all the time.
Everyone wants to talk
about Hadoop and Big Data,
you always stress,
"It's never about the technology,
"it's about the application
of the technology."
And you focused your company on that.
Very laser focused from day one.
Now, it's so great to see,
as we think, the bad news about COVID-
A lot of bad news.
But one of the good news is
that there's never been
as much technology,
compute horsepower, Big Data, analytics,
smart people like yourself
to bring a whole different
set of tools to the battle
than just building Liberty Ships
or building playing planes or tanks.
So, you guys have a very
aggressive thing that you're doing.
Tell us a little bit about
is the COVID active
transmission COAT, if you will.
Tell us about what that is,
how did it come to be,
and what are you hoping to accomplish?
>> Of course, so first
of all, you're too kind.
Thank you so much.
I think you also were
one of the first people
to give me a hard time
about my new Twitter picture
I put on.
(Jeff laughs)
And you said,
"What are you doing Abhi?
"You know, you have a good smile.
"Come on, give me the smile back."
So, thank you.
You're very kind, Jeff.
I think, as you know and I know,
I think we have a lot to
be thankful for in life
and there's no reason
why we should not smile,
no matter what the circumstance.
We have so much to be thankful for.
And also, I am remiss,
Happy Earth Day.
I'm rocking my green for Earth Day,
as well as Ramadan Kareem.
Today is the first day of Ramadan.
And I wish everybody in
the world, Ramadan Kareem.
And on that trend, on that trend of
how do we, as a community,
come together when faced with crisis.
So COAT was a very simple thing,
Thank you for recognizing
the hard work of the team
that led it.
It was an idea, I came
up with it in the shower.
I'm like, there are two kinds of people,
or we as humans have a choice.
When history is being made,
which I do believe history
is being made, right?
Whether you look at it economically,
and a economic shock that we have not felt
as humanity since the depression.
Or you look at it socially, and again,
something we haven't seen
since the Spanish flu.
History is being made in these times.
And I think we as humans have a choice.
We can either be witnesses to it
or play our part in helping shape it.
And COAT was our humble, tiny attempt to,
when we look back, say when
history was being made,
we chose to not just sit on the sideline,
but be a part of trying to
be part of the solution.
So, all we did with COAT
was take a small idea I had,
Dean gets the entire credit
for it, they ran with it.
And the idea was,
there was a lot of data being
open-sourced around COVID,
and a lot of work being done
around reporting what is happening,
but nothing was being
done around reporting,
or thinking through
using the data to predict
what could happen with it.
And that was COAT.
With COAT, we tried to
make the first COAT 1.0,
that came out almost two weeks ago now,
when you first contacted us,
was predicting the spread.
And the idea around the
spread wasn't just saying,
"Here is the number of cases.
"Here are the number of deaths.
"And know what to be wary of."
We were to provide, like
how firefighters do,
can we predict where it may go to the next
at a county-by-county level?
So we could create a
little bit of a firewall
to help it from stop-
help the spread effect to be slower.
In no ways are we claiming
that if you did COAT you can stop it,
but if it could create
firewalls around it,
and distribute tests
not just in areas and cities and counties
where it is spiking, but look
at the areas and counties
where it's about to go to.
So, we used an in-house network algorithm,
we call that Orion,
and we were able to start predicting
where the virus is going to go to.
We also, then, quickly realized
that this could be an interesting-
an extra arrow in the quiver in our fight.
We should also think about
where are there Green Shoots
around where can recovery be held.
So, before the president
came out and announced-
It was serendipitous.
Before the president came and said,
"I want to start finding
"the Green Shoots to open the country."
We, then, did COAT 2.0,
which now, is a week ago.
With the Green Shoots around
a Tresata recovery index.
And the recovery index is looking at-
it's kind of like a meta algorithm,
looking at the rates of
change of the rate of change.
So, if you're seeing the
change of the rates of change,
the meta part, are declining,
we're saying there are
early Shoots that we,
as we plan to reopen our
economy and our country,
these are the counties to look out first.
That was the second attempt with COAT.
A the third attempt we have done is,
we're calling it the "Are
We There Yet?" index.
It got announced yesterday, and now,
you're the first public
announcement of it.
And the "Are We There Yet?" Index
is using the government's definition
of the Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3,
and we are making a prediction on
which are the counties which
are ready to be opened up.
And there's good news
everywhere in the country,
but we are predicting there
are 73 different counties
that, as per the government's
definition of Ready To Open,
are ready to open.
That's all, you know.
We were able to launch
the app in five days.
It is free for all first responders.
All hospital chains, all
not-for-profit organizations
trying to help the country
through this pandemic
and for-profit operations,
who want to use the
data to get deaths out,
to get antibodies out, and to
get the clinical trials out.
So, we have made a commitment
that we will not charge for COAT
for any of those organizations
to help the country open.
Our very, very small attempt
to add another dimension to the fight.
It's data.
It's analytics.
I'm not a first responder.
This makes me sleep well at
night, that I'm, at least-
we're trying to help,
you know?
>> Right.
The first responders,
the true heroes, right?
The true heroes!
This is our humble attempt to help them,
and recognize that their
effort should not go to waste.
>> Abhi, that's great
because there is data,
and there is analytics,
and there is algorithms,
and the things that we
develop to help people
pick their better next purchase at Amazon
or what are they going
to watch next on Netflix,
and it's such a great application.
It's funny, I just finished a
book called "The Ghost Map",
and it is the story of the
cholera epidemic in London
in 1850-something-or-other, 1854.
But what's really interesting
at that point in time,
is they didn't know about
waterborne diseases.
They thought everything
kind of went through the air
and it was really a couple of individuals
in using data in a new
way, and more importantly,
mapping different types
of data sets on top of it.
And now, it's this map
where they, basically,
figured out where the pump was
that was polluting everybody,
but it was a great story
and changing the narrative
by using data in a new
novel and creative way
to get to an answer that they couldn't.
And there's so much data out there,
but then, they're so short of data.
I'm just curious, from a
data science point of view,
there aren't enough tests
for antibodies, who's got it.
There aren't enough tests
for just, are you sick.
And then, we're slowly getting
the data on the deaths,
which is changing all the time.
Recently announced that
the first Bay Area deaths
were actually a month before
they thought they were.
So, as you look at what
you're trying to accomplish,
what are some of the
great datasets out there?
And how are you working around
some of the lack of data
in things like test results?
How are you organizing,
pulling that together?
What would you like to see more of?
>> See, that's why I like talking to you.
As I miss to you, all
these good questions of me.
Excellent point.
I think there are three things
I would like to highlight.
Number one: It doesn't take
your point that you made,
with the plethora of technical advances.
And this S-curve shift that we first spoke
at theCUBE almost 11 years
ago to the date, now,
or 10 years ago.
Jeff, the idea of
population level modeling,
that cluster computing
is finally democratized,
so everybody can run complicated tasks
at a unique segment or one.
And this is the beauty
of what we should be
doing in the pandemic.
I'm quite surprised, actually,
that, given the fact that
we've had this S-curve shift,
what the world calls a
combination of cloud computing.
So on-demand, I/O, and technical resources
for processing data.
And then, the on-demand ability
to store and run algorithms
at massive scale.
We haven't really combined
our forces to predict more.
To the point you made
about the waterborne
pandemic in the 1800s.
We have an ability, as humanity right now,
to actually see history play out,
rather than write a book
about it as a past tense.
And the three things
that are important to do are as follows.
Number one.
Luckily for you and I,
the cost of computing,
and algorithm to predict, is manageable.
So I am surprised why
the large cloud players
haven't come out and said,
"You know what?
"Anybody who wants to distribute anything
"around predictions related the pandemic
"should get cloud resources for free."
We're running COAT on all
three cloud platforms,
and I'm paying for it right?
That doesn't really make sense.
But I'm surprised
that they haven't really
joined the debate,
or contributed to it and in a way to say,
"Let's make compute free
"for anybody who would
like to add a new dimension
"to our fight against the pandemic."
Number one.
But the good news is, it's available.
Number two, there is, luckily for us,
that open-data movement that was started
under the Obama administration
and hasn't stopped,
because you can't stop open movements,
allows people, companies like ours
to go leverage whether it's
John Hancock, Carnegie Mellon,
or the new data coming out
of California universities.
A lot of those people
are opening up the data.
Not every single piece is at
the level we would like to see.
It's not Zip+4, it's mostly county level,
but it's available.
The third innovation is
what we have done with COAT,
but it's not an innovation
for the world, right?
Which is the Give-Get model.
So we have said,
we will curate everything
that's available online
at no cost for anybody
who wants to use it.
(words garbled) and computations.
We want to enrich it.
Every organization who gives COAT data
will get more out of it.
So we have enabled a data exchange,
(words garbled) and open
up the data exchange
that my clients use,
but, we've opened up our data exchange,
part of our software platform,
And we have open-source
for this particular case,
a Give-Get model, that
the more you give to it,
the more you get out of it.
And our first installations,
this was the first week that
we have users of the platform.
The state of Nevada is using it.
Our state, North Carolina,
is using it already,
and we're starting to see the first asks
for the Give-Get model to be used.
But that's the three ways
we're trying to address the problem.
>> That's great.
And so important, again, when
this whole thing started,
you couldn't help but think
of the Ford plant making airplanes
and Kaiser making Liberty
ships in World War II,
but now, this is a different battle,
but we have different tools
and, to your point, luckily,
we have a lot of the things in place.
And we have mobile phones
and we can do Zoom,
and we can we can talk
as we're talking now.
So, I want to shift gears a little bit
and just talk about
digital transformation.
We've been talking about
this for ad nauseum,
and then suddenly, there's
this light switch moment for,
people got to go home and work,
and people got to
communicate via online tools
and kind of this talk and slow movement
of getting people to work
from home kind of a little bit
and digital transformation a little bit
and data driven decision
making a little bit,
but now, it's a light switch moment.
And you guys are involved in
some really critical industries
like health care, like financial services.
When you look at this, not from
a business opportunity pure,
but really, more of an
opportunity for people
to get over the hump and stop.
You can't push back anymore,
you have to jump in.
What are you kind of
seeing in the marketplace?
How're some of your
customers dealing with this,
good, bad and ugly?
>> There are two hours-
I will start my response to you
with using two of my favorite
sayings that come to mind
as we started the pandemic.
One is, someone very smart said,
and I don't know who it's
been attributed to, but,
"A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."
So, I do believe this move
to restoring the world,
back to a natural state
where there's not much
fossil fuels being burned
and humans are not careful
about their footprint.
But even if it's forced, is
letting us enjoy the Earth
and its glory, which is interesting.
And I hope we don't waste
the opportunity, number one.
Number two, Warren Buffett
came out and said that
"It's only when the tide goes out,
you realize who's swimming naked."
And this is a combination of
both those phenomenal phrases.
Which is one, this is the moment.
I do believe this is
something that is deeper,
both in the ability for us to realize
the virtuosity of humanity, as a society,
as a social species, as
well as a reality check
on what a business model looks like.
Vis a vis, a presentation
that you can put some fancy words on,
in what has been an 11-year boom-cycle
and blitzscale your way to disaster.
I have said publicly, that
this, the peak of the cycle,
was when Mr. Hoffman,
Mr. Reid Hoffman wrote
the book "Blitzscaling".
So we should give him a lot of credit,
for calling the peak in the cycle.
So what we're seeing
is a kind of coming-together
of those two big trends.
Crises is going to force industry,
as you've heard me say for many years now.
To not just modernize.
What we've seen happen, Jeff,
in the last few years or decades,
is modernization, not transformation.
And they're different, right?
It's the big difference, as you know.
Transformation is taking a
business model, pulling it apart,
understanding the economics that drive it,
and then, not even reassembling it;
recreating how you can
either recapture that value
or recreate that value,
completely differently.
Or, by the way, blow up the
value, create even more value.
That hasn't happened yet.
Digital transformation,
data analytics, AI, cloud,
have been modernizing trends
for the last 10 years,
not transformative trends.
In fact, I've also gone
and said publicly that
today, the very definition
of technology transformation
is run a sequel engine in the cloud,
and you get a big check off
as a technology organization, saying,
"I'm good.
"I've transformed how I
look at data analytics.
"I'm doing what I was
doing on-prem in the cloud.
"It's still Sequel in the cloud."
There's a very successful company
that has made a business model out of it.
We don't need to talk
about the company today,
but I think this becomes that moment
where those business models
truly, truly get a chance
to transform, number one.
Number two, I think there's going to be-
So that's on the industrial side.
On the new company side,
I think that the era of
anointing winners by saying,
"Grow at all costs,
economics don't matter."
is fundamentally over.
I believe that the peak of that
was the book called "Blitzscaling".
The markets always follow
the peaks, a little later,
but you and I, in our lifetimes,
will see the return to fundamentals.
Fundamentals, as you know,
never go out of fashion, Jeff,
whether it's good conversations,
whether it's human values,
or it's economic models.
If you do not have a path
to being a profitable,
contributing member of society,
whether that is running a good
balance sheet, individually,
and not driven by debt,
or running a good balance
sheet as a company.
We call it financial jurisprudence.
Financial jurisprudence
never goes out of fashion.
And the fact that even men
became the mythical animal,
which is not the point,
that we became a unicorn,
we were a profitable
company, three years ago.
And two years ago.
And four years ago.
And today.
And will end this year
as a profitable company.
I think it's a very, very nice moment
for the world to realize that,
within the realm of
digital transformation,
even the new companies
that can leverage and
push that trend forward
can build profitable
business models from it.
And, if you don't, it doesn't matter
if you have a billion users.
As my economics professor told me,
"Selling a watermelon that
you buy for $1, for 50 cents,
"even if you sell that a billion times,
"you cannot make it up in volume."
I think those are two things
that will fundamentally change the trend
from modernization to transformation.
It is coming.
And this will be the moment
that we will look back,
and then you write a book
about it, that people will say,
"You know what?
"Now, Jeff called it."
And the pandemic is what drove
the economic jurisprudence
as much as the social jurisprudence.
>> Abhi, you touched on
so many things, there.
We're going to go Joe Rogan.
We're going to be here for four hours,
so hopefully you're in
a comfortable chair.
But-
>> (laughing)
Stand-up desks.
I don't sit anymore, I love
standing up, let me tell you.
>> Do you do the stand-up desk?
>> I do the stand-up desk.
My version of your watermelon story was,
I worked at a couple of high
growth, spend a lot of money,
raise a lot of money
startups back in the day,
and I just always-
Finally, we were working
so hard, I'm like,
"Well, why don't we
just go up to the street
"and sell dollars for 90 cents
"with a card table and a comfy
chair and maybe some ice tea,
"and we'll drive revenue like
there's nobody's business,
"and lose less money
than we're losing now,
"not have to work so hard."
I mean,
(Abhi laughs)
It's so interesting.
As you said,
everyone's kind of of this
pump-the-brakes moment, as well.
Growth at the cost of
everything else, right?
There used to be a great concept
called triple-line accounting,
which is not just shareholder value
to the sacrifice of everything else,
but also, your customers,
and your employees,
and your community, and
being a good steward.
And a good participant in what's going on,
and a lot of that got lost.
Another, to your point
about pumping the brakes,
in the environment.
It's been kind of
entertaining on the oil side,
watching an unprecedented supply shock,
followed literally within days,
by an unprecedented demand shock.
But the fact now that when
everyone's not driving to work
at nine in the morning,
we actually have a lot more
infrastructure than we thought.
And it kind of goes back
to the old Ma Bell
capacity planning issue,
that why are all these technology workers
driving to work every
morning at nine o'clock.
I mean, it's one thing if
you're a service provider
or you got to go work at a restaurant
or you're carrying a truck full of tools,
but for people that just
go sit on a laptop all day,
makes absolutely no sense
and I love your point
that people are now seeing
things a little bit slow down.
That you can hear birds chirp,
you're not just stuck in traffic.
And to your point on the
digital transformation,
the difference between
revolution and evolution,
in revolution, people get killed.
And the fact that digital
is not the same as physical,
but it's different.
Had Ben Nelson on,
talking about the changes in education.
He had the great quote,
I've been using it for weeks now,
that "A car is not a mechanical horse."
It's really an opportunity
to rethink the objective
and design a new solution.
So, it is a really historical
moment, I think it is.
It's really interesting
that we're all going through
it together, as well.
It's not like the earthquake in '89,
or I was in Mount St. Helens
when that blew up in 1980,
where you had a population
that was involved in the event.
Now, it's a global thing.
Where were you in March 2020?
And we've all gone through
this together, so hopefully,
it is a little bit of a
more of a unifying factor.
And the final thought,
since we're referencing great
books and authors and quotes,
is you've all know Harari and Sapiens
talked about What is culture?
Cultures is, basically,
it's a narrative that
we all have bought into.
I find it so ironic that in the year 2020,
that we always joke is "20/20 hindsight".
We quickly found out that,
everything we thought
was, suddenly wasn't.
And the fact that the
global narrative changed,
literally within days.
Really a lot spearheaded right
here in Santa Clara County,
with the Dr. Sara Cody
shutting down groups
of more than 150 people,
which is about four days
before they went to the full shutdown.
It is a really interesting
time, but as you said,
if you're fortunate enough, as we are,
to have a few bucks in the bank
and have a business that can be digital,
which you can't if you're
in the sports business
or the travel business,
the hotel business,
the restaurant business,
a lot of not good stuff happening there.
But, for those of us that
can, it is an opportunity
to do this nice, kind of a reset,
and use the powers that we've developed
for recommendation engines for
really a much more powerful-
>> For good.
>> For good.
And you're doing a lot more
stuff, too, with banking,
and in healthcare.
Telemedicine's one of my favorite things.
We've been talking about telemedicine
and electronic medicine for now.
Well guess what, now you
have to 'cause the hospitals
are overflowing.
>> Now, Jeff, to your point,
three stories and I will let
you go and you can let me go.
I can talk to you for four hours.
I can talk for days, my friend.
The three stories
that have been very relevant
to me, through this crisis.
One is, first-
I guess, in a way, all are personal.
But, the first one that I
always like to remind people on,
there were business models
built around allowing
people to complain online.
And then, using that
as almost like a stick
to find a way to commercialize it.
And I look at, that, all of our friends-
And I'm sure you have friends.
I have lots of friends in
the restaurant industry.
And how much they are struggling, right?
They are always working.
The hardest thing to do in
life, as I've been told,
and I've witnessed through my friends,
is to run a restaurant.
The hours, the effort you put into it,
making sure that what you produce
is not just edible, but is good quality,
is enjoyed by people, is
sanitary, is a hard thing to do.
And yet, there were all of these people,
who would not find in their
hearts or in their minds,
for two seconds,
to go post a review if
something wasn't right.
And be brutal in those reviews.
And, if the same people
were to look back now,
and think about,
had they sought those same swords,
done anything to be supportive
for our restaurant workers.
You know, it's easy to
go and slam them online,
but this is our chance to
let a part of the industry,
that we all depend on.
Food, right?
Critical to humanity's success.
What has been done to support them?
As easy as it was for us
to complain about them.
What have you done to support them?
And I truly hope and I believe
that, coming out of it,
those business models don't work anymore.
And before we are ready to go on
and online on our phones
and complain about,
"Well, it took time for the
bread to come to my table."
We think twice how hard are they working.
Number one.
That's my first story.
And I really hope we do
something about that.
My second story is
to your heavy chain to
(words clipped off).
My kids, I'm sure as your kids,
get up every morning, get dressed,
and launch their online
version of a classroom.
Do you think, when they
enter the workforce,
or when they go to college,
you and me are going to
try and convince them
to get in a oil-burning combustion engine?
That, by the way, can have-
Can crash, can break down,
can impact your health,
impact the environment.
And show up to work, and they'll say,
"What are you talking about?
"I can be effective.
"I can learn virtually.
"Why can't I contribute virtually."
So, I think there'll be a generation
of the next class of
contributors to society,
who are now raised to
live in an environment
where the choice of making
sure we preserve the planet,
and yet, contribute
towards the growth of it,
is no longer a binary choice.
Both can be done.
So, I completely agree with you.
We have fundamentally
changed how our kids,
when they grow up,
will go to work and contribute, right?
My third story is the thing you said about
how many industries are suffering.
We have clients-
We have healthcare customers,
we have banking customers.
We have-
Who are paying the bills, like we are,
while doing everything that
they can to do right by society,
And then, we have customers
in the industry of travel hospitality.
And one of most humbling moments, Jeff,
was one of the Noctis Event
executives sent us an email,
early in this crisis, and said,
"This is a moment where a strong David
"can help a weak Goliath."
And just reading that email
had me very emotional,
because there're not very many moments
that we get as
corporations, as businesses,
where we can be there for customers.
When they ask us to be there for them.
And if we, as companies,
can help our customers,
our clients who, at the end of the day,
are flying people, are feeding people,
are taking care of their
health and their wealth,
if we, in this moment,
can be there for them,
we don't forget those moments.
Humans have long-term memories, right?
That was one of the kindest,
gentlest reminders to me,
that, what was more important
to me, my co-founder Richard,
my leadership team, every
single person at Tresata,
that have tried very
hard to build automation,
because as an automation company,
to automate complex human process,
so we can make humans do
higher-order activities.
In the moment when our
customers asked us to contribute
and be there for them, I said yes.
They said yes.
You said yes.
And, I hope people don't forget that.
That unicorns aren't important,
they are mythical animals.
There's nothing mythical about profits.
There's nothing mythical
about fortress balance sheet.
And there's nothing mythical
about a strong business model
that is built for sustainable growth,
not growth at all costs.
And those are my three stories
that bring me a lot of calm
in this tremendous moment of strife.
>> And the piece that wraps up all those,
is ultimately, it's about
relationships, right?
People don't do business-
I mean, companies don't do
business with companies.
People do business with people.
And it's those relationships
and strong relationships
through the bad times,
which really set us up
for when things start to come back.
Abhi, as always, I'm not
going to let it be three years
till the next time you hear
me pounding on your door.
Great to catch up.
Love to watch, really,
your culture-building and
your community engagement.
Good luck.
I mean, great success on
the company, but really,
that's one thing I think you
really do a phenomenal job,
of just keeping this positive drumbeat.
You always have, you always will.
And really appreciate you
taking some time on a Friday
to sit down with us.
>> First of all, thank you.
I wish that I could tell
you I'd dressed up for you,
but we celebrate formal
Fridays at Tresata.
And that's what this is.
Also, I want to end on
a positive bit of news.
I was going to give you a demo outfit,
but if you want to go to our website
and look at what everything we're doing.
We have a survival kit around-
a data survival kit around COVID.
I don't like using buzzwords, AI,
let's not use that buzzword right now,
but in your lovely state,
one of my favorite places on the planet,
when we ran the algorithm on who is ready,
as per the government
definition of opening up,
we have five counties that
are ready to be opened.
Between Santa Clara to
Tulare, Sacramento, Kern,
and San Francisco, the metrics today,
the data today, with our algorithm now-
our meta algorithm-
is saying that those five
counties, those five regions,
look like have done a lot
of positive activities.
If the country was to open,
under all the right
circumstances, those five look-
The first, as we will recommend-
Ramadan Kareem, Happy Earth Day.
A pleasure to see you.
So good to know your family's doing well.
And I hope we talk to each other soon.
>> Thanks, Abhi.
Great conversation with
Abhi Mehta, terrific guy.
Thanks for watchin', everybody stay safe.
Have a good weekend. Jeff Frick
checkin' out from theCUBE.
(upbeat music)
