 Hello everyone, welcome to this CUBE conversation here in Palo Alto, California. It's theCUBE headquarters, I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media, for a special CUBE conversation with Tammy Zoo, who is the general manager of Kika Tech headquarters in San Jose, friends of theCUBE, I've known Tammy since almost 15 years, it goes on the web 2.0 era, dual degree in computer science undergraduate and a master's as well as an MBA from MIT Sloan. Great to see you. Thanks, John, for having me here. Great to see you. So we've kind of went through the web 2.0 wars ago. Thank you, we're at AOL Ventures then and a variety of other careers. You've been in the trenches, certainly in the front lines, in tech, and you've seen a lot of waves. And so where are you now? Give us an update on what you're doing now. A lot of great things happening. Yes, since we last saw each other 15 years ago, most recently I joined a company called Kika Tech and we're a headquarter in San Jose. And matter of fact, the reason the company recruited me to join the company is for two things. One is to develop our AI effort and product. And secondly is to really move the headquarters from China to San Jose because large percentage of our consumers are US based. Yeah, we love the China connection. We've been covering China recently for SiliconANGLE theCUBE. We're just in Hangzhou for Alibaba, but this really speaks to the, I won't say the Chinese invasion in the North America, that's certainly happening, but also the rest of the world is going to China. Tons of users out there, exploding with mobile usage, really setting the trends. So the globalization of the internet's happening. And the software on mobile is just getting better and better. You're doing some AI work with Kika. What's going on with AI and Kika? Because you guys have spectacular performance, 400 million downloads. What is it all about? What is the big trend that you're riding? Yeah, so the mission of Kika is to revolutionize communication with AI. So if you were to look at the purposes of human communication, right? We categorize into three categories. Number one is about sharing information. And number two is about initiating requests and having your request fulfilled. And number three is about sharing your emotion. And a lot of companies out there are addressing one of the three challenges and purposes. Whereas at Kika, we're taking on the challenges of addressing all three purposes of communication. Well congratulations on all your success as general manager and expanding out in North America here from the Chinese based company. We've got a big challenge ahead of you, but I got to ask you on a personal level, I've always seen you in a male dominated culture in the web 2.0 era as you've been very successful as a woman in tech. And what got you into technology? Because you're kind of a nerd like me, you know, getting there, you love to get in, and look at the technology, you're not afraid to get your hands dirty in the tech. How did you get into the technology business? I'm probably a nerdier than you as a starter. And so I grew up in a very academia family. My parents are both engineering professors and they encouraged me to excel in academic in a school. So I was very competitive, always wanted to be number one and always number one matter of fact, throughout the entire school academic career. And when I was 12 years old, my dad was a visiting professor here in the United States. And he told me a lot about Stanford and the Silicon Valley. And at that time I decided I was going to come to the Silicon Valley when I grew up and participate in technological innovation. I just thought that was so cool. And you did? Yes, absolutely. This is something that I'm passionate about and I'd love to do. You're certainly an inspiration. I've always enjoyed the work you've done and just the energy you bring to the table. And this is something that we need more of. I mean, you're out there. What do you say to people? You say, hey, I've been around the block a few times. And there's a lot of people trying to figure out the whole, you know, women in tech thing. There's been such negative things going on in the business. You're a positive light. What would you like to share for folks around? Just your thoughts on this whole, you know, women in tech, should they be special, the pipelining issue, all these conversations. What's your perspective? How would you take a perspective? And I'd say we take advantage of our individual strength. And a number of things I continue to emphasize to my colleagues at work, right? Number one is every day you check in and ask yourself, do I love this work? Is this something I'm passionate about? If you are, it's more likely you're going to be successful in this with some perseverance, right? And the second thing is that I emphasize is don't be afraid of experimenting and try to make mistakes. That's okay, completely okay. And try to make mistakes early and frequent. As long as you don't make the same mistakes again and learn from that. The third thing I continue to emphasize, as a matter of fact, and lead by example, is never procrastinate. We have dreams and hopes and we talk about that. That's great, but we need to execute on that now. I love your competitive spirit. Again, I think you're an inspiration. But you also, you said you liked to be number one and you were in school. And I think we, you might be a little bit nerdy, but we can talk about that after. When you're number one, you're going fast, you're moving fast and you're learning, you're not going to go without a few interactions that are unfavorable. So how do you talk to other women when you're out in the field? Because when you're hard charging like that and you're smart, you got to deal with a lot of bad actors. And it could be men, it could be harassment, it could be sexual, whatever it is. You got to break through that. If you want to be number one, you got to deal with this. And I've talked to a lot of women saying, look, I've had my fair share of interactions that were unpleasant, but I moved past it. How do you deal with it? I'm sure you have stories and could share a perspective on how you deal with unwanted advances to just bad behavior. Right. I think I'm luckier probably than some of the average population in that I've not really dealt with much of a, you know, too bad of a behavior. But certain behaviors, I'd say, look beyond, way beyond that, don't play the same game. Don't play the game at all. Don't entertain any of the bad behaviors. Believe in yourself and perseverance will get you far and apart and never give up. Awesome. And then on the inspiration side, how do you inspire other women? Because I think this, I'm seeing some really good things happening. One thing is you're seeing a lot of conversations and a lot of people coming together. And a lot of young women are looking up for leaders and looking to folks who have been through, have been that are climbing them up the close to the top or at the top. And so you have this new really cool vibe going on where the women are coming together at all ages for sharing. How do you do it? Yeah. So matter of fact, compared to 15 years ago, right? When we met when doing Web 2, oh, I think there were a lot fewer women in tech. And nowadays, you know, with new generation of technology, social media, you actually start seeing women in computer science and taking the lead, right? As a matter of fact, just taking the time and be patient. And also, I think one of the things, you know, as human being, right? We often worry about compensation, how much, you know, we're being paid now, how much we're worth and what exactly the title is, right? I'd say don't even worry about that. Focus on what you're passionate about. And it will take some time and be patient and we'll get there. Yeah, we always say, respect for the individual, but just be a good person, you know, and just don't deal with the nonsense, move past it and don't play the games. All right, I got to get in and now get back into the tech since we're going to geek out here. So AI, I think is the hottest thing in the planet right now. Obviously, IoT is super important. We cover it heavily with Wikibon SiliconANGLE theCUBE, but no one wakes up in the morning and says, I can't wait to talk about IoT with my friends. They talk about AI because AI's got a cooler vibe to it, but we're talking about software. We're talking about really cool software and a renaissance of software development. So, you know, AI is super hot. You guys are doing a lot of AI geek up. What is the coolness both for any male and female or anyone that get involved? What is the hot AI trend? Is it the machine learning? Is it the deep learning? Is it the user experience? Is it making it easier? What are some of the advances that you're excited about in AI? Right, so depending on the timing, right, in the years. So, say 15 years ago or 20 years ago, let's say 20 years ago, right, at the time, AI actually, there was a small boom, but very quickly went into a ice age, right, in cold winter. And matter of fact, during that time, I was in undergrad and my undergrad thesis was natural language processing in Chinese languages. But with that expert system at that time, the framework, it never got anywhere because it really limited because of the knowledge from experts, right? So now fast forward to two, three years ago, when Amazon Echo first launched, right, I think there were a lot of doubt in that, hey, in academia and among the people in the industry, they're thinking, well, that's pretty cynical, saying, well, this is yet another, you know, boom, I doubt that, right? But Echo really paved the way and brought artificial intelligence into the homes of consumers, right? And then two, three years ago, I think it was very cutting edge in terms of voice recognition. And you know, you hear a lot about Farfield, about noise cancellation, but nowadays the voice recognition is becoming far more mature, right? So for someone who wants to, you know, work on the most cutting edge thing, from my point of view, voice may be a little bit to the point where it's, you know, ensure that people understand the problems, right? And so this year only recently, Apple announced an emoji. So this is the starting point of computer vision in consumers' lives, right? So say if I were an engineer, I would want to get into computer vision because there's so many more things you could potentially play around with that. It's the next level UI and the interaction, I mean, I think NLP, natural language processing has always been kind of fun. I remember back when I was getting my CS degree, ontologies were big, that kind of stalled the nuclear winter hit there, or the cold winter. But now with cloud computing and mobile being so powerful, you now have so much at your disposal. And with all these libraries and open source developing, it's a dream for a developer because now you can create new experiences, not the old way, you know, browser, or, you know, just typing on a phone. You guys got a really cool app. They can download Kika technologies. You've got huge opportunities to reimagine the interface and the interactions. So I think like AI has put a picture in the mind of the user, the consumer and the developer, self-driving cars, Teslas, you know, this is a new coolness. What are some other examples of this new coolness that you could share that are happening in whether it's computer vision or Teslas or voice interaction. Where's the action on the coolness? Yeah, so I've been very limited in that. I've been so focused on work. We have something really cool coming up in 2018. Matter of fact, we're kicking up 2018 with launching a brand new product that taking our existing input method and keyboard right into the whole next level in the whole IoT. That's like you're just mentioning who cares about IoT, but. No, IoT is the fastest growing area, it's real, but just IoT is AI. We'll become an edge of the network. Now on this launch, is this going to happen at CES? Yes, we're going to launch at CES. We'll look for the news at CES. Yes, yes, it'll be very exciting, matter of fact. The digs some information out of Tammy and we have this interview's over. Find out more, we'll be at CES. Okay, final question, just in general, your thoughts on the tech cycle right now. Again, you've ridden many waves. Again, you've seen a lot of, you know the tech under the covers. What's the big movement that young people should be jumping on, the new renaissance and software development is happening? We see the cloud there. It's clear from Amazon's success that the new models here, you're seeing some successes. What is the, how would you describe this new era, this new guard of technology providers and software? Right, so from a talent point of view, right? 10, 15 years ago, if you got PhD in computer science, you could hardly find a job other than finding a professorship somewhere. But nowadays, if you were to look at Facebook, Google, right? As a PhD in computer science, then you are actually worth a lot more. Some say Google is turning into academia, but that's a whole other conversation. Yeah, but so okay, you can get a PhD neural nets are hot still, neural networks, things of that nature. PhD, there's a lot of work there, anything else? Yes, so meaning that AI will continue to develop. And now AI is the real thing compared to 15 years, 20 years ago, right? It were all very limited to academia. That's going to continue to develop and then you look at other areas, right? For example, digital advertising. And in the past four or five years, it was programmatic advertising in that how do you accurately target the audience and then maximize the CPA or CPM, right? Per audience. And the next level is about how do you build a, you know, advertising network that's effective and targeting the audience and not only maximizing the revenue, but also how do you, you know, keep the audience and continue to grow the audience. So these are- And the role of data, I want to give one final thought on the data. The role of data in all this is the center of all this. Your thoughts on the role of data and how that's going to shape because those experiences of targeting might shift around where the users are now driving the data. Yeah, matter of fact, the data is key, right? Our number one differentiation is large volume of training data. So with that data, we can train our deep learning algorithm, make our algorithm identify patterns and predict contacts and texts, right? So that's the number one thing. And number two thing, because you have the data, then there are a lot of privacy policies that you need to watch out, making sure there's no data leaking or security leak, right? That potentially create bad press and also not safe for the consumers. So we're talking about data. So data really is the competitive advantage. And if you have data geek out there, you have no problem getting a job. We're here with Tammy Sue, who's the general manager of Keekatech headquarters in San Jose, here inside the Palo Alto Cube Studios for Cube Conversation. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching.