 Live from Nice, France. It's theCUBE, covering Dotnext Conference 2017 Europe. Brought to you by Nutanix. Welcome back. I'm Stu Miniman and you're watching SiliconANGLE Media's production of theCUBE, worldwide leader in live tech coverage. Happy to welcome to the program a first-time guest, Anja Manuel, who's a co-founder and partner at Rice Hadley Gates. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. I've attended all five of the Nutanix conferences and definitely when we get a speaker at the keynote from RHG is one of the highlights. So Condoleezza Rice, everybody's like, how does Nutanix get Condi Rice to come in? Robert Gates, we've actually had the pleasure of having him on theCUBE. We had Stephen Hadley on in DC also. And a little bit different conversation than some of the kind of in the weeds technical discussion. So Anja, for our audience that's not familiar, maybe give us a little bit about your background, what led you in to be one of the founders? Absolutely. Well, I've done a bit of everything. I've been an investment banker, a lawyer doing international cases. I worked at the State Department for Condi Rice, mostly on Asia issues. And then at the very end of 2008, Condi, Steve and I founded this firm. And we feel very lucky to be working with each other and some of the great young and already, some already large, some fast growing tech companies in the valley and helping them expand around the world. And it's been a particular pleasure to work with Dirage and his team at Nutanix. When we started with them, they were a couple of hundred people and now look around, you've got 2,000 people at this conference. So we're very proud of them. Yeah, absolutely. Great growth for Nutanix, their ecosystems blossoming. One of the jokes I always have here on theCUBE is when I talk to any end user customers, it's like, well, your industry's not changing that much, right? And of course, it doesn't matter what industry you're in, digital disruption is more than just buzzwords to facting. Globalization is just a fact of life. It brings, especially for a lot of our audiences, US based, we reach a global audience, but when we come to some of these international events, it really puts a point on some of the things going on globally. What are you talking to when you speak to the CIOs and you're talking to Nutanix customers and partners, what are some of the big challenges, what are the things that they need to be looking at? Sure, globalization is happening and of course it's more pronounced in tech. This is the first industry that really shows no sectoral boundaries. The big platform companies can basically go into any industry sector and no geographic boundaries. It's very easy to expand internationally. So what I'm going to be talking about today on the main stage is just globalization and its backlash. As you know, we've seen after decades of evermore open borders, increased trade, easier immigration. In the last year or two, you've seen really the West in sort of what I would call a defensive crouch. And there are real reasons for it. In the US, where you and I both live, if you are a white male who has a high school education or less, you live on average 10 years less than all of the very highly educated people in this room. And there is a real issue of people being left behind and you can see that impact politically. You see it in the US with Trump and I would also argue on the left with Bernie Sanders. You see it with Brexit. You see it in the impact that Marine Le Pen and Alternativa for Deutschland and others have had on European politics. And I would say that impact is strong even though those right-wing parties in Europe didn't win, they're setting the agenda much more than you would have seen 10 years ago. So it's something for the tech companies to consider as they keep expanding. Yeah, it's a true, on the one hand you said that there's no boundaries for tech, but one of the things, a lot of the tech community we look at is some of those fragments that are happening. So the internet, is the internet a global internet or does China have their own internet? Will Germany just create their own internet? How much is governance and having data something when we look at Nutanix looks at a lot. Require that you have it within those borders and the boundaries between government and corporations now. There's certain countries where governments are heavily involved and certain ones where it almost feels that they're fighting. In the US it's, is the government actually helping business or stopping business? That's right. It's something that we ask a lot. So I'm curious your thoughts. Right now we still have one global interoperable internet and that has been a huge boon to economies all around the world, not just the American one. And it's this little known organization called ICANN, which was started in the 1990s, has a convoluted thing called the multi-stakeholder model where they say we're going to get people, the technologists who are working on this and NGOs and governments and everyone talking about how do we actually manage this thing and make sure that it stays interoperable and global? And I'm quite happy that that system of internet governance still stands and that it hasn't been taking over by individual governments or by the United Nations. You talked about data localization. It's a real issue. We see this with a lot of the tech companies that we work with out in California. More and more, you see the Russians doing it. You see the Chinese doing it. And I worry that if that trend really continues, you will have less interaction, for example, between Chinese and Americans, which is something we so dramatically need now that our governments seem to be more and more at odds with each other. It's more important than ever that the companies and the people are talking to each other. Yeah, actually, we interviewed the former president of ICANN, Fadi Jahadi, a couple of years ago, and he was raising red flag as to a concern about would the U.S. step back, is really put that in place and had a very strong connection there. So would the U.S. kind of abdicate from some of this or how would that be involved? So you're happy with the way ICANN's going and kind of the global discussion? I was very happy to see that the United States allowed it to be privatized, which is something that had been planned for a long time. So we're quite happy that it happened the way it did and that even the new Trump administration didn't stop that from going through. Yeah. All right, you've written a lot about India, some of the others, any, how do companies, even in the global marketplace, do they have to specialize in what they're doing, certain regionalizations that they need to do or how do they, a global company, interact in some of the kind of more emerging markets? Yeah, they do have to specialize. And I think sometimes in Silicon Valley, we're so confident in our own abilities that sometimes we think, well, if it's invented here naturally, the world will love it. That worked for Facebook, it worked for Google, it doesn't necessarily work for every technology company. And so, yes, of course, you have to tailor it to the local market. And there are some innovations coming out of China and India that are frankly really impressive and we should adopt some of them. In China, the web payments infrastructure is much more advanced than what you see in the US. Lots of people do everything through their WeChat account, they pay, they interact, they talk, it's not just texting, it's a whole ecosystem in a way that we haven't really seen as much in the US and Europe, so we can learn from them as well. So another interesting topic is, Silicon Valley prides itself on being kind of the center of innovation. What do you see globally? Are there certain areas or pockets? Can there be other Silicon Valleys for different technologies or is Silicon Valley going to be the Silicon Valley for all of these waves? Well, we're the biggest Silicon Valley and it is a very unique ecosystem. I'm lucky enough to teach at Stanford and to work with some of these tech companies. The idea that a university and a venture capital ecosystem and entrepreneurs all work together in something that isn't directed by the state. Is very, very important and you do see this spring up anywhere. You have it in Bangalore, you have it in Boston, where you're from, you have it outside of London, you're seeing a little bit in Berlin happening, you're seeing it in China in a much bigger way than I think people appreciate. I'll give you one story. I was at the Chinese World Internet Forum, sort of their vision of the world internet a year and a half ago and I get back to my hotel at midnight, ready to just go to bed and there are a thousand people in the lobby all with their phones out and I'm wondering who's coming, is it Xi Jinping, is it some rock star? In walks, Jack Ma and the CEO of Xiaomi phones and a huge shout goes up as if it's the Beatles. So if you're a young millennial Chinese person you want to be Jack Ma. So innovation fever has captured them as well. Yeah, what about companies being global versus being kind of based in a country? What advice do you give as to how they balance that kind of headquarters versus being a global company? Yeah, this is one of the ironies in all the protectionist talk you see from governments because I think the cat is out of the bag, so to speak. Every company we work with, even the very young ones, they're global from the very beginning. Even if you think your headquarters are in New York or in California, your supply chain most likely incorporates 10 different countries. Your customers are somewhere else. Maybe you don't advertise it because you try to be in all American company or all European company, but there's actually no such thing as a domestic company anymore. Yeah, I want to give you the final word, Nutanix. You give some advice, I'm sure there's things we can't talk about, but how are they doing as being a global company? You know, what are some of the things a company like Nutanix that they'll face as they expand globally? Yeah, Nutanix is very impressive. First of all, if you look at Dira's and Sudeesh and their senior management team, what I love about working with them is that they are good technically, they're great at the people-to-people skills, and they are instantly global, just like we just talked about. If you look at their management team, they're from all over the world, and they very quickly got people out into all the different regions. I think they tried to be sensitive to how their product would be used in different places around the world, so I'm quite optimistic about what they're going to be able to achieve. Okay, I do have one last question for you because I was just thinking about kind of that globalization. One of the concerns we have these days is getting enough women in tech, and with your global viewpoint, just women in the workforce is still something that we're challenged with in many parts of the globe. What's your take? Yeah, strangely, women in the workforce are doing better in China, for example, than in the US, Europe, India, other places. I love living and working in Silicon Valley. We really have a problem, and we need to do more. And it's on the STEM side, it's on the investor side. You've seen all of the news coming out about how it's so much harder for women entrepreneurs to get funded. There's no reason. There's actually a recent study done saying that women who get funded, their companies do, on average, far better than companies founded by men. So, clearly, there's some problem going on here, and I'm happy that Silicon Valley is finally paying attention. All right, well, Anya Manuel, really appreciate you joining us for this segment. I'm Stu Miniman, and we will be back with more coverage here from Nutanix.next in Nice, France. You're watching theCUBE.