 From Sand Hill Road in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE, presenting the People First Network, insights from entrepreneurs and tech leaders. Hello everyone, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. We are here in Sand Hill Road up at Mayfield Venture Capital firm for their 50th anniversary, their People First Network series, produced with theCUBE in Mayfield. I'm John Furrier with Bill Schleil, the Chief Information Officer of the San Francisco Giants Cube Alumni. Great to see you, thanks for joining me today for this People First series we're doing with Mayfield. It's 50th anniversary, thanks for coming in. Good to be here, John. So, it's been a while since we've had, it's been a year, a lot's happening in tech. I mean, you can't go a year. It's like seven dog years in tech, a lot happening, a year managing as the CIO for the Giants. You know, a lot of things going on in baseball. What's the priorities for you these days? Obviously, you guys, great social, great fan experience. What's new for you? What's the priority? Man, it's, there's always something new. That's what I love about it. I mean, I've been here, 20th season with the Giants coming up and it never gets old. There's always new challenges on the field, in the seats, off the field, you name it. As we look toward next year, really excited about bringing in a new video board, which we haven't publicly announced. Maybe I just did publicly announce. We're breaking news on theCUBE today. So, we're putting in a new video board. It'll be over three times the size of the one we have today. That's big news. We're doing a lot of exciting things in the ticketing world. The ticketing world is really transforming right before our eyes in terms of the way fans buy tickets. It's changed a lot. Once upon a time, you could call a game a sellout. And we sold out 530 straight games at AT&T Park. But really, there's no such thing as a sellout anymore. I mean, at any point, you can get a great ticket. So, we have to adapt to that and change the product that we're delivering to fans. So, making some changes on the ticketing front, the fan experience, the ballpark with the video board. And another thing that's changing a lot is the way fans consume our game when they're not at the ballpark. It's rare that you're gonna see somebody sit on a couch for three plus hours and watch a game continuously anymore. Fans are consuming through mobile devices, streaming, catching clips here. And they're all different methods and it's fun to be a part of that. And because fans still love the game, but they're just consuming it in different ways. You know, I love having chats with you on theCUBE because one of the things I've been doing the thing from nine years to on theCUBE is the buzzword of consumerization of IT has been out there, overused. But you're living it. You have a consumer product, the ultimate consumer product in Major League Baseball and the Giants great franchise in a great city, in a great stadium with a rapid fan base. So, and they know tech. So you have all the elements of tech, but the expectations of consumers and the experiences are changing all the time. You know, you got to deliver on the expectations and introduce new experiences that become expectations. And this is the flywheel of innovation. And it's really hard, but I really respect what you guys are doing over there. And that's why I'm always curious. But always the question comes back to is, can I get faster Wi-Fi at the stadium? It's always the number one question. It's funny that you asked that because it is AT&T Park, you know. So honestly, we got to check that box and we've had two for years all the way back to when we first rolled it out way back in 2004, when we first rolled out Wi-Fi at the park. People weren't asking for it then. People were coming to the ballpark with a laptop and plugging a card into it and there were about a hundred of them that were accessing it. But today, you know, what's interesting is who knows what's next, but people were not talking about Wi-Fi as much. Wi-Fi is just kind of expected. You got to have it like water. You know, you're talking about 5G networks and new ways to connect. Honestly, this past season, our Wi-Fi usage in terms of the number of fans that used Wi-Fi, what we call the take rate, the percentage of fans was actually down 30% from the previous year. Not because we had less fans in the stadium because this is the take rate, the percentage of fans in the stadium went down because AT&T made some massive investments in their cellular infrastructure at the ballpark. And if you're just connecting and you've got great bandwidth, you don't feel the need to switch over to Wi-Fi. So who knows what the future will hold. And that's a great point and you see the LTE networks have so much more power. It used to be you needed Wi-Fi to upload your photos, so you'd go in, log in, and if they auto log in, that's cool, but people don't need to. Not for photos, they need it. What they need it now for is when we see it really maxing out as events like our Eagles concert or our Journey concert or a really big game like Opening Day or honestly, Warriors Playoffs games, 49ers football games, that's when folks are streaming the video. For streaming the video, they're still going to that Wi-Fi. Yeah, that's the proven method. Plus they don't want to jack up their charges probably on the AT&T side, but that won't go there. Mostly unlimited. Mostly unlimited these days. Really, I got to find that plan. My daughter's killing me with her watching Netflix on LTE, I tell her. Innovation is changing, okay? I want to get your thoughts on this because I know you're on the front of a lot of innovation, you do a lot of advising, you hear it may feel. The VC's are always trying to read the tea leaves. You're living it. What's the innovation formula look like now for you guys? As you sit in your staff meetings, as you look at the team of people around you, you guys want to foster, you do foster an innovation culture. What's the formula? What do you guys do when you have those meetings, when everyone's kind of sitting around the table saying what do we do next? How do we create a better experience? How can we get better fans and better product in their hands as fast as possible? What's your strategy? You know, it's funny, people talk about the secret sauce for innovation. What's the formula? I would say for us, it's really a symbiotic relationship with a lot of different things. First of all, where we are geographically, we've got folks like Mayfield down the street and many others that we can talk to that are when innovation is happening, when the startups are incubating, they're being funded by these guys. A lot of times they are here and our phones are ringing off the hook with a lot of folks. So my formula for innovation is answer the phone and take the meetings. But to be honest, that creates its own problem because there's so many great ideas out there. If you try to do all of them, you know, you're going to fail at all of them. You got to pick a very small few to try to experiment with, give it a shot. We just don't have the bandwidth. We only have, you know, 250 full-time staff on the business side. So you have to, for us geographically, you have to really be laser focused and say, okay, there are so many great ideas out here. Which are the three or four that we're going to focus on this year and really give it a try? It's really going to drive, propel our business forward, enhance our product on the field, whatever it might be. But I'll tell you where it really, truly starts. It's from the top with our CEO. And I've had a few different bosses over the years. But with the Giants, our CEO is singularly focused on all of us doing things folks have never done before, regardless of what business unit you're in, whether you're in ticketing, finance, marketing, sales. What drives him and drives all of us is innovation. And his eyes glaze over when I talk to him about cost cutting and his guys can glaze over really fast. But when I talk to him about doing something no one's ever done before, that's when he sits forward in his chair, he gets engaged. And I just have a great boss, Larry Berry. He's been with us for 25 years with the Giants. And he is the driver for it. He creates the culture from the top where all of us, we want to impress him. And to impress him, you got to do something nobody's ever done before. And what's even more interesting is, there are some challenges and some changes taking place across our industry, as I said before, in ticketing and other areas. And I've sat in meetings with him where somebody might raise their hand and say, well, but this is happening across the industry. So it's just a macro trend. And he'll get upset. Like, I don't care about macro trends. We are here in the Bay Area with the San Francisco Giants. We're going to do it our way. And so when you do it your way, this is, he promotes risk taking. So that's a great culture. What are some of the things that you have tried that were risky and are risky or maybe an experiment that went well and maybe ones that didn't go well? Can you share some color commentary around that? Sure. Over 20 years, we've had some of all of those. I would say I've had some real scary moments where, and there's a lot of, our culture is collaborative, but I wouldn't call it combative, but we all have strong opinions. A lot of us have been there a long time and we have strong opinions. And so we'll battle internally a lot. But then once the battle is over, we'll all align behind the victory. And so, you know, thinking back, one of the most stressful times for me at the ballpark was related to wifi. When we decided to take our antennas and put them under people's seats. No one had ever done that before. And there were two major concerns with that. One is, honestly, are people going to get cancer from these antennas under their seats? It's never been done before. What's going to happen? And whether it's going to happen or not, what's the perception of our fans going to be? Because these are, you know, the bread and butters, the golden goose here, all the fans. So yeah, it's great that they're going to be, you know, have faster connection here at AT&T Park, but if they think they're going to get cancer, they're going to cancel their season ticket plans. We got a problem. Number two is we're taking away a little bit of storage space, also underneath the seats. So it was very controversial internally. We did all of our research. We proved that having a wifi antenna under your seat is the equivalent to having a cell phone in your pocket. Most people do that, so we're pretty safe there. And from the storage space perspective, honestly, it actually elevates your stuff. If somebody spills a Coke behind you, it'll fall all around your purse, which is sitting on top of that wifi antenna. So we came up with a good solution. But that was an example of something that was really controversial. Spill beer goes on the antenna, not your bag. Exactly, your bag stays dry. We found a way to spin that. But there have been so many. I mean, I can go way back in time, back to the days when it was the palm pilot that ruled the day instead of the act. Well, you guys also did a good job on social media. I gotta give you guys props, because you're one of the first early adopters on making the fan experience very interactive. Absolutely. That was, at that time, not viewed as standard. Yeah, built the act cafe at our ballpark, which is so they're really to try to bring social media to the fans. I think you're the first ballpark to have a kale garden, too, I think. That's a little off topic, but yes. Driven by one of our players who's a big kale fan. Yeah, the garden out in center field. Sustainability is certainly important. Okay, I gotta ask the question around your role in the industry, because one of the things that's happening more and more in Major League Baseball, and certainly as it crosses over to tech here at Mayfield Venture Capital, there's a lot of collaboration going on. And it's a very people-centric culture where it used to be people would meet at conferences, or you do conference calls. Now, people are in touch in real time. So these networks are forming. It takes a village to create innovative products, whether you're inside the Giants or outside in the ecosystem. How have you personally navigated that? And can you share some experiences to the folks watching how you became successful working in an environment where it's collaborative inside the walls of San Francisco Giants, but also outside? 100%, the topic is near and dear to my heart. And from when I started with the Giants, that's what I love about our industry. We compete on the field and only on the field. When you look at who the Giants' competitors are from a business perspective, honestly, the Dodgers are not a competitor from a business perspective. The A's are barely a competitor from a business perspective. We got a lot of different competitors and very few of them are in our actual industry. So we collaborate all day. And it's been amazing. I can count on one hand across all of sports, folks who have not been collaborative. There's a very small group of teams. Your favorite team, the Boston Red Sox, are not on that list. They are very collaborative. But there are tribal. Well, there's a few others out there that may be less collaborative. But most of them are highly collaborative from top down. And so what I did from when I first started, the first trip I made was to Cleveland. And this is many years ago. Cleveland Indians had a reputation as being very progressive. So I called up my counterpart there. I said, I'm new to the industry. Can I come out? Can I learn from you? And that's where it started. And ever since, every year we travel to two cities. I take at least four of my staff to two cities each year and we meet with all the sports teams in those cities. This year we went to Milwaukee and we met with the Brewers and we did the Packers as well. Every year, over the 20 years, we visited pretty much every professional sports city and we just go through it again. And always, red carpet, open door and you build those face-to-face relationships that you can pick up the phone and make the call. In a few weeks, we're all going to get together in Denver at our MLB IT Summit. My job at the IT Summit every year is I host the golf classic. So I bring all the golfers, the hackers, the duffers out and we have a great time on the golf course and build those relationships. And again, the only thing that we don't really talk about that much is the technology we use to enhance the product on the field. Everything else is fair game. So share the business side of the competitive advantage where the battles really happen, Dodgers and Giants on the field, highly competitive. But what's cool about that is then I can meet with the other sports teams to talk about that. So I'll leave the teams nameless, but we've had some awesome collaborative discussions with NBA teams, especially to talk about what they're doing to assess talent and there's no competition there. So there's some kind of rules kind of big baseball, unwritten rules. So talk about the coolest thing that you guys have done this year. Share something that you personally feel proud of or fans love or some of the cool things this year that pops out for you. Sure. The technology that we invested in this year that I thought was a game changer, we saw, we experimented with last season. But this year, we've been experimenting with VR and AR a little bit, but a technology that we thought is really cool is called 4D Replay. It's a company out of Korea. And we saw them, we did an experiment with them and then we implemented them for the full season this year and we've seen them at some other venues as well. The Warriors tried them in the playoffs, but we had them full year. And what they did was they put in about 120 cameras spaced approximately five feet apart between the bases. 120 of them and they focus on the pitcher and the batter. So when you have a play, you can 3D or 4D, 4D rotate around that play and watch the ball as it's moving off the bat and get it from that full perspective. It's awesome for the fan experience. It gives them a perspective they never have. I love watching the pitcher because you can see that hand in full 4D glory pronating as it comes through on every pitch. If you can watch that hand carefully, you can predict what kind of pitch it is. It's something that a fan has never had access to before. We did that for the first time this year. And new experience, obviously you see stat cast on TV and a lot of this overlay stuff happening. Kind of brings like an eSports vibe to the table. And it's just the beginning. Coming. Your thoughts on eSports. Competitor, natural evolution. Baseball is going to be involved in it. Obviously, things in the emerging technology is looking interesting. The younger generation wants the hot young. Sure. I mean, we feel like our game has been around a long time, right? And it still is, the rules haven't changed that much. But fans still enjoy it, but they just consume it differently. And our game can be incredibly exciting in moments. But there's also some gaps in there when you can build relationships. Some of the younger generation may feel those gaps with watching something else or two other things on their devices. But that's okay. We embrace that at the ballpark. But in terms of the emergence of eSports and the changing demographic of our fan base, what we're trying to do is just package our game differently. One thing I'm really excited about and starting to see, we're in the early days, I consider with virtual reality, we experimented with it maybe two or three years ago, we've been doing some stuff with it. But I'd say it feels like we're like in the second or third inning with virtual reality. Where we're really going, I've seen Intel doing some of this stuff. I was out working with Intel and PyeongChang at the Olympics this past year, working with their VR team and where it's going. I can already visualize what this is gonna be like, this concept of volumetric video, where it's not about having that court side seat in basketball or that seat right behind home plate. It's about being wherever you wanna be, anywhere in the action. And to me, it's not about doing it live because in baseball, you don't know where the ball's gonna go. It's about doing it replay right after. Okay, that ball was shot to Brandon Crawford and he made the most amazing diving play, picked it up, gunned it to first. Where do you wanna watch that from? Everybody's different. Some people might wanna watch it from right behind first base. Some people might wanna watch it right behind Brandon Crawford, behind the batter. With volumetric video in the future of VR, you'll be able to do that. And this esports generation, fans' instant gratification, what unique experiences, that's what's gonna deliver it. Yeah, you bring up, this is such an immersive environment. You're looking at this kind of volumetric things from Intel and you got VR and AR. Immersion is a new definition. And I won't say putting pressure, it's evolving the business model. I mean, who would have thought that DraftKings and these companies would be around and be successful? That's gambling. Okay, now you got that. You got VR. So the business model's changing. I've been hearing even token cryptocurrency, maybe baseball cards will be tokenized. So these are kind of new crazy ideas that might be new fan experience and the business model for you guys. Your thoughts on those kind of wacky trends. I mean, that's why I love working with companies like Mayfield because they're seeing the future before we see it. And I love being where we are so we can talk to them and learn about these companies. Another example along those lines is how are fans gonna get to the ballpark five years from now? And how do we adapt that? Because we're doing a major development right adjacent to the ballpark. We've got 4,000 parking spaces. Are we gonna need those five years from now? Well, we're gonna build out that whole parking lot. We're gonna put a structure in there but five, 10 years from now, we're building that structure so that it can be adaptable because is anyone gonna need to park? Is parking gonna be like typing? You know, on a typewriter, 10, 15 years from now because everybody is in either self-driving cars or rideshares and the cars just poof go away and they come back when you need them. Like I said, everything has been invented. It's been on Star Trek except for the transporter room but maybe they could transport to the game. We could use that in San Francisco. Bill, I got to ask you about your role with Mayfield because one of the things I've always been impressed with you is that you always have a taste for innovation. You're not afraid to put the toe in the water or jump in the deep end where the technology is. These guys are looking for some trends too. How do you advise some of these guys? How do you work with Mayfield? What's the relationship? How are they to work with? What's the intersection between Mayfield and you? Well, the one thing that Mayfield does is they put together a conference each summer that I love coming down to and I get to meet a lot of my counterparts and we talked about meeting my counterparts in sports but I love meeting with my counterparts across all industries and Mayfield makes that possible. They bring us all together with some really interesting speakers on a variety of topics, not all directly tech related. So it's a great opportunity for me to just kind of get outside of the daily routine, get outside the box, open my mind and I just have to drive down the road to do it. So that's an example. Another thing is Mayfield and other firms will come to me and just say, hey, here's a technology we're evaluating. They think it would be a great fit in sports. What do you think? And so I can give them some valuable feedback on companies they're evaluating, companies that come to us and I might throw them their way. So it's really like a- It's a great relationship. You're a sounding board for some ideas. You get to peek into the future. I mean, we've interviewed entrepreneurs successful entrepreneurs year and it's a seven, eight year build out. So it's almost like an eight year peek into the future. Yeah, and it's super valuable, especially given where we are geographically and our inclination toward being on the leading edge. Well, I want to just end the segment by saying thanks for coming in and I want you to show the ring there because I always can't stop standing at the hardware. You got the ring there, the world champion. It's a few years old at the moment. We're going to have to get a new one sometime soon. We got to work on that. So is there any cutting edge technology to help you evaluate the best player who you're looking at next year? What's going on? What's the trades going on? Are we off the record now? I have a feeling you're asking this for personal reasons, man. For your squad. Well, I'm a Red Sox fan in the A.L. Obviously moved here 20 years ago. Big fan of the Giants of what come to the games. You guys do a great job. Fan experience is great. You guys do a great job and I'm looking forward to seeing a great season. Thanks, yeah. So hope springs eternal this time of year. We always block off October and expect to be busy, but when we have it back, it just gives us an opportunity to get a head start on everybody. Well, Bill, thanks for coming in. Bill Schloss, CIO for the San Francisco Giants here on San Hill Road, talking about the 50th anniversary of Mayfield. And this is the People First Network getting ideas from entrepreneurs, industry executives, and leaders. I'm Sean Ford at theCUBE. Thanks for watching.