 from Menlo Park, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. It's theCUBE, covering Cloud Now Awards 2020, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. Now, here's Sonia Tagare. Hi, and welcome to theCUBE. I'm your host, Sonia Tagare, and we're on the ground at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California, covering Cloud Now's top women entrepreneurs in cloud innovation awards. Joining us today is Geeta Schmidt, CEO of Humio, Geeta, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, thanks for having me. So just give us a brief overview of your background and more about Humio. All right, a brief overview, let's see. I'll start off that I've been in the industry for some time now, since 97, which I used to actually work at this campus that we're here today at, when it used to be Sun Microsystems. So I started out in technology, in product management and marketing, mainly, when Java was coming out. So early days, and it really learned a lot about what it takes to take a product or a concept out to market. Very exciting in those early days and sort of moved towards looking at industries and sort of focused on financial services and did a lot around financial services, marketing also at Sun. And then I moved to Denmark, which is sort of a surprise, but I'm married to a dain and we decided we'll try something different. So I moved to Denmark working at a consulting company, software consulting company based in Denmark, fairly small. And it was part of sort of building out sort of the conference and business development business they had over there. And that was a way for me to understand a completely other side of the business, consulting aspects, where you really build software for a customer and really understand sort of the customer solution needs that are required versus when you're working at a large enterprise company kind of are separated away from the customers. And that was there where I met the two founding team members of Humio, Christian and Kreston at Triforc. And so essentially we've been working together for 10 years and we sort of all felt like we could really come out with the world's best logging solution. And this was out of some of the pain we were running into by running other solutions in the market. And so we took a leap into building our own product business. And so we did that in 2016. And so that's really what brought me here into the CEO role. So we have a three person leadership or executive team or founding team, which is two fairly technical folks. So the guys that really built the product and keep it running and take it to the next level every single day. But what was missing was really that commercial kind of leader that was ready to take that role and that's where I came in. So they were very supportive in bringing me on board. So that was in 2016 where I started that. That's awesome. So how do you think having like a business and marketing background versus a technical background has helped you become a successful CEO? I think it's really, really hard if you don't have different profiles on your founding team to be able to run a successful tech business. So there's technology that you could have the world's greatest technology like an example would be my co-founders were building an amazing product. But until I came into the room, they hadn't thought about going out and trying to get a customer to use it. And essentially that is one of the issues there is that you can sit and build something and build the best product out there. But if you're not getting feedback really, really early in the design and the concepts of product development, then customers are sort of not built in. And so a lot of the thought process around Himeo is we like to say customers are in our DNA. We build our product for people to use six to eight hours a day and they're in it every day. And so it keeps this feeling of a customer feedback loop. And even if you're technical, it's really exciting to know that you build something that somebody uses every day and looks at every day. And so that's the kind of energy that we've tried to instill or maybe I've tried to instill in Himeo that our customers really matter. And I think that's one of the ways that we've been able to move, let's say really, really fast in building the right features, the right functionality and the right things for people who are using it on the other end essentially. So yeah. That's great. And so you're here to receive an award for being one of the top female entrepreneurs in cloud innovation. So congratulations. Thank you. And how does it feel to win this award? Super exciting. I mean, I'm glad that there are organizations like cloud now that are doing amazing things for women and also making examples of folks that are doing interesting roles in our industry, especially around B2B software. I think that's a real area where there's not many CEOs or leaders in our space where there should be. And I think part of it is actually kind of highlighting that. But the other side is sort of an event like this today is bringing together a lot of other profiles that are women or diverse profiles together to sort of talk about this problem and acknowledge it and also take, let's say, more of an active stance around making this place not so scary. I mean, I remember one of my early events when I was raising our series A, where I walked into a VC event where there were no other female CEOs out there. And there's 100 CEOs. And I was the only one. And I think one of the hard parts is I walked in there and I felt a bit uncomfortable. But there were two amazing VC partners at the company that I first started talking to. And that just really eased the sort of, I guess, uncomfortability. So I think the main focus at things like today or the people that are here today is, I think we can help each other. And I think that's something that I'd like to see more of, that we actively sort of create environments and communities for that to happen. And Cloud Now is one of them. I think a lot of women have had that experience where they're the only woman in the room. And it's just really hard to figure out your path from there. So as the company, as Humio, how do you, what's your strategy for inclusion? So like I like to call it active inclusion. I think part of this is like having a diverse workforce which is obviously including women and different backgrounds and other things. But one of the big things we think about at Humio is we really like to, let's say, celebrate people's differences. So like that you're able to be yourself and almost eccentric is a good thing and be able to feel safe in that environment, to feel safe that you can express your opinions, feel comfortable and safe when you're coming with a opposite viewpoint because the diversity of thought is really what we're trying to include in our company. So it means bringing together folks that don't look like each other where exactly the same clothes and do the exact same hobbies and come from the same countries. We have a very global workforce. So we have folks all in Denmark, we have an office in Denmark, we have an office in the UK, and we have folks all over the US. So we have a lot of backgrounds that have come from different cultures. And I think there's a beauty to that. There's a beauty to actually combining a lot of ways to solve problems. Everyone from a different culture has different ways of solving those. And so I think part of this is all around making that okay, right? So active inclusion is a way to sort of put it into term. So we're definitely looking for people actively that would like to join something like this. I love that. So if you were, personally, if you were to have your own board of directors, like who would they be? It's not really the who, it's almost like the profiles or the people I meet. I mean, I already have a personal board, like I'd call it. I mean, it's something that I actively started doing. Once I started with a company board, I realized I probably need my own personal board, my own sort of support infrastructure. That includes folks like my family, my sisters, and my mom. It also includes some younger junior folks that are actually much younger than me, but I learned so much from. So one of my good friends, Cindy, who is brilliant at describing technology concepts. And I think just some of the conversations I've had with her just opened my eyes to something that I hadn't seen before. And I think that's the area where I like to say the personal board isn't exactly people. It's profiles. So along the way, as you grow, you're looking for new types of profiles. Let's say you want to learn about a new concept or a new technology or get better at running or something. So it's part of bringing those profiles in to learn about it. And then back to this board concept, it's not as though it's a LinkedIn network or it's actually sort of a group of people that you sort of rely on and then it's a two-way straight. So essentially, there could be things that the other person could gain from knowing me. And ideally, those are the best relationships in a personal board. So I encourage a lot of women to do this because it builds a support infrastructure that is not related to your job, it's not your manager, it's not your coworker. You kind of feel some level of freedom having those discussions because those people aren't looking at your company, they're looking at helping you. So that's some of the concepts around the personal board idea. And I think as women, having a support system is so necessary, especially in this male-dominated industry. Well, I think it's back to that whole feeling like you're the one person in the room. Right, right. So you're not the one person in the room. And I think we need to change that. And I think that's like some, all of our kind of roles, all the women in tech. I mean, it's sort of like something that we could help each other with. And if we don't do it actively, I mean, you know the numbers and we know the percentages of these things. If we want to change that, it does require some active interest on our part to make that happen. And I think those are the areas where I see like the support infrastructures, the events like this really kind of engaging us to be aware and doing something about the problem. Gita, thank you so much for being on theCUBE. Love having you here. Thanks for having me, really appreciate it. I'm Sonia Tagare. Thanks for watching theCUBE. Stay tuned for more.