 We're back here live in San Francisco, California, for the Node Summit, Node.js is the hottest thing in the developer community. Rapid rise in popularity, application development. We're here with theCUBE, SiliconANGLE.tv's flagship telecast where we go out with an HD studio, talk to the smartest people we can find, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, executives, we don't care if they have knowledge, we want to share that with you. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE.com and welcome back and pleased to announce the new vertical publication called DevOpsANGLE, which is a new section of SiliconANGLE dedicated to the developer community around Node, around DevOps, around OpsDev. However we want to talk about it, this is a phenomenon that is changing the guard in computing and computer science and coding, this new mindset, this new architecture and it's really exciting. So Node Summit is really the first event that really changes the mindset around development, where JavaScript and HTTP are the front stage of development and systems design to build scalable mobile apps and web apps. So I'm excited, we're excited at SiliconANGLE.com to bring you the coverage and I want to introduce Charles Bieler, who worked behind the scenes investing in a lot of companies. He's a partner at El Dorado Venture Capital, a very successful business over there, he's invested in Compellant, Solta Dell and a variety of other companies. Charles, welcome to the back to theCUBE, CUBE alumni, thank you. I'll see you've been working behind the scenes, financing a lot of the companies in Node, it's an area that you have interest in, you also know the enterprise space, you know the storage space, SiliconANGLE as you know has been covering the storage like a blanket, we're all over the IO concepts, David Floyd just wrote a manifesto around IO infrastructure, IO used to be confined to storage and networking, but now we have IO issues around changing an architectural fundamental change and how codes being written and Node represents that. So share with us your inner dealings and content that you can share with us around Node and what your experience is. Yeah, absolutely, so we actually started this conference and we started it because we're big believers in Node and really big believers in what Node represents in terms of the ability to start to deliver real-time communications, real-time connectivity to millions of devices at a time. So I started this with my co-conspirator Mark Lewis who I know you guys had some news about yesterday, I thought did a great job with and Andy Janks, one of the guys who works with him and we were talking last April about Node and the conversation was what's interesting about it, what should we do with it? And the agreement was it was past this point of just a cool technology if you guys were playing with and there were enough businesses out there who actually deployed it, were starting to deploy it, it was time to expose that in a different way. So we started Node Summit. Along the way, I spent time with folks at Joint and subsequent to that ended up joining as an investor and I'm on the board. You just saw the big $85 million announcement we came in to around just prior to that. Phenomenal company, obviously they're the ones shepherding Node in the community. I think they've done a fantastic job of really making sure it's a community effort, not a joint effort, it's the most important thing to them because their business is not about Node, but Node is one of the things that they see as a key driver to where their business goes over time. So Node Summit, obviously we'll talk about some validation points because as a VC you look, you see a lot of deals and obviously there's some validation here, we're going to get to that in a minute. Let's talk about Node Summit, the event. So we've covered Hadoop Worlds and we've covered Stratas, we've covered VM or a lot of other shows and this one has a nice balance between tech, developer, developer, developer, developer, but it's got validation in the business side mainly because it's moving so fast. You don't have the tracks, it wasn't designed that way. So talk about why the conference was designed this way. Just to kind of clear the air because there's some people on Twitter saying, hey, no tracks on not enough technical side but it was by design to put it this way. So explain to the folks the purpose behind the designs, the first conference was a ton of momentum and I don't know if you saw but yesterday I called the Node category four hurricane mainly because there's so much business interest and there's stakeholder in this, so talk about that. So we tried to be really clear when we started the conference that we did not want to be a Dev conference. The Node conference is a phenomenally good conference around Node. Michael Rogers who's here, he's on stage later and I think he's going to come speak with you guys who runs that, JS conference. We didn't want to do a Dev conference. What we really talked about when Mark and Andy and I sat down was let's do something that tries and it's not just a first conference but in some ways it's the first time anyone's ever tried to do this with an event which is let's bridge those communities, let's get the Dev guys here, let's get the hardcore Node community here and let's bring in more of as they like to affectionately call us the suits and talk about not just what the technology is but what's interesting about it and why enterprises should be and in reality are adopting it. And some of it we got right, a few things we'll probably change next time around assuming there is one but I think there will be and it seems to have worked in that we're getting some of these core developer guys, the guys who DevOps angles and me covering day and night coming in and saying, you know, I'm realizing my role here is I know Node and I need to be an ambassador to a much larger community of people who are just understanding what it is and it's just been fantastic to see the Node community embrace it. I frankly think it says a lot about the community in Node specifically, the way they work and at the end of the day and you've met with them it comes down to the guy who started it, Ryan and his personality is one of the most down to earth casual people you ever talk to, very laser focused on making Node something that works for everybody and I think the entire community around Node has followed suit. Yeah, we were talking earlier with Tom Hughes Crocker who wrote the book on Node that this community is a respectful community but professional, right? So it's an interesting developer community because there's not a lot of mudslinging. There's some arguments and some debates here and there but for the most part, not a lot of group think some contentious, good conversations but respectful and very professional and so it's kind of refreshing to see in this day and age of arrogance sometimes around and people having some integrity here so I just want to say congratulations on that. Thanks, and on that, and Tom's a great example of it he's phenomenally got, we've got him as a judge here spending time and I wish I could tell you what the magic secret was. I think to some degree it's because the Node guys who realize that the world isn't all about Node and there have been some of these communities who have over time have lost sight of what their main purpose was and wanted to be sort of all things to all people. I think you see with Node, they talk a lot about other projects, a lot of things that integrate in and work well with Node and are important for Node-based apps to work and that's somewhat unique with some of the other communities as they've grown over time. Talk about the validation now. So let's get back into some of your working days within the community. You said you saw Node kind of a rise in the scene, companies are out there talking about some of the validation points. You're an investor, you're well educated, you look at deals, you can sniff out a good deal, you got a good instincts. What jumped out of the screen on you on this whole segment? Obviously it's growing. You can see the social proof as Angelus talks about what's the validation points? You said, hey, this is a winner. Well, first I have to thank you for using investor and educated in the same sense. We don't get that much, we appreciate it. How do we have that in there? So really it happened as I started to spend time with some of the people at Joint who already knew. Brian Cantrell is a VP engineering and I have known each other for years. We sat on a board of a magazine called ACMQ. A lot of smart people sit on that board, all of them smarter than me and a great opportunity for me to kind of hear what's going on, hear what people are talking about. And as we started talking about does this conference make sense, we started to hear stories from guys who were here yesterday. So Emerson, Emerson's a hundred year old company that makes really boring technology you install in homes. But when you step back and look at it and some guys came up to me afterwards and said, so that company could have the largest deployment of node in the world on a device basis in six months. They're literally rearchitecting their systems in node because they've seen the value of what node can do in terms of the efficiency in sensors and in large networks with lots of nodes. And so those types of companies, Ericsson's and other ones here, you see Yahoo, you see eBay, both announcing platforms for developers, heavily based on node. Rackspace who's got some folks here and running around just announced last week some things they're doing around node. So we're just seeing some of these big companies come in and start talking about it publicly and we're hearing about a lot of other companies and since they've never told me this directly, I'll out some of them, Netflix. The first time I went and did a search in Google for node.js, one ad came up and it was an ad from Netflix saying we're hiring node.js engineers. This was 12 months ago. Netflix has done a lot with node internally. They don't, I think, wanna talk about it publicly which is absolutely up to them. Bloomberg has done a lot with node. They've talked about it somewhat publicly. They would love to have been here and if we go to New York for the next event, they said they'll be there. Some Twitter guys are here. I don't think they've got anything out in deployment but I know they're spending a lot of time with this. And frankly, and last night, or yesterday the Google guy didn't really, it was a no comment comment. I've heard from multiple guys over there that they look at node in a number of situations to decide is this a use case for it. So these large companies are adopting it a big way. LinkedIn's been very public about it. It's beyond just hey, I'm hacking it and I'm a little startup in a garage which I'm sure we'll talk about more but it's these big companies validating that this stuff's ready to go. There's a lot more work to do but we're comfortable putting it out and having our customers use it which is pretty compelling. What's your funding thesis as you look at startups out there? Obviously you're seeing a lot of startups here with the node jam day two here at Node Summit which is really all about the startup side of it, kind of a demo day if you will. Jamming on node yesterday was the day one. It was the official kind of the conference. What's your investment thesis around the kinds of dollars you deploy? And I want you to talk about it in two categories. One, the kind of capital you outlay in a series A, series B and then what you see as a duration of the financing. Total capital you might put in. So we're a relatively small firm. We're huge, huge believers in capital efficiency for companies, especially at the early stages. We also are enterprise focused. So historically capital efficiency and enterprise startups didn't necessarily go hand in hand. Node is a perfect example of things that are changing that are making that possible. You can get more done in less time. You spend less money getting there. So we're seeing companies where we can invest today, half a million dollars. So Badgerville is a good example of one of our companies. Half a million dollars. Four months after they launched that company they were generating revenue. They generated more revenue in the first two quarters than they raised in those two quarters. And last year they had just a phenomenal year, raised a big round that Northwest led we came in. So what we like to be able to see is really low capital needs on the front end. And it's an ethos between the entrepreneur who believes in it, the technology they're using that allow it, things like joint where you don't have to buy data center spacing where you can turn up an instance when you want to, you can turn it down when you're turning off when you're done. It allows you to get capital efficiency through a much longer cycle of a startup. We see more progress in a shorter period of time. For the startups there's less dilution and less money at risk. And then as these enterprise startups start to get to where they need scale. They have sales teams, they need to build. They do need to spend more money. They need more capital. So for us, half a million on the front end could be eight, 10 million overall. But the bulk of that money is going to come after these companies have been able to start scaling. And at El Dorado, we've actually been doing a lot lately specific to the enterprise space to build programs to help extend that efficiency through the sales cycle, work with channel sales, work with sales strategy. Because we actually think it's possible to do things like compelling $56 million raised. We think nowadays you can do compelling on potentially as little as half of what it took them from when they started Node 2. That's why you put all the big money in the $85 million round. You got to spend it. Otherwise you're not going to be able to raise another fund. The $85 million round was an interesting one. Well, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm usually capital efficient with Silicon Angle, self-financed it, and growing it internally with no outside capital. And we don't need any more money. We're cash flow positive and growing. And it's exciting. And I can tell you right now that technology will be an enabler to actually scale faster. And one of the exciting things that I see with Node is this new architecture change around IO infrastructure and that now with cloud, this opens up the mobile market for entrepreneurs to actually not only do more with less, because that was the classic cloud store in the web, but actually a person who builds an app doesn't have to be a total network guru engineer. So that gives them so much more head room at the scale point for validation. Meaning the revenue point and market acceptance, which as you know dictates venture investment. It's like the venture capital is the classic. It's like the bank. You get big money when you don't need it and you can't get money when you need it. I don't want to go that hard, but you know how it is. So the point is I can get validation and say, I can have a million users on $150,000 in capital or a half a million dollar around. So that's insane. I'm looking through the bright lights right now. An entrepreneur I know, starting a very interesting company called Swiftstack. I'm sure you won't mind if I out him. But exactly that he does. These guys haven't raised any money. They've closed and deployed a customer already. They're still clearly in beta, but you can get so much more done in less time. And we're seeing it again, it's across the board. The consumer internet companies have done it for years and it's been a great trend. We're seeing the enterprise guys start to figure out good ways to take advantage of it. All the stuff you just outlined on the front end, those are the key drivers that we see. And for us again, we're a small fund. So being able to do these small deals, being able to invest in companies that we only need half a million dollars for 18 months. You know what, fantastic. It doesn't exclude you from our perspective. It actually makes you more attractive. We're just starting a new vertical publication called Bootstrapped Entrepreneurs Only, and it's going to be dedicated to all the people who sell finance. Who can't afford PR, we'll do it for free. We're big fans of the trend. It is, and it's efficiency. Look at Angel List, right? Classic example of efficiency in the capital market. Naval's done such an incredibly fantastic job. And he's here today, which is great. I'm seeing what you really appreciate. But when you really look at what he's done and what his objectives in it were, which are not monetary objectives, it's all about building a community. I've seen in 15 years in venture, I've probably seen 40 different people come in and say, we're going to be the marketplace for startups. We're going to be the place to go. None of them have ever worked. These guys figured it out. Jason said it earlier, I go every day, I checked that site. Jason was saying, it's the one thing he checks in the morning. He unfriended his mom on Facebook, but he checks the whole site. They've just done a fantastic job. It was why we wanted him here. Because they're like everything else. They're all about capital efficiency. They're all about really driving this change. Hey, you want to come in and grab a seat? Like one of my co-organizers of the Nodes Summit. Staying behind the scenes. He's on a roll. So obviously we don't get some valuation numbers. What was Joanne's last round of valuation? It was no comment. It was good, but it was no comment. All right, well, Charles Bieler, great investor, young gun in Silicon Valley, cornering the market, Nodes Summit here, by just having a great presence. Congratulations on putting this event together. Great vision. I know you worked hard. You guys are doing great with your fund. And Nodes Summit's really an important trend. So congratulations. Thanks, and congrats on DevOps Angle. It's the first big online publication to really see this as the next wave and jump into it. As you know, it's a very different type of conversation than what you see on a lot of the sites, including some of the stuff you guys are driving now. I think it's very timely. And so we were thrilled to have you guys want to come here and be part of it. And launch it here. And I can't think of a better place to do it, or a better guy to do it with. Well, we'll continue to talk to you. Clint Finley will be heading up Ops Dev and DevOps, whatever we're going to call it. This guy should call it DevOps, but it's kind of the industry term. But we're going to cover it like a blanket. It does cross into the enterprise eventually. DevOps now is a developer market. So we do have services Angle, which is pure old school consulting, big consulting business like Accenture, HP, and EMC. And those guys run huge services businesses. It's EDS and those guys, huge, huge business. DevOps is really kind of the emerging model. So very disruptive. Again, I call this category four hurricane. This marketplace we're on node because it's ripping trees down and some building shingles are going off. But it's not a category five yet. No. But it's a four. And you know, the trees are being knocked down and there's some disruption. And the community, if you talk to these guys, they don't want it to be a category five today. Their biggest fear, as we're having a conversation with one of the core committers to node, they do not want node to be over-hyped. And it's hard to avoid it because it probably is. They don't want it to be all about height. They want it to be about reality. And they would much rather take a slower paced growth effort here. I think they love that this is going on, but I think to some degree a little nervous. That does this expand it to a point where it's ahead of its skis and they're trying to be really careful about that. Which I applaud because it's a long-term approach. You heard Brent and Ike in there earlier talking about JavaScript and some of the things they're doing now. He said, these things don't change quickly. Give it time. Here's what we're working on. Here's what we're doing. And we're seeing the same thing with node, which in the long run will be good for everybody who's starting a company and trying to find a way to be more efficient as they develop things. What do you think about the trending on Twitter? I mean, I was pretty impressive yesterday that node summit was number three globally around this. So obviously there's an online community. We all get what it means to have good IO and HTTP as a first-class citizen in terms of the design side of the systems and apps architecture. Well, first I was blown away. Clearly it shows that, one, you guys have a ton of people watching it from here. There are a lot of people following it just using a hashtag who aren't at the conference itself. There are a few things interesting that happened yesterday that got a lot of attention. Probably the biggest one was Scott Guthrie at Corporate VP of Services and Tools of Microsoft. Phenomenally intelligent guy, very technical. Comes on stage with a Mac. Opens up a Chrome browser and loads a node.js application up into Azure. We sent out a tweet from Modes Summit on that. It had within 20 minutes, we had 45 people retweet it. I mean, there's a lot of interesting things that are happening here that I think have surprised a lot of people in the dev community, Microsoft being one of them. And I think that's helped a lot, but really it just shows it's an interesting topic. It's a fun thing to talk about. It cuts across many layers organically as a community. It's growing very rapidly. It's got some disruption elements in the business side. And obviously the big whale vendors like Microsoft, like HP and EMC and these big guys even like SAP will be impacted by this. So I love it. It's the San Francisco way, but it's not just San Francisco. It's global. We've seen people from New York. We saw some Israel. We saw some UK. We're going to have a UK guy on here. It's just booming. So learn node, check out node summit, pound node summit. But I was going to say it says a lot about Mark Lewis, right? Chief Strategy Officer of EMC at the time we decided this conference would be a good idea. Says a lot that someone in that role at a company like that would be looking at node this early. I know Paul Martz, big believer in node was trying to be here to speak. Steve Herrod came from VMware instead. And there's some people who are paying a lot of attention to it, quietly observing it. But it's not lost on these big guys. And to their credit, they're speaking about it publicly, they're supporting it. And I think it bodes well for the overall community as it continues to grow. Someone just stole my line on Twitter. Node.js is a gateway drug to MongoDB. I wrote node.js is a gateway drug to Hadoop on Monday. Yeah, we've got, you stole my line. One of the Mongo guys is going to, one of the 10 Gen guys is going to be here. We've talked about with next, the future events, really talking about some of the things you plug in around node. And Mongo is obviously one of them. So this is, it goes back to the community thing. It's not just node, it's everything around it. And so far these guys have all really worked on it. I just hope that it just doesn't get mangled up by the big vendor whales trying to put the brakes on it. How it always is with the big vendors. They want to come in and kind of control it. So we're hoping that it continues to be a commercial success at the same time. The development side can pace with that. So congratulations on all your work, Charles Bieler, with Eldorado Venture Capital. One of many VCs here. I saw Insuk Ray from Rembrandt Ventures, another great VC, friend of Silicon Angels. So thank you so much for all your support. And I appreciate it. And again, thanks for being here. Be back in five.