 Hello everyone, welcome to this special CUBE conversation here in the Palo Alto Studios of the CUBE. I'm John Furrier, host of the CUBE. We're here with Dana Rothman, vice president of marketing at Mesa Sphere. Great to see you, thanks for coming in. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. So you guys have a lot of action going on. Yes. A lot of funding, new CEO, a very successful CUBECon, part of the CNCF, we saw each other there. The space is kind of out of control right now. The growth is amazing. Yes. Amazon reinvented two weeks before in Vegas packed. It's been a lot going on. Talk about Mesa Sphere, you guys got some news and momentum, talk about the momentum. Yeah, so I mean we've had a ton of momentum. We got 126 million in funding about eight months ago or so, a little bit before I joined, I joined like five, six months ago. And things have really kicked off in the space. Obviously the space has gone crazy with everything around Kubernetes and all the different acquisitions and just almost kind of crossing the chasm into some of those later adopters now, which has been really, really great for us. And so we've, after the funding and hiring on a lot of seasoned executives, we're really like taking any marketing to the next place, taking what we're doing with product to the next phase. So it's been a great ride so far. Yeah, we had a chance to interview you guys a lot over the years from OpenStack and then as the cloud native kind of moves in the mainstream, it's interesting. The tech chops are solid, great company, DNA. But it's interesting, you know, you go back a year and a half, go two years ago and say the word Kubernetes, you're like, what language are you? You're like, you see it in like Forbes, you see it everywhere. Kubernetes has kind of risen to mainstream. Amazon cloud, Google, Microsoft, they're all growing. Kubernetes is like a core, major, generational thing in the tech world. You're new. Yes. What do you think about Kubernetes? If you look at this, what is Kubernetes? How did you get in charge of the mesosphere and what do you think about all this? Yeah, so funny thing about just Kubernetes story and me, I guess. So a couple of companies ago, you know, working for Martek company, I did have a boss that actually came from this space. And I distinctly remember him talking about Kubernetes at that time. And, you know, coming from a different space, I just had like, what are you even talking about? Like he was going to KubeCon in the early days. So I was actually familiar with it. And then how I got attracted to Mesosphere in this space, you know, I've been in Martek for a decade and really looking just to do something else and, you know, who's doing something really innovative. You know, where's a different space that I can go in that's really growing? You know, Martek and sales tech, kind of like a lot of these little players right now and nobody's really innovating. And, you know, actually with Mesosphere, my husband actually works there as well. And he started about a year and a half ago. And I had spoken to the executive team several times about, you know, just marketing best practices and marketing leadership and, you know, revenue and attribution. And the more I spoke to them, the more interested I got in the company. And then this role was available and it was, you know, just a great fit. Plus, you know, I kind of knew some of the ins and outs already just from having that connection to Mesosphere in the first place. It was interesting too, you mentioned Martek. We've been following that space for a long time. You know, obviously you got Salesforce, the first cloud before cloud was cloud. Martek was very cloud oriented from day one. You think about what that was. Self service, a lot of data issues, a lot of applications that had real value because money's there, you know, you got leads and all kinds of marketing activities. So Martek was kind of has that almost cloud-first DNA to begin with and you come from that. Now when you come over to the cloud native, you're seeing the developer world building a whole another generation of what looks like many industries that have that same characteristics. Self service, large scale, data. These are the top conversations. So it's an interesting connection that you have that background. So when you come into this world and you see all these developers building out this kind of, you know, application layer, CICD, pipelining, and then below Kubernetes, you got all this tech, where are the opportunities? What's the value proposition for maintenance for you? What are you guys attacking? Who's your buyer? Are they developers? Are they going to be businesses? Take a minute to explain that. Yeah, so a couple of different, you know, things to kind of address some of your points as far as our buyers and where the space is going. You know, I think, you know, where we're really strong is really having that enterprise DNA where we can take a lot of this tech and a lot of these open source projects and really make them enterprise ready. So that companies that are much bigger and have all these security regulations and red tape can actually leverage them so that they can continue innovating. And so as we grow, our buyers are also evolving from, you know, in the earlier days, mostly kind of developers, you know, engineers, more of that technical crowd. But now we're coming across a lot more executive level folks. We're talking to the CIOs, the CTOs, the business users where, you know, we have to kind of shift a little bit and have more of that business use case. And the other thing is really that we're getting past the point of the early, the really early adopters. I mean, we still have, we have customers that have been with us for a while that are, you know, these very innovative Silicon Valley companies. And now we're seeing different industries. We have a lot of like automotive clients, finance, you know, manufacturing some of these older industries that want to adopt technology like Kubernetes, but they don't know how to fit it into what their organization, you know, needs and wants from the IT department. So there's a lot of educational involved probably I would imagine, right? So value creation for the customers. Okay, got all these workloads. I see all the early adopters adopting the web scale guys. We all live around here. We know all the Ubers and everyone else out there. You know, Lyft, but a great case study that we need to read those guys. But the mainstream, mainstream America kind of companies that have data centers are going to go to cloud have to move these workloads around. Are they coming to you guys for specific hell? Are they saying, teach us how to do it? Or what are the specific conversations that you guys have with those customers? Sure. I mean, sometimes they come to us with a specific project, but you know, the, the education piece I think is really big for us to get to the next level and what we're trying to do. And that's where, you know, what I'm kind of building out in the marketing team is going to be really powerful so that, you know, instead of kind of people coming to us on a project basis, like we're educating some of these enterprise companies on how they can leverage it, what they should be thinking about, you know, how they can make that transformation, you know, to more of a cloud like environment and what they need to think about. And so that's a big part of the strategy going forward is that, you know, we want to get out there as educators, as thought leaders in the space so that we can get in front of, you know, some of these folks that like, maybe have heard of Kubernetes or thinking about it, but don't quite understand what it is and how it fits into their business. We do, though, get, you know, several questions on just, hey, I'm interested in CI CD, like what is it, or what is this Kubernetes, can you guys help us? And that's where we're kind of jumping in. I want to ask you a question about the B2B enterprise space, because one of the things that I think is really interesting is that you're starting to see, you know, mainstream tech Presco. Whoa, look at enterprises hot. Consumers not. I mean, it tends to have these cycles. And when you start to see companies like Mesosphere going to the next level, they're targeting customers in mainstream enterprise. They have to up their game and get on the marketing side. You're hired to do that. What's your strategy? I mean, is it fill the pipeline? Is it more educational? Build more event, evangelism, localization? Is it global? Take us through your vision of what's next level for Mesosphere. Yeah, so, I mean, I think definitely all of those things. And so one of the most important things for me is when I came on board, it was really, I mean, from an operational perspective, making sure that our marketing department is ready for scale and that we have all the things that we need in order to, you know, generate those leads and accelerate them through the pipeline and that we're really partnering with the sales team. So when I think about marketing, it's not just like top funnel lead gen. It's like, what are the different programs that we're doing in the middle of the funnel to like accelerate opportunities to help close deals? And that's where, you know, we actually create different campaigns to serve some of the middle of the funnel functions. Content is a big piece of my strategy. I come from kind of a content marketing background. I ran content marketing at Marketo for several years pre-IPO in a post and really created the content engine there. And so I've seen the value of thought leadership content, creating content for the different levels of the buyer journey. And so that's a big focus for my team and then building that out with different multi-channel campaigns. Events are huge for us. I love events. And we do, you know, big scale kind of conferences and ancillary events around the conferences. And then we also have a very active field marketing program where we're going into the regions and doing these like smaller executive events that are very high touch. So it's really like all the different pieces. Right now, you know, we're working on brand, we're working on look and feel, we'll redo the website. So we have everything very, yeah. You look great. You look like you're not stressed at all. You look really good. No. So I want to ask you a question because you're on the cutting edge and you've got a great background. I love the Mar-Tech. I mean, I've always said, you know, Mar-Tech never really lived up to its promise because cloud changed the game. But I still think Mar-Tech will be huge because with cloud scale and data driven strategies, I think it's going to be explosive even further than what we've seen. And there's been a lot of venture back in Mar-Tech and has been successful just recently bought by Adobe. But as you look at the digital landscape, you mentioned events. What's your thoughts on digital and physical events? Because you mentioned high touch events, spectrum of activity you're deploying. You got physical events, which are turning out to be quite fantastic. Yeah, they're great. Face to face is intimate. There's a lot of networking and digital. How do you bring the event physical world to digital? How do you view that as a marketer? Yeah, so I mean, we combine them, especially for the bigger event campaign. So, you know, whether it's a trade show booth or an ancillary event around a trade show, like a very large party or something like that, we'll have a whole, you know, digital promotional strategy around that. That includes, you know, maybe we'll have a create like a microsite. We have ads that are targeted to, you know, people that we think that are going to attend these events. We'll do paid programs, other paid channels to drive attendance and to generate that visibility. So I really like to combine them and also, you know, email and nurturing is a big part of the strategy as well. But it's important to have that like online and offline presence and they should map to each other. It's interesting, we're seeing a trend, I was with theCUBE, we do a lot of events where people want the digital experience to map to what's it like on site. You know, reputation, work with good people, have that kind of vibe. And it's evolving and, you know, search marketing has always been effective, email marketing is out there, that's kind of tried and true ways to fill the top of the funnel. Is there new techniques that you see coming that marketers should be aware of? Because you have that history with Martech, you've seen where it's been and kind of where it's going. What's kind of the new hot area that you're watching that's evolving in real time? Because we're kind of going to a Web 3.0 where the users have different expectations. It's not just, you know, email blasts anymore, although that's one mechanism. What's the new thing, what are you looking at? Yeah, so, you know, it's just kind of like a new old thing, I guess. But account-based marketing is, you know, something that a lot of marketers are getting into right now and it's certainly a hot trend and a hot topic. And it's really, I guess, an older way of thinking about marketing instead of that like very wide top funnel lead gen where you're just trying to get just thousands of people into your funnel and doing different things, you have like your set key account list that you're going after that, you know, your company and your reps and marketing all agree on. And you're doing very targeted campaigns to those specific accounts. So we've been doing some really interesting things with different ad platforms. They have ad platforms now where you can actually target on an account-by-account basis based on, you know, IP address and a lot of other attributes. And you can actually do account-based nurturing through ads, which is very interesting. So like I can have an ad that specifically calls out the company that only that company sees. Direct mail is actually also a pretty big piece of this, which again, is kind of an older thing. Not direct mail like the little postcards you get, but like a dimensional mailer for an executive. And you know- It's not a spray and pray. No, it's very targeted. Talk about the dynamic because you're now getting into what we're seeing as a trend where it's not just the marketing person, hey, where are my Glen Gary leads? Or where are the leads? The leads aren't good enough. Always that finger point that's tended to go on traditionally. I mean, over simplifying it, but- It still happens. The partnering with sales becomes even more critical because you have a lot of surface here in your marketing mix. That's not going away. You mentioned those variety of things, but tightening it up with sales and sales enablement seems to be a trend in marketing in general with data-driven things because now you can measure everything. So now it's like, what do you measure? So having a tighter coupling with sales is a key thing. Talk about that dynamic and how it's changing and what you guys are doing. Yeah, so being really tightly coupled with the sales development team and the sales team is a super important part of our strategy. So even when I think of what our goals are as a marketing organization, it's a lot later in the funnel than I think historically marketers have been measured. And so when I'm reporting out on performance, I report out on the entire funnel. I look at conversion rates for every single stage and marketing is measured on pipeline and revenue. And because of that reason, that requires a very tight coupling with the sales department understanding who they're going after, what's working, what's not, and where people are in the sales cycle so that marketing can jump in and really assist them. It's not like a who gets credit for what type of situation. It's like we're all moving towards the same goal. And so different things that we do and I think attribution and measurement really helps quite a bit with this is we can measure what campaign works for different regions. We know what campaigns are good for sourcing people, what campaigns are good for accelerating somebody from a meeting to an op. We can get very granular with topics, channels, campaign types, and even accounts, looking at account engagement. And so that information is really powerful when you partner with an AE and kind of go at it together. We do a lot of later stage field events as well where we're going after key executives in open opportunities and doing very high-end dinners or maybe we're doing a track day or something like that. It's interesting because the world's changing from the old and new. It's interesting to love how you put that because the old way was big ad budget, throw it out there, get the reach, and then now it's much more targeted, much more tactical, still the same strategic objectives, but then cut up into more tactical programs. Is that a challenge for some? And just, I mean, just while you're here, your insight is so amazing. Other markers that aren't as savvy as you try to tackle this. What's your advice to them when you start thinking about that? Because I'm sure you get asked all the time, hey, how do I tackle this new world? How do you advise friends and colleagues in the industry when they say, I got to move from the 50-50 ad spend where I don't know where it's being measured. It's a big budget, big ad agency. I want to take those dollars and deploy them into what looks like programs. You used to have smaller budgets, but in totality, it can be effective. What's your advice? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a hard jump for a lot of marketers, a lot of marketers that I've come in contact with. Do you have that, even if it's not like that big ad budget mentality, it's like that, oh, we're responsible for generating leads and that's kind of where it ends. And you talk impressions and those type of metrics. I think in order to really kind of survive as a marketer these days, you kind of have to move to that next level where you're measuring things and you're really thinking about that full funnel. And the advice that I give to a lot of executive teams is to start measuring your marketing department, your VP, your CMO on later stage metrics, so that the potentially their comp, if it's a bonus or whatever, that it's aligned to the sales team and that we're looking at pipeline and revenue instead of leads generated or impressions or other things like that. It's a real conversion. Yeah, just kind of a little bit of a forcing function to get folks there. And that's what I do with my team when we look at performance. Well, Dana, you're a real pro looking forward, having more conversations. I love the MarkTech background that you have. I think cloud native is essentially going to have as a major feature, MarkTech kind of things. Data, content, analysis, real time, full measurement across multiple spectrums, that's the promise of cloud. So love to follow up with you. Final topic area is mesosphere. As you guys go next level, got some big funding, new CEO, what's the positioning, what's the value statement? How are you guys posturing to the marketplace? Yeah, I mean really focusing on that, how these later adopters are able to have these enterprise standards by having the flexibility of what some of these different technologies and platforms are able to give these companies. We're definitely focusing a lot on innovating through IoT and helping, we're doing some really cool projects with customers on how they can use our platform for those types of projects. And really from a Kubernetes perspective, we're continuing to work on how we can optimize and drive our value proposition there. And then again kind of thinking more in that cloud-like way, how can we continue moving, pushing the envelope in that cloud-like experience for our own platform and software. Take away for you when you look at Amazon re-invent, which was a couple weeks ago, and then KubeCon, CNCF, Cloud Native Computing Foundation event in Seattle just last week. What was your big takeaway? If you had to look back and zoom out and kind of go on the balcony, look at the stage of the industry, what was your takeaway? What was your personal takeaway? What anecdotal things popped out at you? What was the learnings that you saw in those two events? What's happening? Yeah, I mean I think again it kind of goes, I think with a lot of the themes that I've been talking about, I mean especially KubeCon with 8,000 people, I mean they were sold out way before the event. Like we were actually very surprised that they sold out. Like we weren't prepared for that because we still had to purchase a bunch of, excuse me, a bunch of additional tickets. But I think just the popularity of some of these technologies and the business folks and the executives that are attending these events, it is starting to move more towards that enterprise. How can we adopt this stuff for the enterprise? And for both events, to me that was a key takeaway when you're looking at the different vendors even on the expo floor, like what are they talking about? What are they trying to do? And then the attendance at these events and even a lot of the talks were around kind of bringing this stuff to the next level, having more of that cloud like experience for the enterprise and having those best practices in there. As a serious marketer that you are, what was your impression of the role the community plays? Because Mesosphere has a great position in the community. They've been a great steward in the community. People have great reputation. The role of the community now is part of the whole marketing production system in itself, reputation, referrals. This is a big part of it. This is a dynamic. Your thoughts on role of the community in marketing in these new areas? I mean, role of the community is huge. Like you need the community on your side in order to grow the business. Because those are the folks that are going to evangelize. I mean, those are where the influencers are coming from. And so for me, as I've gotten into this space, it's really been trying to understand who these people are, what they're interested in, how we can provide value, how we can provide fun. What are the ways where we can partner with the community and approach it in just more of a humanistic way? So that's what we've been doing a lot of work and just trying to get to know the community and creating marketing that is effective and an assistance to them as well. One of the adds value is always the, it's like an upstream project. You create value, you get respected for it as long as you're not trying to overplay your hand. I do want to get your thoughts on reaction to KubeCon. So I thought one of the things that happened there, besides the cube being there, of course, with there, been there from the beginning, was you guys stole the show at Maisel's View. You had Ice Cube performed. And that was the buzz of the show. Talk about what happened. What was the response? Ice Cube performed. Great, great reviews on Twitter. What was that all about? Share some stories. Yeah, I mean, I thought when we were trying to plan KubeCon and like how can we really, my goal was like, I want to take over the show and really generate that buzz. And again, a big piece of that is the community and trying to think of like, what can we do for the community that's going to get them excited? And picking an artist is a challenge, right? It's got to hit all these different goals. Like you've got to pick somebody that's like not crazy millions of dollars. You have to pick somebody that people are really familiar with. You have to pick somebody that like most people like that's still relevant. So I think that choosing Ice Cube was an important piece of that. And then that, it was just to me, like having come from the Mar-Tech space and the sales tech space. Like I know what some of these like huge impactful kind of parties and side events can have on a brand. And that space is very, like that happens a lot. And I've done that in several companies. I don't think it's really happening as much in this space from my experience so far. And CubeCon, first and not, was a big production. Exactly. What was the feedback? Were you happy with the results? Cause I thought it was fantastic. It was great. I mean, we got fantastic feedback. You know, I knew it would be, when we launched it, very new thing. And so, it created a lot of buzz, a lot of chatter. You know, it could be controversial, which, you know, I was prepared for and I thought would be good to start that conversation. But at the event, it was, you know, just incredible. We had a completely packed house. Everyone was so excited to be there. We had great reactions on Twitter. And I think that, you know, the community was just, you know, really happy to like have that place where we can all come together and have a great time. And, you know, that enabled us to kind of put our brand out there. As, so when people think of Mesosphere, they'll remember that event. So, it's been incredibly successful. The Ice Cube. Great job. Jane, I want to get your thoughts on 2019. What's going to happen for you in 2019? What can we expect from Mesosphere? Yeah, so we can, you know, definitely expect some great product innovations. Different things we're working on, especially, you know, with the funding and kind of new CEO. We're definitely looking to, we're going to take the brand to the next level. I think you're going to see us a lot more. I'm thinking through a potential, kind of our own conference, our own user conference in San Francisco for next year. Well, we'll do, you know, a couple of days, multi-track thought leadership, kind of a bigger production. So that's, you know, something that's exciting. We've got a lot of great, you know, kind of programs planned for 2019. Awesome. Well, congratulations on a great event at CubeCon with Ice Cube and all the success and momentum of Mesosphere. Data Rothman here, Vice President of Market at Mesosphere. Turning up the heat in the marketing, bringing Mesosphere to the next level, a lot of momentum. The industry's on fire. It's just amazing time in CloudNative. This is the Cube also, a covering every day in CloudNative here. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching.