 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 Sonya Tagare. Hi, and welcome to theCUBE. I'm your host, Sonya 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 Dow Jensen, who's the CEO and founder of Kaisen Technology Partners. Dow, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, thank you for having me. So, give us a brief overview of your background. Sure, I actually have a finance degree and had no idea what technology was. I started as a finance analyst at Sun Microsystems and had no idea who they were or what Java was. But having the interest to be a CFO one day or CEO at another company, I figured I'd go into sales and really understand what drives the company's growth and revenue. So, I was actually trained by Scott McNeely's best of the best program and was in sales class with his sister-in-law. And I'd never left sales after then. So, you mentioned that you have a finance background. How do you think that background has helped you to become a successful CEO versus, say, a technical background? Yeah, I think having the finance background is very important because cash flow management is one of the biggest reasons companies fail. Before they can get their next round of funding, they run out of their overhead costs, their monthly overhead costs. The other thing is really to understand how to sell an ROI and total cost of ownership to the decision powers that be at the CFO level and CEO, CIO. Okay, so you're on the Cloud Now advisory board, so tell us how did you join and how is that experience like? I think it grew organically, having been a participant to a few of the events with Jocelyn and then helping her, where can I help? How can I get speakers for you or winners? And over time, Jocelyn just came to me and said, you know, you have such a network. Why don't you join our board and help us where we can? Hence we have mail-in today as our keynote because of my network. And speaking of entrepreneurs, you, I just wanted to mention that you are at this program for Harvard, for entrepreneurs. Can you talk more about that? Sure, it's an amazing program. I wish that there were more women who applied and were able to invest the money and time into the program. It's owners and entrepreneurs who have companies around the world. There's 41 countries represented. Unfortunately, only about 17% of women of the 161 participants in class. We meet three times once a year and we go through three weeks of intensive training to discuss marketing, finance, how to scale, operations. But the best thing you get out of it is one, 30% of it is learning this case studies method in Harvard. The other 30% is really the network and the different industries you get to meet. We have film, as you know, we've talked about, retail and other industries there that you can self-reflect on to how does that involve with technology? And then the other 30 is self-reflection time. A lot of entrepreneurs, especially CEOs, don't have the time to get away from their business. And it really forces you to not be the operator, walk away and be able to self-reflect on where do you want to take the business today? And speaking about networking, what's your advice on networking within the industry? What are some tips and tricks? In my belief, you know, we have social media, but the best way to meet people is through other people. So going to events like this and really having an idea of your goals at the event when you're going there, who's going to help you get to that person? And having a focus. Not, I want to meet 180 people and I don't know who they're going to be. Really being able to say, who do I want to meet at that event? Who can help me get there and prepare and plan as much triple the time that you're going to be even at the event. Yeah, so networking can be really difficult. So as an entrepreneur, what do you think makes a great entrepreneur? You know, entrepreneurship is very hard because you really have to touch all facets of a company and find the right people to trust to do certain areas, but then be able to understand all the different parts of the company, right? From supply chain to partnerships to sales and finance. So you really have to be diverse and ambidextrous and that makes it very difficult for some people who are only analytical or only sales-y to be able to run a company and scale. And what advice do you have for female technologists who maybe feel that, oh, it's really difficult to navigate in this male dominated industry? I would say to them, they'll stand out, make your difference stand out, right? Why make it as negative? The positive is you are female and you stand out so less men get called on by you and you might have a chance to get in the door, but you better have your ideas in line and your resources and you better be kick ass, but use it to your advantage that you are different and that they're not used to hearing from women. So you've been with Cloud Now for many years now. Where do you hope to see Cloud Now in the future? I would love to see Cloud Now be more geographically worldwide as we're doing more work in my nonprofit for women in Rwanda and Afghanistan as entrepreneurs. And I think we've upped and stepped up so much more with Facebook bringing in investments to us compared to what we've done before. I think just the awareness and maybe doing this on a twice a year basis instead of only once a year to be able to celebrate these wonderful women. Dow, thank you so much for being on theCUBE. This has been really knowledgeable. Thank you for having me. I'm Sonia Tagari. Thank you for watching theCUBE. Stay tuned for more.