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Lounibos on SOASTA Technology (Audio) · Bloomberg Intelligence

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  Speaker 1: He could have been a contender in baseball, but he
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  Speaker 1: decided he was going to be a success in the
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  Speaker 1: world of technology. Tom Lunabus is the chief executive of
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  Speaker 1: SOSTA and he joins us now in studio. Tom, thanks
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  Speaker 1: for coming in. Great to be here, Thanks for having me.
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  Speaker 1: All right, do the quick setup, because I bet if
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  Speaker 1: I went to the University of San Francisco, I think
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  Speaker 1: I'd find something that would be a remnant of your
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  Speaker 1: infielder status. Way too much insider baseball knowledge there. Um. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I'm a little unique in the Silicon Valley where we're
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  Speaker 1: a tech community made up of engineers. And I an
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  Speaker 1: odd career in sports where I played baseball for four
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  Speaker 1: years under a kind of a legend in USF and
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  Speaker 1: what started off as being talked into going to play,
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  Speaker 1: I ended up being in the Hall of Fame at
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  Speaker 1: us F, bait for Baseball and drafted by the Minnesota Twins.
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  Speaker 1: And but you know, life always has different crossing points
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  Speaker 1: than I ended up going into tech and not. There's
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  Speaker 1: not a lot of us that actually gotten that direction.
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  Speaker 1: So tell us about SOLS Tess tells how you got
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  Speaker 1: connected in what the company does. Well, So does a
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  Speaker 1: really kind of cool company in terms of the customers
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  Speaker 1: we use. You know, we we we work for UH
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  Speaker 1: five largest digital brands in the world, and as a company,
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  Speaker 1: it's it's a little bit of a story of getting
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  Speaker 1: the band back together again. Ken Gardner and I started
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  Speaker 1: a company back in the nineties around analytics Advanced Analytics UM,
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  Speaker 1: and we started seeing as more brands we're going to
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  Speaker 1: go direct to consumers with marketing campaigns selling a million
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  Speaker 1: tickets for the Olympic Games, or a new iPhone seven
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  Speaker 1: gets launched, that they're going to drive a lot of
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  Speaker 1: traffic to web and mobile applications. And the thing that
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  Speaker 1: we all understand, if that site is down or if
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  Speaker 1: it's slow, all of us consumers are three clicks away
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  Speaker 1: from buying the same thing from somebody else. So we
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  Speaker 1: built a platform UM that in some ways mimics what
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  Speaker 1: Amazon does in terms of understanding customer experience and a
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  Speaker 1: platform that allows our brand ends are five digital brands
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  Speaker 1: to simulate Cyber Monday and Black Friday and Halloween and
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  Speaker 1: and in big marketing events or or UM you know,
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  Speaker 1: for hallmarket's UH their super bowl is Valentine's Day where
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  Speaker 1: they get so many folks coming through so we're helping
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  Speaker 1: them understand their customers online and we're improving their perform. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: so you also have the c p I and index
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  Speaker 1: that measures how users respond to the digital experience and
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  Speaker 1: how speed and response is nous of the side influences
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  Speaker 1: engagement and conversion rates. Digital speed. You know, we've all
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  Speaker 1: kind of become addicted to it, and I think at
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  Speaker 1: the same time also we kind of fight against that addiction.
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  Speaker 1: It's neural. I mean, you know, speed is kind of
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  Speaker 1: inbred into us in all ways. And what we've been
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  Speaker 1: able to analyze is that we go on these websites
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  Speaker 1: and if they're slow, um, we're not very happy. And
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  Speaker 1: so the engagement with the customer is usually cut short.
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  Speaker 1: They may not watch the full video if they're fat Austin,
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  Speaker 1: you're liking what the experiences, You're more engaged, and that's
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  Speaker 1: the key to the game. So what is the number
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  Speaker 1: one thing people do wrong? It makes a slow experience.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm the first one I really want to watch
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  Speaker 1: a video online. I just want the information I want
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  Speaker 1: to read. It would be really enticing for me to
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  Speaker 1: watch the video. Well, sometimes it's the video itself, it's
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  Speaker 1: the content and how long they play it. So you know,
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  Speaker 1: if you play some videos at fourteen seconds versus ten seconds,
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  Speaker 1: you'll see a drop off of lots of different consumers.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's just creating a marketing event where everybody goes
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  Speaker 1: to the website at one time, so it could be load.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes it hasn't been optimized to you know, the device
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  Speaker 1: that you're particular to or the browser you're not particular too.
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  Speaker 1: So it's a very you know, delivering um brand and
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  Speaker 1: consumerism to to the marketplace is very complex and sophisticated
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  Speaker 1: these days, and what these brands are getting is very
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  Speaker 1: sophisticated on how they understand the consumer experience. But it's
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  Speaker 1: a lot of things that create something that could break.
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  Speaker 1: Tell us about the public cloud, how do you do
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  Speaker 1: subscribe it to people? And describe also the growth that
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  Speaker 1: you're seeing there and why it's relevant. And we're particularly
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  Speaker 1: interesting in that area because we built the company around
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  Speaker 1: cloud computing when there was very little cloud computing. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: I was in when we introduced Sosta. The gentleman that
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  Speaker 1: introduced us was the founder of cloud computing. It's Andy
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  Speaker 1: Jassey who runs Amazon z Aws and Andy h This
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  Speaker 1: was at the first cloud event back in two thousand
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  Speaker 1: and eight. What made it interesting for our use case,
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  Speaker 1: and our use case became particularly interested in cloud computing
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  Speaker 1: computing industry was I needed a thousand servers for a
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  Speaker 1: very short period time. In other words, the way that
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  Speaker 1: we test these applications is we have to simulate millions
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  Speaker 1: of consumers going to the sites, and you may need
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  Speaker 1: a thousand servers to do. No one had a thousand
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  Speaker 1: servers in their test lab. And so what cloud computing
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  Speaker 1: does is it gives you, especially public clouds, gives you
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  Speaker 1: access and availability and affordability to capacities server capacities which
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  Speaker 1: I needed and I consume in large ways, and I
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  Speaker 1: can only pay. I only pay for what I use,
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  Speaker 1: so I will only I may pay forty cents an
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  Speaker 1: hour for for a server, but if I'm using a
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  Speaker 1: thousand servers for six hours, it's a very small amount
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  Speaker 1: comparatively buying him for the the whole quick final question, Uh,
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  Speaker 1: how do you make money on this? Well, all of
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  Speaker 1: you know there's over two trillion dollars that are transacted
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  Speaker 1: online every every year, and so our ability to save
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  Speaker 1: and um to make sure that those two trillion dollars
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  Speaker 1: actually get done is the key to the game. So
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  Speaker 1: where the insurance policy for the industry. I like the
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  Speaker 1: insurance is a very lucrative business. Tom Lunabus, thank you
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  Speaker 1: so very much. He's chief executive officer at SOSTA. He's
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  Speaker 1: based in San Francisco, joining us in New York. This
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  Speaker 1: is Bloomberg