Jill Stelfox, Panzura | AWS re:Invent 2022

This is texturong TV. Hey everyone. We're back here with our continuing coverage of AWS.

It's really crazy out here. What's AWS reinvent? This 55,000 people here.

We went downstairs recently. Our next guest was down there and keep in mind where in the wind which is really kind of the hotel next to the event and the lobby there is Is chaos to the deal? Yeah, it's a zoo.

That's a good word. I glad you said it. Let me introduce you to Jill steelf Fox Jill welcome.

Thanks for joining us. We're going to talk about your company in a second. But before we do, let's hear a little bit about Jill story.

I am the CEO of panzera. We bought the company two and a half years ago. And before that I worked with a company called zebra and we implemented next-gen stats for the NFL.

So that's what most really only for is all those lines and we see on NFL those are patents that I have really good for you. Yeah, good job on those two and I do know football and I should not join your fantasy league. You can't be anywhere.

Oh, yeah. Oh, there's no I win. How about next year I bring you in is the ringer partner?

Yes, because I it's horrible thing to be the CEO and always be last and I'm a good football fan. I'm banned from playing it and oh, well, I would imagine they probably can't let you play here in Vegas. Yeah two years ago.

We did two fantasy leagues. I played in both because I was trying to be fair, right and I want them both and then they're like now you can't you're done. Well the fact that you did the AWS stats for the NFL probably would preclude you but no one on our team will know right next year.

I'm reaching out. I think I'll double the dues too. Yes.

Yeah, we'll make it. We'll make it worth our while. All right.

You didn't hear that anyway. Let's so what a great story. Let's talk about Panzer.

Yeah. We are a hybrid multi-cloud data management company. And so what we do is we offer a global file system right?

Let you track primary files all over the world move them to who they need to who needs to use them where they are. And then we added on top of it a whole data management layer. So we have a metadata catalog we can tell you everything about what's going on.

Who's using what when what's going on and then my background coming from Sports and everything else is AI and ML and we added this great engine two and a half years ago the coolest part about Panzer and why we bought it is we managed 12 billion snapshots every day all over the world for huge Banks huge hospitals. So we have so much data to drive a data engine on top of so now we can tell you things like are you compliant with gdpr? Are you shipping Healthcare information that has a HIPAA requirement to the wrong place and we can alert it and they can decide what they want to do.

and then that's turned into the next phase that we're super excited about which is ransomware recovery so we can tell you within about two and a half seconds that you have an event and we can tell you what is happening to what files exactly and therefore you can grab them and put them back into production because we have a snapshot because you snapshot of the whole thing. Oh, sorry the whole thing so difficult huge security compliance. It didn't start off that way, but it happened what roads lead to Security in my life.

It's okay. Yeah, but that's pretty amazing stuff. I mean I don't know.

I just sitting here. It's got to be mind-boggling the amount of data we're talking about though. Yes, it is mind-boggling.

We run the training room floors for a large financial institution. We bring data back from space. We do large Hospital systems and all of their lab data.

So without praying too much I got to get this straight now because you kind of got me going when you say we bought pensura who's Lee, so Um my background like I think everybody has superpowers and for some reason my superpowers is seeing Great Tech and being able to turn it into a great company. And so after I left zebra, I formed a company with a partner of mine, we've been working together for 20 years and we started a company called edgy and we did sales and marketing for tech companies that struggled to find a path to Market and if we loved it, we kind of fancied ourselves as investors and we invest like hundred grand, you know, just like a few shekels. Absolutely.

We thought we were Ballers. Yeah, I get it. So we fancied ourselves Ballers.

Yeah. And so that's how we learned about panzera and we came in to do sales and marketing and we just saw they were selling This Global file system, but they didn't have that data management layer. And when I see 12 billion snapshots and trillions of files, I'm like that I and all it.

Yeah, that's a great story. Yeah, we reached out to investor friends that I know that have backed me before and we literally bought the company on May 7th of 2020 right in the middle of covid. So Yes, I remember it.

Well, yeah. Yeah, who crazy time what but it was a good time too because he gave you a chance to you know, in the middle of all this chaos to kind of set it straight there. So we grew in the last two and a half years.

We've grown 485 percent my God and we are cash flow positive good for you. That's a beautiful thing. So you heard a ws3 event?

Yeah. What do you what do you hear see? and think it's a lot of people.

Well, yes, you're on after three years or whatever. It's been of covid seeing this many people in one place. Yeah, I get that.

Um, so we work with all the hyperscalers but I will say AWS is built for the Enterprise and it really is built to have the pieces in terms of the investment that they do and how we work together. We deploy our staff all of our data management services are on AWS. I was I was ashamed to ask you that yeah, they are which is really cool.

That's got to be a huge. It's a huge Advantage right and it's so simple for customers to buy and right and then we go to market with them as well. And so it's a really cool.

Partnership most of our customers. I think we work with two or three of their very of their time again. Yeah, and you know, it's it's been a great relationship and we do all this quite quietly.

Yeah. I'm because I'm sitting here flabbergasted that I mean I've heard of pinsira but I think was before yeah, you got involved and they were okay, you know, yeah pennzura. Yeah, but this is a phenomenal story phenomenal story just to I always like to throw petabytes and stuff like that around.

What are we talking here? Um, that's interesting because we think of it Company by company. I'll tell you this when we bought the company our average ARR was like 50k or something like that when we bought the company it's now mailing its dollars.

Yeah crazy, it's big. So we've changed it completely. What about in terms of your scalability of answer?

Do you see any boundaries or limits on your scalability? No, I think the I don't think that's the boundary where I Envision this so I think storage hasn't changed in the last 20 years and it really longer. Yeah, and it should change and I think this idea of data management where you have one pane of glass is where we're headed.

So we've launched not only can you see into panzura but you can also see into other people's storage and that's where the goodness happens. I think so, we see this scaling on the data management side quite large and that's I mean, it's my love and my background so and it's exactly it is your right in your sweet spot. but see a point where it gets too big.

I don't today because we are very careful. I mean, it's actually funny people ask me all the time. Why don't you do this?

So why don't you do that? It's like what listen when you grow 485% last two and a half years, you gotta pick you battle. You got to pick your battles.

So we don't say yes to everybody and that sounds ridiculous because we're walking into a tough economy, but for us, we only focus on what we know we can be really successful in that's a great. So I'm gonna so, I I'm a bit of a serial entrance entrepreneur myself a nice good 25 30 years doing Venture back startups and stuff and I learned from someone much much smarter than me. That sometimes to be successful business person.

It's the deals. You say no more than the deals you say yes to right. This is the advantage of being older.

Thank you. It might be wiser, but I don't know I learned no, you know what? I got the t-shirts to prove and I've learned these Pleasant.

I spent five million dollars chasing Lehman Brothers accounts only for them to You know, you know what happened to Lehman Brothers actually Mitchell standing here. He was my co-founder there. He'll tell you that.

I have a hat that says Lehman Brother. Yeah. No, I have we were leaving live we were the Lehman live portal.

Yeah, it went live anyway, but that's another story for another interview. But that is an important thing right know what you do it. Well and know what you don't do well and don't do it.

Don't do it. Yeah, and we do. I mean we do some amazing workloads of things where we think we make a big difference and they're always the hardest workloads.

It's actually funny one of our Banking customers. We do all their wire transfer. They're they're large and they called us one day and they said hey, this was I think I own the company maybe three months and they said we're taking over the wire transfers to some for the United States because they can't process wire transfers during covid and I'm like, oh, okay.

Wow, and then I asked that question to my CTO. Can we? Oh we will scale right we good.

That's all you are. We good. Are we good?

No problem. Thankfully. We were good.

Like it's only trillions every minute. I'm like, okay, it's amazing how this stuff works. Let me ask you for people who want to get maybe more information on pins or yeah.

com for sure. Now that I've met you besides being on my fantasy football team next year. I need to keep following this story.

We need this a great story. This is You know, I tell you we look I probably did 10 interviews today and and there's a lot of good stories but there's a really really great story having you thank you. If you're not having fun, don't do it Life's Too Short.

Yeah, I agree with you. All right, we're gonna take a break. We're at AWS reinvent.

We'll be back in a minute. And thanks for joining us.