Snowflake Data Cloud Summit 2024 | Stefan Williams | Snowflake, Jayne Strickland & Mike Lukianoff | SignalFlare.ai

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Stefan Williams

VP, Snowflake Ventures

Snowflake

Jayne Strickland

CCO

SignalFlare.ai

Michael Lukianoff

CEO

SignalFlare.ai

Snowflake Data Cloud Summit unveils transformative potential for data-driven solutions

The recent discussion at the Snowflake Data Cloud Summit highlighted the transformative potential of data-driven solutions, particularly for industries facing complex challenges.The pandemic disrupted traditional business models across various industries, prompting a reevaluation of how data is used to navigate new market realities and provide insights for pricing, Jayne Strickland (pictured, left), co-founder and chief customer officer of SignalFlare.ai Inc. explained.SignalFlare.ai’s Jayne Strickland and Mike Lukianoff are joined by Snowflake’s Stefan Williamsas they talk to theCUBE about Snowflake Data Cloud.“Pricing is not just cost, it’s about the whole value equation

play_circle_outline Introduction to the Snowflake Data Cloud Summit and the panel of Snowflake Challenge winners.

play_circle_outline Explanation of the Snowflake Startup Challenge and its purpose.

play_circle_outline Criteria for selecting a winner in the Startup Challenge.

play_circle_outline How Data Cleanrooms Ensure Analytical Integrity and Snowflake's Platform Drives Unparalleled Customer Value

play_circle_outline Recognition of other finalists in the Snowflake Challenge.

Info

Stefan Williams | Snowflake, Jayne Strickland & Mike Lukianoff | SignalFlare.ai

Stefan Williams

VP, Snowflake Ventures Snowflake

Jayne Strickland

CCO SignalFlare.ai

Michael Lukianoff

CEO SignalFlare.ai

search

Rebecca Knight

>> Hello, everyone and welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of the Snowflake Data Cloud Summit here at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, here with Dave Velante, my co-host and co-analyst. This panel is going to be really fun today. We are talking to the Snowflake Challenge winners. So I'd first like to introduce Stefan Williams. He is the VP Corporate Development and Snowflake Ventures at Snowflake. Welcome Stefan. Mike Lukianoff, CEO of SignalFlare.io. Welcome. And Janie Strickland, Chief Customer Officer at SignalFlare.io. I can't wait to talk to you about SignalFlare.io, but I want to start with you Stefan, to explain a little bit about the Snowflake Startup challenge. What are you trying to do here?

Stefan Williams

>> The Startup Challenge is an incredible opportunity for young, early stage companies who are looking to build innovative technologies around data to build that hopefully on Snowflake and use the go-to-market channel and the openings that it provides, but also as a platform to help stand up and accelerate innovation and deliver product to market. And so it's been an incredible journey across a number of years now. I think we've had, I think there was over nearly a thousand registered applications from over a hundred different countries. So it's a truly global competition that really does allow startups' a platform and a voice to go and to speak to customers and partners at the summit.

Rebecca Knight

>> And what are you looking for in a winner?

Stefan Williams

>> I mean, there's lots of things and some of the judges covered it right around team and product quality. I think for me it's to what extent is Snowflake's core underlying data components being utilized and how forward-thinking are companies thinking about that as it relates to things around native applications, Snowflake container services, Streamlit. So use of Snowflake is a core component of infrastructure, and then allowing data to bleed into areas of interest, whether that's on different industries as we have here with SignalFlare, but also different personas across the enterprise. Think about CMOs and CFOs and CROs. How are they able to get access to data that is in the enterprise in a seamless experience that some of these third party application providers are building?

Rebecca Knight

>> So that's secret, innovative sauce. Well, I would like to bring Mike into this conversation. Bring us back to when you started this company, what was the problem that you saw and you wanted to solve?

>> So what we were really trying to help was using data to help people solve big, high-impact problems. So a lot of say data companies are just sort of stacking data on top of data, on top of data, and it's actually creating more headaches, more confusion than it is actually helping them make decisions. So we wanted to figure out how do we distill the data down to actually help these companies turn it into an actual decision by telling them what the consequences of the decision are going to be. In order to do that, we need to identify what are the high impact questions that we can answer so that in adopting the platform, we can actually identify, well, how does it actually impact the business enough in a way that's actually going to pay for itself?

Rebecca Knight

>> So let's back up here though. In terms of when you started it, you were really inspired by what was happening to restaurants in the pandemic, and you actually had worked in restaurants earlier in your career. Tell us a little bit about what you were seeing out there.

>> Well, going way back in time, Janie and I both were restaurant operators, and that's going back to the 90s for me.

Rebecca Knight

>> It's okay.

Rebecca Knight

>> But then I worked in startups and data startups in the restaurant industry for, I mean this is, for me, it's gone back 25 years focused on pricing solutions and data solutions within restaurants. I actually exited from my last company in I think 2017, 2018. And going into the pandemic, a lot of the models that I had built as I think a lot of people experienced, they just didn't work anymore because you needed some period of stable demand in order to make a lot of these models that used to work, work. So we had to go back to the drawing board and figure out a new way of looking at the data and working with the data. So we started pulling in different kinds of data sets, mobile data and credit card data and local economic data to really get at the root of what drives the demand for restaurants before we start pulling in point-of-sale data. So we really turned some of the models completely upside down, and in doing that, we also had to look at a completely different data stack. And when I started working with Snowflake, I hadn't personally done a lot of coding and data work myself. At that point, I had been working at my own team for a little while, and when I started doing it myself, I was just floored by how easy Snowflake made it and the model started working better and moving the data and our ability to clean the data and blend so many different data sources. It was so much easier than it was when I started my company some dozen years before. And that's when it really dawned on me that times have changed so much. And what Snowflake was doing was really shifting the entire market and that was going to open up the door for us to be able to take some of the things that we were doing to completely different customer and be able to scale it in a way that and answer questions that we just weren't able to before.

Rebecca Knight

>> So Janie, you get a call from your old colleague, Mike, who says, "I've been doing some coding and I've got this idea." You were intrigued. Tell us a little bit about what brought you to SignalFlare.io AI.

>> Sure. I've worked with Mike before many years and in the data science and the pricing world, so I already had some exposure to his... We already had some very successful times together and my job had been disrupted at the time too, due to COVID situation. And Mike reached out and said, "Yeah, I'm doing some work for Brand A and I'm actually doing my own coding, and this new mobile data is really giving us a new edge on how we can bring the external demand into the equation to help enrich the models of pricing that we've been working on for decades. Do you want to join me?" I'm like, well, if you're doing your own coding and there must be something about Snowflake, and now we have additional data sets that Snowflake helped us manage in a more efficient manner, we can spread this to brands of all sizes. We can go down market, which is really who needs this most, right? The smaller brands, emerging brands, even mid-size brands in their own development journey. Pricing, it's a make or break thing. If you do it well, everybody gets a raise. We do it poorly and it's hard to retract. So we really, helping these smaller brands, emerging brands, medium-sized brands, helping them sort of not get out over their skis. It's a really important time for them to price right.

Rebecca Knight

>> Particularly in this inflationary environment when shoppers are more budget conscious.

>> Yes, I mean we have seen, what did we calculate? Like 30% over the last two years, 30% price increase across really all segments. That's really just kind of mind-boggling. Now, the past couple of years there was a lot more happening. Nowadays, that's more moderate. But yeah, pricing is not just cost, it's about the whole value equation. It underscores the whole value equation. So we bring in certainly the customer external demand pieces. We're bringing in customer satisfaction. The other factors that are part of the equation, there's all new channels like consumers, you probably know yourself, do you order delivery sometime? Do you just want to get food? I want to go out, have a nice experience with a colleague, with the family. So restaurants are providing experiences in all different ways, but these new channels, these external channels are adding even another dimension to the price conversation.

Rebecca Knight

>> So what has the feedback been from the customers that you are working with in terms of how SignalFlare AI is changing the way they, as you said, deliver experiences to customers?

>> So they are looking for... We like to say they're looking for a good night's sleep pricing decision.

Rebecca Knight

>> In the restaurant industry, you don't get many of those.

>> That's very hard to find, right? Pricing decision, it is very challenging and it can be daunting. And we want to help those business leaders get to the decision line with more wisdom and confidence. So as Mike said earlier, we're actually presenting them with scenarios of the possibilities of what could happen if you take course A, B, or C. And then they can decide what's their risk tolerance and they choose the option that works best for them. So I think that's something that for them, they're like, I have a lot more confidence. They want to know how the sausage is made. So we spend a lot of time, part of it's even an education of what matters, what's important to your business, listening to them, but here's what matters in the pricing equation. And then yeah, we certainly weigh in on what our recommendation, what we think they should do. But so really it's a confidence factor.

>> One of the things that we're really excited about, especially with where Snowflake is going, is all of the different kinds of apps and native apps that can be delivered. So we have a recommendation engine, but then we also are able to now start delivering that directly to the restaurants. So with the smaller types of restaurants, being able to deliver the apps that go directly to the restaurants, we're also working with point-of-sale register companies so that we can actually push the right prices directly to the registers. And when we work with the large enterprises, we can work with Snowflake data shares so that they can just bypass everything and we could just push it right into their data warehouse so that we're just running the models and then it pushes directly into their data warehouse so that they can handle it within their own systems.

Stefan Williams

>> Maybe just to say, so this is incredible to see what you guys are saying at SignalFlare, but also when Max came up and actually just before the announcement was made that you guys won, they kind of say the similar thing in that by building on a platform like Snowflake, that the ability to move quickly and deliver real value to customers by standing on the infrastructure we have has been incredible for them. And then the channel that it allows them to go and sell into much bigger customers because of the friction that's taken out of data movement. And then you add to that things like the marketplace where you have data products now that you can actually augment your own applications with to drive additional value, it starts to really become a differentiator when you are powered on top of Snowflake because of infrastructure that you can stand on. The friction that's taken out of the sales process and the actual data that you're getting is really impactful to the business. So it's great to hear you say that because I was here last year with the guys and they were kind of saying something similar and a year on, they've just done a significant series A raise and they're off to the races with, I think, meaningful revenue growth, which is great.

>> And that's what it all comes down to is getting rid of that friction. And especially when you're working with customers, it works at the enterprise level, but also with smaller groups that might not have the technical savvy and they're trying to figure out how to get better access to their data. And if they don't have to work with lots of different APIs and the data moving around, you set them up in Snowflake and get the data shares. And now we're working on setting up Snowflake clean rooms so that we can also set up and work with their PII data without having to get any of that. They can mask all the data, integrate that into the analysis so that we can get also customer-specific, right? So the whole world is changing before our eyes.

Stefan Williams

>> I love that point. The data cleanroom piece is actually really important because now you're not only getting access to third party data that's normal data that everyone can get access to. You can actually now set up data clear rooms between one or multiple parties and actually retain analytical integrity of that data without exposing the PII, which you were just saying. So now if you're powered on top of Snowflake using the platform, you're actually having a unique data differentiator in delivering that solution that actually can serve as a wedge to get in and actually deliver value. So I love that you said that. Thank you.

Rebecca Knight

>> And I don't want to steal SignalFlare AI's thunder, but there were two other great finalists. I want to give them a shout-out. BigGeo and Scientific Financial Systems. Do you want to tell our viewers a little bit about each of those companies too?

Stefan Williams

>> I think as it relates to what Snowflake can offer in terms of a platform and how that gets bled into different industries, I think BigGeo as it relates to geospatial data, did an incredible job in extending the platform and using some of the innovative features around native apps. And then-

Rebecca Knight

>> Scientific Financial....

Stefan Williams

>> Scientific Financial, they have the asset management platform. So they're going to disrupt how analysts or financial analysts are able to use data to drive business and investment decisions. So I mean, that was just two. Again, we had nearly a thousand applicants across every single industry you can imagine. And I think that's really the power of it. Once you can have the data kind of consistently in a common underlying horizontal infrastructure like Snowflake, the ability to go and unlock the value across these different industries, now entrepreneurs like SignalFlare and the thousands of others to come onto the platform and really drive that value, for me as a Snowflake Venture member, I feel like it's a super exciting opportunity with this native app framework that we've got going.

Rebecca Knight

>> So Mike and Janie, I want to let you have the last word here because it really is a moment for both of you in your careers, particularly, you had just exited from your company, you're kicking around looking for projects to dig in on. You had a pandemic job issue, and now here you are as the Snowflake challenge winners. What does it mean for you at this point in your career, in your professional life, but also what does it mean for SignalFlare's next moves? Janie, do you want to start?

>> Sure. I think what does this mean at this moment in time? It's like a breath of fresh air or a release. As you can imagine, the startup world is gritty and it's tough, and you're wearing a lot of hats. And for me, I'm taking a breath like, wow, this is going to be a trajectory. We're going to springboard to who knows where? I mean, we think we know where, but there's probably things we haven't even thought of yet. So professionally, I think just being seen and the hard work that we're doing, this business, pricing is like the hub and spoke. Sometimes you don't have the opportunity to take a price change. There are other adjacent things that we can activate. So I guess being seen in terms of that, that we are a pricing provider, but we're much more than that. Excited to see where this takes us.

Rebecca Knight

>> Indeed, Mike?

>> Yeah, when I started working with data, people weren't really working with data. They're kind of like, oh, are you a researcher? It's like, no, I'm not a researcher. I'm pulling point of sale data out of registers and trying to understand behavior. And who are you doing it for? Restaurants. So you're a restaurant technology? No, not really. Nobody really understood what I was doing. This was even before the word data scientists came up, which I thought was kind of weird. It's like, are there scientists who don't use data?

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah, good point. Good point.

>> Yeah. And even when we applied for the challenge, we're like, yeah, restaurant technology and data.

Rebecca Knight

>> Are they going to buy it?

>> Yeah, we'll give it a shot. What are the chances of us winning? But it is a huge validation. It's been a long career and we're really proud of what we're doing, really proud of the team and just being here was a win for us. And to win is just sort of mind-boggling for us. So we're really excited and really proud of the team.

Rebecca Knight

>> Any hints on what's next for SignalFlare AI?

>> Well, I think what's really exciting for us is that, look, I set up... I set things up. I've been through a few startups before. We set things up, not taking really any outside capital. So we're in a really good position, but now we need to really get ready for growth and we're ready to do that because I don't want to be what slows us down. So we've got more inbound requests for what we're doing than we can keep pace with right now, which is also a good place to be.

Rebecca Knight

>> A good sign. Indeed.

Rebecca Knight

>> So we got to start developing and marketing and selling, and we need to speed up. So it's an exciting place to be.

>> And I think what it's going to mean for the industry too, this industry really needs this technology. And we're also Snowflake fans, so we talk about you all the time with our clients. But I think just being able to help people, empower them to make their own decisions around whatever is the burning question at the time, that's really powerful.

Rebecca Knight

>> Indeed.

>> And just building on that, this week and seeing what Snowflake is doing with enterprise AI. AI has become a buzzword in a lot of ways. And we've had machine learning under the hood for a really long time, so I even shy away from it just because people just think you're talking the book or whatever. But enterprise AI is changing things. It's going to change things because it's really harnessing all of it and making it work in practical situations. And all of the sessions that I've attended this week, I'm looking at how we've built all of our models and it's actually built for us so that we can actually bring it all together, make it more efficient, harness the power that's out there and actually use it in practical situations. Not just to say, I've got AI under the hood, right? So I'm really excited about what Snowflake is doing and how it's going to super power what we've already got going.

Rebecca Knight

>> Excellent. Well, I wish you the best of luck, a really great story. Mike, Janie, Stefan, thank you both so much. Thank you all so much for coming on theCUBE.

Rebecca Knight

>> Thank you.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm Rebecca Knight. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of the Snowflake Data Cloud Summit. You are watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news and analysis.

Stefan Williams | Snowflake, Jayne Strickland & Mike Lukianoff | SignalFlare.ai

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Rebecca Knight

>> Hello, everyone and welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of the Snowflake Data Cloud Summit here at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, here with Dave Velante, my co-host and co-analyst. This panel is going to be really fun today. We are talking to the Snowflake Challenge winners. So I'd first like to introduce Stefan Williams. He is the VP Corporate Development and Snowflake Ventures at Snowflake. Welcome Stefan. Mike Lukianoff, CEO of SignalFlare.io. Welcome. And Janie Strickland, Chief Customer Officer at SignalFlare.io. I can't wait to talk to you about SignalFlare.io, but I want to start with you Stefan, to explain a little bit about the Snowflake Startup challenge. What are you trying to do here?

Stefan Williams

>> The Startup Challenge is an incredible opportunity for young, early stage companies who are looking to build innovative technologies around data to build that hopefully on Snowflake and use the go-to-market channel and the openings that it provides, but also as a platform to help stand up and accelerate innovation and deliver product to market. And so it's been an incredible journey across a number of years now. I think we've had, I think there was over nearly a thousand registered applications from over a hundred different countries. So it's a truly global competition that really does allow startups' a platform and a voice to go and to speak to customers and partners at the summit.

Rebecca Knight

>> And what are you looking for in a winner?

Stefan Williams

>> I mean, there's lots of things and some of the judges covered it right around team and product quality. I think for me it's to what extent is Snowflake's core underlying data components being utilized and how forward-thinking are companies thinking about that as it relates to things around native applications, Snowflake container services, Streamlit. So use of Snowflake is a core component of infrastructure, and then allowing data to bleed into areas of interest, whether that's on different industries as we have here with SignalFlare, but also different personas across the enterprise. Think about CMOs and CFOs and CROs. How are they able to get access to data that is in the enterprise in a seamless experience that some of these third party application providers are building?

Rebecca Knight

>> So that's secret, innovative sauce. Well, I would like to bring Mike into this conversation. Bring us back to when you started this company, what was the problem that you saw and you wanted to solve?

>> So what we were really trying to help was using data to help people solve big, high-impact problems. So a lot of say data companies are just sort of stacking data on top of data, on top of data, and it's actually creating more headaches, more confusion than it is actually helping them make decisions. So we wanted to figure out how do we distill the data down to actually help these companies turn it into an actual decision by telling them what the consequences of the decision are going to be. In order to do that, we need to identify what are the high impact questions that we can answer so that in adopting the platform, we can actually identify, well, how does it actually impact the business enough in a way that's actually going to pay for itself?

Rebecca Knight

>> So let's back up here though. In terms of when you started it, you were really inspired by what was happening to restaurants in the pandemic, and you actually had worked in restaurants earlier in your career. Tell us a little bit about what you were seeing out there.

>> Well, going way back in time, Janie and I both were restaurant operators, and that's going back to the 90s for me.

Rebecca Knight

>> It's okay.

Rebecca Knight

>> But then I worked in startups and data startups in the restaurant industry for, I mean this is, for me, it's gone back 25 years focused on pricing solutions and data solutions within restaurants. I actually exited from my last company in I think 2017, 2018. And going into the pandemic, a lot of the models that I had built as I think a lot of people experienced, they just didn't work anymore because you needed some period of stable demand in order to make a lot of these models that used to work, work. So we had to go back to the drawing board and figure out a new way of looking at the data and working with the data. So we started pulling in different kinds of data sets, mobile data and credit card data and local economic data to really get at the root of what drives the demand for restaurants before we start pulling in point-of-sale data. So we really turned some of the models completely upside down, and in doing that, we also had to look at a completely different data stack. And when I started working with Snowflake, I hadn't personally done a lot of coding and data work myself. At that point, I had been working at my own team for a little while, and when I started doing it myself, I was just floored by how easy Snowflake made it and the model started working better and moving the data and our ability to clean the data and blend so many different data sources. It was so much easier than it was when I started my company some dozen years before. And that's when it really dawned on me that times have changed so much. And what Snowflake was doing was really shifting the entire market and that was going to open up the door for us to be able to take some of the things that we were doing to completely different customer and be able to scale it in a way that and answer questions that we just weren't able to before.

Rebecca Knight

>> So Janie, you get a call from your old colleague, Mike, who says, "I've been doing some coding and I've got this idea." You were intrigued. Tell us a little bit about what brought you to SignalFlare.io AI.

>> Sure. I've worked with Mike before many years and in the data science and the pricing world, so I already had some exposure to his... We already had some very successful times together and my job had been disrupted at the time too, due to COVID situation. And Mike reached out and said, "Yeah, I'm doing some work for Brand A and I'm actually doing my own coding, and this new mobile data is really giving us a new edge on how we can bring the external demand into the equation to help enrich the models of pricing that we've been working on for decades. Do you want to join me?" I'm like, well, if you're doing your own coding and there must be something about Snowflake, and now we have additional data sets that Snowflake helped us manage in a more efficient manner, we can spread this to brands of all sizes. We can go down market, which is really who needs this most, right? The smaller brands, emerging brands, even mid-size brands in their own development journey. Pricing, it's a make or break thing. If you do it well, everybody gets a raise. We do it poorly and it's hard to retract. So we really, helping these smaller brands, emerging brands, medium-sized brands, helping them sort of not get out over their skis. It's a really important time for them to price right.

Rebecca Knight

>> Particularly in this inflationary environment when shoppers are more budget conscious.

>> Yes, I mean we have seen, what did we calculate? Like 30% over the last two years, 30% price increase across really all segments. That's really just kind of mind-boggling. Now, the past couple of years there was a lot more happening. Nowadays, that's more moderate. But yeah, pricing is not just cost, it's about the whole value equation. It underscores the whole value equation. So we bring in certainly the customer external demand pieces. We're bringing in customer satisfaction. The other factors that are part of the equation, there's all new channels like consumers, you probably know yourself, do you order delivery sometime? Do you just want to get food? I want to go out, have a nice experience with a colleague, with the family. So restaurants are providing experiences in all different ways, but these new channels, these external channels are adding even another dimension to the price conversation.

Rebecca Knight

>> So what has the feedback been from the customers that you are working with in terms of how SignalFlare AI is changing the way they, as you said, deliver experiences to customers?

>> So they are looking for... We like to say they're looking for a good night's sleep pricing decision.

Rebecca Knight

>> In the restaurant industry, you don't get many of those.

>> That's very hard to find, right? Pricing decision, it is very challenging and it can be daunting. And we want to help those business leaders get to the decision line with more wisdom and confidence. So as Mike said earlier, we're actually presenting them with scenarios of the possibilities of what could happen if you take course A, B, or C. And then they can decide what's their risk tolerance and they choose the option that works best for them. So I think that's something that for them, they're like, I have a lot more confidence. They want to know how the sausage is made. So we spend a lot of time, part of it's even an education of what matters, what's important to your business, listening to them, but here's what matters in the pricing equation. And then yeah, we certainly weigh in on what our recommendation, what we think they should do. But so really it's a confidence factor.

>> One of the things that we're really excited about, especially with where Snowflake is going, is all of the different kinds of apps and native apps that can be delivered. So we have a recommendation engine, but then we also are able to now start delivering that directly to the restaurants. So with the smaller types of restaurants, being able to deliver the apps that go directly to the restaurants, we're also working with point-of-sale register companies so that we can actually push the right prices directly to the registers. And when we work with the large enterprises, we can work with Snowflake data shares so that they can just bypass everything and we could just push it right into their data warehouse so that we're just running the models and then it pushes directly into their data warehouse so that they can handle it within their own systems.

Stefan Williams

>> Maybe just to say, so this is incredible to see what you guys are saying at SignalFlare, but also when Max came up and actually just before the announcement was made that you guys won, they kind of say the similar thing in that by building on a platform like Snowflake, that the ability to move quickly and deliver real value to customers by standing on the infrastructure we have has been incredible for them. And then the channel that it allows them to go and sell into much bigger customers because of the friction that's taken out of data movement. And then you add to that things like the marketplace where you have data products now that you can actually augment your own applications with to drive additional value, it starts to really become a differentiator when you are powered on top of Snowflake because of infrastructure that you can stand on. The friction that's taken out of the sales process and the actual data that you're getting is really impactful to the business. So it's great to hear you say that because I was here last year with the guys and they were kind of saying something similar and a year on, they've just done a significant series A raise and they're off to the races with, I think, meaningful revenue growth, which is great.

>> And that's what it all comes down to is getting rid of that friction. And especially when you're working with customers, it works at the enterprise level, but also with smaller groups that might not have the technical savvy and they're trying to figure out how to get better access to their data. And if they don't have to work with lots of different APIs and the data moving around, you set them up in Snowflake and get the data shares. And now we're working on setting up Snowflake clean rooms so that we can also set up and work with their PII data without having to get any of that. They can mask all the data, integrate that into the analysis so that we can get also customer-specific, right? So the whole world is changing before our eyes.

Stefan Williams

>> I love that point. The data cleanroom piece is actually really important because now you're not only getting access to third party data that's normal data that everyone can get access to. You can actually now set up data clear rooms between one or multiple parties and actually retain analytical integrity of that data without exposing the PII, which you were just saying. So now if you're powered on top of Snowflake using the platform, you're actually having a unique data differentiator in delivering that solution that actually can serve as a wedge to get in and actually deliver value. So I love that you said that. Thank you.

Rebecca Knight

>> And I don't want to steal SignalFlare AI's thunder, but there were two other great finalists. I want to give them a shout-out. BigGeo and Scientific Financial Systems. Do you want to tell our viewers a little bit about each of those companies too?

Stefan Williams

>> I think as it relates to what Snowflake can offer in terms of a platform and how that gets bled into different industries, I think BigGeo as it relates to geospatial data, did an incredible job in extending the platform and using some of the innovative features around native apps. And then-

Rebecca Knight

>> Scientific Financial....

Stefan Williams

>> Scientific Financial, they have the asset management platform. So they're going to disrupt how analysts or financial analysts are able to use data to drive business and investment decisions. So I mean, that was just two. Again, we had nearly a thousand applicants across every single industry you can imagine. And I think that's really the power of it. Once you can have the data kind of consistently in a common underlying horizontal infrastructure like Snowflake, the ability to go and unlock the value across these different industries, now entrepreneurs like SignalFlare and the thousands of others to come onto the platform and really drive that value, for me as a Snowflake Venture member, I feel like it's a super exciting opportunity with this native app framework that we've got going.

Rebecca Knight

>> So Mike and Janie, I want to let you have the last word here because it really is a moment for both of you in your careers, particularly, you had just exited from your company, you're kicking around looking for projects to dig in on. You had a pandemic job issue, and now here you are as the Snowflake challenge winners. What does it mean for you at this point in your career, in your professional life, but also what does it mean for SignalFlare's next moves? Janie, do you want to start?

>> Sure. I think what does this mean at this moment in time? It's like a breath of fresh air or a release. As you can imagine, the startup world is gritty and it's tough, and you're wearing a lot of hats. And for me, I'm taking a breath like, wow, this is going to be a trajectory. We're going to springboard to who knows where? I mean, we think we know where, but there's probably things we haven't even thought of yet. So professionally, I think just being seen and the hard work that we're doing, this business, pricing is like the hub and spoke. Sometimes you don't have the opportunity to take a price change. There are other adjacent things that we can activate. So I guess being seen in terms of that, that we are a pricing provider, but we're much more than that. Excited to see where this takes us.

Rebecca Knight

>> Indeed, Mike?

>> Yeah, when I started working with data, people weren't really working with data. They're kind of like, oh, are you a researcher? It's like, no, I'm not a researcher. I'm pulling point of sale data out of registers and trying to understand behavior. And who are you doing it for? Restaurants. So you're a restaurant technology? No, not really. Nobody really understood what I was doing. This was even before the word data scientists came up, which I thought was kind of weird. It's like, are there scientists who don't use data?

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah, good point. Good point.

>> Yeah. And even when we applied for the challenge, we're like, yeah, restaurant technology and data.

Rebecca Knight

>> Are they going to buy it?

>> Yeah, we'll give it a shot. What are the chances of us winning? But it is a huge validation. It's been a long career and we're really proud of what we're doing, really proud of the team and just being here was a win for us. And to win is just sort of mind-boggling for us. So we're really excited and really proud of the team.

Rebecca Knight

>> Any hints on what's next for SignalFlare AI?

>> Well, I think what's really exciting for us is that, look, I set up... I set things up. I've been through a few startups before. We set things up, not taking really any outside capital. So we're in a really good position, but now we need to really get ready for growth and we're ready to do that because I don't want to be what slows us down. So we've got more inbound requests for what we're doing than we can keep pace with right now, which is also a good place to be.

Rebecca Knight

>> A good sign. Indeed.

Rebecca Knight

>> So we got to start developing and marketing and selling, and we need to speed up. So it's an exciting place to be.

>> And I think what it's going to mean for the industry too, this industry really needs this technology. And we're also Snowflake fans, so we talk about you all the time with our clients. But I think just being able to help people, empower them to make their own decisions around whatever is the burning question at the time, that's really powerful.

Rebecca Knight

>> Indeed.

>> And just building on that, this week and seeing what Snowflake is doing with enterprise AI. AI has become a buzzword in a lot of ways. And we've had machine learning under the hood for a really long time, so I even shy away from it just because people just think you're talking the book or whatever. But enterprise AI is changing things. It's going to change things because it's really harnessing all of it and making it work in practical situations. And all of the sessions that I've attended this week, I'm looking at how we've built all of our models and it's actually built for us so that we can actually bring it all together, make it more efficient, harness the power that's out there and actually use it in practical situations. Not just to say, I've got AI under the hood, right? So I'm really excited about what Snowflake is doing and how it's going to super power what we've already got going.

Rebecca Knight

>> Excellent. Well, I wish you the best of luck, a really great story. Mike, Janie, Stefan, thank you both so much. Thank you all so much for coming on theCUBE.

Rebecca Knight

>> Thank you.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm Rebecca Knight. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of the Snowflake Data Cloud Summit. You are watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news and analysis.