David Sipes Answers the Call at 8x8

Dave and Evan  discuss life in the UCaaS driver's seat with Dave Sipes, the CEO of 8x8.  We cover XCaaS, the economy, Teams, stadiums, and much more. 

Many of us met Dave during his 12 year stint at RingCentral, ending with the role of Chief Operating Officer. It was an extraordinary period for RingCentral. Dave led innovation, engineering, global sales, marketing, customer care, international operations, corporate development, and business development. Dave left RingCentral in June of 2020 ... and emerged as the CEO of 8x8 in December of 2020.

Before joining RingCentral, Dave was co-founder and COO of Branders.com, the nation’s largest online B2B seller of promotional items. Prior to that, he worked in brand management at PepsiCo and was a principal at Booz Allen Hamilton in their marketing intensive group, providing strategic guidance to marketing and media companies such as Heinz Company, Callaway Golf, and Universal Pictures. Dave also serves on the board of directors of PandaDoc, an all-in-one document automation company that streamlines the process of creating, approving, and eSigning proposals, quotes, and contracts.

He holds a master’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in marketing from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, as well as a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of California, Berkeley.

Transcript

Dave Michels: 0:00

Hey hey, welcome to Talking. Today Evan and I will be speaking with Dave Sykes, the CEO of a buy a but first I haven't you know, I love hosting a podcast with you. But not everyone knows how to access our podcast. You can play it on the web, of course. But there's other ways to why don't you share that?

Evan Kirstel: 0:30

Well, I think everyone under about 50 knows how but just to refresh your recollection. It's on all of the music and podcast players, Spotify, iTunes in the App Store.

Dave Michels: 0:41

Apple has an app store. I

Evan Kirstel: 0:43

didn't know that. Yeah, that's a little $100 billion business, Google Play, and on and on and on. And the most beautiful thing about it, it's completely free to download. There are no ads. And we don't charge guests to appear.

Dave Michels: 0:57

We don't charge guest to appear, although technically we do have a because our podcast is invitation only. And because there's a long line, we have the concept of a bonus episode, which actually is a sponsored episode. And the advantage of that is you get to cut the line.

Evan Kirstel: 1:11

Well, bonuses are good. And I noticed when I listened to podcasts, there are a ton of ads. So I'm really glad we don't do advertising. Speaking of which,

Dave Michels: 1:19

what podcasts Do you listen to? What do you do you have anything on your podcast player besides talking heads?

Evan Kirstel: 1:24

Well, talking heads is one. Number two is This Week in Startups with Jason Calacanis, an amazing daily Silicon Valley based focused podcast on startups. Really fun and interesting. Stuff. Number two, I'm looking now number three is pivot with Scott Galloway, and Kara Swisher. I love those two. They're kind of a smarter version of us. Really fun to listen to. What about you?

Dave Michels: 1:51

I've actually got him looking at it. Now I got a bit more atmosphere than I even more podcasts here than I even realized I had. I guess it kind of happens. I've got different categories. I like the news app. Since I've got three or four news apps. I've got a whole bunch of crypto apps. I don't know how you're doing crypto, not a good time to be talking about crypto, May 2022 is gonna go down and in crypto history is one of the most turbulent, tumultuous months I think ever in crypto history. I've met a lot of these they do the deep dive stuff I got like this Freakonomics or or reply all or Radiolab they go really deep into a lot a lot of esoteric things you didn't Oh, not another good one is an 8% Invisible I like that one. I don't have that Kara Swisher one I have this way this way when when she does interviews, and of course I have quite a few about Portugal. I've been brushing up on Portugal history and Portuguese way of life.

Evan Kirstel: 2:46

Why didn't know you could speak Portuguese. That's That's pretty impressive. Let's get away from the esoteric and go to the mainstream. With our next guest.

Dave Michels: 2:55

Let's get to it.

god: 2:56

Talking. It's a semi monthly podcast with interviews of the top movers and shakers in enterprise communications and collaboration. Your host Dave Michaels and Evan Kirkstall, both of which offer extraordinary services including research, analysis and social media marketing. You can find them on Twitter, LinkedIn, or at talking points.com. That's points with the Z and Evan curse. school.com. That's k r s t e l.

Dave Michels: 3:25

Today we have with us Dave sipes, the CEO of eight by eight. Welcome, Dave.

Dave Sipes: 3:30

Thank you, Dave. Thank you, Evan, I can't believe this first time you've had me on.

Dave Michels: 3:34

We have Brian Martin on a while back. But it's actually been a while since we've heard from me by and you know, we wanted to give you a little time to get comfortable in your new role there.

Dave Sipes: 3:43

Well, I don't think I ever get comfortable. But it's been a great year and a half so far.

Evan Kirstel: 3:49

Well, let's start with RingCentral. It may seem odd to start a question about eight by eight with RingCentral. But you were there for just over 12 years and part of a team that created quite a powerful and impressive company. Let's get the awkwardness out of the way is it? Is it awkward to compete against it now?

Dave Sipes: 4:08

I like how you started that we built a fantastic team. And there's a lot of great people in the industry today that were on that team still at RingCentral and at other companies. So you know want to give a shout out to that team that we built over that era. And is it awkward competing? You know, you always go and compete every day. They're not the only ones we compete against, but we do compete against rang a fair amount. So it's not that awkward. It's something that we're used to competing against all comers. And I know Vlad certainly is awesome.

Dave Michels: 4:43

Let me try a different angle on that. Obviously a CEO and as CEO, you have a big impact on the company culture. So if we go back, let's say five years while you were still at RingCentral then obviously and if you think about that culture at RingCentral say five years ago, we're talking Like 2017 Today, which company is more like that culture? Would you say eight by eight or RingCentral?

Dave Sipes: 5:07

You know, I don't know if I can answer that, because I don't know exactly how the culture is going over there. But we've really focused on a, you know, I call it a CPT culture, customer first product first team first at APA. And that is bringing making the customer number one in what you do. And we talked about hugging the customer, we talked about walking them down the aisle in a hardware store, making sure we solve their problem before we send them out. And product first is about the fact that they're buying not just for what you have today, but a platform that you're going to have forever. And then the team is making sure everyone's knowledgeable, hard working team players. So I think that's part of the core culture that you'll see here. I think you still see that, you know, and that's what we built previously. And it's not only doing that, but giving them the right tools, so they can be very successful. So doing that, and then expanding that to our partners, our retail partners and making them part of the team. So I think the team culture and having hard workers and knowledgeable people are really kind of core to the culture here at APA I think was core, probably how we built RingCentral. Awesome. Okay.

Dave Michels: 6:19

Well, you know, I've known you for a while David, I've always viewed you more as an operational executive. Maybe that's because I've met you as CEO, but but very operationally focused, rather than, you know, some CEOs are more sales focused or, or some are very product focused. Is that assessment? And I have fair, or would you say that's changing? Or, or what are your thoughts on that?

Dave Sipes: 6:41

Well, you know, ring, lads very product oriented person, and in a great way. And so we used to call him user one. But if I had all the product and engineering reporting to me, so I picked up a few tricks along the way. But how I think about product is just two words simple and powerful, is just critical. And this is the opposite of you know, complicated and complex. But powerful is kind of the back end of the product, the reliability, resiliency, the interoperability, the analytics, the AI that goes into the product, and making that super powerful and things you don't see. And then simple, simple in the usability. So how people can get into the product quickly, and understand and capture the capabilities, as well as the presentation layer that you'll see and things like analytics, and the ability to configure just the core needs that you need to configure making that easy to do. So if you bring those together, that's when it starts acting a little like magic. And so the simple and powerful is really a product philosophy, like I like to pursue and that we pursue here day by day.

Evan Kirstel: 7:55

Fantastic. I picked up a new buzzword reading Dave Michaels talking points newsletter this month, something called XCaSz is XCaaS just a fancy way of saying UC plus CC or is it something else?

Dave Sipes: 8:09

Yeah, it's the communication experience as a service, and it is UC and CC, and why is it important that they are so interlinked, that's why we wanted to give it one word, to show how important it is to that you bring the entire company together by having contact center really siloed. In an organization, I think you're giving a disservice to your customers and to your ability to be agile to your customers. Because if you think about it, all the customer interactions are going through your lowest paid employees in the company. And what you really want to do is you really want to know what's going on with your customers and be able to react quickly. And that's why bringing you CNCC together and not keeping them siloed is, is critical. And that's why we coined the term x gas,

Dave Michels: 9:01

solve for x. Let's shift into the elephant on the phone here, Microsoft, because you talked about x cause a lot of providers like eight by eight are talking about the convergence of UCAS and see cows. But let me ask you is UCAS and teams converging?

Dave Sipes: 9:18

Teams is a huge trend, and fundamentally team messaging. And I'm seeing a lot of CIOs roll that out to their organizations as their core messaging application. And it's tied closely to the Productivity Suite. Some of them use it for video, not all and not that many yet have enabled it for enterprise voice. And what we're seeing is the true platforming of that enterprise voice across both Microsoft calling plans in some cases, but really predominantly, direct routing and operator connect as platforms of hooking up for Enterprise Voice. And so that's what you know, we have a number one, I'll call it number one direct routing solution in the market. And building that becomes key to riding this wave of teams as the messaging app in the organization. And we do a number of things there. One is, we want to make sure we're a trusted solution. And we did that by being certified with both our UC and contact center solutions on the team's platform, we bring more to the party than just connectivity by bringing things like business, SMS, fax, and other you know, call queue configuration into the team's app itself. We make it simple to get connected. And we bring the whole organization by bringing both contact center frontline workers and knowledge workers to teams. But I do think it's a big trend to enable those users for enterprise voice. And it's big opportunity for all the UC players today. And even a lot of the carriers are playing in that space.

Evan Kirstel: 11:07

Got it. So last time I checked teams customers can purchase UCAS, directly from Microsoft is is that a tough sell when they call eight by eight instead?

Dave Sipes: 11:21

It's not a tough sell, because it's not doing a lot of things. Those organizations like the ones we work with the Midmark and enterprise organizations really want to do in being global enabling frontline workers along with knowledge workers, enabling contact center workers. So we haven't seen it as conflictive it becomes more of who between direct connect and operator connect, are you going to utilize to enable that Microsoft team's user on to enterprise telephony?

Dave Michels: 11:53

So that's that's teams and eight by UCAS, what about teams and eight by eight see Kaz?

Dave Sipes: 11:59

Yeah, and that's great question, right? Like, we were one of the first CCAFs certified providers on teams. And it's core to our proposition of X casts. But you don't see a lot of contact center agents using the team's app as their number one app, they'll often have the contact center, application, and then maybe the team's application or not. So what we're doing is one, we've enabled visibility into those agents with the rest of the organization by doing things like shared presence into the team's app, we've made our front desk product work. So they can see into contact center cues as well as into individuals without throughout the organization. But the next key thing to crack is enabling the consult the expert capability between contact center and regular knowledge workers. And we're leaning towards Federation of messaging to do that, so they can still stay within a contact center app, as well as obviously, they could have a side app of Microsoft Teams in that case. So we do think tying those in better than what's happening today is a big opportunity.

Evan Kirstel: 13:17

Got it? You mentioned certification a moment ago, what does it mean to be a certified seek as provider for Microsoft Teams? Exactly.

Dave Sipes: 13:27

So there's UC certification, which is your SBC. So you're using it see cast certification is the service itself and the agent UI that work that we get certified and we're on the Microsoft website is certified for contact center.

Dave Michels: 13:41

So just like you compete with Microsoft, with teams in the sense that they sell dial tone and calling plans as well, it looks like Microsoft is now expanding into seek as to at least they're making noise about that with their dynamics thing. Does that concern you at all?

Dave Sipes: 13:56

That announcement, I believe is dynamics offering a channel a voice and to their CRM, which isn't the true kind of contact centers service product that our customers are looking for. So it could be a future route, but I would say they're very far from offering that service today.

Evan Kirstel: 14:16

I see. And last March, eight by eight launched a new agent workspace. How was that received? And how's how's it going? What can we expect next?

Dave Sipes: 14:24

Yeah, so agent workspace. One, it was an awesome launch. So So kudos to our team. We did it with the ability that it was fully functional and complete. It was launched on time. It won CX innovation, Best of Show or best winner in Enterprise Connect, and it took three weeks to get the first customer found a defect and we fixed it in two hours. So it came out really high quality on time, and functionally complete and it's a great product. So that really gives that array Now that the agent is gonna live in, and we're gonna, we're taking that to the next level with supervisory experience coming next. That's been a great release for us.

Dave Michels: 15:10

That's great. That wasn't a good launch. And it was nice that you get so much attention to Enterprise Connect, I think that was well deserved. Nice launch on that. But back to the Microsoft thing, you know, what I was, what I was trying to get to is, you know, you're doing a tango with Microsoft, and that's a dance that often doesn't end well for people. What's the trick to a happy ending? Do you think I'm

Dave Sipes: 15:31

confident there's gonna be a happy ending? And that when you're asking what the trick is, what we're doing, empowering every employee across the organization, whether it's a knowledge worker, a frontline worker, a contact center agent, and doing that, globally, I think that's just like a core need of many of our buyers today. And it's just, I think it's just different than what Microsoft's pursuing, which is really an expansion of the Productivity Suite, which is really on the employee experience side of the house. And so I just view it as different missions that we're on. And our customers really value what we're bringing to them today. And so I'm just gonna keep, we're gonna keep doing that, and fulfilling that need for those customers, I think it's gonna end brilliantly

Dave Michels: 16:23

well, it seems like a really good relationship, you've done a great job. And, you know, I remember when eight by eight, launched direct routing, I think you're one of the first you guys providers to do. So. That was surprising to me, and I think many others, because I didn't think of a bite as a carrier. Right? You know, you guys providers different than a carrier. But you did really well with that. And so now I'm curious if you can do the same thing with operator Connect.

Dave Sipes: 16:50

It's possible. And we're looking at that. And that could be, you know, we want to meet the customer with how they want to operate. And for some of their business, they may do that. There's still a need, right? Even with operator connect of how do you connect all the employees? How do you connect all the employees globally, and do that in a way that they can still communicate smoothly to each other? So I don't see a reason that would be conflicted with our mission. So it's something that we're evaluating currently,

Evan Kirstel: 17:23

to talk about your global aspirations. I know of eight by eight, you have a long and storied history out of Silicon Valley in the US, but global seems to be an area you're prioritizing how how so?

Dave Sipes: 17:37

Yeah, from two dimensions, right. One is from the product perspective, we now have the largest UCCC footprint in the world, with over 50 countries covering 85% of the world's GDP. We're only in market and countries like China, Philippines, Indonesia. So we're cracking some of the heart to get to regulatory countries. And I think that's just really critical for multinational corporations.

Dave Michels: 18:03

As an objective industry analyst, I can say 50 is a very large number. It's that's a pretty that's pretty impressive. Thank

Dave Sipes: 18:09

you. Thank you. I wasn't sure where that was going. But yes. And then, you know, we've been very strong internationally, both in APAC, with our C pass business where we're a regional leader, and C pass. And also in the UK, with our UCCC business that's also expanded very dominantly into UK public sector. And we now power over a third of the London 32 boroughs. Additionally, we're with our fuse acquisition, we're able to have a strong presence in France, and we're expanding that AMEA representation that way.

Evan Kirstel: 18:46

So as you go into different regions, different regulatory and other requirements, how do you change the as Kas offer or do you?

Dave Sipes: 18:54

Yeah, so one, we're fully we always take the point of being fully regulatory compliant. And all these countries, the you see, compliance is actually the harder compliance often as the interoperability with the local public switched telephone network is the critical interaction and how you go about that. So in some countries like China, we have partnerships with China, mobile, international, and other countries were able to go in ourselves. But we always want to make sure that when we offer those countries, we're going to be able to continue offering those countries continuing offering the right presence, like in the form of types of phone numbers that are different between landline and mobile in different countries, as well as emergency services and informational services. So providing all of that with the right with a local dial plan is critical for being success. So we don't claim a country until we really check off the full rubric of what's critical for to be to run an operation in that country.

Evan Kirstel: 19:55

Good. Many of us have followed Fuze and know them well. It didn't take you long to complete that acquisition, so maybe tell us how's it going,

Dave Sipes: 20:04

we're really happy with the Fuze acquisition, we did it because it brings in any strong enterprise customer base on top of our, our, our customer base. As we look at x casts, it really plays to the mid market and enterprise. And this is a strong UC, predominantly installed base that we can sell and cross sell, contact center and X casts into. Additionally, we'd like the culture of the organization and the development operations they had. So we've fully integrated the whole organization functionally and to organization. And we're able to do that pretty rapidly. And additionally, it allows us to increase our contact center innovation cycle. So we're able to repurpose over 70% of that innovation team into future roadmap. And that has been critical for us, it allows us to go from a 4x increase in Contact Center Innovation up to an 8x increase, and do it immediately. So it's really going to get us further along in this x cast journey and making that global enterprise ready product for our customers.

Dave Michels: 21:18

I'm not sure where the innovation team was, but I know Fuze was based in Boston, tell by Evan, are you still maintaining a Boston office or Zaga development been consolidated?

Dave Sipes: 21:29

Yeah, well, we didn't have a Boston presence. So we're keeping the Boston presence and those employees there, there's additional offices abroad, internationally for development that we're incorporating into our organization, also, whether we keep actual physical offices, that is something that you know, globally, we're obviously probably utilizing a little less physical office and every other CEO. So what we'll make those decisions as they come up,

Dave Michels: 21:56

aren't there any other variations? I mean, I know McDonald's changes their secret sauce, you know, different parts of the country? Do you have to change up any of the any of the X guys offering to local flavors?

Dave Sipes: 22:08

Well, I hit on a number of them, like, you start with dial plan, you go to informational services, regulatory, like 911 services, and even how you comply with 911. And every country can vary, for instance, as well as what phone numbers you're offering in those countries, and then how your insurer operating with the local carriers is critical.

Dave Michels: 22:31

Yeah, and I'm looking more for cultural things like I mean, are certain markets more prone to want to phone, a physical phone or certain markets to use voicemail differently, or I'm grasping at straws here, I don't know what I'm asking. But I'm just assuming that there's some international variation, that there's definitely

Dave Sipes: 22:48

language localization, and even in your IVR tree and your operator voice that comes on. So we do that in over a dozen languages today, in our product and make that configuration easy and make it also available for different users within a multinational corporation. There's also data residency, and how you go about that in each country, that becomes critical. And then you have things like GDPR in Europe and other areas and and how you deal with notification of data.

Evan Kirstel: 23:22

Wow, tough to keep up with all of the eight by eight news, you recently announced a new partnership with Genesys. What's that all about? What's What's the driver behind that partnership?

Dave Sipes: 23:32

Yeah, so creating that interaction between UC and CC is critical. Genesys has a huge it's been a great story success of a company over the the era with a large installed base, large legacy install base and doing some cloud and as they move the that installed contact center base to the cloud, those customers are looking for a full, you know, CCU C suite, by offering that integration that allows Genesys to have a full integrated UCCC offering in the market for those customers as they move them to the cloud. So that was something that's critical for them, we're happy, we have a good working relationship with that organization. And we made it easy giving integration of dial plans between the organization's call presence, shared directory, Single Sign On are some of the things that make it easy if you operate both a by UC and Genesys CC, it's new. And I think the organization's are working well together and making sure customers that have those two needs aren't getting what they want.

Dave Michels: 24:39

The Genesys news actually actually surprised me. You know, Genesys has been pretty aggressively working with companies that didn't have contact center solutions, like teams are presumed until recently and basically the platform's that didn't have a contact center. So you're the first major partnership they've launched with the contact centers. Does that create any kind of conflict or what You think, how do you explain that?

Dave Sipes: 25:02

We're looking at being able to bring the UCC interaction more globally if we can, but it's still we think X Cass is gold standard. But there we know there are customers that are going to be on alternative solutions. And providing that interaction, that integrated interaction is better than not having it. So that's what we're looking to provide with the Genesys. And I think they they're looking for a strong partner, like culturally, and that's what we bring for them.

Evan Kirstel: 25:35

Interesting. Shifting gears, so many cloud providers talk about cloud speed, continuous updates, the cloud, native development, all the benefits of cloud. But that's something eight by eight, I, you know, from my perspective, really take seriously, given its heritage, is that one of your key messages? Is this sort of cloud native cloud first approaches?

Dave Sipes: 25:58

Yeah, it is. And I think why is that important to a customer, right, what you always have to think of, and, for us, I talked about it just slightly differently, a being future proof for a company because a company is buying you not just for your current set of capabilities. But the anticipation that you're going to, you're going to continue to evolve and be leading edge in that platform. So they're buying not only for your current set of capabilities, but your future capabilities that you're you're bringing to the market. So that's why things like our 8x investment in Contact Center are critical for customers and our and our commitment to, you know, products being a core cultural element. So really future proofing that decision and making that buyer smart buyer when they buy? Well, I think

Dave Michels: 26:49

you've been pushing out a lot of updates, pretty regular speed. It's been pretty impressive. But along those lines, let me ask you, let me ask you a tender question here. You've been talking a lot about you CNCC, obviously, and of course, the Microsoft story is very strong. I haven't heard as much from me by lately about meetings. And that kind of surprises me because if I had acquired Jitsi. And, and that's a very popular framework, and you've got a huge installed base on that. But how important is meetings to your vision story right now.

Dave Sipes: 27:18

Maybe it's critical element to the you see capabilities. And we have a fantastic meetings product. today. A lot of companies are using certain video platforms across their organizations. We're really about that UCCC integration. So we're taking our meetings capabilities. And we've done a couple things. One is we create video capabilities for contact center. And the other is we've productized video meetings in an API business and jazz, and allowing people to embed meetings experience into their core product offerings as an organization. So those are two key ways. We're playing the the meetings capability today.

Evan Kirstel: 28:05

Interesting. So yeah, I've seen video channels being you know, announced by several seek as providers. So you see, you see a meaningful opportunity for video in the context center emerging.

Dave Sipes: 28:17

That core use case is so powerful of, hey, I got this product, it's not working. And I want to send a picture or video of it to the agent, so they can help me decipher what's going on. So it's not going to be the core use case, obviously, and most interactions, but it is like a key additional capability to bring to bear in the customer experience. Sure.

Dave Michels: 28:40

So Dave, I hate to say this, but it seems like there's a distinct possibility. We're heading into a recession. I don't know if you agree with that or not. But as the CEO of a growing cloud provider, how does that recession talk affect your plans?

Dave Sipes: 28:57

Yeah, so there is a possibility, right? And we should all be prepared for that as organizations. And I've been through before, like, you know, a and what happens is the organization's organizations like the enterprise organizations, the CIO, organization gains power in that situation. And there's more focus on total cost of ownership or cost reduction, activities, and vendor consolidation. So if we do go into recession, I think you'll see all three of those things. For us, like back in OAE. It had no impact. It almost accelerated our business because we were offering a cheaper alternative, then you could run on a legacy solution. And I think there's that opportunity here as a CIO organization gains power that really plays to RX Cass story plays to the UC you In the cloud story, the TCO argument is strong. And that becomes even more weighted in that situation. And so I just think there could be a further acceleration to the cloud to accomplish those goals. In those organizations.

Evan Kirstel: 30:18

You mentioned the 2008 recession, that was pretty traumatic. Although, you know, most people under 30, kind of don't remember it professionally. Actually, Dave remembers the Great Depression or in the 30s, he was he was around

Dave Michels: 30:31

the time. So there seems to be a resurgence of private label and wholesale options coming up in the UK space I know you're doing or maybe you're experimenting or doing something with that. And UK, what are your thoughts on different routes to market?

Dave Sipes: 30:45

Yeah, I think if you look back, and you see business legacy solutions were all sold through a wholesale model. And there's a lot of power to that model. We didn't do that in the US in UCaaS, just because of some weird regulatory tax situations. But it is a very powerful model that we offer both today like what's called an agency model, and a wholesale model, which we're calling actually resell. So, but that model, that wholesale resell model is something that's growing rapidly, I think it's what a lot of the distributors and resellers are used to, and want to bring to market. And so we're looking at an expansion of that program, not only within our international operations, but even into the art US operations.

Dave Michels: 31:36

And is that primarily in the UK or elsewhere? Well, internationally,

Dave Sipes: 31:41

it starts in the UK and EMEA and it helps you actually grow into a lot of non English speaking countries more strongly. So it's a super lever in international, but it's something that we also think is gonna play well in the US.

Evan Kirstel: 31:58

But let's shift shift gears, enough of this x casts stuff. Let's talk about the Warriors. How do you feel? How are they doing?

Dave Sipes: 32:04

I'm feeling great about the Warriors right now they have this really, you know, they're making a long run into the playoffs here. And they have a pretty good balance between like seasoned veterans, which they seem to have a fair amount of them and some young legs can carry you in this season. Veterans legs get tired. So I'm pretty bullish on the Warriors right now. To continue this long.

Evan Kirstel: 32:28

All I can say is go Celtics set that to match up, I'd love to see,

Dave Sipes: 32:31

that would be really cool, actually. Because I hate the Celtics. So that would be awesome. Growing up in LA,

Dave Michels: 32:39

you obviously really enjoy sports. And come to think of it the last time I saw you in person, Dave was at the RingCentral stadium. And you seem to be in your natural habitat in the sports arena. And I have to say so is there any plans for an eight by eight stadium?

Dave Sipes: 32:54

Well, if we can get you know Levi's to give up on the Niners here, then maybe that would be the logical eight by eight stadium to do

Evan Kirstel: 33:03

well, it's too bad. You can't sponsor the UC Berkeley arena. I heard your daughter's going there. That would be fun.

Dave Sipes: 33:09

That would be the best. We're very proud of her. She'll start next year, looking at a business and biology major. So

Evan Kirstel: 33:17

wonderful institution. Dave, great speaking. Congratulations on all this success and tremendous momentum. We look forward to watching and learning from you and your team.

Dave Sipes: 33:28

Thanks, Dave. Thanks, Evan. I appreciate it. And I look forward to having you having me back when we have our next set of innovations launched later this year.

Evan Kirstel: 33:37

Maybe even face to face. That would be amazing. I'll do that in a stadium. Yes, sounds good. All right. Thank you. Cheers guys. Wow, that was a great discussion with eight by eight I forgotten they had acquired fuse it's good to see that Boston based company is living on and another big competitor in the UCAS space now seek as as well,

Dave Michels: 34:01

yeah, but it really leaves a gap in your portfolio because that was like the only reason you know, it was it was Boston had two things, Evan and so are you

Evan Kirstel: 34:11

and beer but but okay, so we have we have a few things going for us but UCaaS is not among them. C'est la vie.

Dave Michels: 34:19

The only big beans over there.

Evan Kirstel: 34:22

And Dave, who's our next guest?

Dave Michels: 34:25

Oh, it's actually more Bernstein from Balto. And that's gonna be really interesting because as you no doubt no Evan Balto was in the innovation showcase and Enterprise Connect. They do context in a coaching. They announced a partnership at the Innovation Showcase with RingCentral. And I just saw they scored a TD by announcing they're working with talkdesk as well. So that'll be a good podcast

Evan Kirstel: 34:48

excited by. The panel is all about Baltimore. So I'm really a little disappointed but Balto will be a good guest.

Dave Michels: 34:54

Until then. You

Unknown: 34:58

may soon So get into conversation man you gotta get out of here found Oh man. No man knows me