66. Cole Crawford: Founder and CEO of Vapor on Breaking Boundaries in Tech with a Tennis Mindset

As the racquet meets the ball, there's more at play than just a game of tennis; there's a world of strategy, resilience, and adaptability that mirrors the high-stakes realm of tech entrepreneurship. That's something Cole Crawford, the tech entrepreneur and former tennis pro, knows all too well. Join us on an exhilarating journey where we trace Cole's footsteps from the baseline of the court to the frontline of cutting-edge technology. We cover the inception of Vapor IO and how it's redefining the internet landscape, delve into the synergy between sportsmanship and business savvy, and discuss the potential of edge computing and AI to revolutionize industries from healthcare to sports betting.

Ever wondered how being an introvert shapes a leader? Get an intimate look at the intricacies of introversion as Cole and I unpack how this trait has played a pivotal role in the competitive worlds of both - tennis and business. From overcoming shyness to harnessing self-awareness as a strength, we unpack the unique challenges and advantages introverts face. We also celebrate the joy and challenges of past job roles—from Cole's days of embracing Linux to the thrill of building OpenStack—and the visionary steps that led to the foundation of Vapor IO. It's a tale of technological disruption, musical creativity, and the drive that blazes the trail in the startup landscape.

Prepare to have your perspectives challenged on everything from AI's role in our daily lives to the future of immersive technology. We explore the transformative potential of edge computing, the interplay with 5G networks, and how these advancements could change the way we communicate and experience the world. Cole shares his insights on AI fall detection in healthcare, the rise of micro-betting in sports, and the human side of technology—from VR for memory preservation to mental health and bridging the educational divide. This episode isn't just a podcast; it's an invitation to explore the profound impacts of our choices and the relentless pursuit to enrich the human experience through innovation.

Resources:  https://www.vapor.io/ ︱ LinkedIn ︱Instagram

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Follow @GrandSlamJourney on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and join the
and, in terms of fulfillment,seeing one of those kids win a

(00:20):
tournament probably meant moreto me than me winning anything.
So again, maybe I'm super luckyin the fact that the regret
that I've got is very low, likevery little regret on where I
ended up, even though there'sthat moment that stings a little
bit.
But then there's what comesafter the sting and I think

(00:42):
that's where you grow and whatyou do with that sting is kind
of character defining orredefining, altering, enhancing,
whatever you want to use.
The Florida move thing wasprobably an overreaction to the
last thing that had happened,where I just quit.
I was like I'm not going toquit, but the race is always

(01:05):
ahead of you, it's never behindyou, and just like a tennis
match, the match is ahead of you, it's not behind you.
Like the points that you shouldhave won, what can you do about
, should have absolutely nothing.
That point is done and over andyou've got to just move on to
the next point.
And so that's now how I thinkabout starting companies, that's

(01:27):
how I think about growingcompanies and just growing
myself.
You know I'm now 45.
So I'm not like really younganymore, but there's a lot of
road ahead if you prepare andyou do kind of the right things.

Klara (01:42):
Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the
Grand Slam Journey podcast,where we discuss various topics
related to the Grand SlamJourney of our lives and our
passions in sports, business andtechnology.
Today's conversation is withCole Crawford and we talk about
just that his upbringing,growing up with the aspiration

(02:06):
to be a professional tennisplayer and living the journey of
a professional tennis player,and then transitioning to his
next career in business andtechnology.
Cole is the founder and CEO ofVapor IO, the creators of
Kinetic Edge Platform, theworld's true edge computing

(02:26):
company.
He's also the co-founder of theOpen19 Foundation, founding
executive director of the OpenCompute Project, former chairman
of the Open Data CenterAlliance and co-founder of
OpenStack.
Cole was instrumental increating of the US government's

(02:47):
definition of cloud computing.
He has over 20 years ofleadership in the telecom and
data center industry.
Cole is a Forbes contributor.
He has been named to dataeconomist lists of the world's
most influential data economyleaders and the world's first

(03:08):
top 50 edge computinginfluencers.
Cole states today's internetwas built from the core out.
Now we need to re-architect itfrom the edge in.
Fixing that is Vapor's mission.
They're engineers and businesspeople passionate about
re-architecting the internet atthe edge for the good of

(03:31):
humanity and the good of theircustomers.
They do this by deploying theenabling infrastructure for the
next generation of servicesprovided by their customers and
then supporting it with thebusiness processes and
ecosystems necessary to reachcritical mass.

(03:53):
During this conversation, wecover Cole's diverse upbringing.
Cole was a competitive tennisplayer and grew up with passion
to make tennis his professionalcareer, and he lived this
passion and dream until hedecided to transition to the
next chapter of his life.
He's also a musician andtechnologist.

(04:17):
He's always had deep passion intechnology, from Linux to
understanding how complexsystems and architecture work
and how you can recreate themwith his contrarian view and
make them better for the society.
We cover the lessons Cole haslearned from his sport and how

(04:40):
we apply them in the nextchapter of his life, his second
career.
Cole states that he used someof the key principles tennis had
taught him in theentrepreneurial life to build
new technology and companies.
Vapor is one of his manystartups.

(05:01):
We discuss the reasons forstarting Vapor, what was the
main hypothesis behind it, aswell as some of the changes that
he had to navigate, includingchallenges they faced.
Cole shares some interestingand unique use cases for edge
computing and, last but notleast, we envision what the

(05:24):
future of technology, computingand connectivity may hold for us
.
Cole shares his perspective onVapor's mission and his own
personal passion for making theworld a better place, helping to
create new ways ofcollaborating, entertaining,
interacting and new experiencesthat are being created and

(05:47):
transformed by what he and theteam at Vapor are creating.
Of course, we touch oninferencing, large language
model generative AI, xr orspecial computing, v2x, which
means communication betweenvehicle and any entity that may

(06:07):
affect or may be affected by thevehicle, and much more.
In essence, this conversationcovers all aspects of my
personal passion as well sports,business and technology.
One of the most challengingthings about podcasting is

(06:28):
trying to navigate, taking timeoff and disconnecting from
publishing episodes on a regularbasis.
The 14 hour flight home hascertainly helped me get some
focused time to get this episodeto you.
I'm not planning on launching anew one next week, and so if
you get bored, feel free to tuneinto this one again.

(06:53):
From my perspective, it has alot of wisdom on all of the key
topics that I typically talkabout sports, business and
technology, and how to take thelessons we have learned through
our athletic endeavors into thenext chapter of our lives.
For context, this conversationwas recorded in the middle of

(07:15):
January when the Australian Openwas going on.
If you enjoyed this episode, Iwant to ask you to please share
with someone you believe mayenjoy it as well.
Consider leaving a review onApple Podcasts and Spotify, and
don't forget to subscribe so youdon't miss the next episode.
This is your host, claraEgochova.
Thank you for tuning in, andnow I bring you Cole Crawford.

(07:39):
Hello Cole, Welcome to GrandSlam Journey Podcast.
How are you?

Cole (07:43):
I'm really good.
Thanks for having me.
It's fun to be here.

Klara (07:45):
I'm super excited.
I've been looking forward tothis conversation for a few
months and glad to have you hereactually doing this in person,
which is awesome.

Cole (07:54):
During the Australian Open , no less.

Klara (07:56):
Oh, that's true, but I'm very behind since I came back
from Cozumel, so I've only seenInstagram snippets, so you'll
probably more up to date.

Cole (08:05):
Maybe lots of work going on too.

Klara (08:07):
Anyone you're cheering for.

Cole (08:09):
Oh man, you got a route for the old guys.
I'm rooting for Jo Kovic.

Klara (08:14):
He's making the history, so why not?
And he's a fantastic danceplayer.

Cole (08:19):
Fantastic and if you train your body and your mind and eat
right and it shows you what theart of the possible is.
So love to see where he's atcurrently and it'll be good to
see him.
Potentially, this probablysettles the score right.
He'd be the best in the worldof all time.

Klara (08:35):
Yes.
Well, I think many argue healready is, with what he has
achieved and actually just whatyou shared about him and what I
know a little bit about you, Ithink the two of you very much
aligned with trying to maximizeyour human potential, and you
still do it in many ways,physically and obviously with
your business and technology.
And so being here it's superexciting for me because you have

(08:59):
literally like the perfectthree pillars for my podcast.
You have athletic backgroundsthat I'm excited to dive into
and obviously passion with intechnology and scaling
technology and differentbusiness ventures.
So I'm curious where thisconversation takes us.
I think we could be here formaybe half a day if we wanted to
, so before we dive in, you arecurrently the CEO of Vaporio and

(09:24):
you're much more than that.
Especially, your background andexperience is really
interesting, and so when I giveyou an opportunity to introduce
yourself to the listeners, Sure.

Cole (09:35):
So I've always tried to balance play with work.
You know, my dad, like a numberof dads and moms and
grandparents around the world,always said if you're having fun
, it's not work.
Yeah, I try and take that toheart.
I think you're going to livelonger if you like what you do,
and Vapor is certainly one ofthose journeys that has taken a
long time.

(09:56):
Vapor is, I think, my seventhstartup, but it's certainly the
longest startup I've ever been apart of.
Yeah, I come from a techbackground.
My uncle was a Windowsdeveloper, like for Windows 3.1.
Like I think that was Windowsfor workstations, if I'm not
mistaken and so he taught me tocode when I was like 12 years

(10:19):
old and I just sort of grew upwith tech.
Never wanted to do tech as acareer, I wanted to be a tennis
player, as you know.
But you know, looking back, Ithink that kind of the arc that
I've had, I rely heavily on themental aspect of what it takes
to be an athlete and apply thatin business across lots of

(10:43):
different startups that spanwireless wireline networking,
telcos, clouds, hyperscale datacenters, social networks.

Klara (10:55):
Yes, I think there's many of those.
I love that you mentioned thatyou take the athletic mindset
and apply it to the nextventures, and I strongly believe
that our upbringing shapes alot of who we are.
So I'm curious if you couldtake us back even to your
childhood.
What was your upbringing like?
What draw of you?

(11:16):
You mentioned tennisspecifically, or any other
sports you have played andanything else that stood out,
because, listening even to yourother few podcasts, it seems
like the tennis and technologyreally played a role early on
and those were kind of the bigtwo passions you have had.

Cole (11:34):
I think that's right.
I mean, the only other thing Idid as a kid, I mean tennis was
really my sport.
I didn't really deviate toomuch.
I think you know, just like inbusiness, you need a certain
amount of focus.
I was pretty dead set on, youknow, having tennis be a big
part of my life for as long asit could be a part of my life,
and I think maybe I had theforesight I don't know, maybe

(11:58):
the foresight was my parents ormy coaches, but I'd like to
think I had some foresight thatyou know, if you're going to be
really successful at something,probably best to focus on that
something and ensure that, youknow, you're not distracted by
like these other things.
And I was a kid, you know Istarted playing tennis when I
was four years old, so veryearly, and I come from a very

(12:18):
long line of tennis players thatyou know we've chatted before.
For those that listen to thispodcast that are tennis fans,
you might know, like the LinuxAcademy, my uncle taught at the
Linux Academy in the 1980s andhe's like currently, I think,
number 10 or 11 in his agedivision.
My aunt is, I think, numberfour or three in the world for

(12:41):
her age division and in mixeddoubles I think they're number
two.
So you know he was my coach fora long time and I just wanted
to focus on tennis.
I am a musician and I do lovethat part of my life as well.
That, I think, brings in someof the creative parts of what it
takes to run a company.
But between tennis, music andjust being brought up in a, you

(13:03):
know, a tech oriented family, ina tech oriented world, I think
the pillars you talk aboutprobably were serendipitous for
my own personal and career arc.

Klara (13:13):
Wow, I didn't know you were a musician.
What instrument or what do youplay?

Cole (13:17):
I can play saxophone.
Wow, I can play guitar, I canplay piano and I sing.

Klara (13:22):
Wow, look at that.
That's an interestingcombination.
I love that.
So, diving into actually maybeall of those three, how did you
discover some of these passions?
Was there someone whoinfluenced you?
From tennis, it seems like youhad your family members, so that
seemed like a naturalgravitation towards that sport.

(13:44):
So about music, and it seemslike technology you mentioned
also, you had your family andtechnology.
Was it kind of just that beingexposed, or were there any other
aspects you want to highlight?

Cole (13:56):
Man, you're actually giving me like a crisis of
identity here a little bitbecause I you know you'd like to
think you're kind of just yourown person, and you always have
been, but like thinking aboutthose three things, you know my
dad was a very successful songwriter, also a tennis player,
but very successful Like haswritten albums for Disney with
my aunt and you know he'swritten music for famous

(14:18):
Americana country artists.
So brings into question for mea nature versus nurture question
and it feels like maybe there'smore nurture than nature for
the passions that I have, causeyeah, I kind of do the things
that and I'm passionate aboutthe things that you know I saw

(14:38):
my family members doing and, whoknows, maybe I think part of
tennis, part of the mental sideof tennis, is pattern
recognition and, geez, maybe I'mjust good at pattern
recognition.

Klara (14:51):
Or maybe you're talented and actually many things,
because it's, I think, a veryrare combination.
So, speaking about those three,I think those three take a lot
of time, and so doing all ofthat when you were a kid, what
comes to mind is obviously timemanagement, but also focus, and
so obviously, being an athlete,I know how important focusing on

(15:13):
the sport is, gradually more asyou become better and better.
So how did you balance thosethree, or what was your day like
Even back then?
I'm curious how you dividedyour attention to to those three
things.

Cole (15:27):
Great question.
I mean, we traveled a bunch andI was lucky enough to go to
school in a year round schooland so we chose sort of the
seasons, like I grew up inColorado and I didn't need to
take the winter off, so I wentto school three out of the four
seasons, but then, as I wasplaying tennis in school, I was

(15:49):
out so much traveling in kind ofthe late summer, fall, when
tennis was that's when in yourmountain place tennis so I took
summers off, so I had summer andfall and half the year to
basically travel and play tennis, and then we would like a lot
of kids that were kind ofhomeschooled for some part of

(16:10):
the year too.
You know, we kind of took allof this with us.
We traveled in a big conversionvan with my family.
My dad brought his guitar.
I had an acoustic guitar that weplayed and I remember like now
very vividly I don't know Ihaven't thought about this in
forever, I think it was.
This must have been 1994.
Tim Currier was like on thefront page of tennis magazine
with a guitar and there was awhole feature about him taking

(16:34):
his guitar around the tour and Iwas like, yeah, you know, I
practice with my dad and at thetime I probably paid, I don't
know 20 or 30 minutes a day.
But you know, I was just, I wasnever into kind of the normal
things that kids were into, likevideo games and, you know,
going and playing like flagfootball at the park or even

(16:55):
like riding bicycles.
I can't ride a bicycle, but Ikind of wanted to be on the
court or I wanted to be writinglyrics or playing guitar.

Klara (17:03):
So it seems like you were quite maybe between the three.
What I'm sensing introvertedand fine with being by yourself
with your own thoughts andcreating things on your own.

Cole (17:14):
Total social introvert.
I don't mind.
I mean, I actually like beingon stage and I like playing in
front of crowds.
I like playing tennis in frontof crowds.
But I am by no means anextrovert, I'm a social
introvert.

Klara (17:27):
And I think there's also power.
Maybe we can talk about it evenlater when we transition to
your role.
What do you do in technology?
But I do think there's power ofbeing introverted and because
you can sort of think thingsthrough, and then there's more
and more people talking aboutthe power of introvert and
leadership positions.
Anything you want to mention onthat and how you maybe have

(17:50):
evolved or did those things helpyou with that?
Maybe even obviously playingtennis in front of people that
helps a little bit.
But music as well.
There's something very uniquein playing a song in front of
audience.

Cole (18:04):
Well, I think there's good and bad to both.
I think actually, as a kid Iwas probably more like a BNTJ
and now I'm like an INTJ.
But just because you'reintroverted doesn't mean you can
have a hot head on the tenniscourt, which I did.
But I also would think thatsort of being introspective if

(18:25):
you could get past like theself-criticality of what you
could have done better, which isa big thing when you're a kid
and it's a big thing when you'recompetitive.
Once you get past that, I dothink it allows for kind of the
growth and what you're focusedon to happen a little more
organically than if you need tobe taught those sort of lessons,

(18:45):
and so I definitely think thatthere are pros and cons.
At the same time, I probablyhad to struggle through some
things by myself when I couldhave asked for help and gotten
there quicker too.
So I think it's a double-edgedsword.

Klara (19:02):
I like the second one because I think that one I'm
still struggling with myself asa tennis player.
When things are tough, I have atendency to lock in and refine
my own game and skills andtrying to figure out how do I
get myself out of this.
But there's situations and theolder I grow, the more I realize
, look, there is a big power inasking for help and talking to

(19:25):
others about specific things.

Cole (19:28):
It's funny, right, because coaches are a real thing.
You have a lot of blind spotsthat you just don't identify
yourself, and if you try andsolve these things on your own,
it's going to take you a verylong time.
I was just reading an articlethe other day.
I can't remember who it was,but there's some player that

(19:48):
basically just reconstructedtheir serve, and to do that
yourself, I think that would beincredibly tough, and I don't
know that you'd actually end upwith a better serve just by
changing your serve.
Like it's going to be far morequalitative than quantitative,
and I myself was a coach.
People came to me to get better, but oftentimes I would just

(20:11):
want to power through somethingmyself too.
So, yeah, pros and cons, andwhat's the old saying?
Half of being smart is knowingwhat you're dumb at.

Klara (20:20):
Yes, I think there's definitely power in knowing what
you're bad at.
Actually, one of playing tennisthat reminded me one of the
most famous investor, mr Brody.
I actually don't know his name,but I met him when I was
playing some 10Ks in the US, inMaryland, and there was the
advice when Sentence said knowwhat you're bad at what you're

(20:44):
not good at.
And I thought about thatsentence for a least since then.
It was more than 20 years agonow and there's so much power in
it.
I'm still learning what thatsentence means.

Cole (20:55):
And it's tough right, because you're fighting your own
biases.
I always thought that I had fortennis.
I always thought that I hadgood footwork, I was fast, I had
decent stamina throughoutmatches.
But coaches, over and over andagain, were like you have kind
of lazy footwork and ultimatelyI switched from a two-handed

(21:15):
backhand to a one-handedbackhand to hit open stance, in
part because my coaches thoughtthat I had suboptimal footwork.
But I had to fight that myselfbecause I'm telling myself you
don't have bad footwork, you'rereally fast, your coaches are
wrong and so, like that mentalbattle, you have to also just
accept and even if you don'tinitially accept it, you've got

(21:37):
to try it and be open.
And I think that that totallyapplies over to business as well
.
I've gotten a lot of advice inmy career, on the technical side
of my career, that it feltunnatural to do the things that
they were suggesting.
But I would find scenarioswhere I could attempt the

(21:59):
suggestion and over time, whatdo they say?
Water finds its balance and youlearn as you go with these sort
of things.
But again, I think there's adouble-edged sword and you weigh
your biases against yourresults and then I think you end

(22:19):
up where you.
Well, I think I ended up whereI was supposed to end up.

Klara (22:25):
And that's a great mindset.
I think growing through that ittaking me to my own journey, to
realizing that there's also alot of power in that.
But going back to, maybe, yourtennis and diving deeper,
because you were a tremendoustennis player.
Funny enough, when we met first, you told your tennis story and
I could still sense how muchpassion you have for the sport

(22:49):
and all it taught you.
So maybe diving in a little bitdeeper what was your upbringing
like, maybe even specific totennis, and is there a specific
thing that you enjoyed about thesport?
Because I feel like as Iinterview more people, there are
some things that are still verypersonal, so it's interesting
to hear other person'sperspective on what attracted

(23:10):
them to the sport.

Cole (23:12):
Well, again, I was sort of thrust into the sport.
I remember as a junior you knowthis, this isn't like often
talked about but in the early,early days I was sponsored by
head as a little kid and then Iwanted to switch to Wilson.
But I ended up with a preferredrelationship with Wilson.

(23:33):
But that switch, for whateverreason, that was a big
inflection point for me.
I don't know why, because Ireally thought that you know, I
was critiquing my game.
I had other people critiquingmy game.
I was looking to optimize mystrokes.
At the time, I was starting tofocus more on where do I want to
be in a couple of years, and Ithink that that applies to what

(23:53):
we're just talking about too.
I think it's really importantto like visualize your future
and kind of plan towards whatyou want.
It's big for Djokovic and howto stay healthy.
It's big for anybody thatthinks about longevity.
You know, the question is nothow do I live to 150?
The question is, what do youwant to be doing at 80?
And like, I just like to walkmy dog.
You know what I mean.

(24:15):
Like at 80 or 90, like ifyou've got the balance and the
strength to get out and walkyour dog, you know, as
reasonably young people you know, we kind of take for granted
the kind of frailty that comeswith the 85 or 90 year old body
generally.
So that foresight I think ofwhere you want to take your game
and what you want to do thatwas me for the first time

(24:36):
thinking I'm going to reallyinvest in this.
You know, when you're eight,it's just fun, right.
You're just out there winningtournaments and getting trophies
and your parents buy you a bigcelebration dinner.
It's fun.
But when you start thinking,okay, this is like something I
might make a career out of orsomething I want to take very,

(24:56):
very seriously, I think anybodywith kind of a competitive
mindset also wants to eliminatenot just distractions but
extracurricular things thatcould cause them to fail right.
So that was also the same timethat a lot of my school friends
were starting to potentiallyexperiment with recreational

(25:18):
drugs and drinking and I nevergot into any of that and that
was partly because I said youknow, if I make a thing of this,
if I really go for this likethere's going to be no excuses
on the other side, I'll havesucceeded or failed on my own
merits.
It was really like the head toWilson shift.
That did that.
So that was the first thing.
And then, kind of a side note,like randomly, I actually for a

(25:42):
year my junior year in highschool I had gone from being top
five in the nation to kind oftop call it 50, what kind of
distraction come in to my life.
And I actually stopped showingup for tennis practice.
There's a long story.

(26:02):
I don't.
I don't even know if it'sinteresting, but I was a better
tennis player than the numberone singles player we were about
, even on matches, but he wasthe coach's son.
But the reason I wasn't numberone and the coach told me this
and he told me flat out you're abetter tennis player than my

(26:23):
son, but you have a terriblework ethic for tennis.
And in that year I did and itreally just sort of put me off
because I had spent, you know,my entire life thinking that
tennis was going to make mycareer.
And then here I am playingnumber two singles at a high
school my junior year that I hadgone to since I was a freshman,
and played one singles.

(26:43):
You know how it probably goesto school Like no freshman comes
in and plays one singles, rightLike they're seniors that are
looking for their sort ofcollege, you know, recruiting.
So my sophomore year, my junioryear, and then here comes this
kid that you know kind ofreplaces you and I was like
really mad, really angry aboutthat and I actually told my
parents.
I went home and I was like youknow what I'm done, very angsty.

(27:06):
I just said I'm done, like thisis my thing, and it was like a
super kind of moment of selfdoubt and, I guess, general
weakness, mental weakness.
I kind of quit for a couple ofweeks but it was enough for him
to kick me off the tennis team,like my high school team.
In the end, like you know, Icame back, I played, I was
already being recruited, so Ikind of felt like you know,

(27:29):
there was something on the backburner that I didn't really need
my coach.
In retrospect it was a reallydumb thing.
I should have stayed.
I should have stayed and played.
I hurt the team by leaving atstate, but in a good way, but
through kind of a bad event.
That was another like really biglearning opportunity that an

(27:50):
analog to that would be.
You know Thomas Edison's quoteor he said I didn't fail a
thousand times at making a lightbulb.
It took a thousand steps tocreate a light bulb.
So I think it's only failure ifyou quit.
But I had quit and so I makesure now that that's no longer.

(28:11):
I've edited that out of my DNA,at least my mental DNA.
So those, I think, were the tworeally big ones.
And then, if there's a third,it was.
This was before you couldlegally take money as a college
tennis player.
But the transition from summerto college actually lost a
tennis scholarship altogetherand I knew my parents went from

(28:33):
a very young age, said, likeyour tennis lessons are your
college fund, like that's howyou're going to go to college,
and so like that ended up beinganother, like probably
ultimately bigger challenge forme in life.
But I didn't quit.
I actually relocated to Florida.
I always had tech to fall backon, so I was actually working

(28:56):
for America online.
I was working nights forAmerica online but I was
teaching at Harbour IslandAthletic Club during the day and
in the evenings and that, likeI was right between St Augustine
and Jacksonville, where the ATPis based, and I was trying to
play satellites.
It was a much harder pathbecause now I'm kind of like
self funding a lot of this andyou know how incredibly hard

(29:19):
that is.
The travel schedule is not fun,you know, when you're poor it's
like less fun because, you'restaying at like Motel six and we
chatted about this, but youknow I was eating like Taco Bell
, like food.
Nutrition was not what it istoday.
Like the food science of all ofthis is not what it was today.
But on the other side of kindof my tennis story, like I've

(29:42):
been able to build so much ofthat and I mean even in pitches
for companies, I've started Ioften say like don't bet against
an athlete, Never, never betagainst an athlete, because they
don't want to say no andthey're going to plow through
whatever it is right.
They're almost singularlyfocused on an outcome and if

(30:03):
they're dynamic enough, they'regoing to get to the right answer
.
They'll get to where they wantto get.
So those were kind of the bigthree inflection points in
tennis.
The rest, I think, was a lot ofnoise.
Since the Australian Open isgoing on, these are the shows
that people watch and getexcited for, but the training
happens elsewhere.

(30:24):
This is not where Al Kirezz orDjokovic or whoever like golf or
whoever.
This is not where you getbetter.
It's where you get mentallybetter playing in front of a big
audience, but your right to bethere happens somewhere else.
But if you can take thoselessons, I think it's totally

(30:44):
possible to build that into youreveryday life.

Klara (30:48):
I want to ask especially about the last lesson that you
mentioned, because I lived it ina little bit similar, a little
bit different way.
But losing a tennis scholarshipor not being able to compete
for a tennis team when youalready admitted and you're kind
of committed, your playing is abig deal.
I had to sit out for one and ahalf years of my eligibility and

(31:13):
it's actually still a thing insome ways that still bugs me
today.
And so the fact that youactually somewhat I would say
accidentally accepted a fewmoney that by no means covers
all the expenses and hard workthat you put in right, there's
not even winning a satellitetournament.
That covers maybe the expensefor that tournament itself, and

(31:35):
that's all right 10K for sure.
Yeah, how have you dealt withthat?
Going even a little bit deeper,how hard was it at that point?
And now, looking at it fromretrospect, Incredibly hard.

Cole (31:48):
Like it really incredibly hard, because you've built this
idea of what you want foryourself and then, like, it just
disappears.
And I mean that was anincredibly challenging situation
to be in, and I do rememberalmost making a I wouldn't say
it was a snap decision, but itwas a very fast follow because

(32:09):
my parents were in Colorado, youknow Western slope, and I was
like, well, I don't want to liveat home anymore.
I think I was I don't know liketwo months from turning 18.
And I really wanted to be moreindependent.
And so I just woke up and Itold my parents like I'm gonna

(32:32):
go try and be a pro in Floridaand I'll figure it out.
And I moved to Florida.
I actually had a girlfriend atthe time who was also a tennis
player, lived in Florida, and soI went and I'd applied for some
tech jobs.
I did get a job at an ISP, likean internet service provider,

(32:53):
like a dial-up company.
They didn't pay well and Iactually think they went under
pretty quickly after I got toJacksonville and I was applying
around to bigger companies butthey didn't have like I didn't
have a job immediately in thetech industry.
And again, I could code, Icould system architecture was
kind of already a thing, but Iended up getting a job at a

(33:16):
restaurant.
You know, for a little bit andhumbling for sure.
I actually think everybodyshould take a job at a
restaurant.

Klara (33:23):
You know, I've always felt like I wanted to be a
waiter, at least just toexperience what it is.
I couldn't because if you'reimmigrant you can't work outside
of school, so there's verylimited options.
But I actually feelunderstanding customer
experience and kind of what ittakes.

Cole (33:39):
You must learn quite a bit from that job 100% and at the
time I was very bitter, I wasvery mad and very bitter.
But again, I think theintrospective view of okay, what
can you learn from thesituation you are in?
That taught me a lot abouthumility.
That taught me a lot about youknow, I don't love the term, but

(33:59):
some of the philosophiesresonate with me.
I actually think the verydefinition of a server in a
restaurant is servant leader.
You know you are responsiblefor, like, the experience that
that table is going to have.
They're at your mercy but,you're there to serve them, and
so it taught me a lot about that, like listening to what people

(34:20):
you know need and want from youand how to deliver that.
But I didn't learn that lessonin the moment.
That took some time but I endedup going to night school in
Florida at Flagler, while I wasplaying tennis during the day.
So I found my path and inretrospect I can 1,000% say if I

(34:43):
were as successful on the men'sside of tennis as you were on
the women's side of tennis, Iwould be 100x less successful
playing tennis than I am in tech.
So you know, I think on bothsides and for the audience,
tournament-wise men and womenget paid the same.

(35:03):
But I look back now at kind ofwhat I've accomplished in the
tech field and I'd have to be atop 20 player probably to make
the same amount of money.
And it's not money.
It's not about the money.
I want to be clear.
It's not about the money.
I think money follows success.
That's how business works.

(35:24):
But if there's a comparison,you know I'd have to have been a
really, really damn good tennisplayer.
I would say you're anincredible tennis player.
I'm like a mediocre tennisplayer now.

Klara (35:37):
Thank you, you're too kind.
I look at myself differently aswell, but I think it's
interesting because the lasttime we met we a little bit
chatted about the gratitude wehave for failing in the sport.
Mine literally didn't comeuntil, you know, just recently I
was still living.
Probably a lot of tennis hasbeen a failure and I think

(35:58):
there's a good side of failure.
When I tell someone I havefailed in tennis, they're like,
oh no, you haven't.
I was like, yes, I have, likeit's a real thing.
I don't mean in a bad way.
I mean I have learned a lotfrom that failure because the
sport was so much for me.
So it's literally like livingyour own dream and creating, I
think, a lot of what athleticjourney is like.

(36:19):
It's probably same what youhave lived through
entrepreneurship and so I wonderhow all of these things you've
mentioned a little bit theaspects that translate to being
an entrepreneur and having yourown companies.
But going back to that timethat you decided you told your
parents I'm moving to Florida,I'm going to try to be a tennis

(36:42):
player, which is incredibly hardand courageous thing to do and
probably very.
I must admit, very stubborn too,I'm just going to do this Like
I'm going to commit, and tryingto do that while having a job I
mean dead alone, like those twothings.
It's impossible because youtrain so much and you have to
recover and so sort of all that.

Cole (37:02):
And I was working nights right Like Anna was working.

Klara (37:04):
I mean that's almost impossible because you don't get
enough sleep.
I mean I can imagine thatexperience was extremely
difficult.
And so when and how did yourealize, look, this is not
sustainable.
I need to quit this tennisdream and this identity of
trying to live up to be aprofessional tennis player, and

(37:24):
that alone is really hardrealization.
When did you realize it and howdid you go through that next
path of you know, I just need tolean on to technology.

Cole (37:34):
Actually that never happened.
I think I mean certainly thegiving up on touring and playing
professionally.
I gave up on that, but and itdoesn't even.
I mean I'm going to use theword compromise but it's not, it
wasn't really even a compromise.
I've always had a passion, Ithink partly because of my own
upbringing and all the coachesand how much respect I had for

(37:56):
my coaches and I always didoutside of my high school coach.
I always respected my personalcoaches like just massively and
I had some incredible coaches,like Kenny DeConning, who is
Surinam's like Davis Cup coach,like I've had really good
coaches.
I love teaching and I've alwaysloved kids.
So at Harbor Island athleticclub I got to teach what was

(38:19):
called Future Stars and thesewere kind of the upper echelon
of the Florida.
You know, harbor Island's apretty nice club and the kids I
got to teach were really goodand so I got to kind of just
shift my focus from me to themwhile still playing tennis.

(38:40):
And that again I use the wordcompromise, but it wasn't really
right.
It was just an evolution ofplaying tennis and like where my
strengths were and I think ofmyself as a really good coach,
thought of myself as a very goodplayer, but again, looking back
hindsight, I'm probably abetter coach than I was a player

(39:00):
and in terms of fulfillment,seeing one of those kids win a
tournament probably meant moreto me than me winning anything.
So again, like maybe I'm superlucky in the fact that the
regret that I've got is very low, like very little regret on you

(39:20):
know where I ended up, eventhough in those specific moments
there's a sting to therealization that you know I'm
gonna accept that I'm probablyworking 40 to 50 hours a week
now as a career in tech, versusbecause I certainly didn't want
to be a full-time tennis coachlike that.
You know that doesn't pay wellbut you want to live like a

(39:43):
tennis player when you're afull-time coach.
It was really funny because youknow, I taught with a bunch of
full-time coaches.
But there's that moment thatstings a little bit.
But then there's what comesafter the sting and I think
that's where you grow and whatyou do with that sting is kind

(40:03):
of character defining orredefining, altering, enhancing,
whatever you want to use.
You know the Florida move thingwas probably an over tilt, you
know, over reaction to the lastthing that had happened, where I
just quit.
I was like I'm not gonna quit.
But I think the race is alwaysahead of you, it's never behind

(40:28):
you.
And just like a tennis match,right, like the match is ahead
of you, it's not behind you.
Like the points that you shouldhave won, like what can you do
about, should have Absolutelynothing, that point is done and
over and you've got to just moveon to the next point, and so
that's now how I think aboutstarting companies, that's how I

(40:50):
think about growing companies,that's and just growing myself.
Like you know, I'm now 45.
So I'm not like really younganymore, but there's a lot of
road ahead if you prepare andyou do kind of the right things.

Klara (41:09):
So, on that note, preparing, doing the right
things you've kind of describedyour tennis journey, the
learnings that you had, and thenyou mentioned your first sort
of tech job was at an ISP, notvery well paid, and reflecting
and kind of hearing.
If I can summarize what you'vetaken from your tennis career,

(41:30):
it seems like a lot of thelessons you've applied to
entrepreneurship and buildingbusiness with technology,
obviously technology being atthe center.
So what was that career like?
Let's transition, because Ithink we could talk about tennis
forever and you have achievedso much more.
You know talking about thetennis, but you have achieved so

(41:52):
much more in technologyleadership specifically.
So how would you reminisce oneven your beginnings there, in
the start of that journey thatled you to then having seven
startups and even now vapor IOedge, and there's so much we can
talk about what you're creatingand building now?

Cole (42:10):
So I'll start by saying this you know, I think going
into something eyes wide openand prepared it's, you can't
just, you know, thumb in thewind, say this is my next
startup, you know, with no planon how to get there.
Those are typically pipe dreamsthat investors are going to shy
away from.
So when I went into tech, Iwent into it very deliberately

(42:32):
with a plan on kind of what Ithought I was good at, where I
thought I could apply some ofthe knowledge that I had, but
ultimately with a goal of likewhere I wanted to be.
You know, because you look at aSilicon Valley investor and
those guys are also good patternmatchers, right, and I wasn't
Stanford, I wasn't Berkeley, I,like you know, I didn't live in

(42:54):
the Valley.
So, like raising money out ofSilicon Valley for me was not an
option and I knew that.
So I looked at kind of the next, call it 10 years in my early
20s about what data pointsshould be added to my you know
knowledge set and ultimately, cvor resume that will get me to

(43:17):
where I want to go.
So, you know, I took jobs thatI could learn new things in and
I built a you know, awell-rounded knowledge, set of
skills that would later serve me, and I knew there'd be no
immediate benefit, right.

(43:38):
In fact, sometimes it was asacrifice, but I went into it
prepared and I mean even so faras to, you know, working for a
while.
As you know.
You know, I built open computefor Facebook and that was a
501c6 nonprofit.
There's no stock in a nonprofit, right.
It's like like there's noliquidity event at the end of

(44:01):
that job.
But I went into that jobknowing that on the other side
of that my Rolodex was gonna bea lot bigger.
I'll have worked with reallyhigh profile hyperscale
executives across the industryand for a couple of years I'll
be doing these guys, all of themmassive.
I won't say favors because thatyou know, my job wasn't to do

(44:23):
favors, but my job was to putthe puzzle pieces together to
help them.
That's, corporations join501c6s to move the needle but
also sort of compete and likeeven the nonprofit work that I
did.
And let me be clear there's avery big difference between a
501c6 nonprofit, which there's alot of like corporate money

(44:44):
behind in a 501c3.
And a 501c3 charitablenonprofit and I do a lot of
those too.
You know, up until last year Iwas the executive chairman of
the Leaders with Heart Committeefor the American Heart
Association and have a lot ofpassion for charity work as well
.
But I was very deliberate inkind of a 10 year arc that would

(45:06):
allow me to start beingrecognized and ultimately, you
know, even before the Facebookopen compute stuff, I was the
youngest or at least I was toldI was the youngest D1 strategist
for Dell that they ever hiredand you know that felt good.
I ended up working in well for,I should say, the Department of

(45:27):
Defense, where you know I hadmajor contributions to building
FedRAMP, in fact built the veryfirst FedRAMP compliant cloud
offering the government evercould use, and that meant
spending time with the Vatcundraand then East Chopra under, you
know, the Obama administration.
And like I just got some very Igot to do some very cool things

(45:50):
in my career by beingdeliberate about what I wanted.

Klara (45:53):
Mm-hmm, I love that you actually mentioned you were
really deliberate and almostplanned your next journey.
It seems like really being atennis player, because in tennis
you have everything mapped out.
You know how your day's gonnalook like.
You create your tournamentcalendar obviously shifts a
little bit based on wins andlosses, but you have kind of

(46:15):
given four seasons and you knowthey're each gonna look a little
bit different depending whattournaments you plan, how you're
preparing.
So it seems you've kind oftaken that approach and applied
it.
Well, this was my athleticjourney how do I create my
technology journey and who do Iwanna be and then worked from
sort of that backward 100%.

(46:37):
And you did it pretty much firstthing at the beginning when you
were starting your career.
That's impressive.

Cole (46:44):
Yeah, I think so.
I mean again, though I hadfamily members that had been in
this industry for a very longtime and I had sort of outside
coaches that were also guidingme.
But so much of like the Westernbut probably more accurately
said US culture is instantgratification and I really had

(47:08):
to deny on several occasions ahigher salary for a job that
would not have been as impactfulas a lesser paying offer that I
thought ultimately would be abetter foundation to go build

(47:28):
companies off of, and that takes.
You know that everything inyour life that you will treasure
for a long time probably takessome sacrifice.

Klara (47:40):
Yeah, 100%.
There's trade-offs and so,knowing what you're trading,
opportunity costs right there itis it's real.
I mean, you have so manyinteresting parts of your
journey in technology thatobviously led you here to vapor
IO that I want to talk a littlebit more about as well.

(48:01):
But before we dive there,reflecting on some of the roles
you've now shared and things youhave done, which ones were some
of the most fun roles that, ifyou look back, oh man, I would
go back and do this again.
This was really fun and youknow your definition of fun.
I'm sure it requires a lot ofwork and effort and skill and
probably learning, but anythingyou want to reminisce on that,

(48:24):
you really enjoyed perhaps eventhe struggle that came with it.

Cole (48:28):
Sure, like the first really fun I think really fun
job that I had, because workingover nights at America Online
was not fun, it helped kind ofpay the bills in the early days.
But the first real fun job thatI had for a considerable amount
of time was working for US West, the telco which was a spin out

(48:52):
of Mountain Bell so which liketotally dates me.
But I was an architect for USWest worked in a pretty
interesting environment.
We had some networkingresponsibilities around building
some of the network, but wealso had all of the shared
infrastructure.
So any application that didn'twarrant its own you know

(49:14):
multi-million dollar budget cameto us because we operated our
own multi-million dollar budgetand then we offered
infrastructure out to the restof the company.
But, man, we had a lot of funand it was, you know this was at
the time so like shiftingpurely into tech.
Linux was brand new and I hadkind of grown up when I wasn't
playing tennis, like veryweirdly, using Linux.

(49:38):
That's a whole different storyhow I got into that, but being
very young and being invited bythe CTO of US West to go present
to like Joe Nacho, and it wasall hands for the entire company
and we got to talk about whatwe were doing and, like it was
the first time I'd ever bought asuit I'd never owned a suit

(50:02):
before that and it was kind offun to go out and like pick a
suit and know that I was gonnago you know, start brushing
shoulders with big corporateexecutives.
At the time, like you know,those guys became the ultra
stars, but we just had a lot offun in that job Working in the
DoD also, like you know, Iworked for a federal contractor.

(50:24):
We were an 8A.
So an 8A is a socioeconomically, you know, disadvantaged
company.
When we were building OpenStackI'm not sure how much of your
audience won't even know whatthat is, but it's an open source
cloud computing platform andthis was spinning up.
At the same time, amazon wasspinning up right, like this was
just like a year or two, andthe US government in 2010, 2011,

(50:47):
2012, in fact, like it wasn'tprobably until 13 or 14 that any
cloud company had a FedRAMPcompliant data center and, again
, like I had a big hand increating that.
So in the early days, likebuilding OpenStack and like
creating the license, you know,helping to create kind of the
license of that which was Apachetoo.

(51:08):
We didn't create the license,but we applied the license to a
government funded in some ways,cause NASA was.
You know, the NASA was theleading government entity that
was funding the development.
That was just incredible, likereally a fun time to take a
company like NASA and a companylike Rackspace and then bring in

(51:29):
you know, at the time it wasAT&T and Citrix was there and
Cisco is there and like kind ofbuilding this big ecosystem
around this open source movement.
It was just so fun.
And those are probably my toptwo outside of like vapor was

(51:50):
well, let me say it differentlyVapor by far, vapor IO by far is
the biggest startup I'll everbe a part of.
I don't think I'll ever be apart of a startup that will be
as big as vapor is.
I think back maybe two monthsago there was an interview with
Jensen from Nvidia.

(52:10):
He's being interviewed aboutlooking back, what would you do
different?
I think it was a question.
He's like I wouldn't have evenstarted the company.
It is really hard to start acompany.
You know as hard it is to starta company.
It's harder to scale a company.
And it's a different skill setcompletely, but I knew, going
into this again, the forethoughtof going in, and so I'll just

(52:34):
kind of touch on it because I'msure it's like your next
question Like how did you come?

Klara (52:38):
up with the idea for vapor, see the foresight you
know again.

Cole (52:45):
actually I think a little bit was part of what I wanted to
do, but also pattern matchingagainst like where the industry
was headed.
And I just finished up buildingopen compute and you know that
501c6 nonprofit does afford youkind of the internal roadmap
knowledge of a lot of bigcompanies because they're

(53:06):
planning silicon and systemarchitecture and like other
things.
I mean, the Facebook wasn't shyabout this back in 2011, 2012 at
all, like Mark Zuckerberg hadlaunched a Facebook phone.
That was a thing.
But there was a bigger plan.
At the same time, twitter wascoming out and the whole world

(53:27):
was kind of moving to thiswireless first strategy, and it
just seemed like super obviousto me that, well geez, if you're
going to have anything morethan just packets shipped to you
, you're going to need kind of adifferent network for that.
And we don't have that network,and I know because, at US West.
you know we built those networkslike Phil Anschutz, the guy

(53:49):
that started Quest, like he hadthe fiber rights along I 70 and
that's how May East and May Westgot built and you know that
carried all of the trafficwestbound and eastbound across
the United States.
And I started looking at all ofthese experiences.
Now, this was, you know, still2015.
So, geez, almost a decade agonow.

(54:11):
But Facebook there was alreadyinternal conversations happening
around Oculus and spatialcomputing, or immersive
computing, or you know, whatevermixed reality, xr, and it just
seems super obvious to me that,like we didn't have the internet
architecture that we needed inorder to go build what does that

(54:33):
book call it?
Spatial computing?
Yes, and so I went off andagain, part stubbornness, I
think, was the part stubbornness, part boldness, part naivety.
One of the board members onopen compute was a partner at
Goldman Sachs, and so I flew toNew York and I said, hey, I need
like hundreds of millions ofdollars to go compete.

(54:54):
And they're like no, but we'llgive you like seven.
You can like start writing thesoftware and like let's see
where things go.
And so, again, it's like beingin a match where you expect your
opponent to play a certain wayand they're not playing that way
, so you have to also adjustyour game.
You know, I thought again kindof naively, that you know, I've

(55:15):
known this Goldman Sachs partnerfor a while he's on my board.
I can raise whatever money Ineed to, but I raised a
different amount of money but wemade it work in that round.
We made it work and we startedbuilding things and this has
been a really fun journey interms of like art, of the
possible in terms of thefootprint you know we might have

(55:36):
as a company and look, it'sstill entirely possible that it
all falls down Like that canhappen to anybody.
One of the board members opencompute was Andy Petterschein,
the founder of Sun Microsystemsthat people often don't know.
Do you know what Sun stands?
For no.
Stanford University Networks.
Like people don't realize.
You know that's like that's afun fact, but you know Andy also

(55:59):
, the very first investor inGoogle right.
Like wrote the check to Larryand Sergey.
There's a fun story about thatthat maybe I'll tell you offline
.
Not relevant here, butinteresting story nonetheless.
Sun, I think at its peak, wasvalued, you know, somewhere
around a billion.
So it, like you know, adjustedfor inflation and everything
else Like that, would have beenprobably three or four billion

(56:23):
today.
I mean nothing to sneeze at all.
I think Oracle ended up buyingthem for maybe $400 million.
So, even like the biggestcompanies are subject to
disruptors.
Yeah, and I've always viewedmyself as a disruptor and a
contrarian.
Like, how do you look atsomething you know outside of

(56:43):
the box and then how do you go?
How do you go penetrate that?
So finding the attack surfacearea and the threat vectors that
exists to an industry.
I think I've been always prettygifted at finding those things.
And then the rest is, you know,telling a compelling story that
gets people to believe in whatyou're doing.

(57:04):
And I think I've always hadthat gift, that presentation of
like being on stage and I ammotivated to do those things.
But telling the vapor story hasbeen really incredibly fun.
But the journey came out ofpart open stack, part open
compute.
Telco is doing this thing,Cloud is doing this thing.
Like, what do they all need?

Klara (57:25):
Yes.

Cole (57:25):
And I thought Verizon, at&t, t-mobile I worked for one
of those they were going to beslow moving.
I can move faster and I canpivot with the requirements of
hyperscale because Facebook atthe time was as big as any of
those guys, right?
I mean, I think at the timeFacebook had a higher market cap

(57:48):
when they went public than alot of those cloud guys that
were in the game.
So that's how we ever gotstarted and it's also been
incredibly fun and who knows,we'll see we're still building
stuff, so it's still fun.
And probably just bringing sometennis back into this, I don't
think people realize.
Let's look at Alka as anexample When's Wimbledon right

(58:12):
and then, like Cincinnatidoesn't look like himself at all
.
I don't think like the generalpopulation knows how much
pressure you feel for theexpectation that you know you
are now one of the greats, right, like I remember seeing all the
news, he's got all of thestrengths of Nadal and all of
the strengths of Fedditor andnone of the weaknesses Like in

(58:36):
all the strengths of Djokovic,none of the weaknesses that puts
a punch of pressure on you andthat exists for us too.
In business, you raise moremoney, you start growing, you
bring on bigger names aspartners and customers and
there's an increased amount ofpressure that gets put on you to
turn that into revenue, andthose are the things that I find

(58:57):
myself.
You know me, so you know I'msuper passionate about the
things that I do and I'm 100%passionate about vapor.
As I think about, though, likeyou know, your sweet spot
because, like in tennis, there'scertain followers, there's
baselineers, there's all sortsof players.
You need to kind of know whatyou're good at.

(59:17):
Like, my kind of power gift isbeing that contrarian that
identifies the marketopportunity.
I can be an operational leader.
You know I actually started atOpen Compute, which we started
at Facebook, as the chiefoperating officer, but I think I

(59:40):
like changing the world morethan growing the world.

Klara (59:44):
It's more fun, I think.
I think so.
Yeah, I mean because I get tobe vocally disruptive.

Cole (59:52):
Part of the reason I've not been on many podcasts is in
the early days of vapor, we justhad this like crazy contrarian
view of the industry.
Now our view of the industry isgenerally well accepted.
Right Distributed architectureyes, Like when we started that
was not something that peoplewere thinking a lot about and
people were telling me we werecrazy for it.
I loved that, but now thatthat's come to pass and people

(01:00:12):
agree with us and people arealso building capabilities that
look like that, there's lessopportunity for me to be super
contrarian Now.
The fact that AI is now here.
It's not just about the factthat AI is now here and the
entire conversation for that isaround generative AI.
We get to be contrarian onceagain.

(01:00:32):
I actually don't think, justlike I don't think that the
telco networks of days past werethe right networks for spatial
computing and kind of what we'regoing to experience over the
next few years In AI.
I really don't think the totaladjustable market is in large
language models, inferencing thekids attached to those models,

(01:00:53):
and they may not even belanguage at all.
It might be.
It might be an LVM like a largevision model and you look at,
the number one producer of dataacross the globe in any 24 hour
period are cameras, far and away.
I heard a statistic.
This is now a couple of yearsold but I'm sure it's still
probably true and in fact itmight be more true today than it

(01:01:14):
was even then.
But China alone, through CCTVand cameras, generates more data
than Facebook does globally ina day.
Just close circuit cameras inChina.

Klara (01:01:28):
That's scary and that's a very different country, cause
there's also this privacy in.
China of being communist, Iguess you guys have a lot of
cameras.
Yeah, you can't.
Yeah, what are they called thecircle?

Cole (01:01:40):
I forget.
But the rings I forget what theLondon calls that, but I mean
cameras by far are like from anIoT perspective, they're the
biggest data generating and alsocapture some of the most
sensitive things that arerelevant to humans.
You look at the value of a of acamera at an intersection

(01:02:02):
versus, you know, like a, aparticulate sensor in a factory
for like you know paint.
There's like those aredifferent things in terms of
data, in terms of impact onhuman life and whatever.
So cameras are super interestingand I think things like
computer vision and intent basedcomputer vision specifically,

(01:02:24):
and spatial computing and likebuilding models around these
inference engines with standarddeviation built around like the
autonomy of what should behappening.
I just think that over the nextfive years the level of
automation in our daily lives inan urban environment is going
to look very different than itdoes today.

(01:02:44):
It's interesting to have likethat view of of it, Cause I
think the world in general isstill like you know, I can get a
meal plan out of chat GPT.
Yeah, I don't think that's whatthe money is longterm.

Klara (01:02:58):
And you want to go back a little bit more, even to your
decision of vapor, io andstarting and you know, drawing
back on my memory, at the end ofmy Ericsson days, it was
probably a little bit after youdecided to start vapor that 2018
, 19, 20, I mean edge computingwas the hit right.
Everybody talked about it,anybody who knew the definition

(01:03:19):
back then or could string sortof this 5g edge computing.
Sometimes you didn't even haveto know what they mean, but you
spoke the language.
It was fantastic the industrywould write about, but that
triggered a lot of competition.
Even mobile edge eggs yeah,ericsson had their own.
I actually forgot how their edgecomputing startup was named.

(01:03:40):
They did end up shutting itdown.
Yeah, obviously all the bigcloud players at their own edge
and edge offering continue tobuild those and so throughout if
you look at the decade, I guessmaybe that's a good way to put
it, cause you were kind of earlywith that hypothesis there's
been difference in opinions andperhaps space of how to perceive

(01:04:03):
the edge and the value of theedge, what it delivers and even
scaling of it, as you mentioned.
So when you look at youroriginal hypothesis behind vapor
aisle, how accurate is the listnow or how much have you needed
to tweak it as you have beenbuilding vapor and what are

(01:04:24):
maybe some of the big learningsthat you you know could be
positive or negative, thatfueled or maybe stalled or just
kind of changed the way youthought about that reality?

Cole (01:04:36):
Great question.
First and foremost, one thingthat I knew we were not going to
have to change was thearchitecture, like I flat out
knew in 2015,.
You know, before the podcast,you and I were chatting a little
bit about Tesla and Elon Muskand I remember an interview with
him.
This must have been 2008.
This was a long time ago.
He was so convinced that Teslawas going to be a multi-billion

(01:05:01):
dollar car company and they wereon the verge of bankruptcy back
in 2008.
They almost shut the door, like, I think, on Christmas Eve.
They were like, you know, aboutto shut the door, but he later
in interview, like this, was soself-evident to me and I had the
conviction to just keep going,keep funding, keep fighting and
not to put myself in the samefield stadium, city, galaxy as

(01:05:26):
Elon Musk.
I did feel like I knew what thearchitecture needed to look
like and that was a huge openquestion by everybody not us in
the industry back in 2015.
I'm sure I hope you were partof Ericsson meetings where
they're like what's this vaporIO company?

Klara (01:05:44):
Yes, Because everybody had those meetings.
Yeah, we're actually doing.
I was part of the fan memberstrategic team that we're
advising to North Americaleaders in Ericsson and we took
a project on edge computing,like what's the definition,
what's the market?
Should Ericsson go build it?
Should we partner?
Like what should we build?
And obviously, yeah, vapor.
I remember from those days, likewhat is this kind of new

(01:06:07):
company trying to create an edge?
Cause there's been a lot ofestablished players and
everybody's been throwing kindof millions and billions of
dollars to trying to stretchinto the edge and build the edge
.
That's right.

Cole (01:06:21):
So and everybody had those conversations in retrospect,
having kind of the outside ofwork conversations with a lot of
the industry leaders.
It's been fun to know.
You know how much competitiveanalysis has been done on kind
of.
You know we did and I think,look, in the early days we we
were able, and I think we'restill, punching way above our,
our weight class at vaporbecause of who we partner with

(01:06:44):
at the time.
You know, we could not havefound a better partner than
Crown Castle.
I mean just a massive tower, Idon't think.

Klara (01:06:50):
I remember when the deal was announced that shook the
industry a little bit.
I was like, oh my God, evenCrown is getting into this edge
business, like there was verystretchy, huge yes.

Cole (01:06:59):
Huge.
So you know again thatdeliberate.
I needed names like GoldmanSachs.
I needed names like CrownCastle.
You know names like Berkshire.
You know all of who have endedup investing in vapor.
I needed that optically.
So I don't want to say lookbigger than we were, but to to
be relevant to a cloud playerthat you want us to put millions

(01:07:20):
of dollars in what where, likeyou know, and you're like this
at the time, like 20 personstartup.
But you know again, likehindsight 2020, a lot of people
don't realize today that didyour realty trust was a giant.
You know, multi-billion dollardata center.
Read today they went publicwith 11 people.
So it's possible to kind of dothese things.

(01:07:40):
But anyway, back to yourquestion.
We knew unequivocally thearchitecture for the edge had to
look different.
By the way, always hated theterm edge.
We live on a sphere and I don'tknow where the edge of the
internet is, and all I wanted todo is build more internet Right
, so the edge became this kindof catchphrase that I think got

(01:08:07):
overused.
Yes, and even vapor sort of felt.
I think we were part of thedilution of the concept of edge,
even though you know what aVerizon would call the edge and
what we kind of thought aboutthe edge were very different.
And that became hard to talkabout publicly because when we

(01:08:30):
talked about it, the things wewere trying to eliminate and
people still don't know thistoday.
So I'll give kind of a one onwireless to wireline
architecture.
I won't tell you what carrierI'm on, but I will tell you that
I don't actually get an IPaddress until I get fiber
backhauled to like St Louis,missouri, from Austin, texas,

(01:08:51):
from St Louis, because, again,like we're peering and
interconnection and networkhandoff happened there.
There's no peering point in StLouis, so I actually get further
backhauled to Atlanta, georgia,and then, depending on, like,
where I'm going on the internet,the request that I'm going for.
So let's say, like I want tofind you on LinkedIn.
Well, linkedin, the news lastmonth was they were going to

(01:09:14):
migrate to Azure front door onMicrosoft.
That didn't happen.
So what will remain true forthe foreseeable future is if,
say, the CDN that they use Iwon't say the name, but you can
find it the CDN they use isworking like maybe 40% of my
feed comes back from that CDN inAtlanta, but the other 60% of

(01:09:34):
the data I'm looking for likeliterally goes from Austin to
Atlanta, atlanta to like SanJose, california, and then back
to Austin and that's a ton ofmoney.
So, the speed of light beingthe speed of light, there's
latency involved with that.
So you're certainly not goingto get to like spatial computing
or you know anything that comesafter that which we all think

(01:09:56):
you know.
I don't want to use the termlayman, but kind of like what
people think of, or at leastwhat they thought was going to
make the edge very successful,or things like Robotic surgeries
and autonomous cars and dronesand sure, like some of that
stuff will materialize over, youknow, the next decade.
But forget the use case for asecond, because I don't think if

(01:10:18):
you're an infrastructurecompany, you're trying to build
the use case, which we certainlyweren't.
I wasn't trying to come up witha killer app for edge.
I was trying to come up with theright architecture for the
killer app.
I think, like a lot of people,we thought that that would be
the convergence of telco andcloud.
We really did and that turnedout to look more competitive

(01:10:39):
than complimentary.
I mean, look today kind of thebig deals that have gotten done.
A lot of it's being unwound.
There's a lot of it beingunwound today.
Certainly some things are goingforward, but we also thought
that we would be in a greatposition to capitalize on that

(01:11:00):
neutral host share, the towermodel.
Because you go to a crowncastle or an American tower
Macrosel site and you've got allthe telcos living on there and
you know crowns kind of initialbet on vapor was hey, like the
next generation tower might looklike a data center at the
bottom of our tower and so.
But you might now have cloudsin there and you might have
content delivery networkcompanies in there.

(01:11:21):
Like that's a slightly moresophisticated like a tower.
Such an incredible businessmodel because you know, with the
escalators built into theleases on those towers, you
could build the thing and thennot pay any attention to it for
probably 10 years and as long asthe weeds didn't grow and
prevent access to the site, thattower will make more money for

(01:11:42):
30 years every year than it didthe previous year.
Just an incredible businessmodel because it's just a tower.
Yes.
Whereas data centers are, ups isand servers and top of rack
switches and optical gear andlike.
There's a lot more that goes ininto that.
And so that original thesiswhich we also thought turned out

(01:12:03):
not to be what originally, wasviewed as our killer app, which
was really economics and easybutton.
So it wasn't the use case.
It wasn't autonomous driving orrobotic surgery.
The killer app forinfrastructure, for any
infrastructure, has always beeneconomics and easy button, 100%.
Amazon makes no qualms about thefact that for probably 95% of

(01:12:27):
every company out there,outsourcing your data center
requirements to AWS is moreexpensive from a CapEx
perspective.
But on the flip side is, withall of the tooling they have,
shifting that CapEx to OpEx, areyou doing more with your
resources internally so youdon't have to go operationally

(01:12:49):
have that data center and nodifferent on our side, like if
you want to build a lateralfiber, like dig up city
sidewalks, that's a tough askfor an enterprise Like you
worked at Apple.
I don't think Apple knows howto zone and permit for fiber in
downtown Los Angeles, and notbecause they can't figure it out

(01:13:10):
.
Clearly they can.
Do they want to figure that out, though I don't think they want
to figure it out.
It's really hard too, and it'snot months, it's years of zoning
and permitting, like LA.
I'm not picking on Californiaor a specific city.
I mean, they have pretty toughrequirements, it is tough, right
, like LA just happens to be anincredibly tough town to zone

(01:13:30):
and permit, for we started thatcity, I think, in 2017 and we
just finished.
We just finished.
So it's kind of know yourstrength, know what you're good
at.
So that's the easy button part.
And then you know again on theconnectivity side, like the
backhaul of this billions ofdollars of backhaul going to
this per year from each of thecarriers, right, so AT&T,

(01:13:54):
t-mobile, verizon, they alloffer backhaul for enterprises
and it's expensive when, inreality, I think again for the
next generation of applications,so for kind of an internet 2.0
right now, and we're kind ofbuilding the third act of the
internet, which will be moremixed reality, more spatial,
most of that data is going tostay local anyway, right, like

(01:14:15):
there's no need for you totraverse half the United States
for what needs to be sovereignto that city, that county, that
zip code, like whatever theconstraints are.
But I think data sovereigntyand data velocity are kind of
the next things that make up thebackhaul elimination and part

(01:14:36):
of the value that we're going tobring to the industry.
And I really believe that thekiller app is AI.
Ai has this adoption curve thatTelco's never had.
What was the statistic?
The chat GPT like it had.
Was it double the amount ofpeople in?

Klara (01:14:51):
24 hours versus Twitter, it may have been even more.

Cole (01:14:54):
It's incredible, and we've already seen the trough of
disillusionment happen for AI.
I just think that that's reallythe killer app.
So we're kind of betting nowthe farm on being the right
architecture for, again, notgenerative AI, but how
generative AI needs asynchronoustraining, how asynchronous

(01:15:16):
training is benefited from, likereal time inferencing.
Like if you want to inferencean intersection, you can't be 20
milliseconds away, like that'stoo far away.
So that's our bet that's vapor.
We still have the same thesison the architecture the go to
market.
Now the other thing that wefound was people want something

(01:15:37):
that Apple knows really well, alot of companies know really
well is the ecosystem reallyneeds to look end to end, and we
always wanted to kind of shyaway from offering everything
because we never wanted tocompete directly with our
customers.
If you have a cloud company, wewanted you to put your stuff in
our environments.
Now we've been kind of forcedthrough customer conversations

(01:15:58):
to kind of build up thisinferencing capability.
But it's also so differentwhere I feel like we're kind of
back in 2015.
We're really the only onestalking about this publicly and
I want to just call out thatthat's not the reason why I
wanted to come on your podcastand the early days.
I would only do podcasts if Icould be concharian about what
vapor was building.
That's not what I'm here, butserendipitous maybe, but that's

(01:16:21):
where vapor sits today.

Klara (01:16:22):
Yeah, it's fantastic and I was listening to one of my
favorite pots I don't know ifyou'll listen to the all in
podcast and sort of.
They talk about, obviously, thisinferencing and the large
language model, and the more andmore you start doing these
inferencing that requires hugeamounts of data as you mentioned
even just the cameras that's agreat use case the more you need

(01:16:45):
actually the existence of theedge right?
There's been hypothesis that 5Gwill also create that.
I think the problem's been wedon't have the killer app for 5G
and it's becoming to a pointwhere people are tired of
talking about 5G and the killerapp because they've been trying
to figure out what that is andwhat is coming up with.
Anything, including the newbusiness economics that carriers

(01:17:07):
could monetize theirinvestments that they have put
into all the 5G.
But I really think it's kind ofI see it similarly as you like
the AI and all of this.
You know beautiful convergencein this swirl of activity and
innovation about AI.
It seems like that only wouldbenefit Vapor and your position

(01:17:28):
and what you have built and theeffort you have put up until now
.
Is that accurate, I think?

Cole (01:17:33):
so yeah, but why so like?
Let's go back to, I think, thetechnical limitations that have
been forced onto the telcos,because even the telcos you know
, coincidentally, and you knowthis they all backhaul
themselves to their own centraloffices and then those central
offices have to further backhaulto like these internet exchange
, like peering points that aresometimes 100, 200 miles away.

(01:17:56):
That architecture, just it justdoesn't work.
For, I think, these lowerlatency inferencing use cases
Hindsight being 2020, I feellike they should have never been
called data centers, we shouldhave called them centers of data
, and I think that center ofdata is like moving from,

(01:18:17):
interestingly, what I would callthe edge of the network the
other way right Because.
I think the center of data isactually the urban core.
Technically, the reason youwould choose like a vapor is
because you need that kind ofsub 10 millisecond roundtrip

(01:18:37):
capability and that's part ofthe reason why we've launched
this relationship with Comcastand we've said things about the
work we're doing with Dish and,you know, other telcos.
If you can run your packet coreand your inferencing engine on
the exact same hardware, nowyou've got a sub 10 millisecond

(01:18:58):
capable solution and 5G.
The promise of 5G, if youremember, it got booted out of
the spec.
There was actually a spec forit in Etsy Mech and then there
was another spec in like theopen ran 7 to standard called
ultra reliable, low latency.
That's not in 5G anymore.

(01:19:18):
That was pushed out.
It might come in like a laterversion of open ran, but only
vapor after the modem handshakeright, which in 4G was like 30
ish milliseconds, so already toofar.
You know, just the modemhandshake alone was too long.
In 5G you can still do a modemhandshake in about one and a

(01:19:42):
half milliseconds and then ifthe inferencing engine is
running like right there in thepacket core, is running right
there on the vapor network, likeyou could get to the cloud
computing resource and back tothe of the receiving modem, then
the phone or, in the IoT sensor, the Wi-Fi network, in
optimally under three or fourmilliseconds around trip, and I

(01:20:03):
don't think really anybody elsein the US can offer that.

Klara (01:20:07):
I think in.

Cole (01:20:07):
Germany and you know, smaller countries.
It's possible, because of thedistance that you need to travel
, that the US is just soincredibly large and our telco
footprint and our cloudfootprint is just so
disaggregated.
I don't think there's anothercompany that can do what we can
do, you know, with regard tolike having all that

(01:20:28):
infrastructure, live in oneplace and truly keep that data
local across a vast number ofmarkets.
So my vapor has 36 markets.
I mean, technically, we operatenot by square footage but by,
you know, number of locationsper market.

(01:20:48):
We probably operate more datacenter infrastructure at scale
than you know the biggest datacenter companies in the world
and just in the US.

Klara (01:20:58):
Which is impressive that you have been able to achieve
that, built in relatively smallperiod of time, considering the
amount of effort that it takesto build this out right.
I do know a bit about just realestate zoning, obviously from
telco, and just how difficult itis to even construct the soul
side, which from yourperspective is probably even

(01:21:18):
more difficult from what you'retrying to create than the amount
of space and backhaul that youmay need, and digging and
trenching.
It's a real hard work.

Cole (01:21:29):
People think you're so right.
People think of vapor as a andwe are a technology company, I
mean at the end of the day,we're a technology company that
delivers our solution via a SaaSlike a software as a service
model.
But last I checked we had about210 algorithmic data points that
went into site selection andwhere we go, and a lot of it's

(01:21:49):
automated.
So there's a massive GIS systemon the back end of this and
everything from poweravailability to rev share to
water planes and easements.
It's like 100 and somethingalmost 200 data points that go
into just the beginning, likejust scrubbing markets to figure

(01:22:12):
out where to go.
That in itself is adifferentiator for us and it
truly in the early days of ourjourney.
I don't think we would havegotten there without Crown
Castle Like that's what crowndoes day in, day out, it's all
they do zone permit, buildtowers and the fact that they've
got land at the bottom of thosetowers that we can lease from
them wholesale.
We would not have been able tobuild vapor without them, the

(01:22:35):
vapor that we know industryknows today.

Klara (01:22:38):
Yeah, just to summarize a little bit, you mentioned some
of the smartest decision whereunderstanding the architecture
that you can build and what isthe right one from the start
which is really impressive,considering you started building
it almost a decade ago knowingthe right partnerships.
The third one comes to mind isreally the execution, in that

(01:22:59):
you were able to reallymaterialize on the vision that
you have had.
Looking at that and all of thechallenges, you've kind of
described a little bit theshifting of the reality.
What were some of the thingsyou haven't anticipated perhaps
that you had to deal with?
Anything you want to call outmaybe top two or three.

Cole (01:23:22):
Inflation.

Klara (01:23:23):
Yeah.

Cole (01:23:23):
The geopolitical situation , the climate that we're in
right now geopolitically, andjust from a vapor.
We are a technology company butwe're not funded like your
typical software company orcapital intensive.
We build physicalinfrastructure.
We certainly didn't predict apandemic, which slowed down a

(01:23:45):
number.
If you think about on theconsumer side, one of the
biggest money making footprintsyou can own is a stadium.
There's a ton of revenue thatgoes through a stadium from the
retail alcohol sales, food sales, concert tickets, football
games, basketball games, hockeygames, like whatever, baseball,

(01:24:06):
whatever it is.
There was no venue activity forthree years almost, and there
were a lot of things we weredoing with cloud companies and
other SIs and MSPs in the venuespace.
That just got shut down duringthe pandemic One thing that a
lot of folks don't know aboutthe experience that the retail

(01:24:28):
companies have, and becausethat's all contracted, they have
to basically share the sameWi-Fi network as every person
who is Instagramming ortick-talking or whatever you do
now at these events, and thatmakes for a challenging retail
scenario, and we were working onsolutions there too.
So I think, of all of thethings that we've had to sort of

(01:24:52):
prepare for, despite notknowing the pandemic was the
biggest the geopolitical sort ofwars and what's happening now
in the Middle East and Ukraine.
That was kind of second.
And then, because we're in somerespects powered by giant real
estate investment trusts,inflation and interest rates

(01:25:16):
have a more.
Interest rates have a lot to dowith the cost of capital there,
and so those things have beenchallenging.
But again, at the same timewe're figuring out what levers
we can pull to pivot on ourgo-to-market and how we control
our own costs and ensure that wecan pass as much savings as we

(01:25:38):
can find on to our customers.

Klara (01:25:41):
Makes sense, kind of the big, I guess, macro challenges
that you're dealing with.
I have maybe a few morequestions about Vapor and then I
want to transition to a fewmore macro questions as we wrap
up here, or maybe some funquestions to throw there as well
.
Okay, but I'm curious.
I know you said you're buildingthe edge and you're not
necessarily thinking aboutbuilding the applications

(01:26:01):
because that's what yourpartners come up and buy the
edge infrastructure or throughthat model that you have, which
actually went on your website.
I really like the simplicitythat you created, that people
can even see the pricing spot onon your website.
I think just the way thatyou're thinking about it and you
mentioned the economics andeasy button to make it simple is

(01:26:22):
really important for you andthe team when you have been
building Vapor.
But anything you want to sharewith listeners I'm curious even
some interesting applicationsthat you wouldn't have foreseen
that are coming up on edge.
Just something to spike theenthusiasm and for people to
think about differently.

Cole (01:26:41):
Yeah, I'll tell you a fun one that was very recent.
I was at a conference recentlyand someone was like oh, cole,
the father of the edge, orsomething.
I was like, yeah, I'm not oldenough to be the father of a
four-year-old and athree-year-old.

Klara (01:26:54):
I'm not the founder.

Cole (01:26:57):
I look up in my career, I've been fortunate enough to
spend times with some Titans,right Like VentSurf, arguably is
the father of the internet.
Guys like Paul Machupertis, theinventor of DNS, who is right
up there as an industry Titan.
Our chairman of the board isliterally, a couple years ago,
indoctrinated into the wirelesshall of fame.

(01:27:17):
And these are the fathers ofthings.
I am not just my two daughters,I thought.
Starting vapor in 2015, I'dpretty much heard every sort of
iteration of a killer app foredge, you know, from practical
to totally impractical.
One of the more recent oneswhich again I think emphasizes

(01:27:39):
why AI is here and now andrequired was a use case that was
brought to us by a partneraround a hospital use case, and
I had not heard of this.
I had no idea, because I'mactually pretty into health and,
to the extent that thattrickles into like disease

(01:27:59):
prevention and what you can diefrom, I've done some of that
research, as macabre as it is.
So we were sitting aroundtalking with this partner and
they said we've got to, we'relike compelled to try and build
this, this solution, around thenumber one killer of human
beings in a hospital.
I'm like, internally, I'mthinking to myself like what AI

(01:28:21):
solution is going to be used for, like MRSA?
like something you knowbacterial infection that kills
someone.
So that's why I thought thenumber one thing was and so they
come out with the statistics.
I'll ask you really quick.
Maybe I'll ask you this, Idon't know, but do you know what
it is?
Do you know what the number onecause of death in a hospital is
?

Klara (01:28:39):
I have a hand, but I think you told me too it's false
, false.

Cole (01:28:43):
Falling out of bed, breaking hips In talking with
your friends around, like youknow their grandparents, et
cetera it's like oh, they broketheir hip.
It's not looking good.

Klara (01:28:53):
Yeah, fine enough.
Just my aunt, 85 year old aunt,is in a hospital.
My mom brought her there todaybecause she broke a hip and she
needs an emergency surgery.
So actually falls in general.

Cole (01:29:05):
Falls in general.

Klara (01:29:06):
I think we're one, and I think in hospital it's perhaps
more so because you're undernarcosis People don't think
about it.
That's right, even thoughnurses and doctors tell them
don't get up, you need help.
They sort of oh, I can do thisand yeah.

Cole (01:29:21):
So this partner, who is highly opinionated about GPUs,
said we want to build a computervision platform to prevent fall
detection and that what a lowlatency application.
Right, like your microseconds,milliseconds maximum.
You need to have a lot of stufflocal, and that was a really
fun one, because I hadn't heardit.
I think I probably have heardmore use cases around this

(01:29:45):
Others that are like reallyfastening to me.
So I sit on the board of a of anAI company out of Tel Aviv
company called Nexar, andthey're doing some really
incredible things from agenerally call it X to X, but,
like to break that up, it's avehicle to infrastructure,
vehicle to vehicle andinfrastructure to vehicle.
Now, when I say autonomousdriving, I don't mean like

(01:30:09):
putting on a breaking functionor like turning the system or
like turning the steering wheelfrom like a level for you know
autonomous capability, but justlike humans are augmented
through our connectivity tothings that are happening in the
Ukraine, like you know, we'resitting here, in Austin, texas,
but we use augmented data tolike build our like you know

(01:30:29):
internal and external narrative.
I mean our phones.
It's so funny, it's superanecdote.
I swear if, like, you're analien and you landed on earth
and you walked through anairport like you would for sure
believe that all of these humanswere like getting their
instructions from, likesomething that they're like
glued to, because and I don'tknow if you- go the next time

(01:30:51):
you travel, just look at howmany people are sitting in their
chair at the airport on theirphone.
It's pretty incredible.
So augmented data, but you ownan EV.
I you know.
I own an EV and, for whateverreason, autonomous functions
seem to exist more in theelectrical vehicle space than
the ice space.

(01:31:11):
But they're also monoliths andlocalized, so all of the sensors
that they can see, there'sproximity to those sensors.
So if you're going to actuallybuild like a decent experience
from point A to point B, wherepoint A to point B is longer
than a football field withentropy- you know, with people

(01:31:33):
running into the middle of thestreet and fire hydrants,
whatever.
I think you kind of need moredata, the car needs more network
based data, and so those aresome really fun use cases,
because there are very largecompanies thinking through hey,
if we did have access to allthis extra data, we could do X,
y and Z, and so to see, likegiant corporations like you know

(01:31:55):
, building theses around X to Xcommunication I think is cool.
And then, like the other onesthat I'm just really excited
about because I think that arepractical and I think there's a
lot of money to be made, isagain kind of in the stadium
experience.
But from like a gamingperspective, like micro betting,

(01:32:19):
I think that's going to bemassive, like I think we spend a
lot of time in Vegas.

Klara (01:32:24):
I think it is quite.
I mean, it's been rising a lotin the past several years, right
Even just the poker, thepandemic, people playing so much
more poker online everywhere.
So I think just that trend andbetting on sports.

Cole (01:32:39):
I don't know that I can fully envision like how this
would happen, but there's a callit multiple seconds, sometimes
upwards of like 15 seconds delay, you know between your feed and
like what happened.
But if you're in Vegas or ifyou do have a lower latency
connection to the game, you knowdistributed through
relationships, you know thatvapor has right.

(01:33:01):
So Comcast, as an example, hasa lot of cable head ends with a
lot of connectivity intostadiums and also into thousands
of homes in a market.
Just as an example like imaginebeing able to put a dollar on
the next free throw forbasketball or the next ace.

Klara (01:33:17):
You know what's the over under on Djokovic hitting his
next serve and being an ace,like being able to bet on that
would be.
I love betting double folds.
I don't know if you still havethat Like when I'm watching the
game somehow before they bounceand toast the ball, I was like
double fold and I was alwaysright.
I don't know how I spot them,but that'd be kind of fun
example.

Cole (01:33:37):
I bet you can test it, because I think we're going to
go play tennis after this.
You can test it on me.
What I found and I was a servespecialist when I taught tennis,
like serves were kind of myspecialty If you see their
shoulder drop before the ball isat its apex, there's a
statistically very high chancethat that serve is going to go
into the net.
So that's why your coach alwayssaid keep your arm up If your

(01:34:00):
shoulder drops everything elseis going to drop, but yeah, I
still play that game too.
Also, I don't know if you knowthe story about, like you know,
boris Becker and like he'd stickhis tongue out left to right.
Do you know about this?

Klara (01:34:10):
I've heard about it.
Somebody told me to dependingwhere he's going to serve and so
people could guess.
Yeah, I can see, we guessed,and Becker, like never knew.

Cole (01:34:19):
I like forecasting, like are they going to serve out wide
or down the middle, et cetera.
Anyway, those are like two kindof fun use cases that I think
are three.
I guess that are superinteresting.
And then, consumer wise, mywife wants to go see the heiress
tour from Taylor Swift.
I was like wouldn't it bebetter if, like, you could send
your friends the heiress tourand you just like, paid you?

Klara (01:34:41):
know a virtual ticket.

Cole (01:34:41):
but then you're there, right, you put on your Apple
Vision Pro, your MetaQuest 3 orwhatever it happens to be, and
you're there and you're likeit's immersive, and you're not
like dancing Nexus, like a bunchof sweaty people and I actually
agree, I don't enjoy going toconcerts anymore, Although I'm
considering Ellen is more said.

Klara (01:34:58):
it was one of my first concerts I've been to as a kid
and she's back in Austin thissummer, so I would go see her
actually.

Cole (01:35:04):
I would see a lot of more, say I full disclosure.
I own jagged little pill.

Klara (01:35:09):
I love that album.
And I've listened to it manytimes.

Cole (01:35:14):
So anyway could that virtual, you know, even shot on
goal, or being able to, like sitvirtually next to you know some
famous person at the Lakersgame, or whatever.
I just think those sort ofimmersive experiences, those are
pretty cool, and these are nearterm.
These are not far term.
There's a lot of money to bemade.
I mean, I train sometimes inthis app called Supernatural, so

(01:35:37):
it's boxing yeah, it's in VR,and I was like putting like I
was spinning it down yesterdayand it was like Travis Scott is
like live in this, like you know, metahorizons, whatever thing
and I like literally wandered inthere and I was watching 500
foot Travis Scott.
It was cool, like you know.
I don't know that I would likewant to spend an hour in there,

(01:36:00):
but it was neat to walk aroundand if it wasn't, artists that I
like really love, like yeah, Iprobably even pay for it.

Klara (01:36:06):
Yeah, I do enjoy the mixed reality.
I mean, I've tried the metaOculus, it was all right.
I'm really curious what theApple vision for, obviously,
will be like.
I haven't tried it personally,even though I worked at Apple.
We don't always get to do that,but it changes the perception
of how we see things and eventhinking.

(01:36:28):
My grandma, for example, isparalyzed.
You know that the Apple visionpro is available in check right
away, but I guess I could buy itand bring it to her, and so it
changes the perception.
Even for communication, right,we've been used to FaceTime with
my family because I alwaystraveled I know you did too but
I think this makes a little bitdifferent difference when it

(01:36:48):
comes to you like, especiallyfor someone who cannot move.

Cole (01:36:52):
Right.

Klara (01:36:52):
And now you actually put them in like a different
environment, right?

Cole (01:36:55):
So I'm curious how they could change, let's say, my
career, mass communication withme, it's all going to change
right, like this is going to bekind of a TMI as we kind of wind
down here.
But a few years ago luckily mydad's still with us and I'm
actually going to see him in acouple of days down in Costa
Rica, they've retired there Acouple of years ago my mom
called and said hey, dad's acertain level that could be an

(01:37:18):
indicator of cancer like reallyhigh?
And I was like geez, you know,like I could not talk to my dad
soon, ever again, and that thatreally hit me hard.
It was actually one of thecatalysts for me like just, you
know, really focusing becauseboth my daughters are adopted,
which we don't actually sayoften.
I don't know why, I justvolunteered that, but we did
that for me a little later inlife.

(01:37:39):
You know I was kind of in my mid40s taking home a brand new
baby from the hospital and Iwanted to make sure that I'm
around later in life for them.
It would be tragic to the extentI was aware of it being tragic
if I wasn't there when theywalked on the aisle of, like,
whoever they want to marry, ifthey want to do that, you know,

(01:38:00):
being there for some of the bigmilestones in their lives.
I just I really want to makesure that I'm there for that,
because my parents were therefor me during those things and
so this experience, like my dad,I would love to capture such an
incredible songwriter and sucha like just a superhuman, you
know, good soul, super gentle.

(01:38:21):
He was like a Navy SEAL, butbefore the SEALs, because that
wasn't a thing when he was inthe Navy.
But if what I think is going tohappen over the next couple of
years, I'll be able to takeevery email hero, every song
hero and all of the things thathave been documented, that his
communication and the recordings, and, you know, my kids, who

(01:38:42):
are probably going to be tooyoung to really remember him,
are going to be able to spendtime with him in VR or you know,
and a lot of people think thatthat's perverted, but I do not.
I think part of the process ofhealing is being able to do this
.
Why do humans ultimately?
I mean, I can tell you I lostmy grandmother a couple of years
ago and it was less painfulthan losing my dog, and not

(01:39:06):
because I mean I love mygrandmother more than I love my
dog, but I got to say goodbye tomy grandmother and I got to
kind of deal with that on theterms that you know I had and we
could talk about things,whereas, like you, can't do that
.
So I think, the real timestaying of like not knowing, not
being able to communicate withthe person or the thing that you

(01:39:28):
love.
I just think that we're goingto grow as humans.
I often say we're 21st centurysoftware, our brains running on
like zero century hardware, justlike our you know our DNA.
But I actually think we'regoing to be soon on like the
next iteration of the operatingsystem and I think, ai and mixed

(01:39:48):
reality.
I think this is going to bringabout and my hope is that we can
build a lot of good into thoseexperiences, therapeutically for
people, for people's mentalwellness.
I mean, I was, as an introvertand as a germaphobe, I spent a
lot of time alone during COVIDand it really did mess with me

(01:40:09):
in some ways, but I think a lotof people went through something
like what I went through during.
COVID and it certainly calledout to me the need for us to
think through our mentalwellness and I think this is
just like education there's adigital divide between education
.
I think there's a massivedivide between the resources

(01:40:32):
that can help you work throughsomething mentally and your
ability to reach those resources.

Klara (01:40:38):
And I think ARVR, mixed reality.

Cole (01:40:41):
I think this is going to change drastically and I think
that's going to have a positiveeffect on the world.

Klara (01:40:45):
You actually maybe answer one of the questions I was
going to ask on the macro level,which is you have such a
fantastic and broad view oftechnology and, obviously, the
journey and what do you haveachieved and done.
What are you most excited about?
Is that pretty much what youpainted?
Now, when you look at what'scoming ahead from technology
perspective, I really am not.

Cole (01:41:05):
A lot of people say this, but I try and live this and, at
the end of the day, really, yes,I want to provide a good return
on investing capital for myinvestors and I want to make
money.
I think it's clear, likebusinesses need to make money,
but my motivation we buildtechnology to serve humanity.
When I think about servinghumanity, I want to think about

(01:41:25):
like, to the extent I'll have alegacy.
I want that legacy to bebuilding solutions that help
humans be better humans, andthat's everything from not
having to run red lights becauseyou're just sitting in a stupid
red light with no trafficcoming the other way and the
light's still red and you just,you know, I'd love to run that

(01:41:48):
red light, but how annoying thatfeeling is, but also to the
healthcare and, like you know,everything like digital divide
is such a big thing for me.
Part of the deal we did with thecity of Las Vegas is we provide
free Wi-Fi for underprivilegedzip codes there.
That makes me feel really good.
So as we build more of you knowwhat we call today.

(01:42:11):
It's called kinetic grid.

Klara (01:42:12):
That's what we've built because we don't like the term
edge as we build AI into thisoffering.

Cole (01:42:17):
I'll just tell you, you'll be the first.
I don't know when this getspublished.
I sure as hell hope it getspublished after we've announced
it.
But what this wall turned intowhen AI is embedded into this
offering is called zero gap, andthat has a multitude of reasons
of why we call it zero gap.
But it has everything to dowith the sort of end to end

(01:42:39):
experiences that humansultimately have to endure
through the human to mechanicalor human to electrical or just
generally human to machinecommunication spectrum.
But I don't think we don'toperate at machine speed.
I think, by affecting humans,we have to automate machine to
machine for our benefit, and I'mjust I'm super excited about

(01:43:03):
art of the possible here and I'mreally driven to build better
experiences that bring familiescloser together and will allow
you and I select legally getthat light green faster.

Klara (01:43:15):
That's fantastic.
On the opposite side, even wetalked a little bit about AI,
generative AI.
I know it's a great use casefor edge some of the inferencing
that you had mentioned.
What do you think we need tokeep an eye on?
There's also a lot of talksabout this could potentially
create extension.
It could destroy us.

(01:43:36):
What is your view, or are thereany other things you think we
need to really focus on andthink about creating this
positive future?
Because I think, as humans,technology can be used for good
or bad, and it depends on, Ithink, a little bit of human
who's creating it and the humanwho's using it and how they
decide to use it.

Cole (01:43:55):
Man, such a good question and like.
Two things immediately come tomind.
One is like so the bodymechanics of any sport, your
body goes where your head goes,right.
So I think I think that is truefor your brain as well.
If you want to focus on thepositive implications of
something that you're doing,then I think generally the

(01:44:15):
results are going to be positive.
Conversely, if everything'swrong and you find ways to poke
holes, like our cognitive biasescan, whether they're positive
or negative, have everything todo with, like you know what you
can personally achieve and thenwhat influence you put on the
people that you work with andspend time with.

(01:44:37):
So I just try and choose tocontinue to be the optimist and
maybe with some naivete.
But I also think, like anybodythat starts up any company ever
has some naivete about, like,starting that company.
So the again that selfawareness of, hey, we're going
to go and attempt to dosomething and hopefully it works

(01:44:59):
.
We think it's going to work.
Part of why any startup or anybusiness is successful is
because you can influence thepeople that you're trying to,
you know, to influencesuccessfully, like look what an
incredible job Steve Jobs didwith Apple.
Like he got people to in a day,got people to switch from five
different large cell phonemanufacturers to the iPhone

(01:45:22):
because of an app store.
Right, and like I cannot tellyou how many startup pitches
I've been in as an angelinvestor, whereas, like we're
going to be the iPhone of the Xindustry.
But I also know the people atVerizon who turned the Apple
deal down and then regretted itand they said you know, we're

(01:45:45):
Verizon and we can, we can callthe shots.
And so I do think you need togo into these things with the
intent that you want to havelong term.
And I mean, there's some reallyscary things that you can do
with AI, like the deep fakestuff is pretty scary.
Yes.
But my circle of influence andthe sphere that I care about, I

(01:46:11):
can do what I think is right andI can sort of affect change
there.
And I came out of the DoD, soI'll let politicians be
politicians and you know, do Ithink there should be some
government oversight on AI,probably, like there probably
should be and there probablyshould be more than just the US
right, like there should be someUN policy on how AI will affect

(01:46:32):
warfare, because I think it hasa massive potential to affect
warfare.
I was watching a videoyesterday.
It's a really funny like parodyof like the pitch meeting that
went into every Marvel movieeverywhere.
And if you actually think abouthow many humans actually get
killed, it's very little, right,but lots of CGI characters get

(01:46:54):
killed and that's, you know, inpart to make the audience like,
hey, we can kill bunch of CGIaliens, like that doesn't really
affect us.
But I don't know.
I just think that I want tofocus on education and mental
wellness and connectivity anddigital divide and you know,
also money saving, backhaul,eliminating things that a retail

(01:47:14):
store or a venue are going toalso benefit from, and if you're
an optimist for humanity, youhave to believe that we will
always find our balance.
Humans are pretty good atfinding his balance, finding
their balance, and it's notsmooth water, sometimes right,
but it usually levels out tosome form of you know,

(01:47:38):
acceptable outcome.
It has for thousands andthousands of years, so let's bet
on that.

Klara (01:47:45):
I agree that's a great answer.
All right.
Last, maybe a few rounds, I'veheard you on another podcast.
Somebody asked you a questionIf you could play with tennis
with anyone, you pickedChristopher Walken.
But if you could play tennisagainst any tennis player, who
would that be?

Cole (01:48:05):
Oh, man, you'd think I'd have a good answer for this,
like immediately.
Probably it would be PeteSampras, probably just because
when I was growing up he was thebest.
But, man, I'd want to playsomeone that I would absolutely

(01:48:26):
get destroyed by, because Iwouldn't want to play someone
that it was competitive andthere was a chance of me winning
and then losing.
Maybe Pete Sampras, but man,there'd be so many people like
I'd love to play Boris Becker,I'd love to play Yvonne Lindel,

(01:48:46):
there's like a lot Jim Courier.
I'd love to play so many tennisplayers, and I mean there's a
lot of female players I'd loveto play too.
That's such a good question.
I'll go with Pete Sampras.

Klara (01:48:57):
All right, so similar.
But on the technical side, ifyou could have a technical
conversation with anyone youwant in the world, who would
that be Sort of related to?
Could be, you know, vaporized,or what are you building?

Cole (01:49:16):
Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to think like is this someone
that I could like influence forvapor?
But where my mind immediatelygoes is like what good could I
influence by connecting tosomeone who thinks about
connectivity?
You know who it probably wouldbe Honestly sitting here now
thinking about it it's probablySam Altman.

Klara (01:49:34):
That's fun.

Cole (01:49:35):
Probably because I think that I don't know that he knows
how much power he's got.
Yeah.
I mean, maybe he does.
But I also think, look, youcan't be good at everything.
I couldn't go build open AI theway he did, even though he
started as a nonprofit, and I'mgood at doing those.
There's some things around theconnectivity side of what he

(01:49:58):
wants to achieve and, yeah, Ithink it'd be Sam Altman.
just for the amount of good, Ithink, hopefully he knows he can
do with this, but also some ofthe pitfalls that could be
waiting for him specificallyaround, like how well AI is
going to be integrated into ahuman experience when you have
the speed of light to deal with,because I just don't think they

(01:50:21):
think about that oftenSometimes very doable and
achievable and I wish to be likea flounder wall when you and
Sam talk.

Klara (01:50:28):
hopefully it happens sometime soon.

Cole (01:50:30):
I think we're in different leagues.

Klara (01:50:32):
You know, it's just any message, or I'll try doing it
for you.
I think maybe I'll share withhim this conversation and see
what he says.

Cole (01:50:40):
Okay.

Klara (01:50:41):
All right.
Last but not least, you knowyou have a house full of women,
obviously your wife and twodaughters.
What are you teaching them?
Or they're still kind of veryyoung, but when you think about
their upbringing and sort of ourtechnology is heading.
Obviously we talked about yourathletic and music background.

(01:51:03):
How do you see their upbringingand any kind of major things?
How do you look at that?

Cole (01:51:10):
Let me tackle the first part of that.
First, having daughters.
The one thing that I want toinstill in them is they can do
anything they want Like theyshould grow up accepting the
world that we live in, but theyshould also grow up knowing that
they can change the world welive in.
If there's like a philosophicalbaseline that I would like to

(01:51:33):
instill in them is that they canbe as powerful as they want to
be and they are as strong as youknow anybody on earth.
So I think that's one more like, pragmatically, around my hopes
for them.
I want to make sure I mean again, tennis was.

(01:51:56):
I just went out on the tenniscourt when I was four and just
kept on playing every day.
It became a passion of minebecause I was introduced to it
and it was a passion of peoplethat I loved and respected.
And would I have played tennisand been passionate about tennis
if my parents were tennisplayers?
Who knows?
You know what I mean.
I don't know.
I want to make sure that Iintroduce my girls to as many

(01:52:19):
things as I can.
I mean, my daughter's beensnowboarding, my oldest has been
snowboarding, she's been on asurfboard, she's been on a
wakeboard.
I want to introduce them to abunch of things and then let
them figure out their passion,and then I'm going to just
support the heck out of thatpassion.
And that doesn't have to be asport, that could be anything.
And I just want to make surethat I'm there to support that

(01:52:41):
and nurture that.

Klara (01:52:43):
That sounds like a great parenting.
Thank you for leading byexample, cole, and many of those
areas, and I appreciate yourtime.
I know you have lots going onright now so I really do
treasure this.
I think we could go for hours,so maybe at some point we can
get to podcast episode numbertwo between the two of us.
It's been a pleasure having you.

(01:53:04):
Anyone who wants to reach out?
I know again, you're very busy.
Is there a way, best way, toreach you or follow you?

Cole (01:53:11):
Geez, I mean I'm on LinkedIn, so that's the only
social network I'm on.
I mean, otherwise, maybe I'llgive you my email address and
then if someone says, hey,that's someone I want to connect
with, you can give them myemail address.
Okay.

Klara (01:53:29):
I'll test you before I'll be your filter.
I like that, that level oftrust we've established during
this past two hours.

Cole (01:53:35):
Thank you, Geez.
Maybe that was a terribleanswer to you.

Klara (01:53:39):
I appreciate it.
That's a big compliment for me.
I got to make sure I'llschedule a call with them and
ask the right questions, so Idon't send this.
I feel so bad.

Cole (01:53:51):
I don't want to just give up my email address on here, but
I am reachable on LinkedIn.
That's probably the best way.
And if you care about skydiving,which is something we've not
talked about, which I do.
I guess I kind of fit there alittle bit at the end.
I do have an Instagram accountbut that's like largely my
adventures in skydiving, which Iactually kind of keep very

(01:54:12):
private and very personaloutside of like all the other
work, but I find it to be.
It puts me in the present likeno other thing can put me in the
presence.
So fun, like PHUN jumpers, theInstagram account, but it's all
skydiving.
But you can reach me thereprofessionally LinkedIn.

Klara (01:54:33):
Great, I'm going to check out your Instagram profile
because you didn't mention itbefore when we talked.
I love skydiving.
I only did it once and I wantedto get certified to actually be
able to do it by myself.

Cole (01:54:43):
I'm a coach, you are.

Klara (01:54:45):
Oh my gosh.
Well, maybe here I found mynext skydiving adventure.
I love this.
Well, thank you so much, and Ilook forward to hitting some
tennis balls with you now.

Cole (01:54:57):
Let's go do it If you enjoyed this episode.

Klara (01:54:59):
I want to ask you to please do two things that would
help me greatly.
One, please consider leaving areview on Apple Podcasts,
spotify or any other podcastingplatform that you use to listen
to this episode.
Two, please share this podcastwith a friend who you believe
might enjoy it as well.
It is a great way to remindsomeone you care about them by

(01:55:21):
sharing a conversation theymight be interested in.
Thank you for listening.