♪ emily: this is "bloomberg technology." coming up in the next hour, apple urges the trump administration to not proceed with the next round of tariffs on china imports. the founder of the company's largest supplier urges the iso maker to consider taiwan. plus, slack shares fell but so far the direct listing is being hailed as a success all the way around. will it become more of the norm? and three oracle woman are looking to bust the class

ceiling. they say the company pays men more than women, for the same work and want their lawsuit to be granted class-action status. but first, to our top story, billionaire terry -- may no longer be the chair of apple's largest supplier but that isn't stopping him from trying to keep the relationship going for years to come. he's stepped down from that role to focus on his campaign to become president of taiwan and he wants to make sure tensions between the u.s. and china don't force apple to leave the country. speaking from the perspective of the republic of china i'll plead with apple to come to taiwan. this comes after it's said they were asked to shift from china to southeast asia. to discuss, we have venture partner munster and in l.a., bloomberg text resident apple watcher. so there is some confusion about what terry gou said. he made some remarks and then later clarify them. what did he say and mean?

>> the context here is very important. i think this might be getting a little blown out of proportion because this is the guy who is in charge of foxconn. helped to create foxconn for many years. of course, foxconn is where apple produces pretty much all of its iphones outside of india right now, out of china and now he's stepped down to run for president of taiwan. wouldn't it benefit him greatly if apple moved some of his production from china to taiwan? wouldn't he look really good as president and a great campaign slogan to say he's trying to get the iphone moved to taiwan? people have to understand what's going on. there is the political side for him and the political side for apple, so he has a lot to gain by making this happen. >> bigger picture, all of this is based on a report nikkei, asked the china-based suppliers to consider moving production outside of china to perhaps southeast asia.

do you think that would ever happen and what are your broader thoughts on the implications of apple even considering this, at this point? >> i think that will happen in time. i point back to four years ago, when apple started to consider doing production with foxconn outside, actually in brazil, because of some of the tax laws, the import laws in brazil. so i think this motivation for apple to essentially de-risk themselves with china is nothing new. the timing on it is suspicious and probably the truth is several layers beneath the surface why apple is talking about that now but do i believe outside of all things going on with trade apple has a longstanding interest in diversifying outside of china for the manufacturing. >> now, mark, without getting too deep into taiwanese politics, gou has pitched

himself as a china first candidate. this doesn't sound very china first, but, you know, what are the broader political implications here of apple moving -- considering moving its factories outside of china anywhere and perhaps even to taiwan? >> yeah, you know, this could be seen as a lose-lose situation for apple. you've seen the struggles that apple's competitors such as google and others have had in china. apple is the nonchinese tech company to actually be mostly free to function in china. most of their services work there. they have dozens of retail stores across the region. they have had a lot of success there revenue-wise in the last five to seven years as well. that can't be said for google and others so if apple starts stripping out parts of production from china that will

cost a lot of jobs. apple is responsible for about 3 1/2 million supply chain jobs in china alone. if those jobs go away it will hurt the chinese economy and china will have less of a will to want to work with apple to keep them in their region right now. >> in the meantime, gene, you've got a new note just out on apple's reputation in china. what have you found? >> emily, we've been monitoring this closely since really may 5 when the trade dispute with china started to flare up and what we wanted to get a sense of, what the typical chinese consumer would do, boycotting apple products -- as we've gone back over the past month and looked at the broader chinese news media outlets, all of those have a surprising supportive tone relative to apple and the reason why i think that this is important is, that the tone in the media is directed from the top. it comes from the government. there is no question about that.

and i think there is an insight in terms of how china wants to operate and work with apple. if you take in this very clear view, in fact, government is putting a positive narrative out to apple, i think that's a sign that the government wants to continue to work. exactly like mark said. 3.5 million supply -- we don't want to disrupt that. a positive for apple. i just want to briefly mention, even on social media, they are speaking relatively positive or overwhelmingly positive about apple, that doesn't mean that the typical consumer feels that way. there could still be an impact of a negative iphone number in china based on some of the things that are going on in the geopolitical world. >> in the meantime, mark, i want to get your thoughts on other story. google announcing that it's getting out of the tablet business, this after it just released a new pixel tablet.

what do you make of this announcement? >> not entirely surprising. what you've seen since google really entered the business in a big way in 2016 is that from a market standpoint, from a revenue standpoint, their hardware has been a flop across the board. the pixel phones are some of the best android phones in the market. some of the best high end phones in the market but they do not sell anywhere near the quantity of samsung or apple, to a point where it's hard to believe that they are even close to profitable on this hardware business. so what you're seeing is one sign now of them sort of wining down their hardware business. we're not saying that's going to happen completely, but tablets, if you look at the categories of major consumer electronic devices, you have smart watches, tv devices, tablets, smartphones, you know, taking one of those products off of the shelf is a considerable deal, and i think it's a sign of more things to come if they don't turn that business up a notch pretty soon. >> interesting.

i know you'll continue to follow that one for us. bloomberg -- mark gurman, thank you so much. gene is sticking with us to talk more about slack later. five for chinese companies are joining another company from being banned. they raised national security concerns over the company's role in china's efforts to develop computers, among those added, to this blacklist, the chinese joint venture product of the chipmaker, amd. they are suing. huakei is looking to recover equipment and is suing the bureau of industry and security and the office of export enforcement. they don't seek damages and is looking to recover equipment seized by the united states. coming up is the party still going for slack? we'll look at the second day in the public eye for stewart butterfield. that's next. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ >> slack has been a public company for two whole days and since its direct listing on thursday shares jumped above their reference price but closed slightly below their opening price. it wasn't the slashiest debut but that's what butterfield said he wanted to minimize volatility s. the idea of foregoing an ipo in favor of a direct listing going to catch on? colin stewart of morgan stanley thinks next year there could be as many as five direct offerings and for them that could be a good thing since only morgan stanley, gsa -- have had direct listings like slack and spotify. we have with us in the studios, a guest.

to be clear there wasn't a pop on the first day. the opening price was the opening price. >> that's totally right. everyone is looking at the $26 reference price and calculating the closing day and looking at a 48% pop. that's not right. it opened at $38.50. that's the price we should look at comparing performance. no one was buying or selling at that price. no one was agreeing to buy at that price. that was something the new york stock exchange put out as a guide. >> jet folks are still looking at this as a positive moment for slack. gene, how optimistic are you about slack's future growth? >> i'm most optimistic. and partly because this concept of future of work, they have been zeroing in on this communication piece.

really, that's the substance of why they have gone public but they have an opportunity to extend that beyond communication into work flow, in terms of kind of using a.i. to give recommendations to people about how to use their day, nudges, humans instinctively become distracted and get off task, and they can really evolve their platform to help with some of the firsts of work. the point is simple. there is growth opportunities, new markets that slack can pursue and i think that will be good for the stock longer term. >> now, in a way, there is an irony about slack where it's called the email killer, but in a way, you're also more connected to work if you use slack and you use slack religiously. who wants more nudges as gene said? and if the goal is to sort of minimize nudges, minimize your -- you know, sort of improve or change your connectedness to work but you're only working more, is slack doing its job? >> that might end up being a central question that we ask ourselves about slack for the next few years.

i asked a question on twitter the other day about how people relate to slack and how it compares to email and i got a lot of interesting responses where people are just sharing how, you know, it's tough, it's like the more people use slack the more it becomes the place where everyone is just asking you to do stuff and people were saying it's like email and in some ways it's better but in some ways it's worse because the barrier to entry to writing a slack message is lower than it would be to writing an email and it is this expectation of being something you need to respond to instantly. people are having, i think, an evolving relationship with whether slack is actually helping them to be more productive or less. my sense, people who use slack in a smart way are probably getting more done. people who are just using it to chat or maybe not, and so i feel like it falls on slack to make sure it's easy for users to understand how to use it in an effective way and that would probably require more education

or a smart design so that someone who just starts using slack isn't going to get caught up in instant messages and several different channels and feel overwhelmed. >> interesting. jean, do you think direct listings are going to become more of the norm? to be fair they didn't have a pop, but they did get to take home any difference between 26 and 38.50 because they didn't open at 26. they opened at $38.50. >> yeah. undoubtedly, i think this is the future. i come from a background in investment banking and can think of that as an area that's right for disruption. there has been a decade of talk around direct listings that have really never played out. the last big one was spotify almost two years ago. so what's the message here? this is a better instrument, a better vehicle for becoming public because it achieves two things. one is better price transparency, which investors want, and separately, as lower

fees, which companies want. because of that i think this is an undeniable trend. there are such large forces in place around ipo process that it will take, in my opinion, a decade before we see half of the companies doing direct listings, but this is only going to increase. >> right. you know, it's hard to say this is a trend. we saw one last year. one so far this year. we spoke with the partner at -- venture partners who like you thinks it should become more of a trend. >> very few companies have attempted this and it's a small class of companies that can pull it off in the current construct but it suggests very good things for trying to do more of a market match for these ipo's as opposed for the pops that happened with the other companies that went public this quarter. >> they are preparing. they are looking at this idea and the way it's camping on and the way we're all talking about it, thinking, okay, if we're not

going to be getting the same underwriting fees how can we set ourselves in good position to be advising these hot companies before, during and after a direct listing. you're seeing them be more involved ahead of time and after maybe trying to advise these companies on other credit facilities but most importantly, during the direct listing they are coming up with new ways to get fees. morgan stanley, for example, is now the adviser to the direct market maker at citadel security. that's not a role that morgan was planning on playing in the past but they are looking that as an important role for the bank to play if direct listings become more common. >> gene, how do you manage this changing, changing the dynamic between the banks, changing potentially the balance of power between banks and the companies they work with? gene: unfortunately for the banks, they will slowly, again, it will take a decade but they will slowly lose some of the economic interest in this. they can come up with new

vehicles, and they are, to help to continue to get some fees from this, if you look at it as a whole, that 7%, which was the golden number as the percentage of an ipo that would go to the investment banks, that pool is going to be declining over time. i suspect that it will be a slow decline, but undoubtedly, it will decline. so how i see this playing out probably doesn't have as much of an impact, but definitely on the listing side, this is going to cause a lot for investment banks to think about. this is not new to investment banks, of course, because they have already gone through this exercise when it comes to their trading platforms, having decimalization, and also automated trading which has impacted some of those fees. >> always good to have you here on the show. ellen hewitt, thank you for your tireless and continuing coverage of slack. just a reminder, the capital arm of bloomberg lp is an investor in slack. coming up, oracle is being accused of underpaying thousands of women.

we'll give you the latest in a gender pay suit seeking class-action status. and bloomberg technology is live streaming on twitter. check us out at technology and follow our global breaking news network @tictoc on twitter. ♪

♪ >> women at oracle are trying to break another kind of ceiling. the glass ceiling. three are trying to obtain class-action statute in their lawsuit against oracle over pay discrimination. the women represent more than 4,000 employees on the basis that the database giant pays men more than women to do the same jobs which would violate the california equal pay act. the winning class-action status won't be easy. in the last two years two

similar genders fade to advance as class-actions. joining us to discuss is jim finberg, who is representing the women in this case. you were in court this morning. what happened? >> this morning, the court continued our hearing on our motion for class certification until september 9. the motion is fully briefed but a lot of evidence has been submitted. the court wants more time to read the expert reports and did declarations. >> what makes you think that this suit has potentially more merit than the microsoft or the twitter lawsuits or has a better chance of getting class-action status than those? >> this is a particularly strong case, both on the facts and the law. our expert from the university of california has done a report saying that looking at the women

in the product development information technology and support functions, and controlling for the same job code and even controlling for education and experience, on average, those women received $13,000 less in compensation per year. the microsoft case and the twitter case are distinguished both factually and legally, those cases both involve individual manager discretion. in this case, oracle had a policy and practice of using prior pay to set initial pay at oracle and the statistical analysis shows that jerndz gap from prior pay led to a gender gap in starting pay at oracle that continued throughout their careers at oracle. >> if that's how pay is determined that's nowadays a big no-no. that said, oracle, we did reach out to them for a statement. they say this meritless lawsuit is based on false allegations and a seriously flawed process within the ofccp that relies on cherry picked statistics rather than reality. we fiercely disagree with the spurious claims and will

continue in the process to prove them false. we're in compliance with our regulatory obligations, admit to equality and proud of our employees. what's your response to that? >> i'm glad that they are proud of their employees but they should pay their female employees equally to their men employees for the same work. they highlight the fact that the u.s. government, has also brought a suit against them that. case will be going to trial in december of this year. our case is completely independent of the ofccp case. we received oracle's payroll data. we had an independent expert review that data. our expert and the government's expert have reached very similar conclusions, having reviewed the data. these are not fake facts. we'll find out more in september. >> as you mentioned, the department of labor has a similar case. that was brought during the obama administration against oracle about pay discrimination. they filed a similar case

against google for gender pay discrimination. they have since dropped that case. historically, these cases are very hard to win, in part, because of a ruling that the supreme court made in 2011, involving 1 1/2 million wal-mart female workers. that ruling, that the supreme court made in 2011, influenced the microsoft and twitter decisions. can you get around that ruling or could that ruling also stand in the way of your case? >> the duke versus wal-mart case that you're referring to was not brought under the equal pay act. it was brought under title 7, understand that case, which involve thousands of wal-mart stores, supreme court said that the decisions were made by individual managers at an individual level, and that because it was individual discretion, you couldn't have a class-action. here, in contrast, we have the equal pay act and the standard under california equal pay act

is it's the employer's obligation to pay women who are doing the same work as men the same compensation. here, oracle isn't doing that. the cause of that disparity doesn't matter. oracle had an obligation to ensure people doing the same work were paid the same and they didn't meet that obligation. we have a second claim under the california business of professions code which is based on this disparity impact from using prior pay and that's a common pattern and practice, and therefore, class certification is appropriate in our case, in contrast to duke's. >> interesting. we'll be following your progress. you'll be back in court in september and we'll be watching, jim finberg representing the plaintiffs. coming up, one of the biggest names in tech design. we'll talk to john why he's leaving silicon valley behind. that's next. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: this is "bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang in san francisco. as one of the biggest names in tech design, john maeda was the president of the rhode island school of design, became a design partner at the venture capital firm kleiner perkins and has authored several books. he is now decided to leave the world of silicon valley and instead compete with it head on. he became the chief experience officer at publicis sapient to help legacy companies compete with tech giants. he joins us now in the studio. you are still working on some silicon valley projects. john: i will transition in august to publicis sapient.

emily: of all the jobs you could have had, why do you want to now help legacy companies compete? john: i love startups, but i also love end-ups. the companies that have ended up successful and losing to startups. startups and big tech control the world, a little competition would not hurt. emily: what is your take on this wave of anti-tech companies, all the way up to the u.s. government happening now? john: i think it is completely natural because if you are in silicon valley, everyone understands computation, the cloud. people outside of it, they don't understand it and they are afraid of it. in silicon valley, we are afraid of it because we know what it can do. but people outside are not sure what it is. emily: do you think that legacy companies stand a chance of competing with big tech? it seems like apple, google, facebook, amazon have consolidated so much power. they have a lot of money and a lot of smart people even if they

make mistakes. john: i think they can. that is why i want to go this direction, because the legacy companies are all good at irl. they are good at real life. they are good at spaces. we're human beings, we live in three spaces. not just our screens. this is not enough. it has been addictive and bad. emily: really? [laughter] john: the established companies working on real space, there is a mix with the virtual. i want to see this competency get better. inject competition, silicon valley practices and maybe there is a way silicon valley startups can learn from end-ups. emily: what particular things are you fed up with from silicon valley? john: i wouldn't say i was fed up. there is so much knowledge here and capability here that the rest of the world has not cut up yet because here, we speak machine.

outside, people don't speak machine and have biases against it without understanding it. that imbalance is a problem. emily: you are coming out with a book called how to speak machine. what do you mean by that? john: here, everyone understands how code works. i call this like spanish 4 level competency. people usually don't speak spanish of computation. they don't code. they cannot actually speak machine. how to speak machine is like spanish 1 to understanding the cloud. emily: last time we had you want was some apple announcement. i love hearing your thoughts on apple design. i know you follow the smartphone industry. there is a lot going on now with the u.s.-china trade war, huawei versus apple. huawei is now at a disadvantage outside of china. apple having a disadvantage selling into china. do you think these macroeconomic issues will change the hierarchy

of the smartphone industry? john: we have to recognize that the car industry faced the same problem in the 1950's where cars were a commodity and they had to differentiate based on a serious. apple took advantage of that same moment where smartphones became ubiquitous and they differed in experience. the chinese are really good at design. they are really good at experience. they built amazing systems. the danger of this is to underestimate the chinese designers are actually quite good, if not better than a lot of things apple does now. emily: like at what? john: most of the stuff comes from there. they can eventually learn how to make it themselves. emily: do you think apple can become the next ford or gm? i know those companies are working to become more tech savvy. john: if you think about it, apple's biggest challenger is google, i think, because the way they have combined hardware and software together.

the real johnny ive of the valley. emily: that is a controversial statement. john: yes, she's amazing. emily: we were talking about this earlier. google has discontinued getting out of tablets. the pixel has not done that well. john: the pixel is an amazing device. i have both. the pixel has better software. at some point, it is not about the hardware, it is about the engine. the prius, you like it because of the hybrid engine. apple's technology and software has lagged google technology. emily: that said, an interesting wrinkle in the huawei story in that google can now operate its android operating system for huawei. huawei could be forced to build its own operating system. how big a threat of that is to google and apple?

john: gigantic beyond belief. here in the u.s. or europe, we underestimate what is happening in china. china is the wakanda of payment taxes. if that happens, the differences will only increase. emily: should we be concerned about national security issues? john: we should always. we should be concerned the experience quality in china is improving on all fronts. it is great to learn from them, partner with them. emily: do you think someone at google is the real johnny ive, do you think apple is not innovating as much as it had in the past? what grade would you give the pace of innovation at apple? john: i would give it a "b." this is coming from and apple fanboy. i have the original apple ii, the first macintosh, the original iphone. competing now is not about the hardware awesomeness, it is about the software.

emily: you don't think apple software has an awesomeness? john: i think it is awesome, but i can see that google software is so much better. google has mastered the cloud. emily: apple is about to unveil in september a new round of phones. we have reported they will be fairly incremental in terms of design changes. what does apple need to do to kickstart innovation or get back to an "a?" john: an "a" in privacy. we are looking at the fancy graphics and aluminum whatever. i argue that the new aluminum of the apple phones is the privacy features. that is another thing we should not overlook. i think apple might win the people who care about privacy. google may win those who care about convenience more so we will see what happens. emily: fascinating stuff. john maeda, now at publicis sapient, chief experience

officer. we will see if he can help those legacy companies. thank you. coming up, the tech ipo phenomenon continues as a tech cannabis company hits the nasdaq. what the ceo has to say about legalization, next. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: this week, new york lawmakers failed to agree on how to legalize marijuana. dealing a setback to governor andrew cuomo's progressive agenda. the legislature did not appreciate the criminal justice consequences and did not push enough for legalization. the news comes the same week as akerna, a cannabis tech company, hits the public market. it is a regulatory compliance

tech company in the cannabis space led by jessica billingsley. she is the first female ceo to bring a cannabis company to the nasdaq. i spoke with her earlier and asked what is unique about taking the company public when it is not working on things that are always legal. take a listen. jessica: i think the right way to think about us is as a technology company that happens to serve the cannabis industry. we are a software to service business where the client base participates in orderly one of the fastest-growing industries. emily: what is unique about taking a tech company that serves the cannabis industry public? jessica: a bit more scrutiny for any company that is working and interacting with something that still has a federal state conflict in the united states. we certainly spent more time walking through how we enable regulatory compliance and our

role which is to serve as the backbone of the cannabis industry. enabling compliance and taxation. emily: you are one of the earliest investors in the cannabis industry. you are based in colorado where marijuana has been legalized. how do you think the cannabis industry is taking shape? jessica: it is really exciting to be part of an industry that is being shaped from the ground up. if you look at this through the lens of tracking, which we invented, you think about the level of transparency and accountability that we have an cannabis. that has applications to any agricultural product, really to anything we put on or in our bodies. for instance, if you remember the romaine lettuce scare we had a couple of month ago where nobody knew where the contaminated lettuce was, if that were cannabis, we would be able to tell you where every package of lettuce was and if it was sold on what day, what

location and what time. emily: so, legalization recently stalled in new york, in new jersey. do you expect other east coast states to get involved in the debate? jessica: i think it is a matter of time. it is not really a matter of if, it is a matter of when. we do believe we will see movement again in both new jersey and new york. i personally predict new jersey will probably edge out new york in terms of the the first to legalize, but not the first to legalize in the mid atlantic, but the first highly concentrated metropolitan area to legalize. emily: what about on the federal level? do you expect the situation to change? jessica: i do. at some point in time, the federal state conflict needs to end in some way. currently, 33 i think is the number out of our states have legalized. that is overwhelmingly a majority that has legalized

cannabis in some capacity. we do have a couple pending bills that could substantially change the federal-state conflict in particular. president trump said he would publicly support it. if we would see that pass, that would give the states the ability to legalize and regulate cannabis. we think that is likely sometime in the next year. emily: that was akerna ceo jessica billingsley. autonomous cars are only as good as the human drivers they learn from. so, the people who teach these systems need to be excellent drivers themselves. bloomberg tech's aki ito joined two vehicle operators who work with aurora on a test drive in the chaos of downtown san francisco. ♪ aki: every year, more than a million people in the world die in road traffic accidents. many of those fatalities are caused by us.

by the mistakes we make as drivers. ♪ aki: but, there is a solution. >> i think we are ready. aki: and it is to relinquish control to a computer. we've dreamed about it for decades. and now, we finally have the technology to get us very close. the rest is up to these two. they are teaching autonomous cars how to drive. >> my name is stephen. >> my name is daniela. we're autonomous vehicle operators. aki: daniela and stephen work for a startup called aurora. they are part of a team of about two dozen specialists who drive the company fleet of self-driving cars. aurora's software learns from their expert example.

to get this job, they had to be excellent drivers to start with. i went to go see daniela and stephen at their office in san francisco. ♪ aki: funded in 2017 by engineers during the early autonomous vehicle projects by google, tesla and uber, aurora is developing technology to power self-driving car's. so far, it has signed deals with automakers including volkswagen and hyundai. daniela and stephen have invited me here to be the very first reporter to sit in the back of one of their self driving cars. ♪ >> we are ready. >> engaging.

now we are in auto. aki: whoa. >> yep. ♪ >> tracking the car ahead. >> the car right now is stopping on its own. >> it is making the decision. ♪ aki: this is really cool getting to see what the car sees. what are these yellow boxes? >> the yellow box right there is a bicyclist. aki: cool. >> the car recognizes this is a bicyclist. if you see these blue boxes, the vehicle recognizes it as a vehicle. aki: the red boxes are pedestrians? >> exactly. you are hired. [laughter] aki: aurora's operators take turns as pilots and copilots of the cars. today, daniela is the pilot. >> i'm looking at everything, thinking about everything, planning for everything. if a car decides to bail out in

the middle of the intersection, what am i going to do? aki: see how her hands are ever so slightly touching the wheel. her foot hovering above the brake. she is ready to take over in a fraction of a second. >> that is a bailout and i took over. the car saw something that was not accurate. it gives me control. ♪ aki: as daniela's copilot today, stephen's job is to keep an eye on his laptop that sees what the car sees. >> on the left, flickering. aki: he alerts daniela to the things she might not see with the naked eye and prepares her for what the self-driving system is about to do next. >> it is going to want a left lane change. >> ok. aki: as the copilot, he's also taking notes on when daniela needs to intervene.

later on, the engineers will pore over this data so they can figure out what went wrong. this is all part of the painstaking process of teaching the computer how to drive. >> it is a little baby brain that learns. i call all of them my baby robots. [laughter] >> because we are teaching them. ♪ emily: that was "bloomberg tech's" aki ito. silicon valley may have new competition. how one company is bringing tech to california cities like fresno, next. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: in 2013, bitwise launched with a mission of bringing tech to the agricultural city of fresno, california.

it repurposed 250,000 square feet of real estate for tech tenants and produced more than 1000 new software developers. now, it wants to support other underdog cities. the company announced it has raised $27 million in its first big funding round, with a plan to expand to bakersfield and other cities where opportunities are lacking. joining us to discuss is the ceo and cofounder irma olguin, jr. irma, thank you for joining us. to be honest, i had no idea you were doing this kind of work in fresno. when we talk of underdog cities, we talk about boston, we talk about detroit. really, there are so many cities that could have something to gain from this. you've got a lot of different things. you have a coding school. you are doing commercial real estate. how does this all fit together? irma: we think the solution for innovation and staffing the next generation of the technology workforce will be found in places like fresno and

bakersfield. there underdog cities all over the u.s. we teach people to code with offenses on how to reach people that were not previously invited to this segment of the economy. we give them a sense of place so they don't feel inferior and the places in which they live. actualizes the experience of being a technologist and we prove it with the work that we do. emily: what kind of students are these? college students, midcareer? irma: generally, they are non-matriculating students. maybe retail workers. some of them have come from the fields of california and other cities. these are the folks who definitely have something to offer the technology industry, when they are given the chance to do so, but maybe have not been given that chance. emily: tell me how you found this, your story? irma: i think a lot of what bitwise is and does is best understood through the lens of my life. i accidentally ended up a ceo of

a technology company that raised a lot of money. emily: that is no accident. irma: it is a lot of hard work, but a lot of things had to line up to make it work. when you reflect on that, you think we can be more deliberate about the opportunities we put in front of young people that can change their life. emily: you are going to use this money to expand. what are the other cities you would consider truly underdog cities? irma: we loosely defined what we think and underdog city looks like. bakersfield is the first one we have landed on. there are other places we might think of throughout the united states. places like el paso, milwaukee, tucson. places where you would find a density of people that would support the technology industry and would have a huge impact on the local economy. emily: what is the success rate of the students you have taught? where are they going to work? are they a potential new source of talent for big tech companies, if that is the goal? irma: 80% of the students who enter into our career programs

are in technology employment, which has a huge impact on the local economy. 90% of the students want to stay where they live. they want to stay home. it does not mean there is not opportunity for big tech to pick them up, especially when you have this lens of diversity and inclusion. that is where you are going to find these people. these people will come out of underdog cities, assist in making the inclusive workforce that is missing out another markets. emily: how diverse is this crop of students? irma: 50% female, 50% minority. the demographics of our students match the demographics of our county. emily: how quickly do you think you can expand? i imagine -- you are based in fresno, you have to go to silicon valley, new york to raise money. that is not easy in a place where it is harder for people to raise money, who don't look typical. irma: exactly right. it was a long road but we did

close a $27 million series today which is a huge milestone for us, for females, the technology industry as a whole. that money will help us grow faster. emily: how do you imagine -- there is so much focus on metropolitan areas -- how do you imagine the tech industry might or will look different in a decade as a result of what you are doing, as a result of this movement? irma: i think what is important to recognize is we have all of these currently unfilled jobs in the technology industry and we are not graduating enough cs majors to fill them. they have to come from somewhere else. we think we have the solution to that. we think we can change the face of that workforce in the next five to 10 years. emily: fascinating. really glad to hear about the work you are doing. irma olguin, jr., thank you for joining us. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." we are live on twitter. check us out @technology. it is friday. have a wonderful weekend. we will be back here on monday. ♪

>> the following is a paid program. the opinions and views expressed do not reflect those of bloomberg lp, its affiliates, or its employees. heather: on today's show, we are talking about circulation. if you suffer from pain in your neck, shoulders, or lower back, bad circulation in your legs pains in your hips, knees, or , ankles, or pain from arthritis or sports injuries, we will speak to dr. michael ho, inventor of a device that relaxes tense muscles and relieves pain. let's welcome dr. ho.