taylor: i'm taylor riggs, and this is the "best of bloomberg technology," where we bring you all of our top interviews from this week in tech. coming up, cyber security firm crowd strike found themselves in the middle of the trump-ukraine scandal. we hear from ceo george kurtz in an exclusive interview. plus, peloton begins publicly trading on the nasdaq thursday. we speak with the ceo after a lackluster opening. and exit stage left. ebay's ceo steps down from his

role at the online marketplace. who will help invigorate the floundering company? we begin with what was a historic week in washington. on tuesday, house speaker nancy pelosi formally opened an impeachment inquiry of president trump. the investigation centers on a phone call president trump had with the president of ukraine and whether the president betrayed the nation's security by seeking to enlist a foreign power to tarnish a rival for his own political gain. in this case, the son of former vice president joe biden. while the story was not tech-related per se, an interesting tech company did show up in the partial transcript of president trump's call with ukrainian president. that company, crowd strike. i spoke with their ceo george kurtz about the mention of his company in that presidential phone call. george: the only reaction i have is that in 2016, we actually performed the dnc investigation.

we worked very closely with the fbi and turned over all the forensic data, and we stand by the conclusions that we had, and they were backed up by the intelligence community. so, i think a lot of what we have done has already been said, and after that, you know, i do not understand where we are with things. taylor: fold this forward, then, into broader comments on where you think your company fits into general election security. we are approaching 2020. george: well, election security, i think, is a very important topic. if we think about how electronically connected we are with voting machines and we are past the hanging chads of yesteryear, i hope, so when we think about the ability to protect those systems, it is incredibly important for our democracy as well as just the integrity of the election itself, so it's a big topic. taylor: and what is your role in working with, let's say, federal agencies like the fbi, or with the dnc or the rnc? where do you see yourself playing a role?

george: well, we are certainly not partisan, so we help all sides of the aisle and work closely with a lot of state, local, and federal government agencies to make sure they have the best security in place going forward. taylor: i could do financial analysis all day long, so let's dig into some of the earnings and what we can expect from you. let's go through the income statement. talk to me about topline growth. i'm looking here, really solid, triple digits. expected to slow maybe a little bit, 84% or so in the coming years. where do you see sources of future growth? george: one of the things when you look at crowdstrike is its ability to cross sell modules. and that is a key element of our success. when we started the company, we looked at companies like salesforce and workday and servicenow, and thought there should be a pillar of cloud computing for cybersecurity. the security cloud had not been done before. part of our success is being able to collect data, security telemetry at scale and be able

to create new modules on top of it and be able to cross sell that into our customer base. if you look into our most recent earnings report, about 50% of our customers actually have four or more of these modules. we have 10 of them today. that has really worked out in our favor in terms of being able to go back to our customer base in addition to getting new customers. taylor: and has this shift to the cloud provided a lot of future opportunities? george: absolutely. i think that's one of the areas where we have seen the model we have created as a true cloud native architecture be embraced. and it's one of the reasons we have been so successful. in 2011, end point security delivered from the cloud was not so popular. 2019, it's a core element. it is not just about endpoints and laptops and servers. it is really about protecting workloads, and those could be on premise or in a cloud like amazon or the google cloud, and that is really important. you have to be able to protect these wherever they are at. taylor: when we take a look at the bottom line, not profitable yet, but losses are slowing. what is the pressure right now to be profitable? george: the way we look at it is

first, what are the unit economics? we have really good unit .n nymex -- economics as some of the legacy -- i call them fossilized vendors -- get acquired, change their business model, try to move to the cloud, which is difficult for them to do, we think it is a great opportunity to go out and get new customers. we added 730 net new customers last quarter, which is over double from the year before. so, as long as we continue to increase the rate of adoption of our technology, we will continue to invest there, but what's most important is the amount of money we spend on sales and marketing from a unit economic perspective is right where we want it to be. in fact, it is on the upward end of being very efficient. if you look across the companies in general. taylor: there has been a lot of market consolidation. nantech, vmware been bought out. does the consolidation help or hurt you? george: i think it is a net positive for us and i think it's a natural evolution of this market. if you look at what happened in salesforce automation, oracle

buying sebold. i think the natural comment around that is the fact that it was very hard to shift from a perpetual model of legacy architecture into something that is cloud-based and truly subscription-based. so, a lot of the companies you talked about were having a hard time making the transition in the cloud architecture as well as their overall revenue model and they had these mixed subscription models, which is very difficult. taylor: you ipo'ed in june. it has been a tough year for some companies that maybe are not profitable, valuations still too high. any advice you give on how to ride the wave? george: well, i think, first, you have to start with a great company. i think the elements of a great company to ride that wave is that they have something to do with the cloud. they are sas-delivered. they have a subscription revenue model. they have high retention rates where they keep adding adding new modules or bits. and i think those are elements that make you successful. i think the market is smart enough to figure out what companies have great earnings potential in the future, and

those are the requisite characteristics that we have seen, and we are fortunate enough to fall into that category. taylor: that was crowdstrike ceo george kurtz. coming up, a tough ride for peloton. the company begins trading as nasdaq opening nearly 7% below the ipo price. we hear from ceo john foley. and if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio. you can listen on the bloomberg and in theerg.com, u.s. on sirius xm. this is bloomberg. ♪

taylor: tech ipo's were in the news this week. peloton debuted on the nasdaq, thursday, dropping nearly 7% at the open after raising $1.6 billion.

bloomberg's jason kelly sat down 's ceo john foley shortly after its trading debut. john: we are playing the long game. we see this as literally building millions and millions of subscribers around the globe in the coming years. and now we have the money to do that. we are fully funded after today's primary, so we are feeling confident. jason: and when you think about the last couple of days and really the last couple weeks, you mentioned the markets. i mean, wework is on everybody's mind. it is a tricky ipo market, to say the least. do you have a sense of sort of where the miscalculation was? or if there was one? john: i tell you, jason, this is my eighth fundraiser, peloton. this is the funny thing. people either see it or they don't. there are believers and nonbelievers. the people have believed, who have invested in peloton, they have been very, very happy, and we will continue to delight the

capital partners who invest in us. jason: you mentioned fully funded. what will you do with some of that money? what does expansion look like? john: we are doing things like building a $50 million streaming television studio in new york city, another in london, where we will hire our foreign language instructors. so german instructors are being hired in london to stream to our german market, which we open in 60 days. we are investing in new content, new verticals, the treadmill market in canada, the u.k., germany. we are in investment mode. someone earlier today was saying you are losing money. it's like, no, it is semantics, we are investing money and feel very good about what we are doing. jason: how do you feel about the consumer market? you sell a very high-end product. we are in a bull market. we continue to be, other than some volatility that we are experiencing. what do you hear back from your customers, and maybe more importantly, your potential

customers about their willingness to write a big check or charge something pretty big on their credit card? john: one of the most important things we think about at peloton is the optics of affordability. if you have a peloton bike and you and your partner ride it, it is insane value vis-a-vis anything else. interestingly, i know jason, you wrote the book on fitness, so you know this, but fitness has been a recession-proof category for the last 15 years. more dollars went into fitness in 2008 and 2009 as they did every year, so there has been secular growth for the last 15 years. and we think if we create the best value in fitness, on average, our bikes are ridden 12 to 14 times a month, divided by 39, you are paying a couple of dollars for a workout, it is obviously orders of magnitude better than going to the boutique fitness world, and we will show over time it is better value than going to the gym. jason: you have described the company in the s1 and the roadshow as all sorts of things, a technology company, a media

company, it obviously does a lot more. where will you be primarily spending money? is this a content push that's coming? john: yeah, i would say at our core, we cannot hire software engineers fast enough. so we are a software company, tech company at our core. we've had to learn our way into media, now we have 13 emmy award-winning producers. and we just hired this fantastic new chief content operator. so she is going to build one of the most special media divisions in any category. but our core, to your question, the investment will go into technology. we will open retail stores, logistics, more markets, but certainly, software engineering is at our core. taylor: that was the peloton ceo john foley with bloomberg's jason kelly. and this week brought pretty of turbulence to wework. co-founder adam neumann stepped down from his ceo role tuesday in a move designed to salvage the company's planned ipo.

the co-president and chief financial officer and sebastian gunningham, the vice-chairman, were named co-ceo's. i discussed the executive shakeup brett wallace and gene munster. >> i think the writing was clearly on the wall that this is where the momentum was. my reaction is to think of this in three chapters. there is the past and things that happened that were very good with wework. leadership was not as good. the leadership had a lot of the power that built the company. then there is the present, and i have to applaud everybody involved in how smooth this is going so far. if you look at the clock, it was just a few weeks ago this started, and they already have some replacements, temporary or permanent. adam, the way he stepped aside, was respectable. and so, i credit the company for that. it is different from how uber's leadership change.

it took a lot of time to find a replacement. i think that was what was most surprising to me, the pace. then there is the question about the future. to circle back and quickly talk about the timing of this ipo, i think it is unlikely that anything happens in that october frame. because now equity investors are going to want the senior management to have a handle on the business, and that simply takes time. if i was going to guess, i think it would probably be early next year if they want to maximize the valuation here. they could do something more quickly, but equity investors would factor that in with an even lower valuation than what we talked about. all in, good move for wework, but we are still a ways away from an ipo. taylor: brett, i could arguably give you a victory lap. you and i spoke in the last few

months after you wrote a smart but scathing report on wework about their financials. what changed for you today with the announcement? brett: what we found ourselves saying about the situation is that wework suffered from three things that when put together are not good news for a company. the first is significant losses, the second is opacity, making it difficult to analyze the company. and then third is really arrogance. there are a lot of things to put in the bucket of arrogance, the related party transactions, 20 votes per share, a number of things. the only thing that changed today is possibly the third bucket, arrogance. but losses and opacity, those two problems remain. and having watched this play out over the last couple of weeks, among our customer group, a month ago i was not hearing anyone saying adam is the problem. and even a week ago, i was not hearing anyone saying adam is the problem. so this is a new solution, but i'm not sure it addresses some of the problems people have had

most significantly about handing over $3 billion or $4 billion to this type of company at the type of valuation they were looking for. taylor: gene, i fold you back in here as an equity analyst. corporate governance change does not change the top or bottom line fundamentals. and the fact that this company is losing tons of money. is that still the biggest concern? gene: i think no, and i know that that is not consensus thinking. i think that this business, it is a concern if investors don't know that. they understand that this business has a ton of cash need. and i think the leadership piece is really critical here. because it sets the tone. just think about all the leaders of these tech companies. it is almost like the company's performance is embodied in the leader. i think it is critical. i don't think the cash burn is the critical issue for

investors. i think they understand that. i think that if you want to think about upside to the story longer-term, clearly how they spend money will be important and how they scale the business. but i think this is a little more meaningful if they can really kind of change some of that. i do want to catch myself as well. when i talk about the change at the top, that is a really hard thing to do. to change the culture of a business to be more judicious. and that is why i think it will take longer to actually get public. there will be some teething and the company will probably see some departures around this before the rank-and-file are comfortable. taylor: and gene, talk to me about the big risk of removing that visionary leader. we talked about elon musk, who is associated with tesla. mark zuckerberg, associated with facebook. you talk about uber and their leadership changes. what is the risk that you remove neumann and the vision goes with it?

gene: it is probably the biggest risk. and i mean, that's the catch-22, there needed to be change. but the best ideal -- to answer your question, it is a material risk, culture is critical. as an equity analyst, i always focus on income statements and balance sheets. as a private investor, as a venture capitalist, i realize that even with public companies, culture is absolutely critical and cannot be overstated enough. it is going to be -- if i had the hefty responsibility of stepping in in some capacity, that would be my number one concern, not to lose the vision. taylor: that was brett wallace and gene munster. coming up, amazon focuses on alexa privacy as it unveils new gadgets in seattle. we'll have the details of their newest product lineup, next. this is bloomberg. ♪

taylor: on wednesday, amazon introduced the echo studio, a high-end speaker to rival sonos devices, the apple home pod and google's home max. the new device looks similar to the home pod, making it noticeably larger than any existing echo. the speaker costs $199 and is now available for preorder. i caught up with amazon's senior vice president of devices and services dave limp to ask about the changes. dave: we have taken a different take on how audio is developed. basically we have five speakers built into it that gives the sense of music surrounding you, kind of how the artist wants the music to be portrayed, and we think that is an industry first, and we are looking forward to seeing how customers like it.

taylor: you are taking on big rivals. sonos, apple, google. are you happy with your penetration rate? dave: we think that this isn't a winner-take-all game, first of all. and you mentioned one of those companies who is a great partner of ours in sonos. they are really, really great partners. and we think customers want selection. that has always been the case with amazon. we offer lots of selection and choice. and we want to give that same choice, whether it is sonos or our products, and we are looking forward to seeing what customers think and whether they like it. taylor: the pricing is interesting to me. $199 versus the homepod at $299. it feels like everyone is really trying to be competitive here on pricing. are you worried that it is a race to zero? dave: i don't think so. what we tried to do is price our products with as much value as we possibly can. we have always had the philosophy from the first day with kindle to price our products in a way -- we want to make money as amazon in the

device and services business and customers use the products, not when they buy them. so, if we give them good value and the service behind it is really compelling to the customer, they are going to use it for years and years and years. we think the price points we are at now are great. taylor: dave, i was chuckling a little bit when the headline crossed that said alexa will now tell when i'm frustrated with her. how will she be able to tell that, and then what does she do? dave: yeah, we built a pretty deep machine-learning model to be able to recognize when customers are frustrated, and it is important to realize we are not checking whether you are frustrated with the world around you or detecting that or somebody in your family. we are only detecting when you are frustrated with alexa herself. and when that happens, we want to try to teach alexa to kind of autocorrect herself. and the example i showed was a music example. i asked to play one track. she misunderstood. i got frustrated. she corrected herself. and we think that is going to be

very valuable on the path as these digital assistants, alexa specifically, become more conversational over time. taylor: when it comes to privacy controls, what new privacy controls have you added with these new devices? dave: we did a lot on privacy today. we added new utterances that allow you to ask alexa, tell me what you heard, so she can clarify that. you can ask alexa in the coming months, tell me why did you do that, so if she does something that you did not think was right, you can understand the context of that. and we added a new feature in our privacy hub that gives customers the ability to auto-delete their voice utterances on a rolling three and 18 month rolling window. we think customers will like that as well. taylor: in between that rolling three or 18-month window, though, confirm for me if there is audio listening, transcribing, recording, before i delete those. dave: we have a different setting, and i think we are the first in the industry to allow

customers to opt out of human beings annotating any voice recording that we might have. so, you can also turn that off if you want. some of the personalization of the service and some of the capabilities of the service will get worse if you do that, but if a customer wants to, we want to give them that option. and then we have always had from the very beginning the ability for customers to delete any single utterance, any group of utterances, or all utterances with the single click of a button, and those are also in the alexa privacy hub. the key for us is to give customers lots of options, and they can balance the level of personalization and capabilities they have versus the level of privacy they want. taylor: why, dave, is it opt out instead of opt in? dave: like i said, a lot of the capabilities that we get from those voice recordings makes the service more important. let me give you one example. we just launched hindi in india last week, or maybe two weeks ago. and we know that in the first

three months, as long as we have enough data, that the service is going to get something like 33% better, more accurate on behalf of hindi-speaking customers. if we did not have that capability, we did not have those voice recordings, we could not make those improvements. the state of the art of the science would not allow us to do that. so we hope customers will come with us on that journey and be able to have us do that to improve the service. if they don't want, they can opt out and they can delete their utterances, and everything will be fine. taylor: and coming up, ebay is just one of the companies to see its ceo step down this week. what changes are in store for the company after the departure. and bloomberg technology is livestreaming on twitter. check us out @technology and be sure to follow our global breaking news network @tictoc on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪ here, it all starts with a simple...

hello! -hi! how can i help? a data plan for everyone. everyone? everyone. let's send to everyone! [ camera clicking ] wifi up there? -ahhh. sure, why not? how'd he get out?! a camera might figure it out. that was easy! glad i could help. at xfinity, we're here to make life simple. easy. awesome. so come ask, shop, discover at your xfinity store today.

taylor: welcome back to the best of "bloomberg technology." i'm taylor riggs. it was announced tuesday the ceo of ebay was stepping down amid the company's ongoing operating review. devon has been under pressure from paul singer. singer has been pushing the company to spin off some of its businesses, including stub hub. ebay's chief financial officer has been appointed as interim ceo. i spoke with bloomberg technology's spencer soper about the move. spencer: parts of performance and holding the company together, not selling pieces that activist investors want

sold, this is bringing ebay closer to the scrap heap. it kind of feels like ebay breakup part two. it's a similar situation that ebay faced about five years ago when activist investor carl icahn was pressuring the then ceo to break up ebay and paypal. now, we don't have a promising up-and-coming company that they want to spin off like they did with paypal. it's more just to break up what's left over. taylor: what are the activists pushing for in terms of breaking up the company? how do they think they can unlock value? spencer: there's been pressure to sell their ticket market, stubhub, and a local marketplace similar to a craigslist type thing or the start up, offer up. they want to further break pieces. they argue there could be synergies.

stubhub, for example, they say we sell sports memorabilia and band memorabilia, and if someone is getting a concert ticket or a sporting event ticket on ebay, maybe they will spill over and buy a t-shirt, but those synergies never materialized, and it's been the same story for ebay since the paypal split. there hasn't been much growth. amazon is leaving it further and further in the dust. taylor: what can the interim ceo do that the previous ceo was not able to do? spencer: it's hard to find a bigger champion for ebay. devon wenig was enthusiastic and took efforts to rebrand it, shed its image as this online garage sale and reestablish it is the -- as a place to go to buy new things. none of it caught on. it seemed like inertia set in. it looks like scott is a placeholder until they find someone else. that's going to be more telling. when they find a new ceo for the

company, are they going to look for a person to break it up or someone to re-energize ebay, which was the plan that never really went anywhere. taylor: how can they compete with amazon? spencer: not that greatly. they have tried to distinguish themselves more, and they would even joke at their ebay conferences saying we are not the place to go if you want a roll of paper towels in an hour. amazon has the commodity play. trying to replenish people's homes and cupboards and things, and ebay is the place for enthusiasts, like if you are a to ebay to find hard to find car parts. if you're into videogame accessories, you might find difficult to find items. they tried to differentiate themselves that way. but, in terms of delivery, you could be talking days or weeks to get things delivered. those things were difficult hurdles, for shoppers to get over. if you are used to getting

things in two days or less, you find something you like, and you have to get it in a week, that's a long time. taylor: that was "bloomberg technology's" spencer soper. tuesday marked at change at the top of juul labs. as the highly valued company faces a growing public backlash against vaping, the company announced the chief executive officer, kevin burns, will be stepping down. a former altria executive will take over. altria said it was ending talks with photo tobacco giant -- with a fellow tobacco giant phillip morris. i caught up with liana baker for all of the details. >> this seems to be the week for ceos stepping down. i saw ebay before, but juul had a lot of regulatory hurdles that i would say that investors in the company, like altria, thought the previous ceo did not handle properly. this is quite a fall from grace.

the company had been valued at almost $40 billion. who's to say where the valuation is now. after states are cracking down in whole countries, like india, are banning these vaping products. taylor: you have a formal altria executive taking over. what are the plans for this ceo? what can he do with juul? liana: he is a safe hand to oversee juul's transformation. he had been at altria for many years and had overseen some of the regulatory approvals for the product that philip morris international is now rolling out in the u.s. through altria. that is a safer product, at least in the eye of these companies, compared to vaping. he has that strength in washington to deal with these regulatory issues. it remains to be seen what changes he can make quickly.

because the story seems to be getting worse. taylor: i am glad you brought up phillip morris, because they announced they were ending the merger agreement they were in with altria. am i correct in saying the merger is off and the ceo is stepping down, that i am tying those two together? liana: it is certainly no coincidence, and the sources i spoke to today would agree that while these are companies that are maybe destined to be together, now is not the time because of all these negative headlines and regulatory headwinds around juul. when altria invested, they did not know it would get so bad with nine deaths connected to this and several federal investigations. it really isn't the time to announce a $200 billion merger with that much uncertainty. taylor: as you mentioned, philip morrison announced their product that they will work on getting that into the u.s. and work with fda regulators to get that approved. any sense of the extra competition that that creates

for juul? liana: it's funny. that company has been around for a while in development and was supposed to be this hot new thing, until vaping came along with juul. these companies seem excited to roll it out. in the u.s., atlanta is testing it there, but i am not spoken with anyone who has used it, i a haven't used it myself, and i'm curious, what will people be smoking exactly because it is heating the tobacco but not burning it. it's supposed to be a milder inhale. it is hard to say. we will see how audiences and customers react to it. taylor: that was bloomberg's liana baker. coming up, more discussion as a co-ceo calls for more progressive minded solutions to climate change using technology.

and, dropbox dropping details on its revamped services. we will hear from ceo drew houston next. this is bloomberg. ♪ and, dropbox dropping details on

taylor: australian tech entrepreneur mike cannon-brooks is using his platform to fight climate change. the cofounder and co-ceo of enterprise software company and lassie and sat down with bloomberg's ed hammond tuesday to discuss climate, tech, and why the future needs to be ready for more disruption. mike: we have a very complicated business sector when it comes to this. in finance and insurance and lots of other areas, australia is very progressive about this

and worried about climate change moving forward. even in the mining sector, i'm incredibly pro-mining. if you look at the opportunities for australia, in a green world, what are we going to make? panels, batteries, nickel, copper. we have a phenomenal amount of opportunity before you get to sun and wind. that doesn't mean the fossil fuel part of mining is incompatible with future climate. we don't have to transition out of or put in plans to transition out of. ed: you talked about elon musk a couple of years ago where he said he could build a battery in 100 days and you said he couldn't, and he did. he is the standard bearer of sorts for this push to be more green and more environmentally friendly for a long time. it's representative of a lot of people in the tech industry who are making claims about where we should be heading.

is there a problem, people like mr. musk who is so aloof and kind of otherworldly that it's hard for the average person to relate to them and say this is something we should be on board with? mike: sure. in australia, we have some phenomenal examples of where there should be opportunity. i absolutely agree. it can be hard to connect to elon. he's an awesome character, but he is not your regular guy. nor should he be. he is amazing for humanity, but you have to have both regular connectivity in all parts of society. in australia, we have a lot of examples. we have the highest penetration of household solar in the world. more people sleep per capita under solar panels in australia than anywhere else. that's a movement that can be made. if you are sleeping under solar panel, you understand this. when it comes to batteries, it's even more crazy. we have more batteries in australia, full stop,

residentially than any other place in the world. then the rest of the world put together, more residential areas. we have these engaged populations that understands the issues. we've got to get that aligned with stable government policy. ed: another area where you have been strong with the government is saying that they need to do more to position the country and the business sector for this sort of wave of technology that will disrupt much of tech, -- not just tech, retail, and the obvious industries, but in your mind, every industry will be a tech industry. are they doing enough? mike: we are working well with the government in trying to push forward in this area. obviously, we need sensible policy, sensible settings on technology. these are complex topics of encryption and other things. but, we still need to be varying -- be very engaged and move that set forward. secondly, we need to have a viable tech industry and tech enabled every other industry in

australia. a simple stat i like to give is we are 1% of the world's gdp. if we are not 1% of the worlds technology production, we are going to be in trouble as an economy. as the economy moves toward technology, it is the biggest industry in the world and is only getting bigger, we have to be producing some technology in australia. doesn't have to be all of it. we have to produce 1% of the worlds technology to be 1% of the world's gdp. we need to keep moving the economy forward. that's education, immigration, sensible policy settings and all tough areas. ed: immigration is a huge part of what allows some countries to be more successful at technology than others because the tech workforce is transient and will go where they feel the most interesting companies and best opportunities are. what does a country like australia have to do to attract that workforce to an extent where it can be at that 1% level or higher to produce 1% tech

gdp? mike: we are doing a relatively good job recently. we have had a big changes on immigration as a relates to the tech industry. we are in a pretty good spot. it could always be better. to be fair, over the last couple of years, it's in a really good spot. most of the policies settings are sound around you must invest in education, local, and the way we think of it, we need to invest in talent coming up from the bottom. high school and tertiary education, we need lots of graduates. we have lots of talent. that's not the problem. what we don't have is lots of experience. the higher up the company you get, the more we don't have a lot of people in australia with 10 years worth of technology experience. we have to import those. and we have to make sure, internally, that when we import half of a level or an area, the half that we import are helping the other half, and that is how we grow the economy. hopefully, that talent stays in australia.

it's a great lifestyle, great place to live, a lot of sensible jobs, the economy is doing pretty well if you look over a three decade period. we are hopeful we can get that -- we are hopeful if we can get that talented individual into the country, they will stay, and long term contribute to the economy. taylor: that was mike cannon-brooks speaking with ed hammond. and coming up, dropbox is dropping details on its revamped services. we will hear from ceo drew houston next. this is bloomberg. ♪

taylor: dropbox is going way beyond filesharing. the san francisco-based company announced new services wednesday, including a new desktop app which functions as a digital hub where workers

can collaborate with colleagues on projects with their colleagues on projects that require access to digital files. we found all about the spaces -- dropbox bases with the ceo, drew houston. drew: we announced dropbox spaces, which is one of the biggest changes we have ever made to dropbox. it's our first step toward the smart workspace, a calmer and more focused working environment. it changes the dropbox experience from being a folder full of files to an intelligent team workspace for all of your cloud content. dropbox is becoming this new app that brings these other apps together. it cuts down on the noise and lmers it a smarter and ca experience. taylor: tell me how you are building on current customers or if you want dropbox spaces to be new customers. drew: we have built our entire

business on collaborating on files, but with the smart workspace, we are going beyond that, on a bunch of dimensions. first is supporting every kind of cloud content. so, you can still have your powerpoint in dropbox, but you can have your others in one place. second is it is a much more engaging experience. in addition to the content, you can see all the conversations around it and the context around it, and you can send someone a slack message from dropbox or see your calendar or start a zoom meeting. we found a lot of customers were to piece this together, switch between a bunch of different apps. we see an opportunity to organize your working life across all these different tools, while still maintaining a choice to use what you want to use. taylor: talk to me about topline revenue growth. when we dig into your financials, very strong double-digit topline growth. some analysts, though, at least on the average consensus on the bloomberg terminal, looking like it could slow to the midteens.

what are you doing to maintain that topline revenue growth? drew: first, we start with a huge opportunity. in many ways, dropbox spaces expands on our opportunity because many companies or many teams need to collaborate on files, but every team needs to collaborate around content, so we start with solving a problem that every person in every company has. and with the new dropbox and with spaces, we are evolving the experience. now, we have a new generation of our product that does a lot more for our users than we have in the past, and now, our focus is getting in into people's hands. taylor: analysts are starting to forecast what could be your first annual profit in 2019. are you on track to reach those goals? drew: it is a testament. we have a really efficient and scalable business. balancing gr profitability has always been important to us, and we have, in many ways, applied the consumer

inner playbook to business software, so we have this really efficient self-serve motion where people spread the product for free, and that is how we have been able to grow the business, and it has worked really well. taylor: there's been a lot of scrutiny, recently, on unprofitable companies. you've been public for about 18 months or so. what's been the biggest challenge? drew: it has been pretty straightforward for us. in many ways, we laid the tracks for being a public company years before we ever filed for an ipo. so, the biggest challenge is actually something that i think is healthy for us, which is it's like being drafted into the majors. there's a big scoreboard. we've got to perform. it creates a big sense of urgency. on the one hand, there might be parts of that which are challenging, but i think, in a lot of ways, it builds a healthy discipline and rigor into what you do, creates a lot of urgency.

taylor: that was dropbox ceo drew houston. one of dropbox's partners made their own announcement this week. on monday, the video sharing company unveiled a tool that lets businesses, brands, and agencies find and hire world-class video professionals to create content. bloomberg's ed hammond sat down with the vimeo ceo. >> this really isn't a new offering. it is just another way for us to lower those barriers for businesses and make it easier. we don't think of ourselves as a marketplace business. we are a software and service, or sas, business. we have a wonderful community, this creative community on scale. the way we can leverage it and add more value is a differentiator. ed: you can't access it for free.

you said you're not going to be taking a cut. how do you monetize this? anjali: this is not really a separate revenue line for us. the reason we are doing it is to increase engagement. and retention on the platform. like any good staff business, we are interested in building long-term value and relationships with our customers. the vast majority of vimeo's revenue is annual subscription plans. for us, this is about the more people that are coming to the platform to make video, the more value they are finding, the more they will engage with tools and the longer that will stay. that is good for our revenue. ed: does it give more power to the businesses who were using the site to access content, because they can say this is the kind of video we want or this is the commission we want to put out there, and creators can come to them and say we are well-equipped to provide. anjali: what we see is, if you are a business, brand, agency, or entrepreneur startup, you

need to make more video every day. you are making video for social media now. your audience expects higher quality. almost netflix style quality content. the barriers for you, the demand is there, but it is really hard. it's hard to figure out who you can work with, find someone on your budget. in many cases, businesses are not thinking about video. they are thinking about growing their business. this is really about lowering those barriers. what we found is that there is a high demand for this from both sides of the community. ed: it's impossible to talk about vimeo without looking away. vimeo is one of the companies has its own results broken out. talk to us about the path to an ipo, and where you are headed on that. anjali: this has been said, and it is true.

for vimeo, ipo's not a business strategy, it is a fund-raising vehicle. right now, with iac, we have the well-funded shareholder. our focus is not about ipo. it's about capitalizing on this massive market, $20 billion market, for serving the people behind the camera, and not investing in content like others are doing, but investing in the the businesses and creators making the content. taylor: that was ed hammond who sat down with the vimeo ceo. that doesn't for this edition of -- does it for this edition of the best of "bloomberg technology," where we bring you all the latest in tech throughout the week. tune in each day at 5:00 in new new york and 2:00 p.m. in san francisco. "bloomberg technology" is livestreaming on twitter. check us out @technology, and follow our global breaking news network @tictoc on twitter. this is bloomberg.

♪ devices are like doorways

that could allow hackers into your home. and like all doors, they're safer when locked. that's why you need xfinity xfi. with the xfi gateway, devices connected to your homes wifi are protected. which helps keep people outside from accessing your passwords, credit cards and cameras. and people inside from accidentally visiting sites that aren't secure. and if someone trys we'll let you know. xfi advanced security. if it's connected, it's protected. call, click, or visit a store today.

paul: welcome to "daybreak: australia." i'm paul allen in sydney. shery: i'm shery ahn in new york. sophie: i'm sophie kamaruddin in hong kong. we are counting down to asia's major market open. paul: here are the top stories we are covering in the next hour. talking trade. beijing confirms the team will fly to washington next week for the first negotiations since may. the widening array of global threats is keeping haven bowls happening -- happy.