this week, frank talk about diversity. we all want it, but what's the right way for a company to get it? hewlett-packard's chief diversity officer leslie slay ton brown. plus, you bid on houses, why not bid on apartments? alex's simple idea enrages represent erdos. and yes, cannabis, washington is backing off its stress on pot. e's ceo jim patterson. our reporters sara lacy and connie, editor and chief in c-net. this week on "presshere."

good morning, everyone, i'm scott mcgrew. h-p is the birth place of a place called management by walking around. bill hewitt and david packard were to walk around today, they'd be surprised. pleased, but surprised by what the work force looks like now, a reflection of society now, a perfect reflection of society to be sure, but h-p is working hard to make that a more perfect mirror. the person in charge of that very big task is leslie clayton brown, chief diversity officer at h-p, and connie of c-net as well, editor in chief there. normally this is where i'm beginning to ask you questions but i have a couple of things i want to point out. that is, and i said this last time we had a diversity officer on the show, it is my job to ask you really hard questions and they will be about diversity. i don't want you to misconstrue that somehow i am against

diversity. i am conscious i am a white anglo-saxon male challenging you about diversity. that's why it could seem awkward. i am not making an audition tape for fox and friends. >> absolutely. >> let's get started. let me ask you a tough question as long as we're talking about race diversity. could i be a diversity officer? >> absolutely. it's about bringing new perspective to the table. >> twitter had a white male diversity officer. he got a little bit of grief. he left, but they hired a white male diversity officer. >> as i said, the way we look at diversity at h-p and we started by forming the most diverse

board of directors in corporate america. we started with 42% women at the helm and 23% african americans -- excuse me, for minorities. the value that brings in partnership with white males is that you have all views represented at the table, and that's what our goal is. >> when you think about diversity in silicon valley, there's a lot of people who feel like, you know, maybe gender gets more attention or, you know, when you talk about, you know, white men and asian men, like is there a difference between hiring asian versus hiring african-american and what about hiring older people and age discrimination. i mean, how should we think about diversity where -- because a lot of these are individual problems, but really it's also the same problem. how do you approach it? >> in the way we approach it -- and i appreciate your question, sara -- it goes back to all, right? we do business in 170 countries

across the world. and although we're headquartered in the silicon valley, we have sub-sites across the u.s. it is important for us to balance that work force. so, ethnic minorities, race representation, gender, generational ability, veteran status, all of that is very important to us because we create technology for everyone everywhere. and, so, we have to be very respectful to that and knowing that we have to bring that into our work force and honor that. >> i notice you didn't include religion. >> religion. >> you would consider a religious person of some religious faith to count toward the diversity number? >> well, i mean, it's a perspective, right? >> i guess i should refine my question. when you're putting together your diversity report is religion -- >> no, it is not. it is not. >> can we talk about the end

goal of diversity? that's what gets a lot of drama or attention when i or my staff write about it. people say, these are already successful companies and they're making a lot of money. obviously it's not an issue of diversity. can you counter that? >> well, the reason i think h-p has had the success that it has is because we have a legacy of caring about a work force. so, when bill hewitt and dave packard formed h-p in a little garage on addison avenue, they considered how do we build a work force -- first of all, products that meet the needs of a community. and in addition to that, they consciously thought about what the work force should look like in order to innovate. and, so, that's what we're focused on. our end game is greater innovation and winning. >> sara touched on the white and asian question. one of the lines in your report is under represented minorities,

which i would assume is african-american, native american. what is an under represented minu minority? >> under represented is different things in different countries. >> in the u.s. >> in the u.s. it is ethnic and race, it is gender. we look at as well as veteran status. >> i guess what i'm asking is are asians considered -- are they considered a minority in hewlett-packard or h-p and are they considered an under represented? >> at h-p, we don't focus just on our numbers, right. so, we've looked at how do we reinvent the standard for diversity. and in looking at that, there is a different standard. for in the silicon valley, asians are not under represented. in boise, idaho where we have one of our largest sites, it is. so we have to be specific to those different geographies we

focus and do business in. >> there's a lot of data that's come out in the last four, five years. why gender diverse teams are better and yet we haven't seen a lot of change, even at companies like facebook where shared sandberg is number two and a big advocate for this. a lot of studies, when people view their name, show a lot of white men are 46% are sick of hearing about this issue. sorry, 25% of companies have active programs to address this. 95% don't see it as a core thing they need to be focused on. if it's not your priority, how can we expect managers, particularly time pressed people building high growth companies to pay attention to it? >> at h-p it is our priority. it starts with our board of directors. our ceo is very much dedicate today it. as we know, the white male is a really strong component of the

success that we need. in addition to that, when h-p, hewlett-packard split off into two companies in november of, what, 2015, we were very intentional with, one, forming that board of directors, but we find increase even in women in the executive levels, so we increased to, i think it was 27%. so, by 4% increase. and we look at it from the standpoint of first and foremost, you must embed diversity across all aspects of the company. you cannot do it by a program here and a program there. you can't do it by just checking the box on numbers in your hiring. and, so, our goal is to continue to see incremental growth year over year. one single company can't fix the diversity problem within the silicon valley, but the role that h-p is playing is saying that, let's embed it into everything that we do. and with that, our senior leadership, which, by the way,

is 21% national representation, and represent seven different countries across the world as well, are all 100% commit today it. >> can i just pickup on something sara said? intel got a lot of attention when two years ago they introduced their diversity initiative. i spoke him at cnet when he announced it because he has two daughters, their interest in stem, what their career path at a tech company if they were entering the work force today and he was not happy with the outcome. he tied their diversity to money. there is a financial incentive for managers to understand their success matrix is not shipping a product on time or hitting an engineering goal. it is helping the bottom line or top line depending on your point of view. has h-p done something along that line, put money behind the effort of diversity? >> we've done more than i think, connie, put money behind our

effort. we have leadership stepping out, tracy who established the board of directors in partnership with meg whit man. second, ken rivera, who is our general counsel and head of legal, said in september of 2015, i think it was -- 2016, rather, that i am going to enforce that all of our counsel, general counsel, legal partners adhere to the same accountability that we as a company are accountable for. we want them to have that same representation. the legal industry is lacking in diversity as well. so, we want to see women and we want to see minorities in partnership levels with firms that we do business with. >> leslie, i've got more questions about that because i've got that memo in my hand, in fact. >> great. >> we've run out of time. i've come to a commercial. what i'd like to do is keep talking with you and we'll put the rest of it on the internet. would that be -- >> absolutely. >> all right. so, for those of you watching on television, up next, people bid

on houses, but why not apartments? you'll meet a guy who is annoyed at renters when "presshere" continues on television, to be continued with leslie check us out at kntv.com.

between the excitement of that and also dealing with crypton locker, my only response was, okay. >> bear a 'cuda networks was able to assure the worst case scenario didn't play out, the permanent loss of thousands of

giga bites of sensitive data. >> we found all the files had bng encrypted and deleted them. i went straight to the back up and restored the files. first notification we had such a loss to the point we were restored back to business as usual, it was all under an hour. >> to learn more, visit barr acuda.com. "press:here" is available on itunes. >> welcome back. landlords are allowed to solicit bids for their apartments the way realtors do for housing. you're willing to pay 3,000 a month for an apartment, i'll pay 3200. until the amount bid of person at 3 1/2. it is available all over in san francisco, chicago, new york and los angeles. alex came up with the idea. it caused immediate controversy. alex seems to welcome it. you got a lot of press. >> yes. >> it was negative press in some cases, but, boy, people started

talking about rent berry. >> we got a lot of positive press as well, you know, tv stations, got an article, got the tv footage about us. so, it's actually mixed. but i would say there's like more positive than negative actually. >> what exactly was your goal in setting up this app? i'm not trying to be, you know, simplistic here. people talk all the time about the controversy over uber. to me, they have a wonderful real-time mobile reservation. that's what they do. it's when they bring in cars and drivers that they get very messy. you have an industry you're addressing where people are applying for apartments and landlords trying to fill it. there's lets of paperwork and a vetting process. so obviously visual technology can help optimize that. but you've take not it a step further with the bidding. can you talk about that? >> sure. one thing i want to make clear, it's not just about bidding. many people, it's a huge

misconception. i think somebody put in the news a couple of months ago. >> normally you don't bid for apartments so it's new. >> normally you don't. but at the same time, normally you apply for the apartment, filling out paper applications and you submit paper checks. our platform isn't morbiding. we became actually the first absolutely closed loop rental platform on the market in the united states about a month ago. so, as a matter of fact, landlord and tenant can do all of the rental task in one place. this is huge because till now nobody else has done it in the united states. and in terms of the bidding, so, we like to call it not so much bidding, but custom over submission technology. >> you can call it whatever you want. it is what it is. >> i'll tell you the huge difference. when you say bidding on ebay, on ebay people put something they want to sell. the idea is i put a computer, i want my price to go higher, higher and higher. in our situation, this is what we see on the market in real estate. when a landlord puts a property

for rent, the price can go lower and this is huge because essentially it's not just about price. it's a huge misconception because there's lots of data points that go into the analysis of the actual tenant. >> i'm going to ask you about that. there is an important point there. you're saying if it's $3,000 a month and i bid 2800 -- >> you can get the place. >> the landlord may say -- >> exactly. >> now, you're going with the we know more about the tenant thing. we all have questions. i interrupted. continue. >> what was your question? >> my question is where the suspicion is, i thought you were going, is now we've built this profile of this tenant. i as a landlord want somebody with a good credit rating. but i know a lot about this tenant that would enable me to be discriminatory in ways that i might not over a phone call or over e-mail because now i can see this tenant. i mean, there's a profile picture of this tenant. >> well, first of all, let's get

clear. it's avatar. some people call it picture. it's avatar. it's the same if you go to twitter, facebook. >> doesn't have to be my face. >> exactly. we need it just for fun. people can put the picture of a tree, somebody can put his or her dog. it's an avatar. there is nothing that would be discriminating to users. going back to the previous question about data points, tenants submit information such as how much money they make, where they work, for how long they work there, do they have any roommates, what kind of pets they have. there's lots and lots of data points. security deposit and rental price. definitely criminal reports, you know, credit scores. >> things you would expect. >> exactly, exactly. so, landlords can analyze all of this data and all of those applications and make a decision whom to take. so, it's not necessarily something or someone who offers more money. >> let me go back to my original

question, which is you had an opportunity to disrupt. that's the the word dujure and ought matt something that wasn't automated. the part that's controversial is the bidding point. but if your intent is to help the landlords, basically rent apartments, right, why not do a service or part of your data service to help them price it correctly, right? if they're pricing it too high, then somebody telling them that they're pricing it too high or too low, if that's the case, is of value add that you're bringing without adding an extra component of the bidding war aspect that we all and some of your critics are, you know, not quite comfortable with. >> excellent question. my answer will be in two parts. first of all in terms of the landlord. when you say price it correctly, we have data. we can tell the landlord how much he or she should potentially price the property for.

and by the way, this data, the atlanta lord can go and check out his neighbor, his neighbor is charging 2000 bucks. he or she might charge 2000 bucks as well. there is much more to this because it's not just, you know, every property is different. my property might have a better remodeling. i might be just a better landlord. so, somebody like you, for example, will be able to offer slightly more money because we are much better -- had a much better start during the open house, things like that. then in terms of the tenants, that's my second kind of answer to this question, because let's say i price the property for 3,000 bucks. an analogy i want to make, same as you go to the car dealership, you want to buy a car. if you have a better credit score, you would expect to get a better apr, right? somebody who has mediocre credit score, credit report will get higher interest rate, higher percentage for the loan to buy this car. so, same logic applies here. if i am a better tenant, if i am a better tenant do i need to get

a discount? yes, you should. >> alex, i have to leave it there because i've run out of time. the ceo and founder of rent berry, thank you for you can with us. washington backs off its threat for marijuana when "press:here" continues.

welcome back to "press:here". the 2017 u.s. federal budget has a lot of surprises in it. there's more money for foreign aide even though president trump wanted to cut it. federal funding for sanctuary cities will continue and of course we know there is no funding for a border wall. but buried down in the middle of the budget is a line that prohibits washington from interfering with state's decision about marijuana. this despite the fact that our attorney general wants to do just that. no doubt jim patterson let out a huge exhale hearing that news. he's ceo of the cannabis delivery business based in san

francisco. you saw when i did that. >> yes. >> i saw somewhere you had not used marijuana until the time you became ceo of a marijuana company. >> yeah, that's right. i was in the military, i was in the air force straight out of college. in college i was in rtc. you get regularly tested and it was never really a part of my life and came to ill is i convalley, did -- was working and -- >> microsoft, kind of a straight laced guy. lots of people use marijuana at this point. but straight lace guy for a fellow running a marijuana delivery system. >> yes, what i've learned is i'm surprised at the variety of people that use cannabis. people who use it don't talk about it. one of the things about this industry i've learned is everyone has a really strong opinion but no one really knows anything actually about t. i've been learning a lot. since i joined the company, i'm a product person so i've tried everything. >> i think what annoys me the most about a lot of medical marijuana companies and the industry is less that -- i

agree, there are a lot of people who use it and don't talk about it. it's more the people who can't stop talking about it. do you think at some point this is going to grow like an industry? it it needs to go out of this bob marly plants everywhere. that can be off putting in and of itself. >> one of the things we do at eaze we are separating cannabis from stoner culture. it's clear, the majority of americans are in favor of cannabis. a lot of people are put off by cannabis culture. so, just in terms of little things around design, communications, like really frying to separate those two things. for a lot of people cannabis is like alcohol. it's something they use either medicinally, recreationally but it's not part of that are life. it's not their identity. that's a really small niche and the industry is outgrowing that culture part of it. >> and you went in with the delivery service, which there's all sorts of avenues into that industry and how tech can make it more sufficient. i'm curious why that tact.

>> i think when you think -- with 2017, it really doesn't make sense to build a company. really build an industry on brick and mortar retail. if you look at all of the trends in every industry, people would rather buy stuff online and have it home delivered than go to a store. i think in particular, dispensaries, once cities drastically limit the numbers that are allowed, two, they're typically zoned into undesirable parts of the city. when you think of just on the medical side access is important. so some people can't go to the dispensary. the other thing is convenience. people want to buy things in the most convenient manner. buying things online and having them delivered -- >> i see when you buy you buy via credit card, not cash. >> we do both. >> so your driver is carrying cash and drugs. it seems like the most robable driver ever. >> you would think that. we hear that a lot. if you look at our data, our incident rate is in line with if you look at other on demand

services, uber, taxi drivers, we have a lot of protocols in place. >> you know who you're delivering to. that would help. if i'm a bad guy, i order ease and a guy with drugs and cash -- >> you've given us your license, talked to a doctor, cell phone number, we have your gps location. so probably a really bad, bad guy. >> if you're a bad guy's roommate. i'm curious -- scott started out by talking how it's this sigh of relief that the federal government says it's not going to interferon a state by state level. if that's what we're talking about as relief in this industry, i mean, state by state legislation makes it very hard to invest in companies, to scale a big company, you know, how many wine companies did we see fail from the dot-come era on because of state by state regulation. is this an investable industry? >> it's early, it's fairly early. from an entrepreneurial investor perspective, we are in the very beginning of a multi-decade

period where the industry is going to grow. it's investable, but high risk. ease is a tech company. we raise money. we have a few venture capitals. a lot of it comes from private family offices, different types of money than other silicon valley companies are raising from mostly because those investors have a higher risk tolerance. so -- >> what's your personal risk? i mean, could you get in trouble in some fashion as ceo of ease if the feds said, we're going to crackdown, in some way that might affect your future? >> sure, absolutely. >> you must have thought about that. >> sure, that's what being an entrepreneur is all about, taking risk. a lot of people take financial risk and maybe not personal risk. i come from enterprise software, it's a little safe. part of it is i wanted to do something that was exciting, more fun, you know, microsoft was great but kind of getting out there and just doing something more exciting comes a threat. >> they're breaking fewer laws than uber was when this started. more laws than airbnb was.

>> we extremely conservative in the way we operate. we don't deliver in los angeles. the los angeles delivery regulation is a gray area. some companies continue to operate, we pulled out. some of those companies actually got indicted. so, one thing we do is we have a legal team lobbying team. we definitely don't take the uber approach of plowing into a city. we work with local regulators, we use our data and things. before we go in, we always have the green light from the locals. >> jim patterson is the ceo of eaze. we appreciate you being with us. we'll be back in just a minute.

that's our show for this week. my thanks to my guests. jim patterson runs eaze marijuana delivery service. leslie slay ton brown is chief diversity officer at h-p.

all of those interviews are available on nbc.com and ipod. i'm scott mcgrew. thank you for making us part of your sunday morning.

nbc sports, home of the olympic games, the playoffs, nhl, nascar playoffs and super bowl lii only on nbc. ♪ welcome to the u.s. bank nbc sports report. >> golf in the united kingdom takes center stage for the next few weeks. today it's european pga tour and final round coverage of the scottish open is coming right up. we will get you to scotland in a moment. first a quick sports