chase. so you can. this week, behind the scenes at e harmony. nearly 20 years of dating data teaches us something about love. an entrepreneur tries to get into the united states eight times. and when he does, he creates a billion dollar business. can amazon keep its echo from becoming a corporate shell? scott bud man and heather somerville this week on press here.

my first guest had two long distance love affairs. the one with a girl who loved 10 hours away. he created a video chat platform that brought him closer to his girlfriend. the other, getting into the united states was more difficult. he tried not once or twice, to get a visa. when he finally got it, he created zoom, now worth a billion dollars, he has a reputation as a hard charger. he sends employee s e-mails in n the middle of the night. and he expects people to be at work friday afternoon. let's start with the friday afternoon thing, what is that? >> our philosophy, we want our

customers to really enjoy using our solution. and we want to make sure our employees work very hard. quite often friday afternoon our customers are using our service. we want to make sure our team is ready. whenever they have issues, we can make sure they can get help. >> that never happens, friday 6:00 p.m., 7:00 p.m., a lot of us are there. >> i wonder how that affects your ability to recruit and retain talent in if an area where tech companies embrace the work life balance, give people unlimited vacation and such. ping-pong tables people can play during the day. do you feel like that affects your ability to recruit people? >> however, we always talk about -- >> work is really hard. >> we develop some sort of

balance. if you really like your work, work is your life. if you're passionate, you do not think that's work. if you make your customer happy, you are happy. i think that's your life, it's not work. >> silicon valley is famous for not being 9:00 to 5:00, right? friday afternoons, we get a lot of news. >> they bury some of that on friday afternoon. >> heather brought up the ping-pong table. do you have a ping-pong table? are we do. >> does anyone use it? >> absolutely. >> eric foes uses on hiring people with the same mind-set. i'm not sure i would want to play ping-pong in front of you. >> our culture is so -- whatever we can do to make our employees happy, we'll do it. if you like playing ping-pong,

it's great. inside -- everybody talks about how to make sure other people are happy. they play ping-pong, they're more happy. >> can they play at 4:00 in the afternoon on a friday? >> any time. >> let me ask you about the visa question. >> you tried how many times to get into the united states? >> i tried eight times. the last attempt was successful. >> that must have been sufrustre something. >> yes. no matter what, i thought i would get in. i told my wife, no matter what, i would try 10, 20 times. finally i got in. >> since we're in an interesting

time regarding immigration visas, under the trump administration. how have those policies impacted zoom and your ability to get people to work for you who need these visas? >> it's very important, in my case, i go to my h1 visa in 1997. i think we have a lot of engineers who got a degree, and if we cannot get a working visa, we have no choice but to go back. really a lot of top talent here. i think it's testify knitly, we can keep the policy. it's important for the whole united states. we need a lot of engineers. >> have you lost out on any talented candidates because of a visa? >> we do. >> before he got the visa, i know, some problem, something wrong, had he to go back, to

stay there for months to get a visa. before he got the h1 visa, he had to go back. >> where was he from? >> china. >> have you seen a chilling effect for you, other founders, trying to get people into the country in tech jobs? >> it is hard. >> you created a billion dollar company, they call the unicorn, right? >> sequoia came to you, you didn't go to sequoia, they came to you to fund, to give you money? >> yes. >> is there a sense of satisfaction, it took me a long time to get here, look what i did, not right out of the gate. you've been here for a while. look what i did, and what i can accomplish. >> i think we do not talk about it much. it's just on the paper, every day, we focus on customer. make sure the customer's happy.

i think as long as we focus on making our customer happy, i think those will work for a long long time. >> is that your last funding round for an initial public offering? >> hopefully. you never know. hopefully that's the last one. they really help us a lot. >> when do you see the ipo happening? >> it's hard to say. we never talk about ipo. make sure we make the customer happy. >> if that happens, we make sure it happens by itself. we never talk about ipo. >> i always enjoy that conversation, we have it constantly on this show. when are you going to ipo? >> we don't talk about that. >>. >> you gave a much more complete answer than i was expecting.

lots of people have welcomed amazon's alexa into their homes. how brands want to come in too when press here continues.

a couple days ago, ali baba became the latest tech company to offer voice assistance, they call it genie. for now, it only understands mandarin. the echo, created the category. brands are desperate to get into your alexa and sell you stuff. can they do that without anowing the hell out of us? >> steve hammond works with adobe, helping brands capture our attention. i know some people still out there will say the photo shop people? why is the photo shop guy talking about marketing? adobe has made this huge push in digital marketing and understanding how all of that works. right? >> yeah.

in 2009 they added a huge division on enterprise and connected into the digital marketing space, and really expanded into helping us address digital and enterprise. >> i'm nervous about you helping my alexa market. i like my alexa, i have a good relationship with my alexa. >> what's really good about marketing is when companies figure out how to create a connection you like, and that's the right kind of marketing. businesses that figure out how to use voice technologies in a way that work for you, will be the ones that succeed. >> here's my nervousness about this sentence, not to mention alexa and its ilk, they're going to know more about us because of what we say and what we ask for. how do we know that alexa, not to mention all these digital marketers aren't listening to things that maybe are a little too personal. >> i'm not going to get into too much of that. going back to the way the

businesses really connect with our consumers. when they create a relationship that works for you, that is the relationship that will make the biggest difference for their brand. brands by nature are going to stay away from the personal side of things, they know people are concerned about that, and adobe in particular, is trying to take the road in making sure we create technologies, create that kind of division to keep things personali personalized. >> is there enough data to show the efficacy of advertising through these voice assistance. espn was doing advertising through alexa if i'm not mistaken? >> yeah, so the interesting thing about these technologies, last year alone, you can look and see 20% of all internet searches happen through voice technology. that continues to grow. consumers were picking up a higher demand against buying those technologies. the increase in buying them went up 30% last year. people are picking them up and brands are seeing an opportunity

there. >> when i invite you in to give you my expertise as a brand. what are you bringing me, what are you discovering that i might be able to use as actionable sort of data? >> the actual data is information that helps us to be able to understand what are your interests. again, aligning interests to offers is what makes a big difference for consumers to have a relationship with the brand. we think about voice as another channel. you think about all the other channels people interact with. there are signals that people give that give interest, express intent or interest that help us know what's the right offer to give to somebody. voice is another channel like that. there are key words that get picked up on that express interest. for example, a company like dom knows that is looking for ways to provide someone a pizza order can look at the types of toppings you're putting on and

can use that information to better personalize the next time you interact with that particular device, to help provide offers that are morell vant to your taste. >> have you used alexa to order a meets saturday? >> i haven't. >> it can only order the pizza you last ordered from dominos. i'm not even saying dominos is all that great, but hey alexa, order the dominos pizza is amazing, it will also do uber, right? it's one of those things where alexa orders me an uper. assuming you haven't programmed it ahead of time, it shows up. >> thousands of different brands are working with technology now. really the benefit to working with these brands is the ability to connect it back into the broader connections. again, it's a channel. so a brand that wants to have an ongoing relationship with a consumer can't just do it on the web, can't just do it on a mobil device. >> where do you see this -- if

i'm developing for this, i should develop for echo. actually, i'm going to ask you about that as a marketing question. it's not called alexa, it's called echo. it's not what we all call it. >> you're calling it a first name, i call that pretty effective marketing. >> technically the brand is echo. >> people do recognize that brand, when someone's going to go to buy that, they can look -- >> what's interesting is how prevalent it's become. >> i have an 11-year-old boy who goes out in the garage he's messing around, playing with different bikes and whatever it is, he has a device out there, he'll ask it to play certain music for him. he's interacting with it more than the wrest of us do. and he knows how to use the commands better than any of the rest of us do. >> i assume the development is different for every -- a.m. son is so far ahead in the race on this one.

>> every different device has its own development platform for it, yes. >> they have -- alexa has something called skill. it's an application you build specifically for that device. and then that has the ability to build interactions with other platforms or devices as well. that's where adobe comes into play. in this case, you can have a skill built that can reach out to a company like adobe and can reach into our data sets to understand a little more about your marketings behavior to provide a more personalized experience back to you. >> these companies want personal information. what about information about the home? these devices are within our homes. so like i robot, the company that has the robot vacuum is collecting data about the home, the physical space. are you hearing from brands that they want certain data about the home itself? >> it's a fine line.

and actually, it's something that -- it's not required. you don't have to have personally identifiable information, you don't want to go there either. what you really need are the characteristics and traits that help you understand general direction of interest. that way you stay away from the personal space and the intrusion side of things. you look for things anonymous. you can take it into a space where you can create communication without getting too involved in their personal items. press here continues after the break.

the dating website e harmony accounts for 4% of the marriages in the united states. e harmony has been around forever by internet standards. in that 20 years it's been able to capture taeaara bites of dat about what people want in a spouse. i'm going to ask you the question i know you get asked at every party, did you meet your wife on e harmony. >> i was already married before i came to the u.s. >> is your wife nervous you work at e harmony? >> no, she's supportive, she gives me creative feedbacks on our ads. >> we talk about big data all the time, often times it's about

boring subjects, now it's about love. what have you discovered? >> we have to look at the treasure trove of data, and if we are able to tap into the potential of that data, we could do a lot of good to our users and e harmony ourselves. >> we have to redesign our system and software. we have to redo our architecture in order to process all this data in a relatively short amount of time. >> we get excited about a robot is getting your floor mandate ta, this is the most importantal stuff we could ever give out. what kind of data to you have on any of us that have been on the site? >> there is some data we ask you directly as part of our questionnaires. that is important for us to make compatible matches for you. >> we look at your behavior data on the site. whatever kind of matches you're looking at. who are you getting -- what kind

of messages are you sending? the idea of all that is to customize the experience for you. so next time you come around, we're able to give you matches which are not only compatible with you, but you'll be excited about communicating with them. i can match you with the most compatible person on the planet. if you don't feel like sending them a message, that match is not successful. >> a few years ago, the new website 538 did a story that analyzed a million e harmony matches and found people just want to date someone like them. with as many similar traits as possible. i'm curious with all the data you've been able to see and go through, opposite first, they atrack. i think there is this idea of wanting to find somebody who's similar to you in the sense that there's a deeper level of compatibili compatibility. >> i know they ask about political affiliation, how do

you feel about politics. i'm guessing that answer in that question is far more important than it used to be. i'm thinking people are using clicking -- sometimes it's just -- it's not important to me. >> i think what you're seeing is since the middle of 2016, we have a question that talks about geo political affiliation. the number of females that have answered that question has gone up by 40%. >> really? >> yes. >> that's a marketable data point. >> it was brought up that you had an interesting surge in signups after the election in the united states. do you have any insights into that, and has that continued? >> i think what i just said, the data we have, how many people are telling us what their political affiliation is has gone up. i don't have any data on whether that's increased. our business is a bit seasonal,

there are certain times of the year where more people sign up. >> no, i think it's around holiday. right after you meet your families at thanksgiving or -- >> that pressure. >> do outside organizations including political campaigns, do they want to get this personal data on users? >> no one has asked me for that. >> would you give the data in an anonymous way to a sociologist who was trying to discover something? >> i think that's an interesting question. >> i think that is something that does not fall under the per view of my work, i think that's a -- >> i'll circle back earlier -- does this mean if i found my spouse via e harmony before the big data era, there's a better match for me now that you've made it better? >> i think e harm on me -- i

think e harmony's core promise at the relationship level. all the stuff we're doing with data science for communication, you have a higher chance -- now you might find your match faster than probably you did in the past. >> do you track the divorce rate among the couples on e harmony that married? >> i think we found that it was the lowest among the divorce says. >> that doesn't surprise me, some of the questions are personal enough that they would rear their ugly head. i realize you are not in the same business as tinder, i get that. >> true. >> that said, how do you compete in the tinder world? >> i think the most important thing for us, we are trying to

create a safe place on the internet for singles to find love. we are putting in a lot of effort using data finds to improve the security and fraud on the site. we're doing a lot of work on enhancing communication. we want to recommend, what is the message you should send to your match in order for you to get a response from them. >> you recommend what i should say to the girl? >> we have some questions right now that are predetermined. >> that she will respond to. you know these are the questions she'll respond to. >> like recommending a movie or amazon recommending a book? >> if you do an intersection of your and your matches profile, what are the common things -- >> not actually writing for me sort of thing? >> no, no. >> the computer writes back for her. >> yeah, giving her. >> more fiddler on the roof.

>> we would like to just recommend you a conversation starter, which is most likely to get you a response on that one. >> that's fascinating. >> what about the fact that your competitor and this surprised me, match is a competitor, tinder is a competitor and ok cupid is a competitor. what can you tell me about those companies? >> i cannot tell you a whole lot about those companies. >> they're the same company. >> absolutely. i think this is interesting for us, we want to continue focusing on combatability. that is what differentiates from us, all these other companies. and that's where we want to use the data signs to at least get back to you in a much quicker way. we would like to shorten the questionnaire, so we're still asking you the important questions we need to know, but not putting a huge wall for you to get into the product. >> i have to put you on the spot.

what's the most important thing i do to find a good match. >> you just have to be active on the site. people who are very active on the site, have a much higher chance of success. >> we'll be back in a minute.

that's our show for this week. you can watch this show and all of our past interviews online at press here tv.com. thank you for maybing us part of your sunday.

"comunidad del valle." i'm damian trujillo. and today, back to school help, plus the taco fest, on your "comunidad del valle." male announcer: nbc bay area presents "comunidad del valle" with damian trujillo. damian: we begin today with the effort to "clear the shelters," and michelle suarez is with the humane society silicon valley, and she brought trix. michelle suarez: i did. this is trix, our 6-month-old bunny who is available at the humane society silicon valley, milpitas. say hi, trix. damian: tell us about--you were saying that bunnies--for some reason, you have an over-abundance of bunnies. michelle: yeah, people have been looking over bunnies this year, and so we have a lot more of them in the shelters these days. they forget that they actually can make very good first time pets. they're easy to take care of. they're very cute and cuddly.