betes and lower your a1c. now you know. try it for free at freestylelibre.us this week on "press here," cnbc's jennifer a look ahead to 2022. plus some call him the managing editor of the internet. dave pell, author of "the next draft news letter" and a ceoramos shows up for the employee evaluation. that's this week on "press here." good morning, everyone. i'm scott mcgrew. it's been a year since a

takeover at a silicon valley company and asking employees to fill out job evaluations and i thought i'd give him a hand at filling out his own. he's transforming nutanix from a stock company and pushing a sales force to pursue bigger companies and bigger contracts. on the other hand, the company still operates at a loss and that share price is not far from its first day following the ipo. rajiv, thanks for joining me this morning and being a good sport. let me get your thoughts on your first year as ceo and how do u you think you did? >> good question. it's been almost a year since i started here. i can tell you that is an interesting experience and getting to know investors, employees and customers always in that short window. what i realize is getting on

board is that technology is a great enabler for doing this and able to meet literally hundreds of customers, hundreds of investors and thousands of employees using technologies that we also have been able. the question of the last year, we are trying to set priorities for the company. as you mentioned, scott, we're going through one of the important priorities is to complete the transformation of nutanix to be a company and solutions portfolio so it's easier for customers to consume what we build. the third is to leverage the scale on the market. the fourth is around inclusive diverse organization and the first is articulaing a model

we'll continue to execute on. if you look at every one of those priorities in the last year, start with the very last one where we've had four quarters in terms of expectations, you said we're going to drive billings code over the next three years. we will get to the profitability, we'll be precash flow positive by the end of 2022 and well along the journey of executing for that as you can see for the last several quarters. in fact, this quarter we came close and what we said would be part of precapital rate on a sustained basis. so we are executing overall ahead of our plan in general and -- >> what hard lesson do you think you've learned over the course of that year? this is your first year as ceo and your first year as ceo of any company. you have a ton of experience at vm wear and broadcom.

what have you learned about being captain of the ship in that year? >> as any captain would, you have to be adaptable and adapt to the situation because the situation is always changing. i didn't anticipate i would take on a new company in the middle of a pandemic, and initially, i was wondering how is that going to go? surprisingly, we've been able to do that really welcoming on board, being able to meet everyone and build a thesis and communicate it to investors. i think, you know, as a ceo you learn you have to be adaptable and that's one thing i've learned. >> you've been taking very good scare of school children in india. you have an organization called one school at a time you're building schools. that must have been a tremendous challenge during a pandemic. >> yes, i'm proud to say that despite the pandemic, we're able to complete seven or eight schools this year in the middle of the pandemic and continue to build the schools and i have to say it's all a warranty around

our organization with people on the ground with spending their time to get this done and super important. i think next year we've raised enough money to rebuild 13 schools and hope to get that done over the next year. it's a testimony to the dedication the people are so committed to, do the right thing here. >> i read an interesting article, op ed on the bbc website from two indian business correspondents. and i sent you a link to it eaier where they were talking about the new twitter ceo and noted the ceos of google and microsoft and twitter are all -- they all grew up in india. india origin people account for 1% of the u.s. population, excuse me, 6% of silicon valley's work force and are disproportionately represented

in the top brass and go on to conclude the reason is again, i'm quoting their ideas, a combination of chaos and competition in india creates humility. i always -- you know, you got to be careful, some rising an entire subcontinent with generalities but what do you make of what they're saying? >> there is a lot of truth there. perhaps this didn't happen overnight, and it started out especially in tech by the way, you're seeing a lot of company, tech companies with indian ceos. many years ago starting in the 1950s on, the indian government decided to invest quite a bit and set up a series of ips -- institutes called the indian institute of technology in collaboration with western countries and, you know, what they did was graduated a bunch of talent, super difficult to get in.

getting into those colleges with half of them in sanford or harvard or ivy leagues we have out here. you got the best of the population there, right, in terms of the top 1% orless of the population went to these schools and as they got educated and got their under grad, there was a whole period of time there were no real job securities for them in india and many ended upcoming and immigrating to the u.s. and of course, all of us and i was one of them myself graduating in 1986 came here to cal and got my masters and phd degree and ended up building families staying on here and you come here with, you know, the work ethic that of course many immigrants had, the humility, the willingness to really work hard and at the same time, keep in mind that english is our native language. >> the man who preceded you is

the ceo on the show a few years ago. he said growing up in india and being an immigrant made him anti fragile. i'll run a clip of that. >> the fact that shocks me resilience is okay, but anti fragility is better. >> what do you think? you have to be tough being a ceo. in the tech world changes are changing. getting on the map by doing something and could be a shooting star. if you want to be a good company to a great company, you have to adapt change and change getting thrown at you all the time. this is what was being talked about, being anti fragile or resilient is similar concepts and you have to adapt and move. we are as a company transforming

the business model from appliance company to a software company to a subscription company and cloud company. >> you spoke of five priorities you had at the beginning in your first year as ceo. as you go into the second year as being ceo of nutanix, what is one thing if you look back at 2022 a year later you'll say good, i accomplished that? >> yes, i think -- in fact, that's a good question because those five are super important for us. >> right. i need you to pick one. [ laughter ] >> so when i pick one, look, i think we put a stake in the ground saying 25% growth while getting to precash flow possible. simultaneously balancing the growth we get while making sure we create a sustainable profitable enterprise and by 2022 you have at this point another four quarters to go look at us and make sure that we deal with that and having delivering that toward investors is going to be probably the top priority in the united states.

if we can do that, we're on the right track there. all the other stuff we talked about going to making that happen and that's what i look for. >> i wish you the best of luck in 2022. rajiv ramswami, ceo of nutanix. we'll be right back. we learn about covid-19, the more questions we have. the biggest question now, what's next? what will covid bring in six months, a year? if you're feeling anxious about the future, you're not alone. calhope offers free covid-19 emotional support. call 833-317-4673, or live chat at calhope.org today.

this is elodia. she's a recording artist. 1 of 10 million people that comcast has connected to affordable internet in the last 10 years. and this is emmanuel, a future recording artist, and one of the millions of students we're connecting throughout the next 10. through projectup, comcast is committing $1 billion so millions more students, past... and present, can continue to get the tools they need to build a future of unlimited possibilities. welcome back to "press

here." i thought we would consult with people that are far smarter than i am to get an idea of what may be ahead. my colleague jennifer at cnbc and john schwartz at "market watch" both were regulars prepandemic. they join me both now virtually. jon, you have insightful writing and jennifer, you have several keeps on google and back to work but i want you both to speculate on the big stories ahead and jennifer, we'll start out with you. >> what i've before covering around google, there is so much happening with the labor and tech work force now you saw and this is not exclusive to tech but this great resignation and folks having many more options of where to work and so tech companies increasingly trying to, you know, keep the talent that they have and keep the

people but that, you know, doesn't stop a lot of them from organizing so we've seen a huge increase in tech employees fighting for different things that they want and, you know, form unions and i think well see more activity in that space in the new year and i also think bitcoin and crypto that started to gain stream and we'll continue to see more around these stocks and i'm sure john will talk about this, too, you know, how it converges with the metaverse and the future of the web. >> there say magical new amount of terms fairly new to the average person and the metaverse

as well. what do you think? >> what i think will be eventful next year might be uneventful treblds and i don't mean to be cute, but what i'm trying to say in terms of the anti trust front, there isn't a lot of legislation going through. i think that's a given. i think the regulators will go through scrutiny. i think they will try to be much tougher on acquisitions and mergers and i want to mention the supply chain issues, which will continue through at least mid 2022, so you're going to see that as an issue that befuddles companies, cisco, this whole back to work in limbo which we're going through. i think apple decided to ask employees to come back. the i.p.o. market, the i.p.o. market we see this poor performance after the first day

so i think we'll see kind of a stagnant area there. there is a lot of things put on pause and the one thing i want to mention and i want to get kind of around the metaverse hype, that's the latest phrase we heard for a decade on the second life. this idea that all these companies are branding themselves at a metaverse company, a gold rush for the next big thing in a rush to become the next garden, but in any event, i think the one big thing and just big take away in terms of regulation or anti trust enforcement, we're going to see a number of acquisitions being challenged. it's already happening and we're probably going to see justice department complaints against google and apple in the very near future. >> so one of the things i think we can summarize as i listen to both of you is a lot of the same and a lot of that brought on by pandemic. i think if we in 2020 predicted

ahead to 2021 we would have been surprised on the eve of 2022 we were still talking about things that were either in the pandemic or post pandemic and and a lot of what we talked about continuation. >> yeah, exactly. i mean, i think you've seen companies sort of try to shift and put focus on their offerings around remote work and so you see them trying to balance reliance on the cloud and something that started before the pandemic and trying to bring employees back into the office and other companies are modelling their return to office strategies after big tech players and people during the pandemic said, you know, we want flexibility and i don't care how much free food you give us, i want to be able to live anywhere

i want and go to hawaii for a month or go to texas for a month or go to barcelona for a month with my spouse or whatever. and so that's going to continue happening and as long as a lot of these companies continue to bring people into the office like google trying to do very aggressively and did just push back their return to office but they are very stringent three days a week. that's interesting and tech companies are bringing people back but yeah, i think people are just rethinking their careers, too, in general which is fascinating from a people perspective and i think it will bring about some interesting technology and high up people at these tech companies will leave and start things they're truly

passionate about. from people's perspective, that fascinates me and something that might not have happened had the pandemic not happened. >> jennifer elias and jon schwartz continue to do excellent journalism at home. appreciate you being with me this emergency and "press here" will be right back. but with my hiv treatment, there's not more medicines in my pill. i talked to my doctor and switched to fewer medicines with dovato. dovato is for some adults who are starting hiv-1 treatment or replacing their current hiv-1 regimen. with just 2 medicines in 1 pill, dovato is as effective as a 3-drug regimen... to help you reach and stay undetectable. research shows people who take hiv treatment as prescribed and get to and stay undetectable can no longer transmit hiv through sex. don't take dovato if you're allergic to its ingredients or if you take dofetilide. taking dovato with dofetilide can cause serious or life-threatening side effects. hepatitis b can become harder to treat while on dovato. don't stop dovato without talking to your doctor,

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here." one tactic behind the tv show you're watching here or podcast is story choice. it's important why i chose particular stories or topics to tell you. can i bring some new perspective that i can share with you? is there a good visual? is there a counter narrative? these are things that go through my head and they're very important decisions when i decide what it is we're going to talk about. i don't always get it right, but i think i get it right most of the time and i bring this whole topic up because my next guest is david pell, an expert in story choice. he runs a newsletter that is read by thousands upon thousands of people in silicon valley and elsewhere. dave, i appreciate you being with us this morning. did i get that right, that story choice ultimately is one of the most important, you know, support structures, foundations to good journalism and journalism people read?

>> yes, story choice is vale ly important in today's news environment because there is so much argument about what is real news and not news that adds an extra layer to it, an extra layer of difficulty, i think to editors covering the real news. and what i do basically is i put together the top ten most fascinating stories of the day. it's personality driven. it's the stories i find most interesting. but it's still there is an importance to it because i'm trying to give people an overview of the day. what i do is called next draft. i think of my newsletter as a modern day column like choosing a bay area person like what herb cane used to do where he had three dot journalism and a bunch of different stories and short blurbs of each one. that's what i try to do on a national and international news level. >> when you make these choices, you're making them on things you

can make commentary on or offer a counter point to. i see this particularly with local television news we've largely dropped the sports scores and the giants blanked the dodgers 10-1 or 10-0 or whatever it happens to be because people can just look that up. it becomes perspective or things you can add to the narrative that become the important thing for that story choice. >> right. a lot of times when we pick stories, it's 100% personality driven. these are the stories people need to know today to have an overview of the story of the day in america and the world. but a lot of times i'm also choosing stories because i have something i think is either important to say about it or funny to say about it. i really think of myself as a counter puncher. i wake up every morning and wake up 75 news taps and find the stories most interesting to me and share my version of the story and i give a link so

people can click off if they want to read the whole thing. if you just read my part, it sort of dinner party prep. you know enough about the story to know what is going on but there will be two or three every day you probably want to dig deeper and i try to make it clear which stories those are. >> i love the title of your book and want to get to that in is second but i have a question about journalism. they are so different you can give both of them the first place award for 2021 and that is the pandemic and the january 6th attacks by anti democratic forces on the capitol. that's number one. what is the story in 2021 that you don't think got enough attention? >> sure, the biggest one is mental health. both of us and especially of kids. i think we sort of vastly under estimated the impact of this

experience having on our kids. usually you're in a situation where your kids ask a question and as a parent if you don't quite know the answer, you still come up with something and pretend you do and make them feel a sense of security and make you feel a sense of self-worth really but during the pandemic era, we haven't been able to do that. but it's the early days of the pandemic my son is wondering is grandma going to be okay? when will this end and go back to school and get off zoom? the answer to the questions is i don't know. when you think of the natural transitions that take place when you're a young person going from eighth grade to high school, high school into college, there are already so fraught with mental stressors and possible depressions and a ton of anxiety and you're adding onto the pandemic with so many weird elements we really don't understand. right now they're saying i think about 25% more kids are saying

that they have symptoms of depression and about 20% more young people are saying they have symptoms of anxiety. so i wish the media would cover that more for two reasons. one, to a certain extent the on slot of news and constant influx of outside information as opposed to living your own life, which especially is important for your kids contributes to the stress kids are facing and also because covering it destigmatize it. i don't want kids and college kids to feel any embarrassment or stigma around mental health. it's completely normal to be stressed and depressed. their parents are also. their teachers are also, this is a crazy time and we shouldn't under estimate the impact it having on your mind as well as our body. >> on a lighter. ♪ -- note you have a book out called "please scream inside your heart". >> inside your heart, yeah.

>> inside your heart. i know the reference but explain to the viewer. >> sure, sure. at the peak of the quarantine in maybe june of 2020, there was a japanese amazement park that reopened outside of tokyo and everybody there was wearing masks and following all the rules but they were also screaming on the rides so the park executives realized they're screaming through masks and still exchanging germs with each other so we need to make a new rule, you can come to the park as long as you wear your mask but no screaming and it became a little meme of kids making fun of executives for suggesting you can go on the roller coasters without screaming. so the park executive sent two key members on the ride with suit and tie, hair perfectly in place and a webcam facing them

and not moving a muscle or making a facial expression or sound and at the end of the video, a sort of message came up please scream inside your heart. i felt like that was so indicative of the fear that the funny weird memes and terrible news stories would go one after another. that sort of became the internet and t-shirts and lasted about six hours where in a normal year that would have probably lasted six months. that's why i named the book that because it was a feeling we all had. there was nowhere to scream. we were screaming at each other in two different news universes. we were screaming at covid but covid didn't care. we were screaming at zoom cameras but people were muting us. there was no place to let out the sort of anxiety. i felt that encapsulates our year. >> dave's new book encapsulate

the first year of covid. dave pell expert in story telling with a new book. appreciate you being with us this morning. "press here" will be back in just a minute.

that's our show for this week. my thanks to my guest and thank you for making us part of your sunday morning. this is elodia. she's a recording artist. 1 of 10 million people that comcast has connected to affordable internet in the last 10 years. and this is emmanuel, a future recording artist, and one of the millions of students we're connecting throughout the next 10. through projectup, comcast is committing $1 billion so millions more students, past...

and present, can continue to get the tools they need to build a future of unlimited possibilities. seasons greetings to you all across the united states from the premier league on nbc. it is boxing day on this side of the pond and that means football not as much football as usual because of covid around the country, but villa park is just about packed for the visit of chelsea who start the day in third place. they are now nine points behind the leaders, manchester city villa's last game was called off due to covid, and their manage