Enrique Salem, former Symantec CEO, says gigabit-speed internet will spark new businesses we haven't imagined yet, from seamless hotel check-ins to hyper-local shopping alerts. But it also creates privacy and security risks. He tells Kansas City entrepreneurs to fail fast and capitalize on the infrastructure.
With Google Fiber, how do you see the gigabit speed infrastructure driving innovation within a city and what verticals do you think will be impacted most?
What you want to think about is when you get ubiquitous connectivity at high speeds, it enables so many new great things. I think, you know, I used to always hear when I was a little kid, well, all the great things have already been invented. That's absolutely wrong. [SPEAKING SPANISH] Well, we didn't have Google. We didn't have Facebook. We didn't have iPads or iPods or Android devices. And so as I look at it, any time you get high-speed connectivity, it enables a whole new set of applications, things that people haven't even dreamed of. I look at it— I travel with a mobile device everywhere I go. When I walk into my hotel every day or every time I'm traveling, I go to the front desk, I give them my credit card, they give me a room key. You know, and why does that have to work that way? Right? When you've got ubiquitous connectivity, high-speed ubiquitous connectivity, they should know as soon as I walk in that front door, you know, what my room is. They've already got credit card details. And so when I think about high-speed broadband, it's going to enable, in my opinion, a whole new class of businesses and applications that we haven't even dreamed of.
What sort of ideas or services do you think will be built out? And, you know, if you weren't leading this company, what would you be doing?
Well, you know, I'm an entrepreneur at heart. I've been involved with 5 startups throughout my career. I mean, what you want to think about though, back to this broadband capability, is connectivity is going to allow us to do some really interesting things. One of the things I see really surging right now is the idea of local services where I walk by a store and I may want to know more about that store. What are the things that are interesting to me in that store? And so this notion of local I think has a lot of value. And so the more information that can be communicated between me and everybody around me, the better customization or personalization of those services. Now the big question is going to be, so how do you deal with security? How do you deal with privacy? Because that'll create a whole new set of issues.
Sure.
Because quite frankly, I may not want everybody to know I'm walking down the street. I may want to be able to say, well, you know, I do like to go to the Apple Store. I like to go to, you know, check out specific sports stores. And so at the end of the day, there's going to have to be some control of what people know about me. Yeah. And so I think there'll be a whole new set of security offerings. I think there'll be a whole new set of local applications. I think there'll be a whole new set of ways of organizing information. I think about data. Data is growing at over 60% per year. Crazy.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Crazy. So you gotta have new ways of organizing that. So I think there's gonna be lots of opportunities for people who want to drive innovation, take advantage of the broadband, focus on users and how do you create a better personal experience. It's kind of like, I don't know, maybe you're too young, probably don't remember Cheers.
Oh yeah, Seinfeld. Love that show.
Yeah. Right? But think about that concept, right? People want to go to a place where they know who you are. Yep. People know your name. Oh yeah. Right? So that's what you love about that experience that you create with an Amazon. And so with broadband and this high-speed connectivity, I think the ability to create personalized services will be very, very different than what we've seen in the past.
How will Google Fiber change the way that companies approach information security?
Well, there's a couple of things you want to think about. First and foremost is I always look at how things are changing. If you look at what I call digital natives, so that's teenagers today and how they interact, they don't use email. They're always on their mobile device. When they want to solve a problem, they reach out to their network, to their social network and they interact. If they're trying to find information about, you know, where to go to dinner or to lunch or to a movie, they don't go look at, you printed or website, they say to their friends, "Hey, what did you think? Is this interesting?" So, one of the things you think about with that group is they absolutely think about privacy completely different.
Sure.
They want to share everything. Yep. Now, the question is they do care about their reputation, right? They don't want to be in a situation where people are saying, "Oh, well, that's not a good person," or, you know, trashes their reputation. So, there's a balance between privacy, reputation, and security. And so I think there's a lot of opportunities for companies to think about how do they help protect people's privacy, how do they clean up or help somebody with their reputation. You know that old saying, you put it out there, it should be out there forever.
Absolutely.
So you want to think about how do you deal with that, especially now that everybody's going to be constantly connected.
Yep.
What are some of the new challenges that come out of that? And I will tell you, I would be willing to bet, especially with this Google Fiber project here, you'll see a lot of startups here in Kansas City. And having been in the Valley where there's lots of startups created every day, one of the pieces of advice I would give to the startups or people who are going to be here is you want to do something I call fail fast, which is you want to try something. If it doesn't work, go try something else. Don't give up. Tweak your idea. Be agile and go try the next thing. But I'm willing to bet you there'll be some great startups here in Kansas City. That are because of this new connectivity. I also tell people there's been the missing link in connectivity, which has been when you fly, but that's quickly also going away. So imagine now you really do have high-speed connectivity everywhere in the world continuously. I think it changes everything.
This is my last question. What gets you excited about the future in regards to technology? What's the thing that just— you could stay up all night just sort of thinking about ideas?
I mean, what is it that I think the world— we're seeing more change in technology than we've probably seen in the last about 35 years. And so what that means is there's a lot of disruption. There's a lot of opportunity to create breakthrough innovation. And so what I'm focused with my team is how are we changing the world, quite frankly. There's all these internet web services. There's all this data. There's all these mobile devices. There's all these privacy issues. There's new threats. And so as I look at it, what I focus on is what What's the breakthrough innovation? What can we do that changes the world in a way that people want to work with my company every day with high levels of engagement? So I'm excited about mobility. I'm excited about how do we deal with all the new issues around cloud computing. I think there's some huge opportunities there.
Awesome. Thank you so much for coming. I appreciate it.
My pleasure.
