UPDATED 21:17 EDT / SEPTEMBER 19 2016

NEWS

Investors reveal four key areas of focus in the tech world | #OOW

Oracle is well-known company, and its current portfolio has been boosted by strategic acquisitions over the years. One of these acquisitions, Databrix, was sold to Oracle from Costanoa Venture Capital, a company that invests in enterprises at stages from formation to well-established multi-million-dollar businesses. Most of Costanoa Venture Capital’s energy goes into four key areas that it is focused on: SaaS and data-driven applications, the agility of cloud infrastructure, security and data infrastructure.

“We think of ourselves as making decisions about products and people,” said Greg Sands, founder and managing director at Costanoa Venture Capital.

Jim Wilson, operating partner at Costanoa Venture Capital, joined Sands to talk about where the company is headed. The pair were interviewed by John Furrier (@furrier) and Peter Burris (@plburris), hosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco, CA.

Data assets and customer privacy

Possessing data from customers and making it easily accessible is certainly beneficial to creating data assets, which Oracle has used to its advantage. But when talking about data, there’s always a fine line to walk between serving the customer’s needs and respecting the customer’s privacy.

“We have the opportunity for aggregated data assets to enrich customers experience,” said Sands. But, he added, there needs to be choice for the customer. As the data industry grows, it becomes more important to have clear firewalls and data delineations to protect both the customer and the company.

The future

Now, two-thirds of the way through this year’s cycle, Costanoa Venture Capital is constantly in the market. When asked about the future, Sands remarked that containers are an interesting category and still largely open source.

“The big challenge to open source is figuring out how to monetize it,” added Wilson. But whether open source or not, Sands advised entrepreneurs to look for an unsolved problem for businesses and attack it with everything they have.

As for Costanoa Venture Capital? “We expect to keep doing what we’re doing for many years in the future,” said Sands.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Oracle OpenWorld.

(* Disclosure: Oracle and other companies sponsor some OpenWorld segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Oracle nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo by SiliconANGLE

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