Spencer Kimball, co-founder and CEO of Cockroach Labs, discusses building a next-generation distributed database that can efficiently use commodity hardware found in the cloud and scale rapidly. He emphasizes the importance of distributed databases for businesses operating across multiple regions with diverse databases to maintain continuity and protect information. Kimball also talks about the importance of consistent replication and how CockroachDB can help push the envelope for multi-region operations. He advises starting off at a company where there's a lot to learn.