Silicon Valley: The Beginning
Silicon Valley. A place where most people have an entrepreneurial mindset and want to make the world a better place. A place where everybody is thinking about opening a company in some fancy-tech-crazy field and become a great person who has achieved something in his/her life. A place where the sun is shining and happiness is the king of the streets.
And we were there. What it took us (and some tips) to make this trip happen is possible to read in my previous story. This story is about the beginning of the trip in magnificent San Francisco and entrepreneurial Silicon Valley.
First days
California has met us with a sun and warm weather. After snowing and cloudy Copenhagen, it felt like we have arrived to a paradise. And the mountains… there cannot be anything better than them. Nevertheless, after the first breath of fresh, Californian air, we took our rented car (packed in a crazy way) and drove to our new home in a picturesque neighborhood — Potrero hill. The home itself surprised us with a great terrace and the view that was available for us every day. That has made happy about our correct life choices and we rushed to explore more the Bay Area of San Francisco.
Everything around San Francisco is picturesque. Mountains, Pacific Ocean, small boats, big boats, skyscrapers — everything was like from a movie about the US and its West Coast. We have visited the “must see” places: Golden Gate Bridge, magnificent roads of Muir Woods, rocky island of Point Bonita Lighthouse, Asian-pearl Chinatown, touristy Pier 39 and very high Coit Tower. All of these places helped us to realize how unique is San Francisco and that there is much more to explore within it.
Nevertheless, it is time to move to the company visits that we have done throughout the first week and see what are they, how they innovate and create strategic partnerships in entrepreneurial ecosystems.
Stanford University
The first visit was a guided tour at the campus of Stanford University. Thanks to our guide, we have realized the differences between educational systems in the Silicon Valley and Denmark (more flexibility, mixed classes, fostering entrepreneurial mindset of students, connecting diverse people and networking on a good level), saw the beautiful university campus with lots of green spaces and yellow-styled (ancient Egypt or Spain?) buildings and listened to small traditions of Stanford University students.
SAP Innovation Center
After a while at the Stanford University, we have rushed to our first company visit at SAP Innovation Center. To be honest, I have never understood what they are doing. Nevertheless, after spending a while in the Innovation Center and having a presentation and a tour, I have understood that they are trying to cover lots of different fields, mainly related to the data processing. Connecting people, systems, education and machine learning provides excellent opportunity to analyze data and innovate in that field. What makes them different from the others (and their own counterparts in Germany) is that they foster creativity, allow them to do crazy experiments and make mistakes. That was the first lesson, which I have learned there.
Boosted Boards
A small, but cool startup, which makes skateboards (or rather more long-boards) with an electric motor and control system. You can go up a hill on their good looking board and reach your destination faster. As one of the co-founders told us: “The world has shrunken for our first customers”. This visit was related to how the founders of Boosted Boards managed to create a viable product that would be interesting to their target market and how they have survived the first years of business development. One of the key learning from this meeting was a tip from an investor who told Boosted Boards: “Make a product and try to sell it to 5 customers.” And they had a success!
IDEO
Everybody in entrepreneurial-related studies is talking about IDEO nowadays. Design-driven innovation, human-centered approach, creative solutions — they describe IDEO perfectly. When you first enter the office, you feel that it is all about the successful projects that they have developed, open space and “stickers-everywhere” approach to work. After spending a while there you can understand why IDEO’s work-style is successful (they have even helped to develop an Apple Mouse!) and why many companies cooperate with them.
ABC Accelerator
Located in the South Bay, ABC Accelerator is an interesting example of how European-origin (read: Slovenian) accelerator has succeeded in Silicon Valley and how they are helping other European startups to be present there. Being together with WeWork, ABC Accelerator has found a monthly-fee based model for helping startups to relocate and build a network within the valley. Their fee also includes accommodation, help with documentation and providing support. That is a huge help, especially while knowing that the prices in Bay Area are incredibly high (one week of a 1-bedroom apartment: 650$).
Swissnex
“Helping Swiss startups to be in Silicon Valley!” — that is, what I think, is the main goal of Swissnex and people working around it. By maintaining a good and reliable picture of Switzerland, having many contacts all around the world in the biggest hub and locating themselves in the Pier area of San Francisco, Swissnex has built credibility and reputation among their international partners to promote Swiss startups and help them with different questions for a fee.
Humbot
Imagine the future, where your children can have an affordable tutoring in math and chemistry online via chat. That’s the future which Humbot is going to provide us. Humbot - an early stage startup, who has just started to rock’n’roll in the world of entrepreneurship. It was quite interesting to see their garage-loft kind office, located together with other startups in one building. The main goal of Humbot is to provide an online tutoring for children and teens via chat and their own platform for a small fee of 99$ per month. Moreover, they have learned that social media is a very attractive PR channel (especially Snapchat) for their target audience — kids, who need help in chemistry and math. As being an early-stage startup it has given us an opportunity to see how everything begins and what struggles can co-founders have.
STRIVR
VR VR VR! A buzzword which keeps bumping into me more and more often. Today’s VR tech allows us to play games in an immersive reality, which for some people feels very realistic. But what would you say, if you could learn something incredible (like playing American football or learning what’s wrong with the shelves of Walmart) via VR?
That’s what STRIVR stands for. Using VR as a training tool for corporations, sports and many more. STRIVR provides an opportunity to experience and learn faster those things, which are hard to replicate (like Black Friday) in a real life. It represents the rare breed, where VR is not used for entertainment or games. Nevertheless, we have enjoyed their company a lot, during the first- week visits. They were super friendly, honest, interesting and I had a feeling that I am located in a classical startup in a small house somewhere in Menlo Park.
Moreover, their partnership development process and history are also interesting. While sports industry was chosen mainly because the co-founders were playing an American football and could cooperate with the teams located in their area, the cooperation with Walmart was quite spontaneous and would be described best as “being in a right spot at a right time”. In Silicon Valley anything can happen anywhere. You can go for a coffee, stand in a line, talk with a stranger and realize that there is a business potential. That gives a lot of opportunities to grow and be successful as STRIVR is.
To be continued…
