by Andre Mecchi  on Mon 4 Apr - 0 Comments
Categories: Career Trek Blogs

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The world needs people like you. – was the concluding sentence of Google’s CFO in his encounter with LBS Technology Club at Google’s Headquarters in the beginning of the Silicon Valley Trek, first in the last four years. The rest of the week was an eye-opening experience that testified that people like me need places like the Silicon Valley.

Companies challenging the industries they are part of are common in this region. What they do is not. Tesla is a success history of how small companies can make use of enormous competitors to generate cash. LinkedIn defies the online industry by prioritising the user productivity over time spent on the site. IDEO‘s totally unconventional and intriguing processes like bottom-up strategy and staff allocation can change the amalgamated perspectives of a general manager. “Ask for forgiveness, not permission” is IDEO’s motto, one that could not find a better place than the Silicon Valley.

Kleiner Perkins unveiled the mystery of the positive culture in the Valley that accepts failure. Every generation invests in the next, failure is not personal. The Venture Capital firm complements that entrepreneurs must be passionate dedicated, not dogmatic about solution.

In that sense, VMWare taught me about the importance of mirroring the probable purchase behaviour of a company’s target group. Snapfish warned me to stay alert: “Never confuse yourself with the target customer”. Nintendo, by the way, positioned itself as a model about how profitable it is to start with the consumer experience, then work backwards to design products (software and hardware). Zynga showed the power of social hooks and how crucial it is in the social gaming industry to closely monitor the thin line between benefiting payer customers while keeping non-payers players still interested.

August Capital taught me that good entrepreneurs want to keep the equity to themselves and will ask less to be forced to focus and make decisions. Indeed, VMWare affirmed that lack of capital leads to best decisions. Intel Capital, on the other hand, was very convincing about the value added of a Corporate Venture Capital to tech entrepreneurs in terms of accelerated product development and sales in global scale.

By the way scale is the buzz word in the Valley nowadays. Snapfish commented that what defines business success here is not the best technology, nor the best product, it is scale. After you get the scale, then challenge changes to getting engagement and repeated purchases from clients.

Talking about changes, ARM and Intel took me back to the future with the technological trends of smart energy, embedded products and power efficiency.

While Apple gave me the opportunity to witness how secretive business environments can keep talents away, the value proposition of Plug N Play incubator is to keep brilliant minds connected.

The entrepreneurs we met demystified the first steps of an entrepreneur. I regret sometimes I tried to convince myself that it is too difficult to start a business, but it is actually a pleasant journey. WSGR, a leading law firm representing tech companies throughout their entire life cycle, instigated us: “right now it is a wonderful time to entrepreneurs”, because money and talent are available.

The Entrepreneurship professors from Berkeley highlighted the importance of being prepared for every discussion, and to take the time to work on the founders’ agreement (equity and responsibility split) at the very beginning of a start-up.

Changing subject, the mentioning by several companies of Obama’s visit to Brazil reminded me of the importance that politics play on nurturing the investment in and exploitation of the Brazilian market by technology companies. The expectations about Brazil are high in the Silicon Valley and Intel Corporation, for instance, believes that “Brazil will become the largest PC market in the world in approximately three years.”

As you, reader, can recognise, it was a very intense, remarkable and inspiring week. By this time of the year in 2012, look out for me in the Silicon Valley. I will be back.