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We, the MBA2013s, are finally getting into the groove of college / academic life. Everyone has started to expand their knowledge base, attend events, meet experts and build connections across areas of their interests.

I, along with few other classmates, had the opportunity to attend an API conference last week. APIs are a buzz word, not only in the tech industry but also in the media, travel, retail and other such sectors that hold and control large amounts of data. And therefore, all of us were keen to learn about the current and potential future action within APIs. We heard speakers from Guardian, Expedia, Nokia, ASOS, Qwerly, Twilio and few others -- and found the conference incredibly helpful.

Among many interesting insights, following were the main takeaways for me:

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The silicon valley trek was one of the most memorable and eye opening times of my first year at LBS. The two major highlights of the trek was meeting the CFO of Google and a partner at Kleiner Perkins. It was amazing to hear the different perspectives from all the players involved in the valley and to see in a short time how the ecosystem works. The organizers did a fantastic job to provide us a breadth of exposure for companies ranging from established giants like Google, to small start-ups like path, to incubators like plug-n-play, to Venture Capitalists like August capital, to fast growth companies like zynga, and even including lawyers. I very much enjoyed the trek and will definitely participate if not lead the trek next year.

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This trek was a unique experience for me, mainly due to three reasons. Firstly, I was able to visit leading tech companies and to witness not only the unique cultures and people, but I could also discuss relevant technology topics with impressive personalities (e.g., Google CFO). Secondly, I gained several local contacts that will be able to leverage in the future in case I decide to start a business or to move to the Bay Area. Thirdly, Last but not least, the trek members were a unique, hand-picked set of LBS students and spending time together in this unique environment truly sparked our inspiration and ambition.

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Leaving the sunshine of London, we were surprisingly greeted by the rain of San Francisco. We didn’t let the weather damper our spirits as we headed over to VMWare for the start of the trek, energized by the colourful tales of entrepreneur and now CTO Javier Soltero we headed over to electric car company Tesla. After a fascinating analysis of the electric car market we took a tour of their factory and posed for pictures with their sexy roadsters hardtop. We finished the day with dose of innovation, at IDEO, and checking out the legendary shopping cart that has been featured in many of our classes here at LBS.

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My major personal insight was just how much more alive the entrepreneurship community is in the Bay Area compared to London. While this in itself is not a surprise the magnitude to which this is true, however, is. While my impression of London is that it is first and foremost a financial center so is the Bay Area a center for entrepreneurship. There seems to be an abundance of talent, funding, ideas and risk-taker mentality.

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Mato Peric, Mark Shmulik, Aditya Joysula and Bogdan Grosu represented London Business School at the 6 th Annual Boston Tech Strategy Case Competition sponsored by Ericsson. The competition is a unique opportunity to propose strategic plans and ideas to executive level leaders from Ericsson, network with MBA students from all across the globe and at the end of the day, if successful, win a substantial financial prize.

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Before the trek actually started, I had built very high expectations for the upcoming trip. To say the least, the 2011 SV trek totally exceeded my expectations and I was actually blown away by both the quality of our company visits and the overall organization. The first visit was at VMware, where we met with a LBS alumnus and a fascinating Silicon Valley entrepreneur whose company was ultimately bought by VMware in a typical SV acquisition picked up by, amongst other publications, TechCrunch. The stage was set from the first visit for what followed next: talks by Google’s CFO (yes, you read that right!) and by Randy Komisar – Partner at Kleiner Perkins, pre-release testing of the Nintendo 3DS, and a very interesting talk by Dave Marquardt, Founder and Partner at August Capital, who among other things was one of the first investors in Microsoft.

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Potentially being the few Executive MBAs on any LBS trek was a potentially daunting activity, but presented a great opportunity to connect to other entrepreneurs, VCs, managers and alumni that would never be otherwise possible – at least not in this timeframe. The weather was not accommodating either: the previous day was coloured with torrential rain and a tornado warning. I had brought the weather with me to sunny California.

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The Silicon Valley trek was one of the best professional experiences I had during my MBA. It was organized superbly! The speakers, companies and all the rest of the details were perfect.

These were for me the highlights of each visit in a sentence: VMware : Cloud computing company. Even though it’s a big company we met with a very interesting entrepreneur who had joined the company after selling his company. He transmitted a great entrepreneurial culture.

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I was most impressed by Javier Soltero from VMware who shared with us the most inspiring life story I have ever heard.

From a banker in Wall Street to an employee in Netscape before the dot com bust to a successful company sell to VMware, he did it all.

After working as a chief architect in a start-up that went bust, Javier came to the CEO and offered to buy the $15M intellectual property for $1 and for the promise to assume all liability for the 2 clients they had. This is how Hyperic was formed – without any capital and with liability for 2 large overseas clients.

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Without a doubt, the Silicon Valley trek was an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit and hear from companies and people that are making a huge impact on the world. We had the opportunity to visit companies such as Google, LinkedIn, KPCB, Zynga and Tesla Motors and got to hear some very interesting things.

For example, the Google CFO told us that there was “science behind the madness” regarding their investment / acquisition strategy and that working at Google was a “real delight”. A partner at the VC firm August Capital, told us how he used to hang out with Bill and Steve from Microsoft at their house and how he ended up being one of the first investors into the company when it was valued at just $20M.

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The Silicon Valley trek was the best business experience I have had so far during the MBA. As an entrepreneur with a technological background, it was incredible to visit amazing companies that started from scratch, such as Google and Zynga.

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What an experience!

I was extremely impressed with the calm and relaxed environment. We were warmly accepted at every company we visited and met a wide range of SV professionals, from young entrepreneurs to Google’s CFO. Silicon Valley’s unique atmosphere makes the communications and engagements very easy. After all, where else in the world people will tow your car because you took Lady Gaga’s parking spot, apologize for their actions and offer you a ride to go and find your car? J

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T he 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.

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My personal goals for the trip were twofold. First, to get a better understanding of the ecosystem that is Silicon Valley – to understand how founders of startups get access to the capital that is needed to aggressively scale a promising business and how they attract and retain talent. Second, to get an idea of what life in the Bay Area could be like. On both accounts I was not disappointed!

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During our trek in Silicon Valley we got the chance to meet with some of the most prestigious VC’s in the world such as KPCB and August Capital, investors in companies such as Google, Facebook or Twitter. Thanks to the efforts made by the trek organisers we were lucky enough to meet two partners for a bit more than an hour each which was extremely useful to start to understand how and why Silicon Valley (SV) has such an influence in the technology world. In summary I would say that two factors make things happen in SV:

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7 days, 16 companies, 4 nights out and 1 GT Mustang made the visit a memory that will stay with me forever.

 From meeting the Google CFO who couldn’t have been more relaxed, to playing with a pre-release Nintendo 3DS and meeting Randy Komisar of KPCB, the Trek was an amazing experience that really opened eyes to the tech scene over in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

 Sarah, Leetal and Brian did an outstanding job putting the itinerary together and ensured we were never standing still. I would thoroughly recommend it for anyone considering technology as a future career; the only down side is how to get motivated being back in London and being so far away from it all…

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Joining the Silicon Valley Trek was one of the best decisions I’ve made in LBS. It was a great opportunity to see the leading technology companies, meet exceptional people out there, and learn from their business experience. I think I’m lucky because this trek was taken place for the first time in four years. I hope that more LBS students can enjoy this great opportunity in the next years. Whether interested in technology sector or not, it’s absolutely worth to go for it.

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What impressed me most about the trek was the breadth of company and
individual meetings we were involved with. From the world's top VC
firms, to Google and IDEO I garnered a unique experience of the buzz of
Silicon Valley and what sets it apart as a technology hub.

The degree to which individuals were willing to share their stories of
success and failure and offer to help was unexpected. And the LBS