Conclusion of Silicon Valley

Today was a sad day, as we had to pack up and get to the airport by 10am for a 1pm flight home to Boston. As we get to the airport, the airport is packed with other travelers. Even though I wish I could stay longer, rather than leaving. In the airport, I felt a small personal reflection during the time I had spent in California. When I was thinking about our trip, I thought more about the opportunity that was given to me. I really reflected on all the the great places that I was able to visit and the amazing people I could meet. During this time, we had learn a lot about ourselves and as well building new connections. I will say that I loved the fact we could meet with alumni and talk to them about their successes and career since graduating Curry College. Overall, I believe this one trip that I will always remember because it was the most influential trips from the meetings to the people.

Day Six: TuneIn Radio, Target & San Francisco

Today was a busy day from going to explore Tunein Radio, Target and exploring downtown San Francisco. Tunein radio was a very fun and interesting trip. We learned that they are a very diverse company, in the way that they tend to work with everyone, not just a single group. The company is relatively small, being just around 100 employees. The company supports over 100k radio stations on a daily bases, which is just crazy to think about but even more impressive is the 4 million songs they have on demand. They believe, just like most of Americans, that radio is the best passive medium. Most of the work that the company does is still done through a human element, even though there are some programming codes that do the work too. Most of the revenue comes through ads, which is picking up daily. As Tunein was a great place to visit, Target was another great place as well.

Target has a very diverse group of employee and believes on a message that diversity is a great way to bring in more workers/progress. The company has won many awards for its diversity and giving back to the communities. For in the year 2014 alone, the company gave back over a billion dollars to different charities. The company very much strives on the motion that they should be giving back to the community in any way that they can. The company works on always developing newer apps that can help its customers save money and hassles with in the store. The company expresses the message that you should be willing to try new things and don’t be afraid to fail. As our tour and Q/A with Target came to an end, we would be setting off to San Francisco for the day.

San Francisco was a very unique place as it has a lot of different events happening all around, like it is almost varies what you see next. We went on a boat ride that took us close to the Golden State Bridge and Alcatraz, which was so much fun. I have never seen the Bridge and Alcatraz up close before, so this was such an amazing experience. After we got back, we would go to the gift shop, which had a variety of knick-knacks. Leaving the gift shop, my friend James and I decided to walk back, which was only about 3 miles back. We were shocked about just about how many places you see and all the different venues that you pass by.   

Day Five: Apple, Facebook and WakaTime

Today was a very busy day from an early morning at Apple, leading us to go off to head to Facebook and concluding our day with WakaTime. Each of these companies have very different objectives, but they share the same passions. When we arrive at Apple, we arrived at a sub-site that is located just one mile from the famous main campus (office,) where Tim Cook and others are located. We learn that some of the employees at Apple believe that its better to plan day by day rather than years down the road. The message of trying new things and expanding out is embraced. Even though some of the employees don't come from technical backgrounds, they can adapt to fit into a group at Apple. The biggest message that I personally took away from talking with Apple employees was, "Be open to trying new opportunities!" As Apple was a pleasure to tour and meet with employees'; our next stop at Facebook was crazy. 

As we showed up to Facebook, the parking lot was a sea of cars. When we finally parked, we walked into what seemed like a normal office with a massive large door. As we opened the door after getting to check in, we found a campus that was beyond belief! The campus had almost everything you could think of, from a coffee shop, wood making shop and so much more! Facebook has a lot of cool features and workers in open rooms to show that all are even rather than no one is higher than others. As our tour of Facebook came to an end, we headed back to the hotel to meet WakaTime.

WakaTime is a company that started from a poly-science major from Stanford. WakaTime is a plug in that is used in most text editors, and it can pick up on almost all languages. We learned that the best way to gain support is by having strong trust among people. The biggest risk that any company can take is the risks of uncertainty. WakaTime is a small company that makes its programs open source by has some great success with the plugins that it develops. Overall, after all these meetings with all of the companies that we met with; I think the message of risk is reward was a common factor among all companies big or small.

Day Four: Google, Boxfish & Criteo

Today was a very eventful day from starting a bright early morning from going to Google to Boxfish and finishing up at Criteo. Google was a massive campus and housed a wide range of buildings and many unique features. One of the best things is that at Google is that you will see a bunch of bikes that are free to use. As Google was a lot of fun to visit and look around, we eventually were asked to leave as our tour fell through sadly. After Google, we headed off to Boxfish, which is small company that is growing at a rapid rate. 

Boxfish is used to capture over 900 channels in the United States alone, some include 90% of the shows we see on Netflix and Hulu. If you do this math, it adds up to around 128Billion words recorded a day. The amazing part is to think that Boxfish only started three years prior from an apartment that is located across from the current office. The dream of Boxfish is to have the ability of allowing customers to have a custom built directory of what channels they want to watch. The most important context is that of the key searching, which towards fast track patterns. After Boxfish, we went off to Crieto; an company that started in France. 

Crieto is about ad retargeting strategies with visited sites. The company focuses on building the mobile development by re-engaging its customers similar to how cookies work for the Internet. Crieto works on help companies direct customers to their products by developing methods to drive people to their product lines. Most of the profit coming in, still comes from the desktop functions. The best way to see how they are focusing on building the company is by buy/investing in small shares and selling when the shares are high. Most of this is all run through automation systems. Overall, today has been a very busy and eventful day; we can only imagine what is in store for tomorrow!

Day Three: Stanford & Contastic

Today was a busy day as we explored the great university of Stanford and a small start up company called Contastic. Walking around Stanford, we learned a lot about the past of Stanford. We learned about how the school use to be free until eventually, they started to charge $140 a semester to attend. The campus is rich in history and even shows that in art, even showcasing a piece of art that has over 22,000 colours in it alone! The school tends to develop and work on expanding its student population. One of the most interesting facts that I found out was that about 97% students return after freshman year and about 96% stay on campus all 4 years! As we concluded our tour around Stanford, we would be heading off to a small start up company called Contastic.

Contastic is a company that focuses on data driven sales automation, which lead some of their customers to be Tesla and Splunk. We met with the CEO and Founder, Cy who talked to us about his personal side and business lessons. He would go on to repeat the message that it is okay to fail and that you need to fail in order to learn. We found out that when you invest more money over time, you tend to find more success than those who make money straight away. As sitting in the presentation, I thought it was interesting that Sy talked about fitting the perfect product with the perfect model market is the key to success. Overall, we learned a lot about Contastic during our presentation with Sy and I believe he gave me a lot of good points to think about.

Day Two: Exploration of VMware & NetApp

Today was a busy day from running around VMware to NetApp learning about these diverse companies and their stories of success. This morning, we show up to VMware in Palo Alto, where we met with Jeff Goodall who is a man that fills many hats. One of those hats is a recruiter for brining in VMware. We learned that VMware uses green environmental technology, which helps the company cut 17% water usage and they also use recycled materials to build everything from furniture to buildings. The one fact that Jeff told us was that one of the floors came from Edison's house! There are 17 buildings located on their campus, which is broken up into three areas; Hilltop, Creektop and Planetary. Over the vast 125 acres is about 4,500 employees in buildings that total just over 1.4million sq. ft. They are leasing the land from Stanford, on a 35 year contract. The company might have a large land space, it still requires lots of building codes and regulations. VMware has its main data center located in Washington. One of the key importance is diversity but other key beliefs at VMware are: community, customer, execute, interest, and passionate. Some of VMware's top competitors are Microsoft, Oracle and Cisco. Overall, VMware is a very modern company in architecture but very passive about its surroundings.

After visiting with Jeff Goodall at VMware, we went off to NetApp in Sunnyvale; where we met with Justin Rowland. Justin talks to us that they use a variety of hiring processes and that about 75-80% accept their offers. They usually look for balances in; leadership, team efforts, enthusiasm, achievements and ability to learn/apply new skills. NetApp doesn't just hire based function but they hire on cross functioning and wiliness to try new things by branching out. We learn that over 77% fortune 500 companies use NetApp. They create Data using a process called ONTAP, which lead them to become the US Government's user. NetApp hosts over 150 offices worldwide and have one of the most efficient data centers. NetApp employees are also know for giving back to the community, which resulted donated around 50,000hours in donated time in 2014 alone! Justin talks to us lastly about how NetApp hows empowers and improves. Overall, NetApp was a very large company spread out through multiple multi-level story buildings.

Day One: The Arrival to Palo Alto

Where to begin? So much in a very long crazy day, from being up all night from night before to going to the airport at 6am. After almost about a six hour flight, we finally made it. The weather was amazing, and was warm with a settle breeze. As for today, it was fun as we got to kind of have the day for a bit to ourselves but then we went on a tour of Palo Alto. We went to visit the HP garage, for where HP was first put together. Afterward, we visited the home of the famous Steve Jobs. We even went through different streets looking at the style of homes and seeing just how different each house is compare to the next one. As today came to an end, tomorrow is going to be a bright and early morning but lead us to a new exploration in our quest of exploring Silicon Valley. 

A History of Silicon Valley (Chapter 19 & 22 Summary)

During the course The Energy of Silicon Valley, we are reading the book; "A History of Silicon Valley" written by Arun Rao. We are assigned different readings from the chapters within the book. We were asked to read chapter 19, which Early Failures: A Case on Good Ideas which Arrived Too Early (1980 – 94.) During the my readings of chapter 19 and 22, I happen upon that venture capitalism really didn't begin to take place until 1981 to 1987. (Pg. 221) As I continue to read the chapter, I read about three inventions that helped shape pathways for technology today. The invention of the Commodore Amiga, Apple Newton and the GO PenPoint OS are excellent examples of showing how such extreme success can be equal to bankruptcy in a matter of years.

The Commodore Amiga, was product that went from having great success to an ultimate failure. Jay Miner, who want to change the 8bit console Atari to 16bit. In 1982, after $7 million dollars was raised and Larry Kaplan joined in as a partner, the Atari 2600 was born. Problem was as the funding in the end was coming to around $500,000; it was clear that the company was facing major issues. (Pg. 221) Eventually Commodore bought out Miner's concept and paid off the loans and debt to help create the most advance OS (operating system,) at the time. Eventually the company's downfall was due to that they weren't attracting new customers with a 32bit. As a result, Commodore ended up going bankrupt in 1994. Newer companies like Compaq, HP, Dell and Gateway took over much of the market (Pg. 222)

Next we see Apple come out with the Apple Newton. The Newton would be the forerunner of tablets, PDAs, and smartphones but ended in a total grand failure. (Pg. 222) The Newton lead Apple to develop Figaro in  1992. The Figaro was really developed towards a specific group of people, which made it unsuccessful. John Sculley, who was in charge of the company during this time as Steve Jobs was fired a few years prior. In 1997, Jobs returns to the company and shutdowns all projects related to the Newton. Why and what made the Newton fail so quickly? Well, lets see. First Apple pre announced its arrival more than 2 years ahead of time, unrealistic expectations, physically too large, operated slowly and dictation of cursive caused headaches. Eventually, Jobs turned Apple around when he launched the new line we know as iPod Classic to iPhone 6 Plus. (Pg. 223)

Lastly, we see the GO Corporation's PenPoint Operating System. The company was started in 1987 with 1.5 million dollar investment from Kleiner Perkins, who owned 33% of the company. GO faced many hardships from the beginning to the end. Bill Gates even took information he learned about GO and applied it to making his own pen. On page, 223 we see that GO had to make a key strategic decision on who the vender would be to who will help with the hardware and even financing issues as well. GO decides to go with IBM in partner agreement in 1990. (Pg.223) Eventually GO fails due to the fact that took much work was needed to be done in a scope of small company. IBM also seemed to be more predatory partner and competitor rather than be a supporter. GO's PenPoint operating System was three to five years too early.

Overall, even though most of these companies have been failures; they have helped lead to many successful technology advances we have made today.

Source: 

Rao, A., & Scaruffi, P. (2013). A Case on Good Ideas which Arrived Too Early (1980 – 94.). In A history of the Silicon Valley the greatest creation of wealth in the history of the planet : 1900-2013 (2nd ed., pp. 158-165). Palo Alto, California: Omniware group.

A History of Silicon Valley (Chapter 14 Summary)

During the course The Energy of Silicon Valley, we are reading the book; "A History of Silicon Valley" written by Arun Rao. We are assigned different readings from the chapters within the book. We were asked to read chapter 14, which talks about; Helpers: Lawyers and Investment Bankers in Silicon Valley (1970-2000.) Rao states from the beginning of the chapter that, talking about the helpers that help start up companies are under appreciated. Pg. 158) I find this to be rather interesting that Rao mentions this because discusses through out the chapter about how these "helpers" feel. One lawyer by the name of Larry Sonsini, states that Rao means, "These companies are synergistic groupings of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, lawyers, accountants coming together to really build enterprises.” (Pg. 158)

As enterprises were being built, large broker-dealer banks, started to buy out these smaller enterprises. Sonsini got the reputation of the most feared/sought-after lawyer. (Pg. 159) Sonsini was so strong of an advocate, that he boldly state, "We would start to develop the recipe for how to build companies, and I was becoming part of the recipe." (Pg. 159) One of the most popular methods of being successful in the 1960s was co-investing. Long-term investments were other ways that capital ventures could make money from owning a portion of a company. Companies could make money from methods of licensing, distribution, intellectual property protection and property litigation.

Eventually companies began to shift their focuses. Companies believed that, "if you started an enterprise and failed at it, you probably make yourself more valuable as an entrepreneur." (Pg. 161) On page 164, we see that many banks located in Silicon Valley, could no longer stay independent but rather fall under a larger bank or corporation. Larger banks from Wall Street, are some of the ones to take over first. The banks started to face Depression-era regulations; which would result in companies to be sold out before senior partners could cash out. Lastly, stocks that were originally issues, could be sold almost twice or even triple the initial value! (Pg. 165) Overall, Rao takes us through the helpers and the roles that they played on shaping the Valley we know today.


Source: 

Rao, A., & Scaruffi, P. (2013). Helpers: Lawyers and Investment Bankers in Silicon Valley (1970-2000). In A history of the Silicon Valley the greatest creation of wealth in the history of the planet : 1900-2013 (2nd ed., pp. 158-165). Palo Alto, California: Omniware group.