I spent three days sitting across from some of Silicon Valley’s brightest minds: here’s everything I learned.
To start with, I want to make clear that the reason I’m writing this article is far from wanting to *show off* the amazing opportunities that I’ve had access to through this subsidized trip. What I want to do instead is acknowledge my privilege and share as much of it as possible with other young people curious about the world of entrepreneurship and cutting-edge technological innovation.
Just about four days ago, I dragged a small roller bag packed to the brim with a mix of both overly formal and overly casual outfits into an Uber to the airport. As we looked at the itinerary of the trip, me and the other three freshmen (one other international student, one Bay area local, and one American who’d never seen SF before) could not contain our excitement. Someone asked a question on that Uber ride that’s stuck with me since:
“Is Silicon Valley an actual place, or is it a concept?”
I thought — let’s find out.
Day 1: a morning coffee with a personal inspiration + Square, Wealthfront & Qualcomm + dinner with a Google data scientist
Just as a note: There’s a summary of key takeaways at the end of every day that you might want to refer to if you’re short on time!
Riana Singh, founder and CEO at Boss Women Collective, is someone I’ve been following for about a year now. Her confidence and her impact as a young person in the entrepreneurial world has fascinated me — so much so, that within the first 10 minutes of finding out I had been accepted on the Tech Trek, I DM’d her on Instagram asking if she’d be open to a coffee chat.
Before 9am on the first morning, I was already feeling inspired. Aside from the excitement and disbelief that stems from speaking to someone you’ve admired from halfway across the world, what struck me was the resounding weight of her advice.
She talked about the importance of knowing your value as a young person in the workplace: being unafraid to take initiative when you have a meaningful contribution to make, while also showing initiative by listening to those more experienced than you. As a teenager romanticized by the idea of founding and running my own impactful company before the end of college, her second point stood out in particular. She emphasized that chasing an idea isn’t the way to go about it: it’s the problems that we should be focusing on. Riana relayed the suggestion of one of the panelists at a recent BWC event. Paraphrased, the advice sounds like this:
Make an Excel document with each of the problems you observed in your life or in the lives of those around you, what concepts you could apply to solve them, and how you could monetize those concepts to make them sustainable. Choose a problem to solve rather than looking for an idea to realize.
Sure enough, I now have a four-column Excel tab open in a different window.
Thanks to catching the train in the wrong direction from where I met Riana, I arrived at Square only just in time for the panel. It was at Square that I first became aware of what a startup success story looks like on the inside.
One key thing I noticed was that the four Penn alumni on the panel, each from different teams across recruitment, product management and software engineering, were acutely aware of putting their mission, and therefore their customers, first. This lead to what was clearly a very collaborative, purposeful environment: one that indicates the foundation of Square’s growth.
Additionally, the physical environment at Square seemed to play a large part in their company culture: free food, open plan-offices, co-working and collaboration areas. It’s clear that these factors play a large part in productivity and therefore the performance of a company at achieving their goals.
A couple of hours later (after a quick photoshoot with my undeniably extra yellow blazer), I found myself sitting next to Andy Rachleff, the co-founder and CEO at robo-finance company Wealthfront, and also a co-founder at Benchmark Capital, one of Silicon Valley’s most successful VC firms. The Lean Startup Methodology (read through the link for a high-level description), is something Andy emphasized as an effective approach, referencing The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank. The general idea was as follows:
It’s important to start small and scale up from there: discovery, validation, customer creation and company building. That is, in the beginning, focus on identifying need and finding product-market fit, while also being open to adaptations that will undoubtedly occur at some stage.
I did ask Andy whether he had any tips for finding an algorithm to generate enough money through stock investments to pay for grad school (which he managed to do in college). Turns out it’s a little bit more complicated today than it used to be. Worth a try, though — and it’s interesting to see that automated investing systems just may be a way to get there. Also — Andy publishes a list of the top 150 career-starting companies on the Wealthfront blog every year. Definitely something to look out for.
Qualcomm, the last company of the day, was simply mind-blowing: a massive concentration of the brightest technological and scientific minds developing tangible innovations for the future. Our speakers’ bios each had the number of patents under their names. While I could go into more detail about what we heard during those two hours, there’s one overarching piece of understanding that stood out: technology is embedded in every aspect of modern society, and will exponentially become more embedded as more technological advancements are made. What that means is — our daily interactions, health, job prospects, family life, and politics will always be underpinned by technology.
It was this idea that framed some of the discussions later in the evening with the data scientist from Google (a friend of a friend). Being on the child-safety team at YouTube, it was clear that she held social responsibility in her work with tech. Marveling about the intersections between the two for one night was one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life, and reinforced my decision to make a conscious effort to understand emerging tech as much as possible (even though my natural affinity is toward soft skills).
Key takeaways:
- Be strategic as a young person in the workplace: speaking up, listening, and two-way feedback are all equally important
- look for problems to solve rather than ‘brainstorming ideas to change the world’
- putting your customers first builds the foundations of a successful business
- technology interacts with business, ethics, and social impact consistently in this modern age of innovation
Day 2: Google, Nuro, RaiseMe & Opendoor
Just being in Googleplex was itself a surreal experience. I’d heard about the crazy-cool perks that Google employees have at their offices; even in primary school I used to talk about wanting to see the SF office one day. It was awesome. There are no other words for it — there’s a slide, there’s cool posters and collaborative spaces, and there’s innovation everywhere.
What was interesting was seeing the comparison between the massive tech company that is Google, and the comparatively smaller tech startups that we visited throughout the day. It was clear that at Google, every employee knew exactly the part they played in the bigger picture of the company — typically, these were very niche. For example, product management on the PlayStore User Interface, or backend development on algorithms responding to “who/what/where/when” questions on Google Search. In alignment with this clear organization, Google internships (which naturally all the students on the trip were super interested in understanding more about) hold a range of specific, targeted requirements that test role and company fit.
Not only do they have a series of interviews to identify if your particular skillset aligns with the role (eg. highly competent programming skills for the software internships, and technical/analytical intuition for the associate product manager internships), they also test for the attribute of “Googliness.” That is, they’re looking for people who fit perfectly within the larger machine of the company.
While it was clear that newer/smaller startups such as RaiseMe and Nuro are also looking for that culture fit in the people they employ, the roles of each person also involve an aspect of spontaneity and added inter-team collaboration. That’s not to say that Google is not a collaborative company — the panelists emphasized their ability to try out various projects — it’s simply that startup culture seems to lend itself to less rigidity within the roles themselves.
Nuro was particularly interesting to me. It’s a high-tech startup focusing on a futuristic vision of automated vehicles improving everyday life, and it has been able to secure a massive amount of funding on that vision and their current non-commercialized products.
Nuro started as a sort of spin-off idea by a range of highly skilled people with incredibly relevant technical backgrounds: the founders were principle engineers at Google’s self-driving cars project (Waymo). The rest of their team grew to contain people formerly from Apple, Tesla, Uber and GM. That near $1B was acquired by selling Nuro’s optimistic, cutting-edge vision alongside the uniquely fitting expertise of their team. Before seeing Nuro, I didn’t realize that it was possible to generate money on an idea in this way.
RaiseMe and Opendoor also similarly emphasized the diverse yet fitting skillsets of their team — yet in application to completely different and somewhat less futuristic missions.
That’s where it started to make sense: startups can be working on infinitely unique visions — the three we observed today were in automated vehicles, education equality, and simplifying the real estate industry — but their ability to grow is consistently attached to the strength and passion of their core team.
It seems that finding the right people to create the foundation of your company is key to success. As Gary Vee would point out: surrounding yourself with people who inspire you is a surefire way to improve yourself as a person. Perhaps, the same idea can be applied to identifying one’s co-founders and/or C-suite…
To finish up with Day 2, I’d also like to point out one unique piece of wisdom from Ian Wang, the CTO at Opendoor. Outside of their ability to secure $10M of funding off of a slide deck, what makes Opendoor’s growth approach remarkable was their choice to test the product in Phoenix before San Francisco. Identifying the concentrated nature of their founding location when it comes to real estate, and actively reaching out to more representative populations to test its viability was invaluable to their success today.
Key Takeaways:
- The way a team is organized within large organizations is crucial to that company’s success
- To work in the technology sector, especially in a large corporation like Google, a strong basis in technical understanding is crucial — but you don’t have to be the best coder in the room
- Startups start-up in so many different ways: there doesn’t seem to be a perfectly tested formula, other than the required input of a strong, uniquely-positioned founding team
- Testing a product’s traction across a variety of customer bases is crucial to scaling in the future
Day 3: Kleiner Perkins, Atomic, Founders Fund & Robinhood
The last day was 12 hours of feeling simultaneously invigorated to act and frozen speechless. I was blown away by the people we met, and the way my view on career seemed to shift — ever so slightly.
The morning began at Kleiner Perkins with a crash-course on what Venture Capital means, and an overhauling of traditional career paths (just some light discussions to start off with). Venture Capital is a buzz-phrase used all the time in the business world, but if I’m honest I had zero idea what it was until last Friday morning. VC is the business of investing in ideas and generating return when and if they end up successful — a concept that seems formulaic enough, but does in fact have a range of variations.
I learned that VC firms often have a designated range of startup types that they will fund. For example, there’s a difference between ‘growth’ and ‘early stage’ startups, and within ‘early stage’ startups, there are pre-seed and seed startups; each of these concepts identify how far a long a business is on their success trajectory. Some VC firms, like Kleiner Perkins, will invest in all types of startups, others will focus on one or the other.
Being a VC is clearly very different from working in investment banking or consulting — which is why not following the traditional ‘career check box’ approach was emphasized at Kleiner Perkins. They’re looking for people with relevant ‘technical chops,’ leadership — which they define as the ability to guide people toward a vision with no formal authority — and entrepreneurial drive.
Experience in a startup or as a founder is generally considered a necessity — which opens up a breadth of possibilities for passion projects and experiences outside of the investment banking/consulting internships that we as business students obsess over.
At Atomic later that morning, this was reinforced and added to. Once again, I found myself somehow sitting across from another billionaire: Jack Abraham, a partner and founder at this innovative VC firm that flips the VC model on its head. Jack emphasized that there’s something unsatisfying about not being involved in actively building the companies that create massive changes in the ecosystem. What Atomic does is become part of the ideation process, find teams of people who align effectively with the problems being solved, and then invest in building those companies from the ground up. I loved this concept, and the first two questions I could think to ask were:
- What goes into the generation of business ideas that will be successful enough to produce impact and an effective investment in the future?
- How can I work for you?
The second question’s answer was simple enough: look at the website and keep an eye out for internship postings. Having started up a company as a teenager, and then continued on the path of a serial entrepreneur for years, Jack knew a lot about answering the first question. Identifying patterns in the ecosystem is crucial: what are people concerned about the most right now?
This means understanding macro trends: people using their phones more and wanting ease-of-access, people becoming more concerned about safety and personal health etc. Formulating an understanding of niche problems within these areas, and then developing a solution according to that is crucial.
I found it particularly interesting that he suggested ‘making a toy’ to finesse the entrepreneurial ecosystem as a young person. That is, making something easily underestimated and building it to become a business. Facebook, Apple, and things like Kiwibots each started with small, focused visions that expanded well beyond their initial bounds. Also — instant gratification and the removal of steps are always attractive to modern customers — key points to understand when designing UI.
He emphasized the barometers of investment when validating a business model: is there a network effect? Do early adopters love the product? Is there a good product-market fit?
But also — what exactly do these things mean?
Each of these three things are related. If a product has a network effect, then as the user base increases, engagement and value also increases. Early adopters are those who try a MVP (minimum viable product), and actually enjoy the product — this is a great indication of great product-market fit. That first product doesn’t need to be perfect, in fact, there’s a better synergy between product and market if even a mediocre version of the product generates positive responses. He also mentioned market validation tools such as Ask Your Target Market to help identify these factors.
Founders Fund completed the trifecta of iconic Silicon Valley VC firms for the day, with a more traditional VC structure than Atomic. Founders Fund is a generalist VC firm investing in all sectors across all stages (Kleiner Perkins focused on enterprise in particular), and was one of the first VC firms based on a “founder-friendly” mentality. That means no firing founders after acquisition.
Trae Stephens (another very wealthy VC firm partner who I couldn’t believe I was sitting next to) presented the idea that their Founders Fund is full of ‘techno-utopian futurists.’ As aware as they are of the dangers innovative technologies may present, VC’s are optimistic correlators: bringing resources to ideas that can shape humanity for the better.
At some point during this discussion, Trae also referenced The Art of War and his love for Sci-Fi and philosophy publications (Locke, Augustine, Renee Gerard). His intellect was genuinely out of this world — and hearing him speak about the ways in which technology can impact humanity felt like a consolidation of the past couple of days, a reinforcement of the fact that understanding technology and its implications is a necessity in the business world.
Trae also highlighted the idea of avoiding “whiteboard founders.” Our presenter at Kleiner Perkins referred to them as “fake entrepreneurs.” These are the people that have picked a business idea from the whiteboard for the sake of having a business of their own, without the underlying passion that comes with it.
In a world where Gen Z especially feel pushed towards entrepreneurship — Trae suggested that we as young people are less rushed toward the romanticized ideal of ‘being our own bosses.’ Not everyone is a founder — if we were, then there would be no employees.
Finally, with luggage in hand and our brains full to the brim with all of this, we went to our last company of the trip: Robin Hood.
As soon as you walk in, what strikes you is the youthful and vibrant vibe of the company. Their environment is bright (literally, they have a sunny, open courtyard in the middle of their office), and their walls have funky illustrations of cats on them. Their engineering team consists of a number of recent college graduates, and speaking to one of their recruiters revealed that Robinhood takes pride in the culture that they’ve been able to build at the company with a surplus of talented young people.
It adds passion, skill, innovation and, in Robin Hood’s case, a stronger understanding of the target market. That would be the one thing I took away from the panel and tour at Robinhood: young people hold a crucial and influential place in Silicon Valley and within entrepreneurship as a whole.
Key Takeaways:
- avoid being a “whiteboard founder” — not everyone is a founder, and that’s ok
- there are systematic processes to generating a business idea in response to a problem, identifying whether it’s worth investing in, and validating it in the market
- hiring young people can have a largely positive impact on company culture
- there are different approaches to Venture Capital; it’s a far broader and more dynamic industry than people on the *outside* generally realize
- getting to where you want to go in your career shouldn’t mean making your path all about ‘checking the right boxes’
So, there it is. Everything I learned ‘in’ Silicon Valley (that the NDA’s would let me disclose). I’m sitting here in my dorm room, worrying about the midterm I’ve been procrastinating on and preparing to get back into college after Fall Break — but the perspective I gained over these three days has lead to me looking at school and career in an entirely different manner.
I’m no longer here to check boxes, I’m here for the feeling of excitement I got while I was looking at the sunset by the Golden Gate bridge, planning my next moves. I’m here to throw myself into building tech skills with the intention to learn, rather than the intention to add to my resumé. I’m here to be open to failure in order to understand my strengths and weaknesses.
There’s no doubt that Silicon Valley is a concept rather than a defined geographical area (the trip went all over SF). I think it is these exact things — a unique and proactive approach to entrepreneurship, building skills for the sake of learning, and embracing failure — that underpin the ‘concept’ that is Silicon Valley. I genuinely look at the world through a different lens now — and I hope, that through following this story, you too have gained from a new perspective on personal development, entrepreneurship, and technology.
