Why Do Startups Go To Silicon Valley ?
Insights from 3 startups
If you’re unfamiliar with our project, Diving Into the Bay Area Work Culture, read our intro here
Meet Jorge and Diego
We went to an event at StartupHouse called 1 Million Cups. Here 2 early stage startups pitched their ideas and asked the crowd for feedback and advice for next steps. One of those startups were Bridgefy. They are working on a technology (SDK) that allows offline communication in apps. Bridgefy is founded by Jorge Rios, Diego Garcia and Roberto Betancourt from Mexico. The team split their time between San Francisco and Mexico City.
Why did you come to the Bay Area?
We came to validate our idea and also this is where the money is. As an early stage startup there is more freedom to develop because the investors are experienced investors.
What advice would you give to future entrepreneurs?
Diego: Do what you like to do — so many people don’t do that.
Jorge: If you find something you want to do for free, but something people are also willing to pay for, then you have a good idea.
Meet Chris Bennett
We also met up with Entrepreneur Chris Bennett, who is CEO & Co-founder of Soldsie, a 5 year old startup helping companies with their social shopping service, using Facebook and Instagram.
You in 3 words: Life is short.
What advice would you give to millennials?
Figure out what you want to do and then try it out. What I did was to do a lot of information interviews, or actually shadow people. I believe, once you find something you like, you should commit to it. Because the only way you will get good at something is by doing it for a really long time. Basically do a lot of career-dating before you marry your career.
Meet Mariano
We also briefly met up with the founder of Mural, Mariano Suarez Battan at Impact Hub, another co-working space. Mural has created a product that allows remote creative collaboration, which is why we were curious about the startup. You can get a tour of Mural here. They already have big Fortune 500 companies working with the product and an impressive investor list. Mural’s team is split between Buenos Aires and San Francisco.
We have collected all the insights we got from the 3 startups below. Enjoy!
Innovation Challenges
For Mural and Bridgefy getting the resources (money!) needed to hire talent, to develop your product/service is a big challenge. Bridgefy told us they have been to around 90 VC or funding pitches in the last 2 years. There has been a lot of waiting and some “it’s a great, but no” and hurt feelings. At the same time living expenses are so high in the Bay Area, that it’s also hard just to survive there while trying to build your company.
And this might be an “of course”, but as an early stage startup it’s also a big challenge to convert your Idea to a real product/service and to make a sustainable, scalable business out of that.
Chris said that he has all of the things he needs, it’s more to find the”right way” to do things that is the biggest challenge. For Chris having mentors and advisors is a support to navigate the way. From what we heard from all three startups getting advisors and mentors is a big part of succeeding and accelerating the learnings.
Collaboration and Creative Processes
Both Bridgefy and Mural has had to find a way to collaborate remotely and with different time zones. Mural has the help of their own product, which is designed for remote teams and Bridgefy said that their solution has been to focus on hiring experienced workers, who bring relevant and value to them.
In Chris’ company they have retrospectives once a month, Product and strategy meetings every two weeks and what he calls an Innovation tournament every 2–3 months. The point of the tournament is to come of with new ideas, because to Chris it’s about listening, debating and quantity of ideas that makes you find the good ideas.
Work Culture
What we got from all the entrepreneurs we talked to, the tech and startup culture is very much a work culture, all the time, meaning that the conversation rarely change from work-related subjects. Socializing and meeting new people is rarely outside the context of work or networking.
Related to what Justin Lowitz told us about the Bay Area work culture being naturally collaborative, Jorge and Diego think that the Bay Area is open minded and everyone is very helpful. It’s also a culture of hustling. Chris agreed on that, both on the open culture and the hustling. It’s a lot of positive reinforcements and support, because people can relate to each other’s struggles, because they have most likely been there. He even referred to the Bay Area as a College Campus, where senior entrepreneurs could be considered the professors. Helene actually stayed one night at a bunkbed co-living space in SoMa, and based on her experience she agrees and can literally relate to his metaphor.
Chris also said that most people adapt to the culture and way of doing things when they get here. They have to, to succeed.
He also shared that it’s considered rude to network with a hidden agenda, trying to sneak your way to what you need. Because of the nature of the Bay Area, If you need help you can just ask for it and somebody will help. No need to trick people.
Co-written with Paula Vivas-Avila
Thank you to Jorge, Diego, Chris and Mariano for sharing your stories with us.
Note: Talking this morning we realized the title was to “perfect”, which is why we chose to change it.
