Tales of the Valley
My first trip to Silicon Valley was an intellectual one and it started when I was 13 years old. At about age 12 I started thinking about my legacy, and what would be my life’s work when I died. Something I realized was that through this process of self-discovery and super-long-term goal-setting,
I knew that I couldn’t necessarily know the answers to these questions, but that a useful resource would be having a role-model that I felt resembled not the specifics but the overall of the future I wanted for myself.
Me having recently become obsessed in Apple, I looked up to Steve Jobs as a role-model. My interest in Steve Jobs lead me to become interested in Apple and Apple’s early days, which in many ways is a story about the innovation landscape of this mythical place called “Silicon Valley”.
While I was interested in Silicon Valley and its mythical history, I became aware of the existence of their most endemic mythical creature, The Startup. I searched for ways to learn about startups and the current state of the valley, and found all of this through podcasts.
The first podcast I listened to was Gimlet Media’s debut Startup Podcast, then came YC’s How to Start a Startup, as well as Y Combinator Podcast. I also — obviously — listened to Kara Swisher’s Recode Decode, and some others.
I became in love of all the nitty gritty and all the cultural details of everything from startups, entrepreneurs, Venture Capital, and all that stuff. In retrospect, my approach to all of this was similar to other kids’ to Harry Potter or dinosaurs; a magical world of fantasy with weird rules and social dynamics.
The real Silicon Valley was, in comparison to the world I lived in, a bit fantastical. I found this so interesting and fell in love so much so, that only two years after that I became intern at a local Micro-VC firm where I today lead Digital Transformation as my job.
Thanks precisely to my work and job inside of Orion Startups, I had the pleasure to travel to Silicon Valley as part of a corporate trip. The reason behind the trip was to create contacts, allies and gather best-practices as well as trends to better inform our work back home. For me, it all felt like being on a the theme park of my dreams. Funny thing is, tho, that I had somewhat forgotten how much I liked and loved the mythical valley; all of this came clashing onto me like a distant memory.
Takeaways
I guess that my main takeaway from this trip to the valley is that world is far smaller, and that the people atop, those who’re building the mythical place I so loved, are not any smarter than me or most people for that matter. It was paradoxically humbling, for instead of watching all these people and thinking “huh, I could do that”, I though “hey, I could do that”.
Another thing I discovered is the value of a Mecca. Back home, I believed in the narrative that Silicon Valley was a great place that had a great ecosystem, but that had many competitors that had developed recently and that were en par in some ways. Actually going there, it became clear that’s mostly bs.
Silicon Valley is, in every way, years ahead of time, and although other places have great contenders in some verticals, the valley is still the place where thing happens, and if anything — because of network effect — , things will only become much more centralized. And I plan on adding to that.
Being in the valley I felt weirdly home. I attribute this to my former self-education about the valley, but this time my professional connection to it made it feel all much more solid and real.
My plan used to be to develop myself and grow my impact in the Mexican ecosystem. Today my goal is going to the valley was soon as possible. The road? Finishing High School and creating as much value and consolidating as my projects and products as possible.
This change in focus, also has a funny consequence into my short-term plans, and I am no longer going to Mexico City this January, but more on that in another article.
