A candid insight to life in Silicon Valley
“We can’t dig shit out of the ground and keep selling it to China forever”
Quote of the day from Bevis Cheng, Co-founder & CEO of Hacker Exchange. Bevis, a Melbourne Silicon Beacher, home from San Fran made an impassioned plea to Aussie startup founders to “get to it”, at Telstra’s Gurrowa Lab at an event hosted by Hacker Exchange.
In a passionate, off the cuff speech to the assembled startup founders, aspiring founders and failed founders (who got a special round of applause), Bevis dished out loads of advice gleaned from his time at the Valley and San Francisco. And he did not pull any punches.
Here are some highlights –
- Ask “how can I help?” NOT “How can you help me?”
- Pay it forward
- Stop following what others have done and are doing.
- Don’t try to be someone else. Do your thing.
- Think BIG. Go global.
What do we have that the Valley doesn’t?
- Work-life balance
- Thinking about and caring for other people
- Slower, kinder pace
- Friday afternoon beers. Weekends and public holidays off!
Bevis lives in San Fran with his partner and 15 months old Maddie (his other “prototype”). He is in Melbourne for a few days catching up with family and friends and of course, promoting his 2-year-old startup, Hacker Exchange.
Here’s his full speech and the Q&A at Gurrowa, the Innovation Lab of Telstra in Melbourne – which is home to Melbourne arm of Telstra’s Muru-D Accelerator.
Oh, before you watch just a couple of warnings..
Explicit language warning – as I said, Bevis didn’t pull any punches. So if you are watching this around co-workers or children, please have your earphones on!
Video quality warning – Filmed by an amateur (me) using the MoviePro app on a hand-held iPhone 6Plus. Audio via inbuilt mic. At Silicon Beach, we believe “done, is better than perfect”.
Thanks to Pivot Summit 2017, sponsors of Melbourne Silicon Beach, for making this video possible. Get a 15% discount on all tickets types via this link. This year’s headline speaker is Silicon Valley icon, Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple). Rub shoulders with “Woz” and other startup heroes. Listen, learn and as Bevis said, be inspired to do your thing.
