We are at Silicon Valley
SUPERKODERS have a vision and are ambitious. We would like to enter new markets, make new partnerships and work on new types of solutions.
In June we got the chance to participate in a 14-day accelerator program in the heart of Silicon Valley. We thought whether or not it was suitable for us. A typical startup is about a product, traction, and scaling.
We provide a service. And the US wasn’t the first region on our minds, primarily because there is a -9h time difference. In the end we said: “Why not, let’s go”.
Our goal is to find how people think about business in the heart of Silicon Valley where Facebook, Tesla, Uber and other successful companies started. We will try to meet local companies, gain experience and eventually make partnerships.
How did we prepare for our US business trip?
Of course we needed to obtain an ESTA, prepare power adapters and exchange some cash. What is more important, we had to prepare our team for our 14-day absence, our limited accessibility and the large time difference. Furthermore, we had to find and select companies, contact them, and try to plan meetings with them.
The big surprise for us was that we weren’t able to find any tech meetups similar to what we have in the Czech Republic.
What are we doing here?
We landed on Friday, September 7, and depart on Sunday, September 23. So, we have 3 free weekends and the program lasts for two weeks.
The first Saturday we went sightseeing in the center of San Francisco and saw the traditional tourist attractions.
On Sunday we had a chill meeting with the other attendees of the program at Stanford lawn.
And then it began.
On Monday morning we met with the others in BootUP, where Laleh introduced herself as the main program coordinator. It took her 15 minutes to explain something which would normally take 5 minutes (and she repeated it 3 times over :-D)
In the afternoon we had our first session with Mukul (Bootup CEO) called “Mindset transformation”. It was very intensive.
Introduce yourself in 30 sec.
Introduce your company in 30 sec.
Mukul analyzed our answers and pointed out what is most important in such a short time. He compared it as if you wanted to introduce yourself to someone during a walk from the office to the parking lot. You have limited time and you have to pitch your company / startup so well that they will remember you.
The following days continued with a combination of group workshops and 1:1 sessions with mentors. We have been dealing with conversation, marketing, strategy, and training our pitch over and over. On Thursday afternoon we tried our pitch live in front of investors. For us, as a “lifestyle company”, the situation is even harder because in one presentation the following was mentioned:
“Never introduce lifestyle company to VC investors.”
What have we found out so far?
- how to pitch in 30s / 2min / 3min
- everyone is focused on product startups
- you have to reach $100M revenue in 5 years, and in 7 years you have to be unicorn company
- contacts are important and recommendations open doors
- how to make a tweet reaching 30M users
- in front of VC investors, either have a vision or traction, never be in-between
- everyone boasts about how many companies joined (doesn’t matter what % they have)
- they’re all fucking successful
What’s next?
Next week will be similar. Additionally, we would like to have more meetings either with potential partners or at least for inspiration.
If you are interested in what we are doing in-between, follow us on instagram. If you have any questions, write into comments.
Stay tuned.
