Date post: | 24-Jan-2015 |
Category: |
Business |
Upload: | sunil-maulik |
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What makes Silicon Valley Unique?
my background• Came to USA in '82 to study Biophysics at Brandeis
(Boston)
• Moved to SV in '86 to join startup
• Worked at 5 startups in 25 years
• Two went public
• Two were acquired
• One went spectacularly out of business
• Ran my own e-health company for 5 years (GeneEd)
• Transitioned from research to development, support, sales & business development.
• Currently at Designit, focusing on design and innovation
features of Silicon Valley
• Strong science & engineering culture. Very strong networking culture.
• Also a strong business culture ("go big or go home")
• Close to a meritocratic society ("you are only as good as the code you cut")
• High tolerance for risk (pain!)
• Also a lot of hype & fluff ("in the short-run, technology is over-hyped; in the long run it's under-hyped")
• Very international but very parochial at the same time
FAILURES
valley is DARWINIAN EVOLUTION in real-time
• Throw lots of ideas at the wall and see what sticks
• "I see 5000 companies and fund 5 of them." Marc Andreessen
• Relentless and hyper-competitive
• As soon as a niche exists, it is filled. (Sometimes, even when there is no niche, it is filled!)
• Great ideas are a dime-a-dozen; great execution is rare
words of wisdom• "It's better to win the deal then to win the
argument."
• "Hire slow, fire fast."
• "As a founder, you are always selling." (To investors, customers, partners and your own employees.)
• "Better to have a small piece of a big pie, then no pie at all."
• "The valley is littered with the ashes of great technology companies with no sales & marketing"
• "A great team can rescue a bad idea; a bad team will kill a great idea."
• "There are no original good ideas; only bad ones."
tales from the front
•Meeting a VC in the check-in line for a flight from SFO to Amsterdam
•Cold-calling the President of Pfizer
•Closing a $1.7MM deal with Astra-Zeneca (Lund, Sweden)
in conclusion
• Silicon Valley scales companies from anywhere in the world
• The streets are not "paved with gold" (though there is plenty of capital available)
• Everyone is looking for "the next big thing"
• SV can be a launch-pad for sales into China, India, Japan, Korea, etc.
• It requires tremendous, sustained effort, but the rewards are worth it and the culture is addictive!