We woke up on our final day of exploring the Valley to a dreary morning. However, nothing could get us down as we were ecstatic to be visiting facebook, Microsoft and Intel today.
We stopped at a Peets coffee shop, the company from which Starbucks came out of, to finish up our book reports for class. After a couple of delicious cups of coffee and about an hour of stimulating conversation.
Soon we were pulling into the parking lot of facebook headquarters. We met with mobile development manager Dave Fetterman who is an extremely out-going and high-energy Harvard grad. He described many different areas of the company, from specific information about coding to more broad business operations of the company. Facebook certainly does operate in a perplexing manner. Dave described it in this way: "our engineers development something and bring it to the marketing and sales teams and ask if they can sell it." While most business plans tend to reverse this pattern of operation, facebook seems to be thriving with its own model. We got to take a short tour of the building after our meeting and then we were on our way.
We took a pit stop at Chipotle for lunch and then continued on to Microsoft. The class was a little memorized by the sheer scale and feel of Microsoft as they hosted us in one of their main conference rooms. Our particular room gave you the feeling that you were in Star Trek. However, we were brought out of our temporary trance and back to reality when corporate VP Dan'l Lewin walked into the room! Dan'l is an extremely crisp and sharp individual who was one of the original developers of the first Macintosh computer! He made sure to underline the unique opportunity that our class was given to be a part of this trip. Dan'l emphasized the fact that everyone has the ability to decide their own career path. He said that we need to find out what it takes to get where we want to go and take those steps to get there. He, like others we've met, obviously dismissed paralysis in big decisions. Dan'l then handed us off to a few other employees that briefly showed us some of the new technologies that the company is developing. From hand held projection devices to transparent drag-drop touch screens, Microsoft did a good job convincing me that it could probably take of the world if it wanted to. We also got a demo on an extremely large touch screen with unbelievable capabilities. After being thoroughly amazed, our group had to quickly pack up and drive down the road to Intel headquarters.
Upon entering Intel's stunning building I remember thinking 'my brain has been over stimulated, I don't know if I can take much more of this.' The combination of the two very intriguing visits earlier today combined with everything we'll seen while in the Valley had left me speechless. We were greeted by a manager of front-stage chip design named Neal. It was palpable that Neal was pulsating with mathematical genius as he gave us a 15 minute crash course in chip design. He Flew quickly through different function combinations derived from physics and logic. His explanations left our group speechless with some of our jaws held slightly ajar. Neal then described his background from Stanford to Sun Microsystems to a start up to Intel, he seemed like a chip design rock star. Yet, I feel that it was his attitude that led him to where he is now. Just like all of the other highly successful people that we met in Silicon Valley, I could tell that Neal would not let anything come between him and where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do.
Later that night at dinner the group reflected on the things we've seen and experiences we've had over the last couple of weeks. Now I am convinced that entrepreneurship is mostly about leveraging a fearless attitude with intelligent and creative ideas. All three of these qualities can be cultivated by a person, it is simply whether they are courageous enough to try. Decide for yourself.
That is all.
Adam
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