No Fear (1/20)

Hola!

So WE went to Google today! We woke up to the pouring rain this morning, but we wouldn't let the weather get us down today! We headed out for Google around 8:15am from the Menlo Park Inn.

Google headquarters was fascinating!! The architecture and interior design of the buildings was purely representative of the type of imagination and innovation that is cultivated within the company. We saw tons of micro cafes around the office, along with many playful decorations from dry erase drawings to full wooden doors attached to second story window frames. We met with 4 different people from Google other than Craig. We met with Davidson Young from university relations, Michael Braderman from Google Enterprise, Euefu Wang from Google Books, Jessica Pfund from Google Maps and Rick Klau from Blogger. All of the presentations were very informative and interesting. It was super cool to see the background of Google Maps and the direction that it was going. Since everyone in the class is on blogger, it was great to connect a face to the software product that we are all relying on.

After all of our morning meetings, we got a chance to eat in one of Google’s cafeterias called "Charlie's Cafe." The food was absolutely wonderful. There was a mix of a few different types of ethic foods along with a salad bar, a grill line and a desert bar. There are several more cafeterias on the Google campus, all of which are provided free to employees.

While we were at lunch I got some free but extremely valuable advice from Craig. As a former Luther Professor with his PhD in Chemistry, Craig decided while at Luther that he was going to return to school to get his PhD in Computer Science. I love hearing stories like this. I feel like it takes so much for someone to decide to change courses after being involved with something for so long. There is an enormous social stigma in the Midwest that discourages people from taking risks and changing paths. It is a scary thing for people to realize that they are not entirely happy with what they are doing. It is perhaps even scarier for these people to take the leap and start doing something different.

This is a fear that all college students battle with when they are attempting to choose their area of study. The standard question we all hear our conscience asking is “what in the heck am I going to do with the rest of my life?” This question, which plunges every one of us into a pit of despair, seems to be the favorite of many college alums and college parents. However, as Craig pointed out, this is the wrong question to be asking. The weight of a life-deciding question is paralyzing. We college students, and arguably everyone out there, need to be asking ourselves ‘what am I going to do for the next few years?' This is the winning question. By focusing on the present we shrink the consequences, ignore the paralysis onset by over analyzation and decide to act. Increasingly we find that our world is always changing and adapting. The variables that we consider in our decisions are constantly changing. We have to be able to change our colors to fit our current surroundings. Craig is a great example of a person that follows this type of philosophy and it has seemed to serve him well. This very lifestyle is the kind that I have discovered here in the valley.

After we finished up at Google with Craig we had a quick stop at the computer history museum to see a demonstration of the Babagge computer. The computer is basically a super old computer designed in the early to mid 1800's to calculate logarithmic equations. Then we left the museum and met up with Luther alum/ ex-accounting professor/ CPA/ venture capitalist, Al Brudos. An extremely successful man, Al was a great host and humble mentor. He described his past and the things that made him successful throughout the years. When questioning him about the absence of risk-aversion in the valley, he too gave us some great advice. Like many of the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, Al promised us that failure was not something to be afraid of. He insisted that there was nothing to be afraid of and that when you fail, you simply try something else. And so Al, like many of his Silicon Valley neighbors, reassured us that the paralyzing power of failure is simply an illusion. Things are never as bad as they seem.

We finished our night off with a tasty treat from Cold Stone near our hotel. Walking back to our hotel on the dimly lit streets of Menlo Park the lessons of selective ignorance when it comes to fear-setting paralysis in decision making began to sink in. I have seen a lot in Silicon Valley, but I think the experiences I have gained from exploring the attitudes of entrepreneurs will prove to be truly invaluable.

peace out!

Adam

The Purple Onion (1/15)

Hey There,

We got a later start today as our first meeting was scheduled for 1:30pm at a PR firm called Porter Novelli. From there we moved down the road to meet with Creative Commons, a non-profit license/ copyright firm, at 3pm.

We were greeted by a woman named Karen Hartland at Porter Novelli. Karen was part of PN’s special media and was in charge of training employees and customers how to leverage different types of social media in order to improve their public relations activities. Public relations has to do with managing the way the public perceives a specific entity (e.x. a corporation, organization, individual, government, etc.). Thus, with various social platforms on the rise like Facebook and Twitter, PR firms are using these social platforms to shape the perceptions of the public. The world of PR is puzzling to me. It appears to me that people in PR get paid to do what everyone else does everyday, but for entities other than themselves. Yet, PR firms only attempt to make the reputations of particular entities as positive as they can. Thus, public relations agents are really just illusionists, constantly trying to paint the perfect picture and manage "the damage" of their clients. The office certainly seemed like a cool environment with tones of magazines, a flat screen TV, a PS3 and God of War 3.

We finished our milk and cookies at Porter Novelli and heading on down to Creative Commons. This is a new and cool organization. Originally born from academia, the idea behind Creative Commons was to provide greater information sharing over the Internet by allowing users to easily license their content (pictures, essays, etc.) in order to proclaim how they wanted their material to be used and shared. The Creative Commons website (creativecommons.org) allows you to license you content in multiple ways. During our meeting we had three young employees describe their business plan and software coding specifics.

We departed Creative Commons and milled around Union Square for about an hour until your stomach began to grow. This feeling was abated when we inhaled some scrumptious clam chowder at Boudin on the Fisherman's Wharf. From there we returned to our hotel to regroup with some of our classmates and head to a comedy club called the Purple Onion.

The Purple Onion was part of many comedy clubs hosting a San Francisco wide comedy tour in dubbed the "Sketchfest tour." 8 different comedians have 10 minute gigs in succession. We found this club simply by googling "comedy clubs in San Francisco" and choosing the cheapest one within reasonable proximity. We were standing in line for 30 minutes painfully watching as the people who reserved tickets walked past wondering if we going to get in. Suddenly there was a bit of commotion behind me further up the stairs we were standing on. As I turned around to investigate I was awestruck to find a short, gray and unshaven man politely moving down the stairs - Robin Williams!! I couldn't believe it! Here we were standing in line to the cheapest comedy club we could find and Robin Williams just went inside!

After the show started we were granted entrance into the show to fill in the gaps. I haven't laughed that hard in an extremely long time. While some comedians were a bit of a let down, my cheeks actually hurt from laughing so hard as a result of the others. It was a bit surreal to hear Robin William's cackle amid all the laughter in the club. Before the beginning of the next show at the Purple Onion the members of our class managed to get a picture with Robin. What a night! Laughing the hardest I ever have and meeting a celebrity.

Truly exceptional!

-Adam

A tiger, a goat and a cabbage (1/14)

Hey-O

Today was another wonderful sunny day in San Francisco. We visited both netvibes and kiva.org along with a fabulous burger shop called Taylor's Automatic Refresher.

We strolled into NetVibes around 9am this morning and were welcomed by Chris. He introduced us to NetVibes and their products in their green Ikea-like conference room. Basically the company specializes in completely customizable personal dashboards for all of an individual's software accounts, programs and interests. These organizational dashboards run on real time and keep their user up to speed. This multinational firm offers this product to individual companies so that they can have a closed format. While NetVibes number one competitor is iGoogle, it has been recognized as the number one dashboard publishing platform. I loved this company's products and I think that it is a very effective organizational tool (really, check it out at netvibes.com). The company leverages the talent of it's user community to translate language, fix bugs and write widgets; all at no cost. In addition, the market is only continuing to grow and expansion into the mobile market and smart home connectivity seems very likely and extremely profitable. To me, NetVibes has promise.

A couple of hours later we were sitting down in a sunny outside patio in front of a burger joint called "Taylor's Automatic Refresher." While a number of individuals in our class claim that the famous "In and Out" burger joint burger cannot be beaten, I am in stark opposition. Taylor's Automatic Refresher's Western Bleu Cheese Bacon burger blows In and Out burger out of the water.

A lengthy bus ride later, we found ourselves walking toward the offices of kiva.org. Kiva is an online micro financing organization that connects people with money to underprivileged entrepreneurs over the Internet in order to encourage lending. At their website, a person can look at the profiles of various entrepreneurs and decide which particular individual they would like to provide a loan to at very low relative interest rates. We were greeted by a group of Kiva employees that almost out numbered our own class. All of these employees were very talented with one being a Stanford CS grad, another being a UC Berkley CS grad and another former Barclays Capital employee. Needless to say, this was a very intimidating room to speak in. However, it was apparent that these extremely talented individuals loved their jobs and took pride in their work. What a group to run a non-profit company. Kiva's business model was extraordinarily robust and something to be replicated if possible.

Two hours later, we found ourselves sitting comfortably in an expensive seafood restaurant. Initially we all thought that our dinner excursion would be a somber one as we all were dragging our feet to the restaurant, however we were wrong. We were sporadically bursting with laughter as a result of quality conversation laced with childish humor (please read http://megynsays.blogspot.com for more details, start at the bottom of the page at "mmmmmmmmmm..."), lobster never tasted so good! Something along these lines...

, and

This satisfying meal was completed as we remembered our meal was part of our pre-trip fee, almost as good as free! There's some good old back slapping mental accounting for you!

signing off!

Adam

Stalking (1/12)

Hey people,

So our first full day in San Francisco was slammed packed with different sights and sounds. We managed to utilized all four forms of public transportation in this single day. We end up meeting with three different start up companies in the San Francisco area. We spent time with callspark.com, vark.com and digg.com before going to a bar named "Mighty" for a tech networking social where 7 entrepreneurs pitched their ideas to the whole bar.

At callspark.com, we met with the CEO, Steve Larson. He was a very friendly guy who was obviously a man that knew how to get things going and completed. As an experienced CEO and a person who has been with several companies from their start up stage to their IPO stage, he gave us a good taste of what it took to make things happen as an entrepreneur. Steve explained his company's product to us, which was an app acting like a "smart directory" for smart phones using social networks to increase the ease of connectivity. Steve chuckled about having multiple lifestyles with us during the morning, but I am beginning to wonder if possessing multiple personalities is and essential characteristic of business oriented start up entrepreneurs. It seems that in order to thrive in this environment one has to be able to constantly change their colors. The art of being able to appeal to anyone is undoubtedly useful in business, it certainly makes relationships seem less genuine. However, I very much enjoyed our trip to callspark.com and learning about upcoming products and their related technological developments.

After leaving callspark our group walked through the city to a delicious Thai restaurant to meet with Alison Johnston from Aardvark (vark.com). Alison is a community manager for Aardvark, which is another social networking software tool that leverages the knowledge of its users to answer each other's questions in real time. Like callspark, this company is planning on combining social networks with it's own product to increase connectivity across various platforms. Alison was an extremely outgoing type-A personality Standford grad. I imagine her working about as fast as she spoke to us, leaving no doubt in my mind that she gets things done well and efficiently. This type of high-energy attitude, the same type of attitude that Steve possessed, seems to be the key to entrepreneurial success. Leaving the restaurant stuffed with my Pad Prik King (a steamed green bean and grilled chicken combo smothered in a sweet and spicy red chili sauce) our group toured some downtown shops for a while. One of the more memorable stops was the Ferrari apparel store. Here the price of selling our whole class into slavery would not match the value of their displayed floor merchandise. After a brief bout of window shopping (the only kind of shopping I'll be doing here), the class made good use of the Muni and made our way to the next meeting.

We showed up at Digg.com around 3pm. Here we met with Matt Van Horn a business development manager; a sleek geek if there ever was one. Dressed in hip sneakers and expensive jeans that showed his sense of style, a three wolf shirt that displayed his sophisticated dry humor and a casual blazer that boasted his business boldness. Matt told us about digg.com and how it was a website that ranked top news stories from many different sources in order to present the best information on their home page for their users. In addition, Matt gave us a crash course in networking. I think the most precise word that sums up Matt's lessons about networking would have to be STALKING - stalk everyone any way that you can. Matt insists that adding value to relationships is the key to networking well. While this is unequivocally cynical, there is also some truth to it. Everyone bases their relationships on the value derived from them. We have best friends because we gain the most value (e.x. similar interests, simulating conversation, empathy, etc.) from those relationships, why should it be any different in business?

Our next stop was a couple of blocks away from digg.com where we were able to put our new networking lessons into practice. At SFNewTech we grabbed some grub from a taco truck out back before aimlessly falling into various conversations with random software entrepreneurs around the establishment. Believe it or not, there were not many techies and code monkeys throwing themselves at a senior accounting student in hopes to fall into deep conversation. With that said, I did have a wonderful experience talking to numerous entrepreneurs and listening to their sales pitches.

I am learning so many things here in CA. The culture in Silicon Valley is fascinating; risk-aversion is pagan worship and fearlessness the only survival tactic. Just take a moment and imagine what was going through the minds of 9 Midwestern college students from 9am to 9pm today. Brilliant!

Sincerely your stalker,

Adam

Landed (1/11)

Finally here!

We touched down in San Fran about 2pm today. The plane was delayed for a while in Minneapolis but no big problems really. We were transported to the Holiday Inn Express at Fisherman's Wharf. After depositing our things in our rooms we ended up prowling the embarcadero for food and ultimately we decided on the Fog Harbor fish house.

2 hours and minus $30 dollars later I was stuffed gazing out the glass window past my classmates attempting to make out Alcatraz and the Golden Gate bridge as night was falling. After refusing dessert at the restaurant the guys decided to continue searching the surrounding blocks. Guided by a iPhone, we ended up wandering into a unique and towering open-air brick mall that housed a variety of little shops and restaurants. Norman's ice was our destination. Nothing like mint chocolate chip to top of a filling meal!

So now the whole class is staging a ruthless take over the hotel lobby while struggling to keep our eyes open - we're a pretty talented group. Tomorrow our day begins at 8:15am. We have meetings at callspark.com, vark.com and digg.com. Our day will conclude with stand-up like entrepreneurship pitches at a bar in called Mighty.

Cheers

Adam

Pre-game (1/10)

Hey Everyone,

I'm sitting in my kitchen doing laundry and hanging out with two girls in my J-term class that is about to fly out to Silicon Valley in San Francisco, CA. Our flight leaves tomorrow morning from the Minneapolis airport and the anticipation is building. We are going to visit companies like Google, kiva.org, Microsoft, Intel and Creative Commons. Tomorrow will bring warmer temperatures and a bundle of adventures - Silicon Valley awaits!

Adam