Day 19 - Capsule & FullScreen

Well what a last day for meetings!  Today we met with our last two meetings and despite having heard from a large amount of tech companies over the past month, the things that we heard today were still very informative and helpful.  The first company that we talked to was called Capsule who did photo collection and sharing for weddings and we talked with their co-founder and CEO Cyrus.  One thing that Cyrus talked to us about that we had heard a lot about was being able to pivot the focus of a company when needed.  He told us that company leaders (and especially founders who are probably more emotionally attached to the company) need to be aware of the fact that they may need to pivot the companies direction away from what it was originally intended for and towards a possibly more profitable market or product.  In the case of Capsule, we learned that the service was originally intended for use for a wide range of occasions such as trips and parties.  However, when the company learned that their product was almost exclusively being used for weddings, Cyrus pivoted the company towards marketing and developing the product mainly for the use in weddings.  Although being able to pivot when necessary is something that any good startup or established business should be able to do, we have also learned that founders and leaders of companies should also be able to stick with their dream in the face adversity.  When a product or company is being funded by a handful of different investors, there is naturally going to be multiple different directions that investors and other people think that the product/company should go.  We have heard from a handful of founders that it is important to keep true to your vision if you know it is the right one for your company or product.  This is in contradiction to the equal number of times when we have heard the importance of pivoting when necessary.  So the question in my mind (that I haven’t heard the answer to and haven’t come up with one myself) is how does a CEO or founder of a company know when to pivot the direction of a company?  My guess it would probably come down to intuition.

Our next meeting was with a company called FullScreen who does content management and monetization for content creators on Youtube among many other services.  One service that FullScreen provided that I found particularly interesting from a marketing stand point was called “Gorilla Campaigns” in which essentially advertisers gave their product to Youtubers who would make videos about the product and include a quick plug for the product at the end of their video.    This use of Youtubers to directly market products to potential customer is brilliant in a couple ways.  Firstly, it’s a highly targeted message in that the content creators knows their audience extremely well and thus is able to deliver a message that is guaranteed to reach and speak to the audience.   The second advantage is that the audience trusts the content creator that they’re watching, so when they receive this message they know that it’s not coming from some business that doesn’t know who they are but rather a person that they trust.  These two aspects of the Gorilla Campaigns gives this sort of advertising a huge edge over traditional methods, something that FullScreen confirmed with the statistical success of this service.

Day 18 - Coloft

                Today we had our one and only meeting (our first of three in LA) for the day with a business called Coloft which provided a collaborative work space specifically for technology startups in the Santa Monica area.  We met with their co-founder Avesta Rasouli who was an experienced and serial entrepreneur who had a lot of tidbits of wisdom to share with us concerning his experience with both successful and failed startups. 

                One thing that I found interesting that Avesta talked about was his idea of how to market and sell a product or idea.  He said rather than sell the product, sell the “why” of the product.  For instance in the case of his Coloft business, he said rather than telling people that his company had the best chairs and the fastest internet he told people that his place would be filled with likeminded people who could collaborate and help each other with their respective startups.  This strategy reminded me of something that I read in my “Crossing the Chasm” book when the author talked about giving elevator pitches and marketing high-tech products.  Moore (the author) said that a crucial role in marketing a product to the early market is to sell the reason why a consumer or business should buy the product, and that marketing should heavily tie into this reason to purchase.  This confirms what Avesta talked about when he told us to “communicate the why” of the product rather than the product itself.

                Another piece of wisdom that Avesta shared that correlated with my “Crossing the Chasm” book was that relationships with consumers is crucial in establishing an early customer base.  Avesta communicated this idea to us by telling us some of the things he did to get Coloft off the ground in the first couple of months.  He told us stories of how he would let people have meetings or get-togethers in the space for free, or went to conferences and talked with his potential clients, all to build a relationship with them.  According to him, these relationships were important in the continued growth and stability of Coloft.  Moore talked about the same importance of relationships when trying to market and sell to the early adopter or visionary phase of the technology adoption life cycle.  He explains that to this group of buyers, a relationship is key when trying to sell your product and that without healthy relationships the company is likely to go no farther and potentially fail.  Now although these two people (Avesta and Moore) are talking about selling two different products (a workplace for Avesta and high-tech products in Moore’s case), they are both similar and thus applicable to each other in that they are both selling disruptive products, or products that if consumed or used would change the way the consumer goes about their life.  Therefore I see that the lessons learned from both the book and Avesta’s talk are related and that relationships are in fact highly important in marketing and selling a product early on in its life cycle.

Day 16 - Sportvision & Fenwick and West

     Today we had two interesting meetings with two very different companies that both touched on something that has been a common topic of discussion and explanation on our trip.  Our first meeting was with a company called Sportvision who does virtual reality for sports broadcasting and is best known for doing the yellow “first and ten line” on all professional and most college football games.  Sportvision surprised me in a couple of ways.  Firstly, I didn’t really think about not only all of the computer and programming work that goes into doing some of these services (for instance using cameras and computers to detect and track baseballs and players) but also the math and physics that some of Sportvisions services require.  Take for example some of the information that is displayed during a baseball games.  Not only does Sportvision track a baseballs position and speed, but from this data they have also found an algorithm to determine the spin on the ball using its speed and trajectory.  Never before had I thought about all of these intense calculations and work that went into some seemingly simple data displayed on an info graphic during a sports game.

                One thing that our contact at Sportvision Mike talked about that tied into our second meeting of the day was the idea of intellectual property and patents and specifically the roles of these things concerning the use of contractors.  In an environment that is competitive and crowded as the software industry, intellectual property and patents become extremely critical to maintaining an edge.  So when contractors are involved in developing this IP, it could become extremely difficult and frustrating when you move onto a new company and project but might not be able to use the knowledge or ideas you developed previously. 

                Our second and final meeting of the day was with the law firm Fenwick and West where we met with a team of patent litigation lawyers who explained to us the ins and outs of patents, filing them, and defending or attacking them in court.  The main thing that I got out of this meeting was that patents and the patent system (as far as the software industry goes) is incredibly flawed.  Firstly they explained a group of people called “patent trolls” who collect seemingly old and useless patents en masse and then use them to sue large companies over incredibly loose infringements (for example one of these groups sued twitter for a patent concerning two-way radios for truckers under the grounds that their patent included the idea for social media) in hopes that the large companies will settle rather than pay millions in legal fees.  There is seemingly no way out of these legal battles for the companies who are being sued as they either have to settle or go to court and even possibly lose due to the loose and broad nature of some of these patents, which is also the second flaw in the patent system.  Because the system allows for some patents to get approved that are incredibly broad and vague, companies are able to sue each other and waste large amounts of time and money and intellectual power over fighting each other rather than focusing on collaboration which could help both parties involved.

Day 12 - Google

Today we had the opportunity to tour the facilities of the internet giant that is Google and it definitely held up to expectations.  Before going to the Google-plex I envisioned a place full of food, slides, toys, and anything you would ever need to actually live on the campus if you needed, and that is exactly what we saw.  The perks given to Google employees were seemingly endless.  Free laptops, employee discounts at stores such as Apple, free (amazing and delicious) food, free travel and expenses for work, long maternity and paternity leave period, and electric cars that employees can check out were among countless other perks.  In fact there were so many perks for employees that our host, tour guide, and former Luther grad Charles who works in the equivalent of Googles internal technology help desk told us that there is a site for employees to keep track of all the perks that they receive.  At first glance it seemed like Google was supplying so many amenities to its employees either because it could or in order to attract talent.  While the latter is true it is more of a necessity than I originally thought in that a large number of tech companies here on the west coast provide a similar amount and diversity of benefits as Google does.  So, in order to compete, Google is almost forced to provide the perks that it does.  Another reason for the plethora of benefits that I learned about was that it allows employees to practically live on the campus.  If you can get unlimited food, transportation, haircuts, nap rooms, sports, laundry, work out facilities, and practically anything else you may need, why would you ever leave the work place?  In fact, when we asked Charles if this was actually plausible to essentially live at the Google-plex, he said that he only went back to his apartment to sleep at night and in the morning he came right to Google for breakfast than work.  In this sense, Google has done a great job of melding people’s home lives into work.

One thing that surprised me about Google was how they seemed to be at the cutting edge of technology rather than following it.  Now granted big companies have more money to fund new and exciting and possibly not profitable projects, we had both seen and heard that bigger companies are less likely to use new and less proven technologies such as the Go programming language or WebRTC as they are risky to institute and use in consumer products.  However after talking with employees at Google, they denied this saying that they are in fact encouraged to use these new and blossoming technologies to help spur creativity and production.  Along these same lines, employees are encouraged to take what they call 10% time, or 10% of their paid working hours to work on a personal (or cross-functional) project.  This once again shows how, contrary to my prior belief, Google really does value creativity and pushing boundaries in order to keep its competitive edge.

 

Day 11 - Hummer Winblad VC

 We had a couple of meetings today, our first of which was with a venture capital firm called Hummer Winblad Venture Capital where we met with their cofounder Ann Winblad.  She walked us through what her company did, what she did for the company, and some of her insights on the technology industry.  One thing in particular that Ann said that made me think was her idea of how programs and code will be written in the future.  Ann was of the opinion that someday in the near future code will not be so much written as it will be assembled from fragments and components hosted on various websites.  I would agree with her in the sense that this is happening more and more with websites like Github readily available to distribute helpful segments of code, and also with the rapid pace of software innovation code assembly rather than writing will become more important. However, I do have a couple of problems with her statements.  Firstly, one of the companies that her VC firm has backed is one of these code segment hosting sites so she is probably a bit biased in telling us that this is where the market is going because that is where her money is.  Secondly if Ann is correct and only 10% of code is written rather than assembled I feel like A, a lot of people have to be writing code given the ever changing nature of programming languages and algorithms, and B, we are going to lose a lot of creativity and innovation if she is correct.  If no one is writing their own code than less and less people will be thinking about how to solve problem their problems and about how they can solve them in even better ways.  However I do agree that code segments will be used more and more as time goes on.

Another thing that Ann talked about that got me thinking and also tied into some things that I had been thinking about before was when she talked about the abundance of ideas and innovations happening right now.  As she said it, there has only been one other time in history when this many different fields of technology (mobile, social, cloud, and big data) had been developing as rapidly as they are now.  This reminded me of the seemingly over abundance of talent that there is in the world to fuel this innovation, however Ann assured us that there was still a need for programmers and developers to help push these technologies on.  Still, it’s a bit daunting to think about the sheer number and difficulty of some of the problems that today’s programmers are taking on.

Our second and last meeting of the day was with a serial entrepreneur and all around inspiring guy named Phillip.  Phillip had started and sold multiple startup companies, worked in various roles in the schooling system, and had also worked for NASA for some time.  The greatest thing that I took away from that meeting was how important passion is in a career and deciding what to do with your life.  Even though I didn’t understand the majority of things that he was talking about, the way Phillip talked about his endeavors made me interested in them and made me realize how important his passion was.

Day 10 - Bizo, Moovweb, Financial Planning

Today was one of our busiest and most diverse days yet as far as meetings go as we met with three different companies here in San Francisco.  Our first meeting of the day was with a company called Bizo who does business to business internet marketing.  We met with a large group of their development team and one of the things that they talked about that intrigued me was something they said when talking about their interview process and what they look for in a candidate.  They said that although they do look to make sure their interviewees have a basic set of technical skills (in this case programming skills) what they are most looking for is not "do you know it" but "can you learn it" and they said that one of the biggest places that they find this is in a candidates cover letter.  In fact, one of the employees even went as far to say that aside from checking a few technical skills on the resume he said that he could care less about it and relied almost exclusively on the cover letter.  Now although I believe that there is more importance to a resume than checking a few skills, I had never really thought about how important a cover letter can be in communicating an applicant’s passion, interests, and even personality, all which (as I am learning more and more out here on the west coast) are very important in determining the necessary job-person fit.

The next company we met with was a semi-established startup called Moovweb who did mobile web development.  Our meeting with Moovweb was a lunch meeting on the wharf so we got to sit in the warm sun, enjoy some lunch, and have a fairly low key yet informative chat with some of their front-end developers.  One thing that we talked about that got me thinking was about how many talented people (as far as computer science and development goes) live and work here on the west coast.  It’s a little daunting to think about, considering that I am going to be entering the job force and potentially competing with these people but at the same time this abundance of talent has a positive side effect for me.  Because there are so many people that are talented programmers and CS majors I have really been thinking about what makes me different from those masses and how I can distinguish myself to potential employers and to myself.  Now I haven’t landed on anything concrete yet but I think it’s going to involve leveraging my combination of CS and Management, my time in Sweden, and my desire to always do better and learn more.

Our last meeting of the day was with a financial planner named Sara who had some good advice about career paths in general.  She told us her story about how she graduated with an English degree, worked at MPR, then moved to a big financial institution and then finally settled into her own financial advising firm.  Her talk reminded me more than anything that one shouldn’t get fixed that you will end up in one and only one career path or job.

Day 9 - Pintrest & Strava

     Today again was a busy day in that we met with two companies, Pintrest a company of moderate size who is growing expansively, and a startup of about 80 employees called Strava which provides a sort of social network for athletes.  Our first meeting of the day was with Pintrest where we met with two data engineers Dan and John.  These two talked about their career paths, their roles at Pintrest, and about Pintrest in general.  One thing that Dan and John talked about that I found interesting was what they felt set Pintrest apart.  When initially asked neither could come up with a concrete answer (aside from saying what it was not) one of the two landed on the idea that Pintrest was a positive social network whereas services such as Facebook and Twitter could be and often are places of negativity.  He explained this by saying in places such as Facebook and Twitter people can get involved in all sorts of arguments or fights, but Pintrest is a place for (as corny as it sounds) hopes and dreams.  Now granted I am not a Pintrest user but I have seen people use it and I would agree that it seems to be a place where people go to dream about how they want their life to be and in some cases find ways to make these dreams reality.  Another thing that I found interesting about Pintrest that we as a group had talked about was valuing a business that is "pre-profit" and is seemingly yet to have a plan to make profit.  Now Pintrest does have a plan for revenue but it still amazes me that businesses that don't and aren't able to make a profit are able to get so much funding based off the possibility of making a profit at some unknown point in the future.  Most often I feel that the answer becomes "throw in some ads" but it would be interesting to see an alternative method to making money for this kind of business.
     The second company we visited, Strava the social network for athletes, we were able to meet with the President, former CEO, and founder Michael.  One thing that stood out to me was when he talked about was his opinion on going to business school or getting your MBA if you wanted to do your own startup. Before hearing his opinion, I had always thought that getting your MBA was only helpful in that allowed you more job opportunities and a greater skill set.  However Michael pointed out that a lot of a persons good ideas, drive, and connections come after being in an undergrad program.  Plus, after receiving your MBA you will probably have lots of debt after leaving school and there will probably be job offers that are willing to give you substantial money to pay off that debt which would be a tempting offer away from creating your own startup

Day 8 - MSL & Sqwiggle

     Today's meetings were with a large PR firm called MSL Group and a young startup called Sqwiggle.  Our first meeting was with MSL and we met with their president Bryan who talked with us about the PR business and his company specifically.  One of the things that he talked about was the nature of startups and the atmosphere of the Silicon Valley in general.  He said that the nature of the Silicon Valley and technology firms in general was so competitive that it led to (as he said it) a nature of "the second you're on top, someone is climbing over you".  This continuous struggle to be on top of the market or a certain technology also led to the practice of "If it's not broken, break it", which I'm not sure if I agree with.  Although I understand the need to be continually searching the market for possible breakthroughs and doing your best to stay on top of technology and the market, I feel it may lead to a "shooting yourself in your flagship product" situation if taken too far.  If you have got a solid product that is dominating its particular market, if you were to try and change it or make products to keep up with every technological fad or startup, you would quickly go broke or lose your market share because consumers wouldn't want to keep up with those continuous and more often than not failing trends.
     Another topic that Bryan talked about was the role of Big Data in the future with the development of so many "smart" gadgets.  As we move closer and closer to a world in which most everything we do is connected in one way or another and is therefore gathering, transmitting, and storing data, an important part of that abundance of data is going to be filtering it and going from Big Data to Good Data.  By having access to a lot of data gathered from our devices, companies will have to find a way to add value to this data by organizing it or using it in a manner which serves the user who is providing it.  Without adding enough value to this data collected, I do not see a techno-weary population like the majority of the US adopting into this view of the future where everything we do is turned into data and companies and products have ready access to it.
    The second company we visited was a startup called Sqwiggle which is developing a program that allows users to be continually seen by colleagues through the use of their webcams (anyone who was online had a photo taken every 10 seconds through their webcams and was displayed on other colleagues screens in black and white) while having the Skype like ability to start either personal or group video calling sessions and a group chat feature.  While it was really interesting to meet and talk with Eric (one of the founders) about forming and running a startup, the whole time I could not help but think that this program doesn't really solve a problem in today's business world.  Now granted some visionaries have begun to purchase their product for use within an organization, I have trouble thinking that this product will win the early-majority because I don't see this product either being a market leader in their market (something that pragmatists need to see) nor do I see their product solving any major problem.  Now granted maybe they have found a niche market that I haven't thought about, but their only distinguishing feature is having videos of people to represent them being online rather than a little green icon.  Unless Sqwiggle has some upcoming features to differentiate itself or has found a population that needs this, I don't see this company making it into an early majority market (who also will be weary about people having the ability to see them every time they start the program).

Day 7 - Biking and Alcatraz

     Today was a gorgeous and fun filled first day in San Francisco.  Firstly, I apologize for missing a post on Saturday but for the most part it consisted of me waking up at 4:45am and being rewarded with a nice Chelsea win, getting into San Francisco, walking to our hotel and resting for the remainder of the day.
     Our day started with a beautiful (but hilly) 25 mile bike ride across the Golden Gate Bridge and into the coastal town of Sausalito.  Now I had never heard of Sausalito before today but I have no idea why not because it is a gorgeous and wonderful looking small coastal town that is only a quick car ride from downtown San Francisco.  It could have just been the weather and the bike ride that made this town look so great, but it looked like the perfect coastal town.
     That evening the group went on a night tour of Alcatraz.  Firstly, the ferry ride out to the island was very cool in that we got to take the ferry all the way around the island before entering (which is exclusive to the night tour) and it was really cool to see the whole island from the outside.  Also the sun was going down as we were there so we got to see some really beautiful views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the city at sunset.  I had never seen Alcatraz before but it was really interesting to see one of the most famous prisons in history.  Some highlights were the solitary confinement cells (very scary looking) and the "Sound of the Slammer" demonstration where they showed us the shutting and opening of the cell doors which was a really haunting sound.  All in all the tour was very interesting and informative.

Day 5 - Amtrak to San Francisco

Today has been pretty uneventful as far as companies or activities go as today we are traveling from Seattle to San Francisco via train.  We got up and left our hotel in Seattle around 8am and made our way to the Amtrak station a couple of light rail stops from our hotel.  Our train left at 9:30am and we will be arrive in San Francisco at around 9:00am the next morning so we have a solid 24 hours on the train.  The scenery is pretty nice, although most of it so far has been city or towns so I’m hoping that we eventually get to see some cool landscapes.  Aside from being on the train for five hours now, we did get one half hour stop in Portland to walk around a bit.  A group of us walked into town a ways and grabbed some stuff for dinner so we didn’t have to eat at the over-priced dinner car.  So I will probably just be reading and listening to music for the next couple of hours until I try to get some sleep.  Hopefully I get to sleep early because I get to get up at 4:30am to listen to Chelsea (my favorite soccer team from London) play Hull City.  I don’t know how these west coast Chelsea fans do it but I'm going to give it my best.

Day 4 - VMWare & PerCognate

     We got to meet with both a fledgling start-up and a well-established company who have garnered a high-market share in their field despite competition from several big names.

      The first company that we met with (and the larger of the two) was called VMWare whose main business is a software that creates virtual machines, which basically means you can have multiple computers running on one physical computer.  When we arrived at the VMWare’s building for our meeting, the gentleman who was supposed to meet us was out of the office and seemingly not coming back.  Thankfully however, his co-worker who worked in about the same position was able to give us a tour and talk to us about his company.  One interesting thing that he talked about that was pertinent to the book I am reading (called “Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers”) for this course was the reason that VMWare was able to beat out its competitors.  Our contact told us that the reason that VMWare continues to be so successful is their emphasis on the “whole product” rather than just selling software.  For example, the company’s software comes in a whole ecosystem of other VMWare programs and when a company buys enough of those products, VMWare will actually send one of their own employees to be stationed at the buying company’s building to assist with any problems or questions concerning the VMWare product.  This commitment to selling not just a core product but rather a whole product allows VMWare (among many other companies) to gain and hold a majority of their market share.

                The second company we visited was called PerCognate which was a small start-up of four guys who met us in the Seattle Public Library because they didn’t have an office yet.  It was interesting to talk to these guys (Bill, John, and Sean) because although a majority of the people we have talked to thus far have worked at a start-up at some point in their career, they were all working at large well established companies.  Talking with the member of PerCognate really hammered home the concept of risk involved in start-ups as one of the original members had run out of money and was forced to leave the company and get, as they called it, a “real job”.  One of the other members of the company talked about how although it was fun to live on Mac n Cheese in college, it wasn’t as fun when you are forty and are running out of money because of the start-up.   Another topic that they talked about was the Innovators Dilemma, or the problem that eventually all technology becomes obsolete. So in the words of PerCognate, the best technology company is the one that can create a product and then is smart enough to be looking for what the new technology will be that will replace their product, and even attempt to be the ones creating the new product to replace their own.

Day 3 - Microsoft

Today was a very fun and informational day as we had our meetings with Microsoft during the day and our group dinner at night.

Our meeting at Microsoft gave us insights into the future according to Microsoft (although I’m not allowed to talk about what we saw in detail) and also into the present situation and workings of the company.  The first stop of the day was to the “Envisioning Center” where we got to see how Microsoft saw the world in 5-10 years with their products of course at the center of everyone’s technological ecosystem.  Like I said earlier, we’re not allowed to say exactly what we saw but I can say that we saw their vision for work, on-the-go, and home and it was all a very synchronized and personalized environment which was very interesting and inspiring to see.  Although all of the technology and demonstrations that were shown to us were cool and innovative, it seemed a bit scripted and unreal at points, and it assumed that everyone would firstly be using this new smart technology, and that it would all be assumedly Microsoft’s technology rather than another company’s or mix of many which I thought was a bit unreal and overly optimistic.  All in all it was very thought provoking to see Microsoft’s ideas for future technology and definitely got me thinking of things that I would create or want to buy.

The next part of our meeting was in a conference room in another building where we met with someone in the Product Evangelist department for mobile development, which basically meant that he went to various up and coming app developers and tried to sell them to make their app for the windows phone.  Our meeting here was very frank, as he explained flat out that Microsoft had messed up in the past and lost its edge in mobile development to the point now where they have an incredibly small market share.  He also talked to us about the culture of Microsoft and how it has changed over the years.  He explained that when the company was still smaller, the culture was very competitive in that if two people had different ideas for the same problem the response was that one idea “won” and the other “lost” and the losing idea had to deal with it and move on.  However after Bill Gates left the culture became more collaborative and the company lost its cutting edge according to him.  Despite this he was optimistic about Microsoft’s future and talked about their commitment to “service and devices” rather than just selling software licensing fees

One topic that I found particularly interesting was a conversation our group had between meetings about the valuation of companies with either no current revenue stream (like Snapchat) or ones that make little or no profit (Amazon).  This made me think about how often Wall Street values companies sometimes entirely off the possibility of future revenues as predicted by one or a few investors who more often than not have little or no concrete proof of their prediction.  It also reminded me of a quote from Jeff Bezos the founder and CEO of Amazon who was asked by interviewer if he even knew how to spell the word “profit” because his company has failed to make a steady profit to which Bezos replied of course he could, p-r-o-p-h-e-t.

After our meeting with Microsoft (we talked with another gentleman who worked in Microsoft Research, but he mainly spoke about advanced networking topics which went mostly right over my head) we all went out to a very nice seafood dinner courtesy of our trip leader Brad Miller.  It was a great night with wonderful food and an awesome group of people which was a perfect way to wrap up our day.

 

 

Day 2 - Amazon

     Today we had our first meeting with a company!  This morning we had the pleasure of talking with an employee from Amazon.com who worked in the legal department.  So at 8:30AM we walked the seven or so blocks to the Amazon head quarters where we met our contact Sam who worked in the legal department, got our visitor badges, and then headed up to a conference room.
     Our talk with Sam was very helpful and insightful to both understanding the details of Amazon as a company, and its culture as well.  The first thing that I learned from our meeting with Sam is that I greatly underestimated both the size of Amazon and its potential and vision of expansion.  One division of Amazon that I hadn't heard of but seems like a large and growing part of the company is the Amazon Web Services in which Amazon provides computing and hosting services for companies from Netflix all the way to small startups.  Amazon plans to grow this product to the point that they are the one and only provider for hosting and computing and are essentially the information center for the world.
     Another thing that Sam talked about was the things that the company is most worried about, or as he put it "keeps him up at night".  The first thing that he talked about and was the most unexpected to me was the issue of possible anti-trust lawsuits against the company.  According to him, Amazon has been flying under the radar of trust laws in the United States, but as they continue to grow within their current markets and expand to new ones, the possibility of anti-trust lawsuits increases dramatically.  For example if Amazon were even to come close to reaching their goal of the usage of their web services, there could definitely be some concern from both the public and the government over violations of anti-trust laws.
     The second thing that Sam said kept him and the top management worried was privacy and information security, which given the recent Target security breach is very topical.  As an e-commerce company Amazon stores incredible amounts of personal data that if lost would be very harmful to the public.  So given the recent interest in information security it was reassuring (although not unsurprising) to hear that Amazon is thinking and hopefully acting on this concern.
   The final topic which Amazon would be concerned about is their brand image and keeping it positive, which was a bit surprising to hear.  When Sam first mentioned this I thought it was a bit odd because I don't have a negative image of Amazon, however when he said that they didn't want to become like Walmart which is known for its harsh treatment of employees and business partners, it made sense that Amazon would want to be actively staying away from this sort of image.  It was nice to hear that this was something that Amazon was concerned about, even though it wasn't affecting them much at this very moment.  One way in which Amazon recently attempted to better their image was through the introduction of their Amazon Smile program which gives (if I remember correctly) 0.5% of each sale to a non-profit of the consumers choice.  This program could not only serve to better countless non-profits nationwide, but also to keep the public happy with Amazon and to increase their brand loyalty.
     All in all, our meeting with Sam was very informative.  I was a bit nervous at first that with his location in the legal department he would only be able to give us insights into the legal side of Amazon, however this was far from the case as he was very up to date on the company's vision, culture, and inner-workings.

Day 1 - Seattle

     Today was our first day in Seattle for our "Understanding Entrepreneurship in the Silicon Valley" J-term trip.  The day mostly consisted of travel, but we did have some time to explore the city at night and get our first local meal. 
     Our journey from Minneapolis to Seattle went without a problem.  I was a bit worried that the -15 weather was going to delay our flight (like some of the other flights who were missing crew and planes traveling from Chicago), but we left right on time.  When we arrived in Seattle it was 40 and overcast, which felt warmer than it should have (I'm sure our group looked odd for being so happy about weather in the 40s).  After taking the light-rail into the city we found our hotel which is right downtown which is great.  Once we checked into the hotel the whole group (all 12 of us) went to a nice grill restaurant downtown where I had some delicious and fresh fish tacos.  After that, a group of us went exploring on the waterfront and found a carnival-esque wharf that had an overpriced Ferris Wheel and an indoor arcade and carousel. So after exploring that for a while we found our way back to the hotel for the night.
     So not much entrepreneurial learning yet, but we have our first meeting with Amazon tomorrow morning which I am looking forward to!

-Gage