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