30 Days in Silicon Valley
“If you want to do movies, you go to Hollywood; if you want to do fashion you go to Milan or New York; if you want to do a startup you go to Silicon Valley.” This phrase, in one shape or another, has been voiced by pretty much everyone I met here in California during my thirty day tour - and I can’t but agree with them.
As I’m sitting at the San Francisco International Aiport waiting to board my plane back to Vancouver, BC, I am already planning my return back here. It won’t be easy, but I feel that it is what I must do even if it takes going through an alphabet soup of visas and paying steep legal fees.
Maybe it’s the relaxed atmosphere of the Silicon Valley that had allowed the minds of so many geniuses and visionaries to roam free and create world-changing technology. People are definitely friendly and welcoming here. Not everyone you meet is working on “the next big thing”, but everyone is keeping an open mind out for one. That is what creates this perfect environment to inspire and be inspired.
The Bay Area is home to some of the most brilliant minds in the world. Not surprising, considering it houses Stanford, Google, Yahoo, Sun, Microsoft and virtually every major web startup in existence. Ideas are born here, over shots of esspresso in the coffee shops of San Francisco, after lectures in the classrooms at Stanford, or over weekend beers inside the home offices of Palo Alto.
The startup community welcomes newcomers and everyone is open to a geeky chat on where things are now and where they will be in the next few years. Nowhere else can one hope to get a better prediction of the direction a new technology will take than in Bay Area. Being in another part of the world, reading the tech news and forecasting is one thing. Witnessing the news being made is something entirely different.
It may be called “living in a bubble”, and perhaps rightfully so, but I’d rather be in a bubble than floating in stale water. There is no harm in being exposed to an uncontrolled flow of free ideas as long as you don’t lose your own sense of direction. More so, exposing yourself to intelligent people and rubbing shoulders with those who are smarter than you drives you to challenge yourself, to broaden your imagination, and, hopefully, to shift your entire paradigm for the better.
Here I have made new friends and connections, picked up new ideas, and had a fresh breath of inspiration set it into me. I realized what I had been missing: I once had grand visions on the future of technology. Visions gradually took a second place to lengthy financial spreadsheets, and business plans. I’m not saying that those aren’t important, on the contrary they are some of the most powerful tools in the entrepreneur’s arsenal, but they are not the primary reason I wanted to start my own company. The reason was the original vision of being able to make a difference, create meaning and make change. I am lucky to have felt that again here and am embarking on a brand new and very ambitious project as proof.
Silicon Valley, ‘till we meet again!
