JOURNEY TO THE VALLEY: DAY 5 – ARE YOU A STARTUP SUPERHERO?
From America, To the World.
Check out where I’m writing this blogpost now!
3rd floor of Macy’s at Starbucks overseeing Union Square
Living the digital nomad experience?
Let’s head on to day 4!
Part 1: Visitation to The Hive Silicon Valley
All of us went to The Hive at Silicon Valley during the morning. There we managed to pitch to a couple of VC’s from The Hive itself, March Capital and a few others.
Dr. Kev presenting QMED’s Co-Pilot
From there on, we were also greeted by 2 companies, In-Live and VARO. Both port-co companies of The Hive themselves.
It was fascinating to see actually many people from the valley came from a media or advertising background!
When you come to think of it, they do not mean media agencies like the ones we see in Malaysia, but primarily from Meta/Facebook, Google, LinkedIN or Twitter themselves.
Why is this the case though? Fundamentally if you think about it, most of the biggest tech companies in the world all found gold struck through digital advertising, thus effectively making these companies media companies themselves.
Hence a lot of startup ideas that is being brewed in the valley, would have people experienced from the media background. Digital media to be precise!
One major thing which I will dive deeper later today, is the fact that I finally understood why would people come to America. Let’s talk about it at the later part of the blog.
PART 2: Supporting the Future of Superheroes at Draper
In the afternoon, we then headed over to Draper University, where all of us was pitted to pitch again to 4 VC’s and respective startup founders themselves. The tour through Draper was indeed very iconic, as we were shown the values that Draper University upholds. They believe that all startup founders are superheroes, as these are the people with the power to change the world.
Heh, reminds me of the early days as a hopeful founder, where you believe that with your will, and determination, you somehow believe you could make a dent out there. These people here, are indeed there to make it happen though!
The entrance to Draper University in Silicon Valley
Greeted by a Tesla model at the reception counter!
Pitched our metaverse solution to 4 judges
One of the judges being Startup Grind founder, Derek Andersen!
The fellow startups from Malaysia indeed received very brutal but relevant feedback to improve our pitches. The people residing in Silicon Valley has seen THOUSANDS of startups a year. WHAT MAKES YOU DIFFERENT, is a constant among all of their undertakings.
Distribution and Go-To-Market Strategy, the powerhouse that makes America the haven for startup growth.
Circling back to what I learned from The Hive, it was rather impactful for me to finally see the growth of some of The Hive’s investees on the day itself.
Within a year, many of the portfolio companies have shown tremendous growth, and that to a certain extent has to do with the US itself.
Nadia, the founder of POD, told me 2 very interesting things in-regards to exponential growth.
It’s either, you are a very B2C-focused product that went viral, or if you are a B2B company, your distribution channel or implementation towards a greater pipeline would be key to growth.
In America, most of the companies here to a certain extent has a global outreach potential. Because of the power due to currency, expansion of many local companies across the world is something innately of build into these businesses and startups since day 1 itself.
Working or striking a collaborative deal with a company here, would probably mean a distribution network to many countries immediately bringing you thousands of users from the get go!
How different it is with how you work it out in our home country back in Malaysia for example. A very hard-earned collaboration might just be a user of 1, with very minimal distribution network to boot.
Searching for companies with power to decide of expansion would usually lead you to a direction that is not in Malaysia instead.
Advice to founders out there, always think of the COE (Center of Influence) and NE (Network Effect) strategy, and build your targeted beachhead around that.
In simpler terms, is your current growth strategy focused towards someone who has a center of influence, where if a decision is made, that decision will create a network effect that would bring in the growth of affiliated users?
If your answer is, my business strategy will only give me 1 user itself, then that might be something to rethink about.
I’m not saying that is wrong, different businesses would have different point of view of course, but do think about it before calling it off, as I know, that would be my focus after coming back from America.
DAY 6 THE FINAL DAY, CONTINOUS BRUTAL SHUTDOWNS, OR INSPIRATION FOR THE FUTURE? READ NOW!