Five Days in the Valley
This past week, while on-campus recruiting was occurring at HBS, I had my own recruiting week out in Silicon Valley. Despite having a passion for tech, entrepreneurship, and early stage VC, I had never spent much time exploring the area other than for a couple job interviews coming out of undergrad. Having gotten very involved in the startup communities in both NYC and Boston, I felt I owed it to myself to see what SV was all about and figure out if I wanted to spend the summer out there. After just five days of bouncing around between SF, Mountain View, Menlo Park, and Palo Alto and talking to people at mature startups, early startups, an incubator, and VC firms, I came to the conclusion that I need to spend this coming summer out west to truly see what it’s all about. Rather than rehash the last week, here are a few insights that I took away from my trip as well as other observations…
1. Silicon Valley:Startups :: Washington DC:Politics
The summer after my sophomore year of college, I interned on Capitol Hill in the Senate and at a lobbying firm. The experience was eye-opening to say the least, but what I took away from it was that people in DC eat, sleep, and breathe politics. They talk about it at restaurants during dinner, at bars during happy hour, even when just hanging out. Politics infiltrates everyone’s life in DC even if they’re not “in the industry.” That’s the same vibe I felt in SV. People eat, sleep, and breathe tech / entrepreneurship / VC and even soccer moms in Starbucks with their toddlers were talking about the latest apps on their iPhones. Tech has permeated the culture in SV in ways that it hasn’t done so in NYC and Boston, which leads me to my next point…
2. NYC is further behind than I realized.
Previously on this blog I’ve written that NYC is going to win out over SV, and I felt confident that it would happen sooner than most people who do so think. Quite simply, I’m not so confident anymore. While I still believe that NYC has some distinct advantages of SV (hub of numerous industries, density of startups and investors), the cultural factor may be too much to overcome in the time frame I was anticipating. When everyone in SV speaks the language of tech and that is the industry of choice, it is difficult for NYC to compete. The closest analogy I can think of is the following: often many sports commentators in the US lament that we are way behind other nations in soccer because most of our top athletes play football and basketball. However, in other countries, a majority of the top athletes play soccer. That’s sort of how it is with technology. In SV, the best and brightest go into tech, and on the East Coast, the top talent is drawn to a variety of different industries with finance being this analogy’s equivalent of football and basketball.
3. Entrepreneurs and VCs are the celebrities of the Valley…
…and they’re treated the same way “real” celebrities are treated in NYC. When people see a movie star or musician in a restaurant or coffee shop in NYC, that celeb is acknowledged as being there, but people don’t make a big fuss over it or approach the person for an autograph. I noticed the same thing in SV / SF. When I was out there, I came across a number of top tech entrepreneurs, VCs, and bloggers at random places. And they were treated the same way celebrities in NYC are treated. The real question is would people on the East Coast recognize these so-called SV celebrities?
Other observations…
-Stanford’s campus is gorgeous, but I still would take Chapel Drive and Cameron Indoor over Palm Drive and Maples Pavilion any day.
-I kind of knew this beforehand, but Sand Hill Road is very underwhelming.
-That being said, some of the offices were incredible on the inside, and I’m very grateful that numerous people took the time to speak with me.
-The commute between SV and SF is absolutely brutal. If the West Coast had NYC’s density of startups and investors, I don’t think NYC would ever have a chance of catching and passing SV.
