JOURNEY TO THE VALLEY: DAY 4 – IF YOU'RE GOING TO SAN FRANCISCO, BE SURE TO WEAR SOME FLOWERS IN YOUR HAIR
Of the principles of Jeff Bezos, Berkeley’s Startup education, and hello 500 Global!
Check out where I’m writing this blogpost now!
San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge!
Boy it’s a huge 3 day backtrack till where I am now haha. Final day in San Francisco, gonna try and finish up the week’s experience before my long trip back to Malaysia with a layover in Qatar again.
Let’s head on to day 3!
Part 1 : Visitation to Amazon’s Startup Loft
Right in the morning, the whole entourage went over to Amazon’s startup loft that is located in San Francisco.
There, we were greeted by Omar who took us on a short tour around the office there. We then proceeded with getting taught on the innovation beliefs in one of the most famous FANG companies in the world.
Dr. Kev having a discussing with Mr. Bob Smith
Omar said that the people of Amazon believed a lot in leadership principles, where the management team along the many years took cues from Jeff Bezos, and the way he ran the company.
Some of the slides being shared with Amazon’s culture of innovation:
Everyday is DAY 1 in Amazon!
Amazon’s Growth Flywheel
It is such a thing there, so much as that, all employees are encouraged to act like Bezos. The better the employee is attempting to emulate the great leadership qualities of the man, will eventually be reflected into their performance or even as an interview process to even get into the company! This reminded me of the teachings I learned regarding Jack Ma of Alibaba few years ago.
Amazon’s leadership principles here: https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-principles
How well of a leadership culture does your organization currently have?
Part 2 : Visitation to Berkeley’s HaaS Business School
It was made known to me that Berkeley is considered the number one public school in the world! With even multiple nobel prize winners coming from the institution frequently.
When we were introduced to the lecturers of the business school, it was amazing to see how as a university which is so near to the most powerful tech place on earth, was able to instil great strategies of startup and business growth strategies to its students. Typically academia and entrepreneurship don’t bode well especially in places that I’m familiar with.
At UC Berkeley
That innovative mindset and thought process since young would do wonders for all individuals growing up.
Part 3: Heading to the Valley!
SO THE TIME HAS COME. AAAAANNDDD….it’s just a bus ride across a bridge to Palo Alto, and erm, we were just, suddenly there, with many shophouses buildings, lol.
Yeah that’s it folks, the super dramatic buildup is just like this haha.
Part 4 : 500 Global’s Silicon Valley Headquarters
Partly why this session was particularly exciting for me, was the fact that I get to finally visit 500 Global’s headquarters in Silicon Valley. For those that are new to my company, we were invested by 500 Global in March of 2022. Since then, we have been a proud portfolio company of 500!
We met with Leonard, who took us through with many QnA’s regarding the US market, and what it means to actually kickstart a startup in the US.
The short summary answer…? It’s just painstakingly challenging. The competition and the amount of companies and ideas that pops up every now and then in the valley is vastly enormous.
Questions on at least do you have the right experience, market knowledge, network, and funding to survive here will always be a key question to answer.
As much as people get easily blinded by the amazing successes that the valley could bring to you, apparently, be prepared as much as possible to the dirt of expectations and reality.
Leonard did share a very quirky story on how just 2 days ago, he was walking outside his office and saw Mark Zuckerberg with his wife just randomly strolling around the area.
Well, that’s the valley for ya.
CORE LEARNING OF THE DAY, ON INFECTIOUS LEADERSHIP
This is something that I’ve been slowly conceptualizing for years now. One of the most common startup founder complaints I heard is, “IF ONLY THERE WERE 10 MORE ME’S!” That has always been the case of many business owners, even to more mature companies alike.
One of the key strategies that we can constantly instill to the people in the company is through what I mentioned earlier on in the first part of this blog.
It is important to find our principles when it comes to work as a founder of the company. Once identified, write it down, and make it like a cultural belief and mandate to the people in your company. As also with one of the most important part of the Amazon culture is, if you can’t write out something in black and white, means you do not have the necessary details and fluidity of any given ideas.
By training more people around you to “work” like you and have the same thought process as you, would be a great first step to enable a stronger more cohesive working culture in the future as you grow.
When your first layer of managers start to instill this layer of strategic execution, you will then get the chance
and opportunity to observe more mini you’s to appear in the company.
DAY 5 HAS COME, AND VC’S ARE A PITCHING! READ ALL ABOUT IT HERE ~
https://www.jasonlow.io/2023/05/25/journey-to-the-valley-day-5-are-you-a-startup-superhero/