Difference between revisions of "1415T1g1 Silicon Valley/Participant Information/Reflection/8 Dec"
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| + | PayPal was an eye opener. As the first company for TSM Silicon Valley, it was spectacular, and the visitor tour was amazing. I learned a lot from the tour itself and where the direction of PayPal is heading to. The tour emulates the actual scenario of a user well, like our IDP module, it was really relatable to me. The question and answer segment was awesome and it was very interactive with Shaun. I had a lot of insights of PayPal from the inside and outside. | ||
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| + | Innov8 is an interesting aspect in the valley, it is a venture capitalist company in the tech sector which is backed by Singtel. Jeff from Innov8 is no doubt a very experienced professional and has very good insights over the various sector. Even though the office of Innov8 did not show much as they recently moved into the new location, it was a very insightful time with him. I further understand the importance of a venture capital companies for startups </div> | ||
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==<div>Brandon</div>== | ==<div>Brandon</div>== | ||
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Revision as of 02:21, 10 December 2014
PayPal was an eye opener. As the first company for TSM Silicon Valley, it was spectacular, and the visitor tour was amazing. I learned a lot from the tour itself and where the direction of PayPal is heading to. The tour emulates the actual scenario of a user well, like our IDP module, it was really relatable to me. The question and answer segment was awesome and it was very interactive with Shaun. I had a lot of insights of PayPal from the inside and outside.
Our visit to Paypal was a particularly interesting and engaging experience, we visited their showroom on their current and future developments and were pretty blown away by how our two showroom host, Eric & Michael, presented all the new up and coming features that Paypal are working on providing. The most impressive feature which showed us were the integration of their Paypal application with the POS systems in which they are trying to provide a more hands-free and friction-less kind of customer experience to the future customers (through the use of a bluetooth beacon). The entire experience at Paypal i believe for most of us can be summarized by 3 letters IDP (Interactive Design & Prototyping) which most of us took this semester. Paypal gave us a industry level showcase of many concepts that we learnt in class such as personas, scenarios, context & presentation of our work.
Singtel Innov8 was completely different experience from Paypal, We had two great hosts, Jeff & Daryl, who shared with us what Singtel Innov8 is about and how they function as a venture capital firm. Our team were able to have a very meaningful Q&A session with our host, conversing about a wide spectrum of topics ranging from how venture capitals work to what are the new technologies that they are looking into in the future.
Twilio i believe was the highlight of the day, we were hosted by Peter (a fellow Singaporean working here) and he gave us a pretty thorough run through of the entire company and its services which left us pretty much only personal questions such as what the company culture was like etc to ask. I was particularly impressed by the entire culture and the environment of the company, how it functions, how they encourage their employees to explore and provide the more self-driven environment to their employees. The company seem to give a very welcoming and warm working environment where everyone knows everyone and are mostly self-driven but yet towards the company's main objective. The most memorable thing at the company i believe was the pizza box framed up at the entrance, with the initial brainstormed ideas of what Twilio was going to be scribbled on top of them by the founding fathers of the company. Back in my mind i could picture a few guys sitting by a box of pizza in one of their garages and brainstorming of an idea to start their company with, it really showed me how any ideas that we can think of at any time might be small or unrealistic at that time but given some time and effort it could be made into a brilliant idea such as Twilio
PayPal - One of the largest e-commerce companies
What I learnt about PayPal is that despite the market leader in internet payments, they are still looking for ways in which to stay ahead of their competitors (though their attitude about it is slightly less urgent than the small startups trying to break into the industry). The eBay and PayPal showcase of their ongoing projects was an eye-opener for me and it was especially memorable because we could see applications of certain things like personas/scenarios/use cases that we learnt in our Interaction Design and Prototyping module being put into an actual context. Since many of us recently took the module, it was fresh on our minds and very relatable. We were all awed by the presenters' fantastic presentations and how easy their application was to understand. However, some of us did think that the applications they came up with were mostly good-to-haves with a few non-obvious loopholes (why not just use paywave for quick payment insead?) and they were still far from game-breaking concepts we were expecting to see. Nevertheless it showed us things beyond what we could just learn in a classroom such as the usage of personas and scenarios being put into action in a presentation and so it was a really valuable experience for us.
innov8 - Venture Company by Singtel
The visit to innov8 was a rather informative session where we learnt much about the work of a venture capitalist company. We learnt about Silicon Valley having the right culture and the right infrastructure that eventually breeds success that continues other cycles that lead to more success. The team at innov8 also mentioned about their company selection process and how they tend to look out for and choose to capitalize on good situations whereby the right team comes along with the right idea at the right time. Partnerships between VCs and the company they invest in is like one of marriage - whether you like it or not you will be stuck in it long-term, thus why they choose to reject great ideas if they do not think they can work with the team that came up with it. There were also insights about how we should not worry about failing as failing is normal and even the investors expect failures to happen (but they also expect one to learn something out from it)! However, one is expected to fail fast so time and money is not wasted. And if one learns nothing after failing many times, he continues to waste time and money. Much like how we should not have functional fixation on designing applications, we should also not be fixated on one single product. It was a pretty educational experience here as there were too many things that we learnt which we would not have known about unless we went through the process ourselves.
Twilio - a Rising Startup
My main takeaway from Twilio is that a customer-centric company has it much better in a country like America where the consumers are more vocal and more willing to provide constructive feedback. With good feedback, the company is able to improve on their products and give consumers even greater quality products. We also learnt that people in Silicon Valley are more likely to tell us about the positives and how one is capable of succeeding, whereas people in Singapore or Asian countries in general will be quicker to put you down on your risky endeavors. Twilio itself may not be the best example of such situations however, as in its early days, many people mentioned that they were merely providing APIs and not an actual product and that it was never going to succeed. Turns out, by providing great documentation and making APIs easy for use was a great move. Recently, Twilio even ended up becoming one of the best startups in Silicon Valley. Twilio is currently primed for even more success as they expand their reach to more countries and more developers start to use Twilio for telecommunication in their projects. The most respectful aspect of Twilio is how they provide incredible service by going out of the way and taking the initiative to help you in your Twilio-related projects. It is a great way to not only build relationships with their users but also score points with potential users as they would feel much more inclined to try Twilio's API with the quick help and good customer experience. Most importantly, I can't wait to incorporate Twilio into my next project!
