1415T1g1 Silicon Valley/Participant Information/Reflection/8 Dec
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
Innov8 - A Tale of Marriages
Twilio - APIs for everyone
It always intriguing to think about how such a huge company like eBay and Paypal works. With operations and services worldwide, Paypal has established itself as one of the prime payment gateways for eCommerce. When our host, Shawn brought us around the company, the sheer size is overwhelming. Employees are all over the vicinity and the entire culture is very different from what we have in Singapore. In Singapore, we are required to be at our desk from 9am to 6pm, with an hour lunch break in the center. However, over at San Francisco, they don't practice such 'rules'. Work time is very flexible as long as the work you produced is of good quality and on time. Shawn was very open with us on the trend of Silicon Valley and the IT industry. It was indeed a wholesome experience to be hearing from someone with the real knowledge of working in San Francisco. This information can never be googled or simulated back in classrooms.
Usually, we would always hear about how companies or innovations expand to Singapore, but rarely the other way. Singtel Innov8 is a Venture Capitalist arm of the Singtel Group with $250 million worth in investments. It was a really meaningful session as the Managing Director of Innov8, Mr Jeff Karras shared with us his experience in the valley and what kind of start ups they are looking out for. It is rare to hear from a venture capitalist point of view on how they source for new ideas and innovations. An idea, no matter how good, requires proper financial support from people like Innov8 in order to make it far. As a result, it was important for us to understand the key areas that they are looking out for. One of the key phrases that Jeff mentioned is "fail early and move on". It is very important to keep ourselves in check so that we know when should we hold on to our ideas and when would be a good time to let it go. The earlier that you realised that you have failed, the better it will be for your next project or idea, as one usually won't make the same mistakes again. All in all, it was really an enriching session for us to hear from their point of view.
Interestingly, their business model is to sell APIs, which is a rarity even though APIs are in high demand nowadays. Even though they have yet to penetrate into Singapore's telecommunications market, they are very well-known in the IT industry and are even ranked to be the top few startups in Silicon Valley by Linkedin. It was fascinating to hear from them about how they managed to survive and thrive so well in Silicon Valley, where there are so many similar startups around. Their entire concept was very relevant to programmers like us, and we were able to relate to what they are doing and developing very easily. The tour around the office also demonstrated to us the culture of working in a startup in Silicon Valley. It is a very chilled and relaxed environment where they value quality more than quantity. One of the most alluring point that captured my attention was a framed pizzabox with scribblings. It was actually where the entire idea of Twilio was developed. It is very interesting to imagine how a group of like minded guys sit around the empty box and started to pen down their thoughts. As such, it struck me that it is very important to get like-minded and driven people in group in order to for a start up to be successful. The initial stage is where most of the magic happens.
