Difference between revisions of "1415T1g1 Silicon Valley/Participant Information/Reflection/8 Dec"
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| − | <div style="font-size: 20px"> | + | <div style="font-size: 20px">Day 2: PayPal, Innov8 and Twillo</div> |
| − | <div> | + | <div> The first day of company visits! I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who was excited to see the companies. Our first stop was at PayPal. The panels of glass that surrounds the office bears an uncanny resemblance to Apple’s HQ. Shawn, a mobile developer in PayPal soon ushered us in and we were treated to a PayPal presentation that’s usually only shown to enterprises. With fluid transitions and real use cases, the sales guys wowed us. They claim that all of what they’ve shown us being live tested as they speak. However, no one knows if it’s going to be successful or not. Some interesting use cases were beacons and check-ins for a more personalised experience. And it ended off with a day in the life of an ideal use case. Impressive, for sure. But realistic? Debatable. Shawn then talked about his own experience working in Silicon Valley. Being really frank, he missed those times when he was still working in a startup. He lamented that things moved slower in big companies (such as PayPal). Anyone could surmise that he didn’t really like working at Paypal. But he loves working in the Valley compared to Singapore so he’s probably gonna stay. If there’s one thing that I can take away from his experience, it’s that more learning comes from working in a startup then in a big corporation. Of course, it’s tougher too but that’s life isn't it. |
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| + | We then visited Innov8. Interesting place. When we went there, it was a pretty empty office. Then we saw 2 guys popped out from the staircase and we soon realised that they are the only 2 people working here. It’s a venture capital arm of Singtel after all. Generally VCs are lean but control a large amount of capital. From what they say, Innov8 is doing pretty well. What was interesting to me was that Innov8 measures of success need to be tied to Singtel, albeit vaguely at times. So if one day I have a company that might be of some help to Singtel, Innov8 is probably the best way to go. | ||
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| + | Last stop of the day was Twillo. I’ve came across their API a couple of times while browsing the web and I can’t believe I’m now at their office. Peter, a well-built guy in an orange shirt, greeted us. From Singapore many years ago, he seemed to have lost the Singaporean accent only having worked at Twillo for a year and a half. The presentation seems like a sales pitch and it didn’t really help me understand the company more than I already do. I mean I could probably get what he said from the Twillo website. That said, the walk around the premises does offer a glimpse of the benefits of working in a SF startup. Free food, pingpong, work-life balance are just some of the perks of working in Twillo. Working with amazing people is probably another unspoken perk. Peter said that he still “worked” during Chinese New Year partly because he cared about his project and the company. That’s true isn't it? If everyone is as passionate about the project as you, wouldn’t you enjoy working too? </div> | ||
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Revision as of 03:51, 10 December 2014
We then visited Innov8. Interesting place. When we went there, it was a pretty empty office. Then we saw 2 guys popped out from the staircase and we soon realised that they are the only 2 people working here. It’s a venture capital arm of Singtel after all. Generally VCs are lean but control a large amount of capital. From what they say, Innov8 is doing pretty well. What was interesting to me was that Innov8 measures of success need to be tied to Singtel, albeit vaguely at times. So if one day I have a company that might be of some help to Singtel, Innov8 is probably the best way to go.
Last stop of the day was Twillo. I’ve came across their API a couple of times while browsing the web and I can’t believe I’m now at their office. Peter, a well-built guy in an orange shirt, greeted us. From Singapore many years ago, he seemed to have lost the Singaporean accent only having worked at Twillo for a year and a half. The presentation seems like a sales pitch and it didn’t really help me understand the company more than I already do. I mean I could probably get what he said from the Twillo website. That said, the walk around the premises does offer a glimpse of the benefits of working in a SF startup. Free food, pingpong, work-life balance are just some of the perks of working in Twillo. Working with amazing people is probably another unspoken perk. Peter said that he still “worked” during Chinese New Year partly because he cared about his project and the company. That’s true isn't it? If everyone is as passionate about the project as you, wouldn’t you enjoy working too?
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!
Start-Up Spirit
The main thing I learnt from the companies we visited is not something specific, but a spirit. It is mind blowing to see people actually work and live with such a different mindset. There are people who thinks Paypal is going to fall soon and wants to join a startup. There are people who have already quit a top 10 rising startup to join a new startup with only 3 to 5 people. The people in the valley are not afraid of failure and risk, new ideas and failures are highly appreciated. Jeff, one of our hosts from Innov8, actually explains the reason behind this, “people in the valley think of ways to bring you up when you are in trouble, but people from other places think of ways to pull you down. Everyone in the valley is trying to give back to the community.” There is no doubt that all the young people dare to try any new ideas and this provides more chances of success and lead to the overall success of the valley.
Working Culture
Another different mindset they have is judging by result, not the appearance of working. Most companies have no fix working hours, you propose the work that you are going to finish this week and you schedule your own working time. This makes me think why most companies follow a strict working hours at the first place, isn’t the quantity and quality of the work done more important to the company rather than the appearance of working?
Personally, the atmosphere here really makes you want to start up your own companies. In the valley, you feel everything is possible and you can be the next one that change the whole world.
Today's trip to PayPal and was an eye-opener and quite a reflection by itself. As the host was explaining the different possibilities of PayPal's initiative - of course it was marketing talk but as he went on with his talk it did open my eyes to possibilities of the future of payments. However, it made me reflect on my experience interning at an ERP provider - my CEO, the first SISS president always believed in creating a complete ecosystem of ordering. First of all, I thought that it was a bad idea for PayPal to have another application to manage inventory. It would take a lot of money and convincing of the companies to change to a system that PayPal uses. At the same time however, if companies do not jump on to the latest trends of payments (PayPal and also Apple Pay for a start) they might lose out - Like Kodak who claim that Digital Photography is a trend. One thing interesting that I found interesting is that there are many options from PayPal and Apple. But these are the two only companies dealing with payments. Could there be a brain drain in payments, or are we already at the final frontier for payments? It was also interesting to talk to the host. He kept saying that he wanted to leave PayPal and look for another start up because in a start up you take ownership of your work, there’s visibility and you are passionate in your work and the ‘product’ you own. I too feel the same way – as an Intern at a startup as a Linux Sys Admin(DevOps) I take ownership of different products and I can relate totally to the host. Up to today, I don’t think I want to work for a big company. I want to find a startup that I can hone my skills and help the startup grow and hopefully cash out.
Visiting a VC – Well that was probably the only time I have ever been in a VC. Singtel’s direction in moving towards a global presence is quite interesting. For Singapore’s only telecom provider in the olden days to one of the few companies who’s from Singapore and moving in to the global location of Silicon Valley. Visiting a VC was quite an eye opener – while all of us want to visit a start up and probably own a start up, we do need a VC one day to fund us. I asked that if VCs are relevant in today’s era of crowd funding. As mentioned by the host, it is important to note that a lot of VCs are avoiding companies that are making hardware – this is where crowd funding come in. in a way VCs are looking for things that will last in the long run, by being easily changing it(software) reiterating it. it’s true today that the hardware becomes ‘irrelevant’ software changes everything and has been setting the direction. For example, Apple’s iPhone – while the hardware is good, the software is awesome – SDK that allows limitless options when developing apps, good user experience etc.
Lastly, Twilio’s visit was really my first visit to an proper start up – the start up that I really want to be in, open concept, free drinks(ahem, some ahem big MNC only had a vending machine) makes the MNC look funny. Sometimes when we work it’s about the quality of work and if your work is done – not about the hours you put in it the company. Having perks in the company will definitely help the younger generation of workers who don’t believe in wearing a suit and tie(heck I don’t even believe in wearing one for even the most important presentation) it’s not about what you wear, or how you smell or about how you walk, but it’s about the quality of work you do. Take Twilio for example this is exactly what they believe in. and they are not one of the top few startups in the world according to Linkedin. As we are moving towards an impatient world(my 3g is sooo slow, 4g better) a company that can meet the client/market needs by having the right people. And the right people are essentially more important than the CEO – so the companies got to love them and respect them, give them the perks. A person’s idea can only go so far – it’s the human assets that make a person realize his dreams. So treat them right – if they want to wear crocs to work let them be! If they don’t even want to wear clothes, let them be! Twilio is just that and that company looks like an awesome company to work for.
