Silicon Valley for Beginners – The Only Way to Do It is to Do It!

OPINION CONTRIBUTOR: Vidya Munde-Müller

I assume that it is a dream of many product managers, designers, developers, entrepreneurs and the would-be-entrepreneurs among others to work in Silicon Valley or at least to have seen it. Well, it is true for me! I love being a product manager and have always wanted to see the Silicon Valley up close. Thanks to my company, Deutsche Telekom AG and with special encouragements from my boss and his counterpart in the valley, I made it there on a 3 months’ job rotation. This is not an article as an expert but rather an outside-in perspective from me, especially seen from the german side. I invite you to share your opinion about the valley and how you see it.

Silicon Valley Crash Course for Beginners:

Before I dive into details about my life in the valley, I want to offer my very own crash course for the people who weren’t there but are planning to do so. Please plan more time if you want to explore the valley. It is a big territory including 30 or so cities, covering Cupertino, Los Gatos, Mountain View, San Jose, Santa Clara, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, etc. and off course San Francisco on its north tip. San Francisco alone is a huge tourist attraction taking some days to explore. Just see the map with some fun details thanks to my colleagues from Group Partnering.

Source: Google Maps, Silicon Index 2015, Wikipedia, A.T.Kearney analysis and DT Group Partnering team 

The geographical heart of the valley (or the bay area or the peninsula as some call it) is the Santa Clara County (which includes city of San Jose). Birthplace of Silicon Valley per Wiki is a garage in Palo Alto where Hewlett and Packard started HP. (Side note: if you want to see how the garage looked like, visit Stanford University Engineering Quad. There you will also find the first Google storage server among many other interesting exhibits).

The name “Silicon” Valley originated because of silicon chip manufacturers based in the region but now naturally everyone knows it as a Mecca of Innovation with all the top high-tech corporations located there. (Side note: if you want to see get the whole history on the rise of the valley do go to ‘Computer History Museum’ in Mountain View. It has tons of interesting artefacts and original exhibits like Apple I, Cray-1 supercomputer, the first iPhone and many more). 

It was at the Computer History Museum that I came to know of William Shockley who invented the early transistor and the traitorous eight who left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory and founded many remarkable companies like Fairchild Semiconductor, AMD, Intel etc. which eventually led to Silicon Valley being the hotbed of innovation. One of these traitorous 8 was Gordon Moore, who later founded Intel and we all know the Moore’s law, right?

Source: Computer History Museum, Mountain View

Moore’s “Law”: “The number of transistors incorporated in a chip will approximately double every 24 months.”

Getting Wiser in the Valley:

Another place that has influenced me a lot is Stanford university. In October 2015, I attended a graduation ceremony from ‘Innovation and Entrepreneurship Certificate’ course offered by the Graduate School of Business (GSB) at the Old Union Complex building in Stanford. I still have fond memories of the time I spent getting to know many of my fellow-students, the GSB staff, and one of my favourite thing was meeting with the Design Thinking faculty from the d. school - Jeremy Utley and Perry Kleban. I had interesting discussions with them on implementing design thinking with my own product at that time. But getting wiser at Stanford is quite costly. The costs for an MBA are in a range of 230.000 USDs for 2 years (that will get you a nice house in suburbs in Germany by the way) and for an undergrad program start at 70.000 USD for 1 year alone and there are 3 more years to cover! So not cheap by any standards but quite worth it if you can make Stanford’s 5 percent cut for admissions. So, getting in is not guaranteed. (Side note: By the way Design Thinking method is a must-know for any product manager. I strongly recommend it to create customer delight and it is my favorite user-driven-development tool for products. Please write to me a short message and I am willing to offer all that I know for free:-))

Source: Personal pic from Stanford GSB, a place of inspiration

Stanford has a one of the most beautiful university campuses with Spanish-architecture and beautiful palm trees, which should be on anyone’s list. I have seen both Oxford and Cambridge universities in England and they also have beautiful, old buildings but I think Stanford campus stupefied even my expectations and you can’t match anything else against those beautiful palm trees and clear blue skies!

Source: Personal pic of Stanford University from Hoover Memorial Bldg.

Quite a few high-tech corporations emerged here including Google, HP, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Yahoo etc. I found out that Elon Musk was a Stanford PhD student dropping out just after 2 days! He went on to start Zip2 and then PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla. Well, even 2 days at Stanford can help it seems:-) It is a place for inspiration and has many spots to sit around and reflect quietly on what high-tech company will start next. I recommend somewhere behind the Memorial Church? I am very lucky that one of my Group Partnering colleagues at Deutsche Telekom Inc. took time to give us a very detailed tour of Stanford as he was enrolled in an executive program and knew the university from inside. 

I admit here that I am a little biased towards Stanford university because of my previous experiences there but I had the great pleasure of being on UC Berkeley campus and it has a very vibrant and dynamic vibe. Especially the Free Speech Cafe spot is must visit for all. I sensed an awareness for climate change and other social issues which are crucial issues of our time (this also reflects the concerns of the more environment friendly and liberal people I met in the valley). Also, I did not expect at the beginning that Berkeley has 91 Nobel Laureates. What a great achievement! The parking lot picture says a lot, doesn’t it?

Source: Personal pic of UC Berkeley at Free Speech Movement (FSM) Café (searching for a summer job to save the planet)

Source: Personal pic of UC Berkeley parking (future parking spot!?!) 

Working in San Francisco:

So how was working in the SFO and valley? Firstly, I saw that most of tech people were dressed quite leisurely. There were no business outfits on the streets except maybe the people at the reception, who were more formally attired. I nearly never saw people in suits and ties except in the Financial district; proves that Finance is still a very conservative sector. Someone told me that all CEOs are in jeans and that you can forget getting money from Investors if you are in a conservative business outfit when you pitch your idea. This is apparently a major disqualifier! All this influenced me to buy my very first Nike (company founder Phil Knight studied at Stanford) sneakers and my colleagues can testify that I now dress very much in jeans and T-shirts instead of usual business suits I was accustomed to. I must admit that this is far more comfortable to be creative, which matches the demands of a product manager but it does make combos more time consuming. (Upside: it gets you integrated with nerds on the dev. team?)

I was posted in the Financial District (33 New Montgomery St.) and had one of those picture-perfect views, in ironically the “View” meeting room. Our company is on 20th floor and it is a great spot to hold a meeting. Quite impressive for most people who came there to see us and a great spot to arrange for Meetups, which we did?

Source: Personal pic of view from the “View” Meeting room in DT San Francisco office

I found that it was far easy to get in touch with people compared to back home in Germany. There is no big formality, a simple email or chat at a Meetup will do. It was a nice feeling that people want to get to know you and do not mind to network on LinkedIn. The startups are faster than traditional companies, they know that such contacts mean money. I also saw a mix of very young CEOs and older, mature CEOs so can’t say that all startups had young founders. There is no big hierarchy at the companies and that is also the spirit required for innovation. What was great, there were also many women founders/co-founders at many of these startups. I was so impressed that I even wrote my very first blog in LinkedIn on it - The highly impressive women I met in AI startup space in San Francisco.

(Side note: I don’t know about you but I was always unsure of my English-speaking skills even though I have been stamped as nearly native speaker within my German company. Well, I want to tell all those who are bit unsure of English skills, don’t be! I met with many CEOs, Founders, VPs in the valley and everything comes down your intention and your actions rather than your English. Nobody expects absolute fluency topped with an American accent (which I grew fond of once I understood it?)

I felt a positive spirit and the atmosphere is filled with ideas and pitches. I can safely say it is a place to start new trends (happily tasted one of the success stories in the valley - Blue bottled coffee in the Ferry Building). San Francisco is a busy place. Cafes are full of people starring at their laptops maybe starting the next Google or Apple. I was told that I would meet millionaires at Starbucks and would not be able to recognise them. So, in case I saw some, I surely did not guess that they are millionaires! My colleague in Germany told me to watch for people wearing costly, limited edition sneakers. So, next time I know who the next person in line with me at Starbucks or Peet’s Coffee is! There are so many events revolving around startups - startup battles, incubators, shark tanks, basecamps, Meetups, technology conferences etc. and you feel the daily hustle in the city with the billboards and taxi ads everywhere. This is what it feels like and it is something you get addicted to. Kind of builds pressure on you to get into the race!

I used Caltrain (which runs through the Valley) often to go to Mountain View or Palo Alto or San Jose. It is a great train and has beautiful coaches minus the leg space (uncomfortable if you are 6 foot plus). Also, I missed Wi-Fi on board. Don’t know their plans but sincerely hope that they improve on that. Lot of people use this train daily to commute to Google, Facebook, Apple etc. So, you see people working on their laptops even in such confined space or in most cases head tilted down viewing their iPhones (future back pains are guaranteed!)

Source: Caltrain stations from caltrain.com, your ride in the valley 

I think I covered many AI conferences during my time in San Francisco. It was easy to chat with people. Well in my case I even dared and took selfies with Peter Norvig (Director of Research at Google Inc.) and Anthony Goldbloom (Founder of Kaggle which was recently bought by Google) during a Bootstrap AI conference. Investors/ VCs are approachable during such conferences so there is chance for anyone trying to pitch their ideas. I am fond of reflecting back on these carefree times where networking was the top most point on my agenda and it is so much fun! I also learned a ton of stuff and what was happening in the valley. Well, as someone who is a AI-Enthusiast, I felt a certain comfort that AI is one of the biggest trends there. This was confirmed when I visited one of these valley Technology Trend conferences in Santa Clara and everyone voted on the trend “Neural Nets/ Tiny brains in Everything” which was proposed by VC Steve Jurvetson (Investor in Tesla, SpaceX, Nervana Systems among eminent companies).

Source: The most voted top technology trend from Churchill Club was Nr. 7, Santa Clara (everyone agrees, right?)

I know the flip side is that AI can make people uncomfortable. So much so that I have written a blog on this development together with my SVP from the valley – Like every revolution before, AI will kill jobs in the short term! - do check it out and post your opinion!

Source: My second LinkedIn article on AI revolution (looking forward to your opinion!)

Living in San Francisco:

Living is very costly in San Francisco and around. There is a housing crisis. The rent for my 1-bedroom furnished apartment was horrendous. I am lucky that my company paid for my stay. It is simply unfordable with a normal salary. I did hear that people get roommate(s) or corporate housing. I have even heard of people living in vans. Is that true? 

I stopped cooking after a month or so of living in San Francisco. I found cooking meant that I had to buy at a supermarket which was costly if I wanted organic at Whole Foods and it did not save me money. It was so much easier to take a great salad home or order something from Uber Eats. It saved time and money and plus the food in San Francisco is so great! So, I do not recommend cooking if you are alone, unless that is your passion. But I would recommend Trader Joe’s for groceries and great wine/beer. It is kind of discounter for organic food and I found most of the things I wanted to cook. But it was rather difficult to find my beloved Indian spices. I heard that I could have found them in plenty in Berkeley. I never found out the truth about that. Maybe next time! 

Traveling within the city is easy with Muni or BART but I also recommend using Uber for transport because not everything is so well connected. It is so easy to use (great user experience, well done POs at Uber!) and very reliable. I was happy with the service and found most of the drivers very friendly. Furthermore, it is a great way to feel the steep streets of San Francisco (like the Filbert Street between Leavenworth and Hyde with more than 31.5% grade!) where you just hope and pray that the brakes work. It is a cheap way to get your adrenalin up!

I recommend going out on the weekends to get a feel of the night life. There are so many great bars and pubs. I was living near Mission district so there is some amazing food on Valencia street. San Francisco is great at night and to see the Ferry Building or Bay bridge at night is a must! (Side note: Just be careful of walking alone in SOMA (6th and 7th street) or Tenderloin at night. Stick to the main roads if it is too late. I personally never had a problem but there are lot of people with crack and it feels uncomfortable. Better take Uber or Lyft!) Haight and Castro neighbourhoods offer their vibe to the night life. If you want more wine culture do visit Napa Valley or Sonoma – a must for wine-lovers. Furthermore, there are so many beautiful coffee places in the region for coffee lovers so there is no is no shortage of great coffee. This is inherent part of the Silicon Valley culture. So much so that companies like Google experiment and brew their own coffee! 

One of the negative aspects to live very near Market Street is seeing many homeless people. I feel sorry to see so many of them and asked myself often, how can it be that there are so many millionaires and billionaires in this town and yet this problem cannot be not solved. It was one of those unfair things that stick in your head and do not leave you. I also recollect smell of Marijuana in the air when I was on the Market street. It is a part of city culture (legal use) and one gets used to it after some time.

Things I took back with me home:

The City and the Bridge: There are many places to see in San Francisco and honestly, I don’t know where to start. So, I will list all that I can think of: Embarcadero, Fisherman’s wharf, Pier 39, Lombard Street (great to drive down the crookedest street in the world), Alcatraz, Twin peaks, Lands’ End Trail, Painted Ladies, China Town (which is even bigger than LA China Town) etc. etc. Just missed not getting a good LTE signal everywhere in the city (forget national parks outside SFO like the Muir Woods where there is absolutely no mobile signal to call Uber. Trapped!). I found better LTE coverage in Germany! But the central attraction rightfully is the Golden Gate bridge. I must admit that I never got tired of looking at the Golden Gate bridge. It is awesome! Try to drive on Highway 1, it is a dream!

(Side note: If you have time, try the beach yoga once on Baker Beach at sunset to get this beautiful, life-changing view of the Pacific and the Golden Gate) 

Source: Bay city guide (Neighbourhoods)

Source: Personal pic of the majestic Golden Gate!

The people: I had great fun interacting with many people at different events and at work. I found it easy to chat and network with them. They carry a spark in them that everything is possible, given time and money. I had a feeling that they try very hard to succeed and are not afraid of failure. So, they grab every opportunity they get. There is courage to try out new ideas, many CEOS I met are serial entrepreneurs. Failing is not so bad and the Valley forgives you for that but not trying is worse! I feel the same and I am “biased towards action” (also a Design Thinking principles) that I try to live by daily. Justifiably, one of my favorite spots in Stanford University was the Hasso Plattner School of Design or d. school. It is a very inspirational place for me personally as a great Design Thinking fan myself. 

I think this picture speak as to what is important.

Source: d.school gallery at Stanford university (personal inspiration)

Computer History Museum: I am big fan of going to museums and I loved being at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. It is must visit for all and has so much to offer! Do try to visit it (even for non-nerds or -geeks). It helps explain the beginnings of the valley as we know it. I promise you will not be disappointed. I intend to go there again next time.

Source: First iPhone, Computer History Museum, Mountain View (inspiring, ain’t it?)

Meetups as Door Opener: Another thing I took back with me is the experience of going on “Meetups”. There is a Meetup for nearly every topic you can imagine. This is the most perfect way to network and find your next co-founder! Great place to chat on a Meetup topic with like-minded, highly skilled people. Most of the time we got free pizza and wine/beer, awesome! It is a good marketing instrument for startups because they can show their offices and cause more buzz for their products and acquire newbies. I learned that you had great chance to get a job if you were physically in the bay area. Seems like the bay area hires people from bay area, is it true? 

Source: A Meetup at Salesforce

The Future: In one of the conferences on trends I came to know of the top trend in the next 3-5 years. I did write about it in one of the paragraphs above. But here is a short repetition: The Deep Edge: Embedding of Inference Engines/ Neural Nets / Tiny Brains in Everything. Furthermore, the Facebook F8 conference, which I briefly attended confirmed my work direction for the coming years. This trend is relevant to my field of work and I am trying to learn as much about AI, Data Science and the applications. Please feel free to chat with me on this. What is your opinion?

Source: Facebook F8 at San Jose

Micro-cultures: There are so many micro-cultures in the valley but somehow all of them fit very well in one another. The cafés are filled with people working on their laptops to chisel out a new and cool idea to change the world. The Google campus is another great spot in Mountain View which I will always remember especially riding the cool Google bike. Thanks to a personal contact with a Google engineer, a colleague of mine and myself made it inside Google and were awestruck with how much Google offers its employee! So many perks! I am thankful to Google for a free cappuccino and smoothie on their campus (which resembles a small city) and I promise to pay it back if anyone from Google visits me at our Deutsche Telekom campus in Darmstadt (it is also called Telekom city by the way). Open invitation!

Source: Biking on Google campus (the bike was really comfortable, thanks Google!)

Diversity: I saw a lot of diversity and find that is good for the valley. So many young and dynamic people wanting to change the world. No wonder it has a magical pull on people. In my opinion, the internal Google memo (link) criticising the efforts to promote diversity has been rightfully deemed offensive by Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google. Personally, this is a question of priority and what to do with your life. Technology sector has been always difficult for women but there are so many great women founders nowadays. Just go through my blog on this and share your opinion. I completely believe that when women achieve critical mass in Technology sector, the coin will turn and we will be talking about supporting men in technology!

The Myth of Steve Jobs: As I said before I love being a product person and Steve Jobs has made a great impression on me as a PO. My favorite quote is “stay hungry, stay foolish” from him along with the Misfits campaign (Apple Misfits Ad ) from Apple. I remember showing the video to my boss who said it inspired him and defined his own role with such a big company – so we are bunch of Misfits ourselves! The reason I write this is that I did not have time to explore the life of Steve Jobs in the valley. I wanted to see where he grew up and started Apple. Next time perhaps. The two films about him from Aston Kutcher and Michael Fassbender (born in Heidelberg, Germany) must suffice this time.

Source: Goalcast, Internet

Deutsche Telekom Inc.: I had great time working in DT San Francisco office with the colleagues and greatly indebted to them for making my stay enjoyable. We had a table-tennis table in our office and I miss the camaraderie and the fun playing table-tennis in the evenings to blow off some steam! I also miss visiting startups and getting the vibe. They generally have some giveaways and I remember collecting T-Shirts from startups which I wear sometimes to our office in Germany.

California Dreamin’ and Summer of Love: If you visit the de Young Fine Arts museum, you will get a Summer of Love feeling. They are exhibiting art, fashion, rock & roll there and although I wasn’t around in 1967 to experience it myself I lived it through the music. A colleague introduced me to the music from that time and I immediately became fond of the music. The Mamas & the Papas are my favourites, who knew!

Source: Personal pic from de Young Museum, San Francisco

The Food and Night Life: Don’t miss out going out in San Francisco and enjoy the food and drinks at cool bars. I have posted my views on it before so will not go into details and fill in too much recommendations because that would make for a separate article! But just be aware that you will not remain rich if you go out every other day (food and drinks are quite costly depending on where you go). 

Failure: As much as I laud the successes of the Valley, there is also a dark side. There is lot of job insecurity as it is relatively easy to fire people. There is also a lot of job-hopping especially within millennials. During my stay, Twitter had cut workforce, Uber was involved in many cases of sexual harassment and when I came back the Uber CEO was kicked out of the company. There are also ‘yuge’ (to pronounce Bernie Sanders) fails if you consider ventures such as Juicero (crazy if you see how many millions were invested by most well-known investors like Kleiner Perkins, Google ventures etc. This just shows that we hear of the 1 startup like Google or AirBnB which made it but forget that the statistics for starting a new company and bringing it till an IPO are brutal. More than 90% startups fail.

“Alles kocht mit Wasser” (just like “they still put their pants on one leg at a time”): What I mean is that Talent is everywhere but if you see the perks that are provided in the valley and the access to venture capital, you start understanding why the valley is such a hotbed for innovation. Top that with a great mindset and diversity and you get the key ingredient for entrepreneurship. The valley is also always in search of the super talented people. Stanford has consistently provided many of the stars. There are lot of international people (not only americans) who make it here by pitching their ideas and start businesses. You can get a visa to work in your own company. Well maybe it changes now due to the new policies of Donald Trump. Wait and see. Did I think that the talent there was better that what I saw here in Germany? Well I would say it was more the mindset (naturally people there had some great qualifications) but what was more important was the right mindset. I encourage the German companies to invest in their employees and give them space to be creative. One important thing is to flatten hierarchies to encourage more engagement.

Source: Personal pic from the road in San Francisco

What did I miss out on?

I am 100% sure that there are many other things that I did not catch during my stay so I invite you all to comment on what I should see next. I leave you all with some lyrics from Sentimental Journey from Doris Day. I hope to make it soon to the valley to renew old memories. 

Gonna take a sentimental journey

Gonna set my heart at ease

Gonna make a sentimental journey

To renew old memories

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PS: Silicon Valley vs. Silicon Alley. What is your opinion? Technically it could be more appealing as only 6 hours’ flight from FRA to NYC! 

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About Me

My name is Vidya and I have 12 years work experience in different business fields and sectors. Starting as a software developer and tester, I landed on my dream job as a product manager about five years back. Since then I am working at Deutsche Telekom AG (7th largest Telco provider in the world) in Darmstadt, Germany. My two favourite fields are AI and Design Thinking and my goal is to combine these to give the users the best experience as possible. 

I come from a humble background and have lived in Pune (India) slums the first years of my life, which is the reason why I want to help as many people as possible in my life and make the world a fairer place for us all. My uneducated parents encouraged me to study (a good decision looking back). My two fields of focus for social entrepreneurship are Environment and Education and next year I intend to start building a reading room for girls in a village in India to support female empowerment. I am working on another social idea (coming soon!)

In my spare time, I aim to help new startups to get on the AI bus and use Design Thinking (Design Sprint) and other methods to better understand the customers. I love coffee and offer a free chat on the topics (Design Thinking, AI, Data Science) in return of a coffee? I love to network so please connect with me on LinkedIn (link to profile) and Twitter (@Vids_Mueller). Cheers (or rather ‘Prost’) to interesting ideas and conversations!

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