I must confess that the first time I traveled to Silicon Valley, ten years ago, I had no idea what it was. It is not a city and its name does not even appear on maps. It spans from Menlo Park to San Jose and currently includes the city of San Francisco. It is the headquarters of the best technology companies in the world like Facebook, Google, Twitter; the home of the most powerful investors; and the cradle of thousands of start-ups that aspire to change the world. Upon setting foot in Silicon Valley for the first time, something changed in my life. It was a new perspective, a new way of thinking, understanding business, relating, and growing professionally. I call it "the Disney World of the entrepreneur" because it reminds me of a theme park, where you are given a map at the entrance and you can see each themed area totally prepared to make your dreams come true.
In Silicon Valley, instead of children chasing their illusions, the protagonists are entrepreneurs. It has several themed areas: the investors' zone: the VCs —venture capitals—, the most important investors in the world have their office on Sunhill Road. It represents the largest concentration of investors on the planet and where the largest number of investment operations are closed. Another zone is that of knowledge, with Stanford University as the queen of the ball. It has been fundamental in the creation of this entrepreneurial ecosystem. Following the Silicon Valley map, the other zone is that of service providers, where lawyers, mentors, consultants, accelerators, and business incubators operate, dedicated to helping teams validate and grow their businesses by providing them with resources, and many times, money. The best known is Y Combinator. Everything is possible. Another zone is that of large technology companies. Google is buying a huge amount of land and real estate in the area, where corporations like Apple, Yahoo, Sales Force, Twitter, Facebook, the great innovative companies, can be visited. They started as start-ups and with great ideas until they became giants that feed and are fed by this brutal ecosystem. Most start-ups aim to be bought by these giants. Garages and coworkings, where work is done openly and collaboratively, house the more than 30,000 start-ups created in the Valley.
In San Francisco there is a neighborhood called Mission, below Market Street. It is a more picturesque neighborhood, full of hipsters, well I would say that all of San Francisco and the Valley is hipster, but it has a special and artistic air. As it is cheaper to live there, it is normal for so many start-ups and entrepreneurs to settle there and have redeveloped a neighborhood that had been poorer and remains unsafe. About 5,000 start-ups are created there every year and 85% die before five years. The other side is that it is the most difficult market in the world, one of the most expensive, mature and where only the best of the best win. Silicon Valley does not surprise with its aesthetic beauty. Coming from Barcelona, where architecture and history accompany you at every step, you only see industrial areas, secluded residential neighborhoods, and everything quite scattered, without personality. It is not like the charm of San Francisco, especially when the fog blurs its bridges. Its beauty lies in what its garages, university classrooms, cafes and glass buildings hide. People from all over the world come to be part of team USA and Silicon Valley welcomes them, as long as they have talent, of course. Innovating and the future are the key to a select and secret club. Everything is an incentive to work more and better, to deserve to be there. Smaller than one might think, it is a club only for those who are well connected. Entry is very difficult although networking is easy because there are more than a hundred events every day where you can try to find the right connections. People are very open, they will listen to you and help you, but only if you have something new to contribute.
The day I arrived in Silicon Valley, I went to the Keiretsu Forum office in San Francisco, located on Market Street. It's a tall glass building in the heart of the financial district. People wore jeans, informal, relaxed, despite moving multi-million dollar deals. I was dressed much more formally. Ten years ago in Spain, it wasn't as common to go to the office in a t-shirt and sneakers. I started working very hard with the team members to learn the methods and investment strategy of business angels, who are private investors who invest their own money in companies expecting a return on investment, and to be able to adapt it to the Spanish culture and reality of that time. The work was more open, efficient, focused, and motivating. I would have worked for free twenty hours a day just for the reward of feeling part of the team and the place. This more open and transparent way of working is now starting to be implemented in Spain, but ten years ago it wasn't like that. I was so impressed by the passion, talent, ambition, and strength, that I decided that one day I would live there. And so it happened when a few years later I moved to San Francisco as vice president of the multinational Scaale group, based in the city of fog.
I have adopted their work, meal, and leisure schedules. They seem much more efficient to me than ours in Spain. Back home, I follow my American schedule. By 7 or 8, you are already active with a coffee in hand, usually from Starbucks. Lunch is at 12 noon. In Silicon Valley, you can find food from all over the world, and people seem to really like Mexican, Chinese, Thai, and Indian food, which is not the same as what you find in Spain. Lunch is eaten in twenty minutes, and many, like me, in front of the computer: a salad, a sandwich, some Chinese food, or sushi in transparent plastic boxes. By five in the afternoon, everyone is already out of the office, but often they continue working. People go to the gym, have dinner very early, around six in the afternoon, and remain connected from home because connectivity is like a drug for all the crazy people in Silicon Valley.