The newest IT trends straight from Silicon Valley

In the beginning of March, 2012, there was a tour to the center of modern information technologies - Silicon Valley, USA.

The participants were the heads of Russian and Ukrainian companies: GC “Askon”, “Mind Labs”, “Nova Poshta”, “Kievstar”. Dmitriy Bondar, FASTFORWARD Director, and Vera Shatskaya, FASTFORWARD Sales Manager, were learning leading companies experience together with the participants of the tour. 

Organizer:  - FastForward

Instead of introduction

The tour to the Silicon Valley is one of the most popular in FASTFORWARD line. There are 2-3 of such tours per year. And every time Silicon Valley surprises! Different companies, speakers and questions were seen by participants during the tour.

Silicon Valley: UC Berkeley campus and  Innovation Way

As usual, our old partner, Professor Barton Lee, opened the tour. He presented the scheme of the Silicon Valley’s ecosystem, in details told about the cooperation of different business companies and government institutions, about the influence of research institutes, what are the venture funds and startup-incubators, about the place that networking holds in Silicon Valley life. Only several hours of communication with professor and it becomes clear that Silicon Valley is where the World Learns First new approaches to innovation.

Professor also brought out the most significant and popular trends in IT industry development. He pointed on mobile technologies and variety of PC technologies (Apps, iPhone, Google, Android, iPad, Kindle), social networks and Web 2.0, development of gaming industry, crowdsourcing and cloud technologies. Social Curation was also brought out as significant trend (Pinterest, Tumblr).

Forward and up from the start. Breathing in life into startups

It is quite easy to start a business in Silicon Valley. Much harder is to make it a multimillion income source. The genius idea is very important in business, but the implementation of this idea demands a lot of effort.

Nikolay Mityushin, ABRT Venture Fund Investment Director, presented several ways to manage startups. During the meeting he shared several patterns, which can be used for management and developing startups. 

Entrepreneur

There are two spread points of view. The first one says that entrepreneurship is an art and successful startup is the fruit of its creator’s imagination, where intuition is the main part and there are no rules. The second one insists that entrepreneurship is a science and there are certain patterns with which we can lead the idea to the successful implementation.

“We can repeat startup that once worked”, - says Nikolay and during the meeting he gave several examples of the main technologies, which can be used for analysis and management of startup business models. “8 boxes” and SPACE were among them. With those examples Nikolay showed how we can change the image of the product and manage sale and marketing channels by using cleaver analysis of customers’ portrait and needs. 

Within the scope of meetings with Valley entrepreneurs, one rule becomes clear: at first your mind is focused on start and development of some idea, making it possible to earn money, and only after that you think of using serious investments to develop your idea and to make it a serious business.

Some of participants admit that this is the completely different thinking compared to Russian and Ukrainian, where a lot of entrepreneurs during long months or years are trying to work out one genius product, which will become leading at once. But while our entrepreneurs are thinking of something cool, those guys form Silicon Valley are earning millions. 

There are a lot of business-incubators in Silicon Valley that helps young startupers to develop their ideas and to move it to certain business-model. This time our group visited 500 Startups business-incubator, which works with companies at the early stage of financing – the limits are from $10 000 to $250 000. One of the partners of this incubator made us an excursion and told about work scheme in details.

The incubator occupies one floor in business center. There are workrooms for startupers where they work on their projects. The work scheme is quite simple: for three months teems are having tutorial program and making their ideas into certain complete business model. After those three months it becomes clear either they need to come up with some other idea or it is time to move to the next level – to turn to venture funds. 

Over 160 experienced advisors from all over the world work with this incubator. Those people are successful businessmen, who facilitate young startupers development for free, teach them entrepreneurship and business management.

Experienced and young Valley players

The tour program included learning of the experienced companies’ practices. The participants met the representatives from Microsoft and Juniper.

The meeting with Microsoft was in sales and development office. It was a natural dialog in free discussion format. We discussed such questions as cloud technology based innovations, we asked about the future Office 360, company organizational structure, ways of people retention and methods of selling the complicated solutions to corporate clients.

An interesting solution for raising the sales effectiveness is Server Technologies and Solutions Center we were able to see. This is the room where client can test some technological solutions and decide whether this solution helps him to solve business tasks. 

Juniper Office. 

In Juniper participants met the sector chief Andrey Titov. In the course of the meeting one of the main theme was the correlation between product management, sales and developers teem. In the end everybody sorted out typical work scheme where product manager is a very important section that is responsible for competent marker and trend analysis and together with the sales team studies clients’ needs. He is responsible for new product introduction and sets the tasks to developers.

Also while discussing the personnel work effectiveness it was very valuable to hear the American pragmatic point of view. According to Titov the principle “one owes nothing to anybody” works in here. Every employee has resource, can communicate with colleagues and his boss in order to achieve his goal. If you aren’t able to achieve this goal the company easily say goodbyes to you even if you are the leader of the highest level.

After meeting serious IT companies it was interesting to visit Twitter’s office in San-Francisco. Twitter is a young company with light and pleasant atmosphere. We were amazed by the company workers. They are kind and nice, wear colorful t-shirts and sneakers. Birds – the symbol of the company – are stuck everywhere. And there is always a lot of food. 

During the meeting we were escorted by Marketing Department Chiefs, who were sharing their plans about collaboration with corporate clients. It was very interesting to discuss the corporate culture. We learned that Twitter have started giving a lot of attention to this problem. Together with employees they formed the company key values list. Now everyone in the company decorates his workplace with stokers, where those values are printed.

Education in Silicon Valley

The tour participants visited two famous universities - Berkeley and Stanford.

Berkeley is the famous entrepreneurship and computer science center. While being on its territory you have a feeling that this is a serious university, which is prospering, but there is no dust on it compared to many Russian and Ukrainian universities 

We had a meeting with one of Berkeley Professors – Entrepreneurship Center Chief. His lecture was really interesting. He said that sales era had changed. For example, when notebook is being sold the program solution developer gets more than producer of the device. We should sell problem solution not the product because now customers don’t want to buy big box with some interesting device, they want to ease tasks and save time. 

Stanford and UC Berkeley

In Stanford University we were able to feel the atmosphere that helps to create suitable environment for carrying different researches and developing fantastic ideas in different branches of science. 

Resources

During the trip participants also met venture capital experts. Due to some point venture funds are matchmakers for entrepreneurs and investors. They are cynical and pragmatic. While talking to them you should know who is your client, what market are you going to conquer (at least $100 millions) and how fast are going to move.

If those question are clear than business core can be subscribed in 30 seconds. It is a very important skill for those entrepreneurs, who want to get investment. If after 30 second presentation your idea seems interesting, you will have the chance to continue negotiation and get some investment. 

But money is not the main point. Natalia Krol has 30 years of experience in Executive search and personnel problems. She told about wars for talents in Silicon Valley. The competition for personnel you can win for account of attractive business idea or offering a share in startup. Big salary and social security won’t amaze anybody.

Big companies offer their workers future startup creation training. This item is really interesting for employees. They are ready to bring benefit for their company knowing that company will give them an opportunity to be one step closer to their dream. 

News from IT industry giants

Facebook moved to new office. Our group was one of the first who met company representatives in new place. Company development speed is amazing. Every day it proves wise tale: if you want to move forward you have to run. The history of Science Micro System is a proof for this, by the way now Facebook occupies its building.

The atmosphere in the company one can call the light community of creative young people. Environment is least regulate compared to Google. It is cool to work in Facebook now, many want to work here. All rooms have bright uncommon design. There are huge displays in the hall that help to book rooms for work and meetings. 

Facebook

Social networks are the synonym for development. Here you can try and start many things. Generally everything is cool and cheerful, but each one has his own task to complete by the end of the day. If in morning you play tennis than you will have to work in evening and there is also a possibility that you have to stay for the night. There all possible resources for you to create your own schedule according to your needs in the office. But everybody understands that there is work you need to do even if nobody controls your every move. That is why there is so few people in the entertaining center in the middle of the work day.

Google day

This company is like some other dimension. The world of Google is very various so we decided to give it the whole day.

If you want to describe Google with one sentence it would be “We just hire proper people”. Proper people would never lie, steal or be lazy. They develop personal relationships between colleagues and departments. 

One of the members of the department, which works with clients, told us about some tricks to faster requests, “Of course there are rules, but if you really in need you can try to find other ways to get to your goal faster. I have friends in every department so when I am in a hurry I always have someone to ask for a favor. ” Google employees are working for the result, so there are no talks about everyone to go home at 6 p.m.

The office is amazing. There are a lot of food everywhere and a lot of entertainments: training room, bowling and swimming pools. But!

The client is king and god for successful companies in Silicon Valley.