Management tour to Silicon Valley [March 2011, 20-27]

Visited companies: Facebook, Google, SugarCRM, Cisco, фонд DFJ, Stanford University, Forrester, Gracenote (Sony), Twitter, Wrike, I-Jet media, PlugandPlayTechCenter, Alexander&Krol, Orrick

Visit theme: New Information Era. How to face IT challenge. Visiting the best worlds’ IT companies in Silicon Valley.

Management-tour format: Open.

Participants: Kievstar (Vympelkom), Beeline (Russia), Megaphone, Terrasoft, 1C Bit, RKK “Energiya”, Telesence, Ifree, Infowatch, Nix Solutions, Softpress, Market Report, De-Novo, Mobistudio.

Organizer:  - FastForward

The group of first parties of Ukrainian and Russian IT companies was being in the Silicon Valley, the heart of worlds’ high technology business, from March, 20 till March, 27. During 7days work program we were able to visit such well-known and respected companies as Google, Facebook, Cisco, Twitter, Gracenote (Sony), SugarCRM, PlugandPlayTechCenter leading incubator and DFJ venture fund. In order to perform stable relations with local community, participants also took part in networking-events and meetings with different experts from AMBAR, Global Technology Symposium, etc. 

For even better understanding of what is going on, we welcomed the Professor of Stanford University and the vice-president of worlds’ leading analytics company Forester Research. They made several serious analytical presentations. In general, everything that occurred during this week was yielded to one main line – searching the Silicon Valley foremost technologies and business-experience and ways of managing ones business here.


Day 1. How does it work or Silicon Valley for beginners


Probably the most often asked question that companies in Silicon Valley hear is: how does it work? Why nowhere else in the whole world there is no such place? We can spend months or even years analyzing the reason of Silicon Valley (SV) development, but for now we can admit that this place is the best environment for IT business, daring startups and revolution discoveries.

We won’t talk about the history of SV development we rather talk about its main players: best universities (Stanford, Berkeley), techno parks and incubators, service-providers (lawyers and HR-managers), venture funds and angels, who votes for startup with alive dollar, and bright companies with break-through innovations.

Usually idea goes through the sickle, which begins with the generation in engineers (or students)  and entrepreneurs minds,  then it is commercialization or technological transfer, after - getting finance support from angels or venture funds and finally going on IPO or being absorbed by giant (M&A).

Of course, this scheme is simplified but is shows how many players are in the process and, moreover, every one of them is doing his job. Universities (Stanford, Berkeley) are teaching and preparing fertile environment with the students, incubators are teaching how to make first steps in business, venture funds and angels are selecting and making investments, service-providers are helping business to develop peacefully and dynamically. If you remove just one of the sections, idea may die and there won’t be another Google, Facebook or Zynga in the world. 

“What is SV? It is a plot of land which consists of 4 county, 40 municipalities, 1.3 millions of workplaces, 2.9 millions of people and just 30x30 square km. 40% of venture investments of USA were due to SV in 2010.“ 

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Stanford. The meeting with professor

The first organized meeting for our group was speech from Stanford School of Engineering professor, who told us about the history and life of SV. The participants were able to get acquainted with the specifics and differences of this ecosystem work. It was interesting to find out that the themes like production, logistic and nanotechnology are not “hot” anymore in SV (yes, say hello to those who believe in it in Russia). Today the hot topics are geo&social services, cloud-computing, mobile technologies, big data, open source, video services.

“Stanford University has 7 faculties (engineering, medicine, earth studying, business-school, humanities, department of law), 3.8 billion budget and 15 thousands students. “ 

Talking about SV ecosystem we couldn’t left outside the entrepreneurship cradle (Stanford University) . This place is having a very important function for the last 60-70 years. From the moment of starting the military laboratories in Stanford in the middle of World War II (look though the history of Frederick Taylor, the founder of SV) to today’s IT sector condition the university was being the heart of his ecosystem.

Those, who say that now USA government (one more player in ecosystem) isn’t playing a big role, are right but we shouldn’t forget the government role in 50-60th when Mr. Hoover (the former Head of CIA) was the head of the university. That is why the innovation process model which is chosen by Ukraine and Russia (the active role of government) is only the first step towards independent innovation development in our countries.

We can’t repeat all core of meeting with the Stanford professor but I want to share some important conclusions. They will be especially useful for those, who only starting their business in SV. This is the list of mistakes that are made by newcomers:

1.    Low understanding of relations importance in SV, of image that is being built on those relations.
2.    Low understanding of social media as the way to find and maintain the relations.
3.    Low respect for the other people time. Not being ready for the meetings especially with the investors. First time they meet you but the second time is the question. 
4.    Ignoring the juridical questions while defending company technologies. There a lot of losers who went bankrupt just hadn’t closed the juridical questions in time. 
5.    Necktie. Nobody wears it in here. You want to put it on? You can but only if you are an FBI agent or from the USA government. It is not a joke. 
6.    Bad English. Without comments. 
7.    Lack of curiosity and openness for new ways and ideas. 
8.    Any complexes or prejudice for age, gender, skin color, money in other ones pocket. 

If you keep main principles of work in Silicon Valley in mind the effect from your startup can be amazing. When company comes and opens its office in here it gets an opportunity to become one that develops very fast and has billion turnovers in one year.

Silicon Valley is important for Ukraine and Russia because it gives a access to the latest technologies and leading approaches in IT sphere. It also makes it possible to enlarge company capitalization, to train its own specialists and to attract the best brains. 

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Venture funds

During the trip our group has visited one of the most respected and well-known funds in SV - Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ). Starting from its founding in 1985 the fund has made investments into more than 600 companies around the world (for example, Hotmail, Baidu, Skype). One of the main reasons to visit this fund was DJFs’ strong connections and investments into Russian and Ukrainian companies.

In order to explain the work core and role of the venture funds in SV we can give one simple example. The “A” company comes to the investor and says, “We have a unique idea that can make us the second Google, Facebook, etc”. After listening to all this investor gives you five tricky (but correct) questions:

•    Who is your customer and where is your market
•    What is your business model
•    What is your strategy
•    Why is your technology unique
•    Who is in your team and why do you think you will succeed

Let us assume that after having answered all those questions “A” company will get 1 million dollars investment. In this situation investor/venture fund gets 10-20% of company’s share and includes their representative in shareholders group. This person plays very important role. He is not only the representative of the fund that is giving the investments for development but also helps with some advises, connections so the company can develop faster.  When the fund feels that company is too big for it the fund usually attracts some other funds money.

The final goal of investment and company development is IPO or selling the company to one of the giants. Of course there are cases when company becomes giant. In this case the fund investment growing multiplier can be over 1000% per taken up dollar. This is the simple way to describe the work of funds in SV.

Of course our group had many question about funds operations, ways to fill funds’ assets, how they allot the profit and many other. But the main and, probably, the most memorable in that meeting were questions about risks and mistakes. In SV mistakes are considered to be not the barrier to further company and its management development but the kind of proof that the person has experience and got some lessons from previous initiatives. To tell the truth we reverted to this thought several times during our trip. This attitude in SV is quite different compared to our countries. 

Service providers

Our first day program followed the logic similar to the one in the classic cycle which the entrepreneur and his company go though. At first it is studying in university, later when the idea already matured it is the mobilization of venture money. So it is quite logically that our next meeting was with the professional service providers, which are the significant part of the company growth way and its entrance of the stable growing stage. 

Visiting Orrick or technology protection basics

For those who don’t know, in SV you can’t move forward without solving basic legal issues. One of the first questions you can hear from investor is “Do you have patents?”, “How have you protected your intellectual property?” That is why if you haven’t solved the intellectual property question you need good law company with appropriate specialization. It is better if this company is one of the best. We met this kind of company and its head.

Orrick is specializing on IT companies’ rights protection and helps to solve questions of the startups development early stage and not to have big law issues in future. It is very important because there are huge amount of transactions in SV every day. There is a big chance of law menace and you never know where you may step on the law mine without being prepared. Companies like Orrick are watching your rights to be respected. The important rights that should be watched over by IT companies are:

•     Financial and control rights. Finance law core is that you will get your money back when company will be sold. 
•   The second right is tailing guard. Do you remember “Social network” movie? The consequences of this right violation have been shown there.
•      The third right is the future finance right. 
•      Intellectual right is also one of the key options. 


Of course this isn’t the full list of legal details that Orrick helps to solve, but it shows that there are a lot of underwater stones on the way, which final point is your law safety. 

War for the talents

One of the most interesting meetings during this week was the meeting with another service provider in SV. That time we met the representatives of Alexander&Krol Executive Search. We got answers for many questions about search and retention of personnel during the presentation and conversation with company partner in chief. 

Of course fighting over personnel is the key question for every IT company and Ukraine and Russia are not exceptions.  The war for the best brains has reached the temperature, which is uncomfortable for many companies. Today in both our countries and USA it is hard to draw in/gain specialists over just with salaries and bonuses. They are using tricks, refinements and “baits”. 

“- in average one candidate asks from 75 to 120 thousand dollars without bonuses
- in average 5-15% of HR budget go on recruiting, but we are talking about big companies here
- not big recruiting companies are specializing on some certain IT vacancies. Only a few can be “indiscriminate.”

In 2010-2011 Google plans to hire 2000 people, Facebook – 800. Those companies know their profiles and process is worked out to details. Selection process had been worked out many years ago when they just appeared. For Google and Facebook dozens of companies are working searching for talents. Graduating students from business schools, engineering faculties, people from McKinsey and other “best people” are taken by monsters and small companies can’t compete with big companies. To gain even little opportunities startups are trying to invent something interesting. For example, they motivate with actions. Or offer entrepreneurship courses and “how to create your own company”, but there is also risk that people will leave the company and create their own business.

There is other point of view. Many specialists go to the small companies because work there is more interesting and they give more opportunities for development. They have a joke in SV telling why people chose one or another company; the reasons are three “F” – fuel, friends, family. In other words it is money, friendly atmosphere and work like at home. One who can offer combination of those three F wins.

In the end of the meeting we were told about some interesting facts. For example, Yahoo died (critically decreased its position) because of muss escape of people and not because of losing some technology. It means that on some stage company leaders had lost one of the main elements of personnel development and retention system and lost the talents war. 


Day 2. How startups are being born

Talking about the second day we should explain one important work detail in SV – techno parks role. When startup is being born, or we should say there is a group of young exited people who only have an idea. But they say that idea costs nothing in SV. Yes! Idea without proper implementation. To give an impulse to the startup is the main role of techno parks and incubators.  It is reached through training young entrepreneurs, help during first steps, working out business scheme, preparing company to getting venture or angel investments. 

PlugandPlayTechCenter

Our group visited one of the incubators – PlugandPlayTechCenter. It was found as organization that provided with comfortable chip infrastructure solution (office, communication). Later techno park increased its facilities and started to offer study services, searching for investments, etc. In 2009 there were 16 companies in techno park with the investment amount nearly 600 million dollars. 

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First of all we were given an excursion around techno park. It is very interesting that such a simple idea really works.  It is quite strange that nobody repeated it in Ukraine and Russia. Skolkovo only making its first steps and already demands huge means.

Sometimes there is a feeling that techno park is a simple ground, where you can come, rent a place and start working. From one point of view it is true, but from another – if it was so easy it would have been made 1000 times.  This organization value is much higher and this is the core of all the techno parks.

Right away after getting acquainted with work concept and meeting the CEO our group watched several 5-minutes presentations of real startups that are in the techno park. Besides interesting technologies and solutions (primary selection is important stage on the way of getting onto techno park) our attention was caught by the high level of presented material. Therefore at least this practical value of being in techno park exists.

According to special Excellence Program over a period of 3 months (standard staying plan) the company goes through stages from “green” startup to skillfully formed business that understands its goals and ways to achieve them. Of course it isn’t easy to find real investor within 3 months but it gives an opportunity to find out is the company competitive or not. The thing we were amazed with was the quantity of countries and universities Plug&Play Technopark is working with.

We saw flags of many countries which are interested in IT development and economy development innovation models. Canada, Spain, Ireland, Estonia are only several from the long list of countries, whose governments pay great attention to these questions and have their missions in technopark. Canadians bring 6 companies each month that proves the high level of cooperation. And what about Russia? In Russia they are planning to implement similar project in Skolkovo and already have started to organize business plans contests. Dropbox and Zoosk work closely  with technopark.

Talking about universities we saw Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, Harvard, Cambridge and others’ flags in technopark. They worked out their own cooperation process with universities. Technopark helps young startupers teams to work out model and enter the market. Those, who already have model, get help to enter the market. We should admit that we haven’t seen either Ukrainian or Russian flags. We also haven’t noticed here MSU or Shevchenko University. But it is just to say.

What else can we say about Plug&Play? Everything is open in here. For example clear schedule is showing when big “angels” and corporate investors are coming. In average 30-40 investors are visiting technopark each month. They get acquainted with 3-5 startups. Technopark provides a lot of services and placements that are taken up for 80-90% (common real estate is occupied for 40-50%).

Technopark provides with networking that is very important. Nearly 100 events are held in here. For example 400 participants were invited to event that was in May. And it happens all the time.

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Visiting Cisco

Without any doubts Cisco is not only the lieder in telecommunication but also one of the whales in Silicon Valley. Now Cisco has about 40 billion dollars on its accounts, constantly rising profit and stable leadership in many network spots. Amazing that they are leaders in all telecommunication branches and their engineer certification system in computer networks is acknowledged as one of the most competent in IT.

Cisco has many interesting features. For example the fact that company has never paid dividends but constantly has been buying safety stocks. Let us add some numbers to support this paradox: company capitalization is about 132 billion dollars and capitalization of 12 nearest competitors together is about 24 billion dollars. No need to say something else.

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What is the secret of Cisco success? Actually everything is quite simple.  Cisco isn’t waiting for somebody to create a breakthrough technology and to make technological revolution, but trailing interesting ideas and quickly buying promising companies along with the team.

Generally strategy is being based on noticing future tendencies in the right time, monopolizing their development rights and getting profit out of it. As we were told by the Wireless & Services Products and Services Vice President there it three Cisco success whales: BUY, BUILD, PARTNERS, that re the base of technological leader strategy.

The organization of departments in Cisco is worth paying attention. Their structure is unique because they are not vertically locked into the sections we are used to but on the contrary created horizontally overflowing to the other directions. Kind of Cisco-style cross-management.

After office sightseeing tour our group listened to Vice President presentation about company’s work. Speakers company was also bought by Cisco and only after 8 weeks had passed it entirely worked in Cisco structure! It is their key competence that all buying processes are going on quickly. 70% of bought companies are successful. There is something to be envious.

A little about product management. Whet Cisco gets a lot of requests like “develop this or that” the first thing they do in order not to drown in those requests is learning what exactly clients want. They are working with inner requests.

Cisco has very interesting corporate culture. Not a single employee flues to business trip by business class . Here you can be offered to have paid vacation for your social activities. One third of the company is sales managers, second third is engineers and about one sixth is service.

By the end of the day we also got acquainted with telepresents system. That was our second day and it was finally over. Hooray!

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Day 3. Community-directed IT companies day  

We visited Twitter in the middle of our tour – at Wednesday.

Our group had a lot of practical questions because Twitter phenomenon is something new for us. From the moment company appeared “Slavic user” couldn’t understand how does it work and what for. Fortunately after visiting Twitter office we understood everything.

Company Development Senior Leader started her speech from the story about Haiti disaster. We were wondering why she told us about it, “… there was great earthquake in Haiti in 2010 that damaged telephone lines… a lot of victims and ruins… ”. Soon we understood what speaker wanted to tell us. Having seen your silent question she immediately showed us practical usage of Twitter, “… then people started to exchange short massages from under ruins using Twitter… ”

Then we were told about Indonesia and later – about Japan. By the way I have never thought that Japanese are so active in Twitter. 25% of all twits in the world are from Japan. For example after tsunami 1 of 7 users was from Japan. Even Obama admitted that USA doesn’t need hot line because Twitter is much more efficient. Medvedev also came not long ago and became an active user. Ukrainian President already has this technic miracle. But there is a question: who is writing by himself and who has PS service.

In general the speaker convinced us so we will write in Twitter! In our own twit you can find some real time notes about this tour.

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What is the main Twitter phenomenon? And once more everything is simple. Today the customer dictates trends. And this customer said, “We want to communicate faster, shorter and essentially”. That is why the small network massages exchanging service – Twitter appeared, they called the process “twitting”.

Today 70% of users are Americans. In China Twitter is blocked by government, but they have similar products on their inner market. Knowing the people quantity in China and the their reaction speed I think that have the Chinese government allowed twitting USA would have been left behind.

According to this regional division all advertisement is clearly due to USA (I am talking about advertisers). We also were told that in the nearest future Japan and Great Britain will join the advertisement consumers and their companies will be advertised in Twitter.

“Now Twitter has 225 millions of registered users and they grow about 1500% per year! In average it is about 95 million twitters every day (when there are some events it can be over 140 millions). Twitter interface has 7 languages, Russian, Portuguese, Turkish are in plans. They have their own translation center, which helps users to translate – everything is for you – communicate!” Twitter supports 4 popular platforms: Android, AiOS, Windows 7, Blackberry.“ 

We had a lot of Russian and Ukrainian mobile operators representatives in our group so there were a lot of questions about mobile market. For example the base for Twitter and mobile operators cooperation can be the ability to send sms as twits and vice versa. Twitter collaborates with Beeline in Russia and Life in Ukraine.

We asked if Twitter can eat mobile operators. They answered that there is no such possibility. The speaker explained that sms-service is communication one-to-one but Twitter sends messages to the group of people-followers. The great benefit for mobile operators is that Twitter train users to use data through mobile phone that means great profit for operators. To put it simple mobile phones go to Internet along with the Twitter.

What Twitter is selling and where gets profit?

1.    Promoted twits. Twitter sells this service to one advertisement agency per day. It is very handful for new products and services to enter the market. 
2.    Promoted trends (located on the right side). To put it short you can buy trend and popularize it with Twitter (widely used practice).
3.    Offers (advises from Twitter). They are also on the right side. Here located the information that can be interesting to the customer according to his preferences. “We are selecting the ones who are like you”.

Maybe the third product is the most important among them. Here priceless information for the advertisers is collected. There is one issue which is often used for product or service promotion: advertisers can offer their products certain groups.

Having heard about such wide advertisement possibilities we asked about the difference between twits and spam-messages. The answer was quick: Twitter carefully chooses product and customer.

The speaker didn’t tell us when they are planning to open office in Russia. Instead she told us about plans to open office in London. Russia will be somewhere later. At first they need to provide geo-targeting and currency support and create conditions for local service.

Answering the question about social media giant rivalry the speaker said that Twitter and Google aren’t rivals at all despite Google and Facebook being in top-list rivals to Twitter according to HOOVERS (well-known business-sector report). In reality it is Google that is paying Twitter for licensing and searching for Google Search, because it is Twitter that has real time data.

Resuming our meeting, Twitter once more confirmed the strategy “at first it is users incising and then monetization”. In our countries it is vice versa. Everyone takes his own.

There was a joke that explained the difference between Twitter and Facebook.

Facebook is for those with who you communicated in school. Twitter is for those with whom you wanted you communicate. Of course the speaker had on mind different kinds of celebrities because with Twitter you will know the latest changes in their lives. 

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Gracenote (Sony)

The second half of the day was dedicated to Gracenote that is the pioneer in digital media. Our group visited company office in Silicon Valley and Director Mobile Technologies together with Chief Architect told us about company development trends and explained the advantage of Gracenote among other companies and where media devises market is going.

We can say that Gracenote is situated on the crossroad of several themes: digital media, entertainment and technologies. Those three distinguish Gracenote among other companies that work with music content and media devices. There is no wonder because the company 100% belongs to Sony Entertainment so the second part of the name is completely true. But despite this celebrity belonging Gracenote provides services for Sony competitors. Kind of zero-risk position in B2B sector.

During the meeting we got to know that having only 300 employees Gracenote serves to nearly 200 big clients in SNG that is more than 250 million users. The content is being provided to more than 1 billion of devices! It is the efficiency of personnel that we are talking in here. Talking about company products essence according to company representatives it is “we are trying to increase the perception of music and video by increasing the intuitiveness of those products”. There is all the company politic that is directed to its unique customer.

Gracenote supports accessible via Internet data base, where you can find information about the presence of disks and vinyl records in stores. That is huge music data base (genre, singer, etc.) with 8 million songs and 400 million tracks. What exactly is Gracenote doing on mobile platforms?  They are creating a specific mobile ecosystem: the music is playing on the radio, some curtain song and its name is shown on the computer.  At once this song is being found on amazon.com, where you can later buy it. This technology is interesting for business.

Unfortunately we should admit that Gracenote is still unknown phenomenon on Ukrainian and Russian market (Gracenote is one of the biggest music content rightholder in USA and in the whole world). It is no wonder because the piracy level in CIS countries is very high. The problem is increased by the fact that it is almost impossible to find out who is the owner of the rights in Ukraine and Russia because we don’t have the organizations that will stand for the industry interests as it is in the West. You see that this tendency isn’t helping the music to develop legally.

Day 4. Industry giant pioneers

Google.

We went to Google. No comments. Each one of us had been waiting for a long time to walk through GooglePlex and to feel the atmosphere of the most desirable company in 21 century. Meeting with the chiefs and company specialists and asking questions about company and technology development was beyond your dreams.

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If you have never used Google it means you have never tried to find anything through Internet. We don’t need to tell about Google, because it is unquestionable leader of cyberspace and the engine of continuous development in Internet. This company is the innovator in almost everything. Few words about Google mission: it is organizing the worlds’ information in order to make it open and useful. The subsidiary companies like YouTube and DoubleClick have already gathered billions of users across the world.

On our way we stumble across the refuse bin with the solar batteries on the street. On its top surface batteries are installed. How do you think what for? They are pressing the garbage. Why don’t your president and prime-minister do the same?!  By the way, 33% of whole Google office energy (15 buildings)  are from solar batteries – impressive economy!

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During the whole day in company we listened to the presentation about Google Voice, Adwards and PageRank technologies and after that went to the question why is Google so attractive for the talented programmers (and not only them).

The first Google Motivation Directors’ phrase was that Google is not a common company. All employees are active and lively people. They love jokes and each one has a hobby. For example, CFO leader arrives to work by bicycle and welcomes everyone to do the same. And that goes for many activities – lively, lightly and in a big way. Hooray!

More. Recommendation system is developed and widely used in Google: the employees can bring their friends to work n Google by giving them recommendations. Special recommendation system was developed for this cause. You can not only to put the data in there but also to see the status of your recommendation. Cool? It is not the end. Every employee, who have recommended the friend, which happened to be a really good professional and became the part of Google corporative culture, gets a nice reword – several thousand dollars minimum.

We can talk about Google for hours and our visit was about 6 hours long. We can’t describe everything and tell about all small details. The company is so interesting and unusual that in order to understand at least a part of its success you need to visit, see everything with our own eyes and talk with management. 

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Day 5. Connecting all the world or one billion friends

SugarCRM. To learn everything about your client

To fulfill our participants request we also organized the visit to SugarCRM that is one of the leaders on USA CRM market. The company is developing dynamically and during 6-7 years of development reached a high level of CRM solution elaboration.

The company provides with its own customer relationship management system (CRM) that has open source code and is able to make marketing companies analysis, generate reports, manage electronic marketing, etc. Some software provided by SugarCRM give users the feature to integrate products from Jigsaw and LinkedIn.

Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Walden International and New Enterprise Associates have invested into the company. Among SugarCRM big clients we can see companies from different branches: athenahealth Inc., NIC Inc., NC State University, AVIS, H&R Block, etc.

According to the company CIO future in CRM is in openness and intuitiveness. One of the most impressive things we learnt during the meeting is the social network integration into CRM principle. Of course having the neighbors like Facebook, Twitter, Google and LinkedIn they care about it. Blogs, diaries, social network pages give one great opportunity to find a way   to one certain person and become his “friend”.  All those things can and should be used in sales.

Despite being clearly professional this visit helped our participants to wide their CRM system understanding in business and understand how to make their companies positions stronger while working with clients.

Facebook 
At last we are visiting this legendary company. Our working program final meeting was with Facebook. It amazing how this youth platform for communication and exchanging photos in Internet has become worldwide social communication star.

Being born thanks to the 20 years old Mark Zuckerberg Facebook united Harvard students and whet it had become popular in students environment it was opened for other users.

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One third of users enter  Facebook from their mobile devices. It is new terra incognita for Ukrainian and Russian mobile operators. The one that will jump into the train first will win.

To put it in short now Facebook (similar to Google) is one of the most attractive employers in Silicon Valley. After meeting we were completely convinced in this statement.

Talking about company development vectors we should tell about “being in smartphone” strategy (that means being everywhere). Of course on the one hand it is obvious: now Internet moves to the mobile devices – at first that was PC, later laptop, now smartphone and gadget. We always bring phones with us and often leave laptop ta home or at work.

On the other hand in SNG there are a lot of people, who don’t use their phones for Facebook communication because it is pricy or right time has not come. For business those consumers are gold mine.

That is why smart Facebook representatives actively work with 600 mobile operators all over the world in order to make traffic cheaper of even free – to attract audience.

We should admit that in SNG Facebook already cooperates with Beeline and MTC.

Second Facebook reference point is the mobile phones content developers. Facebook have found platform providing solution for those implementations. The main point is to use all the might and potential of mobile devices and mobile network.

Third important development priority is local approach (think global – act local). Facebook is adapting data for each country and even city. We can easily judge it by context advertisement and by the fact that you can easily find your friends who already “liked” the article in internet sources where there are “share” and “like” (now we all speak Facebook language).

There were many questions from participants who wanted to know everything about monetization, credits, social advertisement, pay system prospects in Facebook, etc.

About monetization we were told that all profit comes from Internet; advertisement, credits, mobile phone usage. The user becomes mobile the more he consumes.

Credits are the virtual currency. You want to buy something in the real time moment and you can pay with credit. At that very moment Facebook earns 30% of your payment – simple profit scheme.

According to the speaker words social network advertisement is a new era marketing cornerstone! When you buy something you are guided by your friends’ opinion! Strong and effective!  To bring into play social element while buying is almost a guarantee that consumer will buy from you when he will be in need.

There was a question if Facebook is planning to create its pay system. They said that for today credits are enough because they give good profit.

And of course our participants couldn’t refuse to write something down on huge Facebook office wall. As you can guess I wrote down the FastForward logo. So now we and Facebook are together forever.  

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