Silicon Valley Diaries
The #SVtoSV journey through pictures
-
(Click on the arrows on the left and right side of the image to navigate)
-
-
Flying above clouds
-
In-flight wifi
Free 20 MB wifi is available for each passenger. Other Wifi plans are pretty expensive because the connection is made via satelites and each signal has to travel like 1.4 lakh kms to and fro
-
Food
The flight from Kochi to Dubai had Idly and Vada in the menu. Most of the other food items were unfamilar and I had to look how my neighboring passenger does with it to figure out how to eat that.
-
The LED screen
There are a large number of movies to watch including 6 or 7 malayalam movies
-
External flight camera
There are 3 external cameras and we can see the flight live in the screen. Normally the planes flies at a height of nearly 11km and with a speed of above 900kmph
-
Dubai Landing
-
Airbus A380
Its the flight in which we travelled from Dubai to San Fransisco. According to Wikipedia, A380 is the world's largest passenger airliner, and the airports at which it operates have upgraded facilities to accommodate it. It provides seating for 525 people in a typical three-class configuration.
-
Dubai airport
-
SFO Airport
-
Time zone difference
Indian time is 12 hours and 30 mins ahead of San Fransico Time. Have read about time zones in school texts, but completely understood it only when I had to manually adjust my watch to the SF time zone. Similarly have read a lot about 'startup culture' at Silicon Valley. But got a real taste of it only by actually experiencing it throughout this trip.
-
-
Place of Stay
Our stay was at menlo college dormitory
-
Our room
They said it was a dormitory. But I prefer to call it a room :P
-
Delayed sunset
The sun sets around 9 in the night. This picture was taken at 8:30pm
-
Facilities
The rooms were divided into sections and we had to swipe a card given to get entry to a section. Then each room had number locks. Another interesting facility was the visitor wifi having an average speed of 40Mbps
-
Breakfast
Our favorite US food was the breakfast we get from Menlo College.
-
-
Road Crossing
We cannot cross the street just like we do in India, we have a button which we have to push and wait then it gives us the signal to cross the road. It was a pleasure seeing vehicles on both sides waiting for us to finish crossing.
-
Caltrain
San Fransisco is about 50km away from our place of stay. We took this train called 'caltrain' to reach there. Caltrain is comparatively the cheapest, but did cost $7.5 for one way trip. (Nearly 500 rupees). Everything seemed costlier other than electronics and liquor. Those of us (including me) who converted the prices there to Rupees before buying something ended up buying only some packs of choclates.
-
Company offices we saw...
After we reached the San Francisco, we were divided into groups and started our journey to explore the world of San Francisco.
On the way we saw the offices of Twitter, LinkedIn, Dolby etc. The city is filled with all tech stuff. In India, the ads at railway stations are mostly of cloth shops and Jewelery shops, but the Caltrain station had ad of Bitbucket and ads were mostly tech related. Even some of the random people we meet are entrepreneurs or have a website. We met a person in-front of LinkedIn HQ who was working with blockchain technology
-
Cable Car
Its a small train in which provides enjoyable journey through the city.
-
A small park
-
City
-
A street artist
People have a very diffrent culture. They don't care much about other people in terms of their appearance. They go on with their work. There are white people, black people, those with coloured hair etc and each one have their own freedom. Also every job has its on dignity. The street artist gets respect for his talent like any others. Their helping mentality was also surprising. Here is what my friend Nihal wrote: "Sharing some random incidents from the Silicon Valley trip
#1 One of our friends got sick and needed to get back to our hostel.With no mobile network and WiFi and an Uber account without a credit card added.We were literally stranded somewhere with no taxis around.It was then an American approached us and without a second thought booked an Uber and paid 25$ with his card which translates to 1500rs. :)
#2 I and Mathew Varghese were literally lost at Stanford University at 11 pm night with dead cell phones.As expected got a lift from a stranger only to realize the stranger was a professor at Stanford and spoke way humble than us and ensured we got safely back to the hostel. :)
#3 The common stereotype that American immigration is a difficult task and make it impossible if you are a Muslim.Believing all that shit, I was totally shocked to see the immigration officer welcoming me with a smile :D,Just asked about my excitement to visit the US and that was it.Kochi immigration was way difficult for me than this :P
All these acts of humility and kindness teach me to be the same to achieve greatness "
-
Pier 39
(wikipedia) Bustling bayside pier featuring scenic views, sea-lion sightings, eateries, shops & entertainment.
-
Bay Cruise and Alcatraz Island
We had a cruise down the Golden gate bridge. The island in the picture is of Alcatraz Island, a militiary prison in which most dangerous of criminals were held
-
A pet shop in Pier39
People seems to love their dogs very much. The streets are filled with people walking their dogs. Their was also a 'Bring your dog to work day' which was on June 25th. The posters in the shops depict the love and care people give to their pets.
-
Time is money
We 3 missed the last caltrain back to Menlo and each had to spend about 15$ each to take a taxi to overtake the Caltrain and reach the next Caltrain station
-
-
Silicon Valley Bank
SVB provides capital for startups as well as other companies. Some of us had a pitching session there. All of them vere very enthusiastic and supportive. Even if some of the ideas were not that big or not in scope for the US, they were very interested and gave valuable suggestions. It was the same everywhere. Everyone was interested in others ideas and was very happy to help.
-
Intel Headquarters and Mueseum
-
Gordon Moore's cabin
The cabin where Moore (Famous for Moore's Law) used to work. Also Intel CEO have no special office space. His cabin was amidst of other employees cabin and people at Intel are proud of this work culture of not having closed offices
-
Welcome dinner by Mayor of Menlo park
They gave us opportunity to meet with a bunch of entrepreneurs, VCs etc. We interacted with the current and the former mayor of the Menlo Park and there were many people who support startups here. We had interactions and got to learn a lot from them
-
Dinner
The dinner was at the best hotel in Menlo Park. But it was diifficult for us to adjust with the food items there. They dont use much spices and the meat items seemed like uncooked or raw for us.
-
Veggie Items
-
-
Facebook HQ
FB was our official host at Silicon Valley. We had pitching sessions as well as other sessions by FB team. Everyone working at FB seems to be loving it a lot. They are very passionate about the mission of Facebbok and in the work they do. This is true for every other company we saw. People working at a company seemed to be very aligned to its mission and they enjoy their work. Similarly the companies value their employees a lot.
-
Walking tour at FB
There are like 13 cafes inside the FB campus. and employees are free to walk into any of them and eat or drink what they want for free. Also there are no predefined working spaces. There are lot of open spaces where employees can sit and work.
-
-
Stanford
We visited Stanford campus in the evening. The campus is very big and beautiful
-
-
-
-
Northeastern University
Had two sessions by P K Agarwal, Regional Dean and CEO of Northeastern University. We were running short of time for the second session. So we grabbed our lunch (Pizzas) and ate it during the session. People dont care about formalities, importance is given to convinience.
-
IOT Workshop
-
Interactive session at Freshworks Silicon Valley office.
Freshworks, founded in India inspires other companies with its worldwide growth. A summary of session by Gireesh, Freshworks CEO is at https://blog.sv.co/great-lessons-from-a-great-founder-and-ceo-girish-mathrubootham-teaches-sv-co-january-batch-64e76760f650 (Link to Freshworks Story)
-
Session by Rajeev Madhavan
Serial entrepreneur Rajeev Madhavan explianed his journey , the hurdles he faced and lessons learnt.
-
Profoundis story
SV>CO Alumni Arjun Pillai shared the journey of his startup Profoundis. It was the first startup in Kerala aquired by a US company. His success was featured in almost all newspaers. But he told us his tough journey which include 3-4 years of hardwork and 5-6 failed products before getting established. https://blog.sv.co/the-startup-story-of-profoundis-labs-cacf04c1e799 (Link to Profoundis Story)
-
-
42 Coding school
Its a revelutionary institution which teaches to code. But there are no teachers or classes. Learning happens through exchange of knowledge through peers. There are levels of progress for the students to complete and some of the initial task include implementing C library codes manually.
-
All iMacs
-
Google Main Office
-
Session by Gopi Kallayil
He is the Chief Evangelist, Brand Marketing at Google. We didnt expected such a person appearing in casual dress and make us dance in Bollywood style which was the first thing he asked us to do at the beginning of his session. This Man from Palakkad also wrote books on Mindfulness and Meditation. Another thing he said was , "Some of the new products google introduce fail. Google wont fire anybody due to a failed product". This is the culture of companies here. They dont care about failure. They learn lessonss and move on. Whether we failed or not do not matter, the importance is on what we work on currently
-
Bootup Ventures
-
Session by Mukul Agarwal
-
Tesla showroom
We went to the Tesla showroom at Stanford shopping centre. People there welcomed us warmly, answered all our questions ,allowed us to enter inside and take selfies even though they are 100% sure we are not going to buy any of their cars. But they showed great interest to show their product to us and explain.
-
-
Google launchpad
-
Mentors
At Lauchpad startups get free mentorships from Google experts. We had a session on Google Cloud and met with various people working on Google cloud products and firebase
-
Snacks
Free snacks+wifi at Launchpad was awesome. Couldnt imagine what would happen if its implemented in India
-
Lunch at Launchpad
-
Visit to Galvanize Coworking space
-
Golden gate bridge
The journey was officially over
-
The collective
Drone shot from 100 feet above
-
The collective is an emotion
Due to my introverted nature, didnt talk to most others much. But these guys made the journey more awesome. As a collective we will move forward together... We all have lot more to go..
-
The sv.co team
Thanks to the SV.CO team for making all these happen. Special thanks to Sanjay for making us understand the power of connections and specially for waking me up when I dozed off during sessions (Sorry, Its a college habbit).
-
Thank you. Its a new beginning..
Inspired from blogs of Ajo, Prabhakar and Agney... Thank You