What I learnt after spending a week at the Bay Area

On the last week of January 2016, I had the pleasure of taking a week-long trip to the Bay Area, mostly visiting San Francisco and Silicon Valley. As an active evangelist of the Singapore tech startup ecosystem, I visited the great tech hub to share the great opportunities in ASEAN and how they could launch into the ASEAN markets via Singapore.

In exchange, I have received interesting insights and lessons from VCs, entrepreneurs and team members of big tech groups based in the world’s global tech mecca, of which I felt were interesting to pen down in an article. 

Everyone in the team is an evangelist, not just the CEO

I had the opportunity to tour AirBnb and Google through the nice friends who took the time to show me around. What amazed me were how knowledgeable my tour guide friends were in explaining the history of their respective companies, along with details on the branding and culture that they embraced. And these were ordinary team players (not senior management) but they knew why things were created in a certain fashion.

These were ordinary team players but they knew why things were created in a certain fashion.

This was the same said of programming schools that we toured. Both the business development managers and students alike would gladly explain with passion and highlight their achievements and what their school mission is.

In reflection, in all my time visiting various startups in the different ASEAN cities, never did I see one company who could get a non-management team member to clearly articulate the values of the company he worked for. It always seemed more etched in the senior management, but somehow fails to trickle down to its rank-and-file.

Culture

Outdoor Lunch day at Google HQ

One super incentive that AirBnb staff and Googlers get are hordes of free food. At Google, among the two dozen buildings at Moutain View, everyone is free to pick and choose the variety of free food. Apparently, there is at least one diner joint for every two buildings. If that isn’t enough, Googlers are spoilt for choice of the food trucks that come with even more food.

At AirBnb, it was the same except the food joints were more café styled. My friend at AirBnb told me that three meals a day is served to ensure that you do not worry too much about hunger and focus on work.

And another nice perk to the job is that you can bring your dogs to work. And I don’t mean small ones, but huge furry ones who jump up and are as tall as a person!

Bring your furry pet to work, whatever the size!

But setting food and dogs aside, Airbnb created a very interesting office space. A large portion of the office was dedicated to co-working and there were many sorts of designs spaces where team members can mingle and get creative in their projects. It is common knowledge now, but for those who are unaware, each meeting room was designed after an AirBnb location.

Conveying methodology and inspiring individuals

If I like to invest in Asia, I would already be in Asia

Scalable business model, not traction

Ending thoughts