Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Hey all,

So today was our first day really out and about doing something related to the class. We visited a start-up called Callspark, and they are doing some really cool things. Their service is basically changing the way the dialer on a mobile (smart) phone works. Basically it is making it super easy to extract numbers for businesses and even your contacts. At Callspark we talked to Steve Larson, an old friend of Brad's (our prof). He was a very interesting person to listen to, and has a lot of experience in the business world. He talked a lot about this business and the different experiences he has had with start-ups.

After we talked to Steve at Callspark we headed across town to a small Thai restaurant and met with an employee from Aardvark. Alison was a very nice young lady. She was energetic and told us all about what Aardvark was doing, and how they were started. Aardvark is a service where you ask a question and their computers figure out what your question is about, and using your social networks, send the question out to a few people to answer. The people are not random, but rather they create a profile and give areas they have a good knowledge base, and should be able to answer your question. This means that not only do you get your question answered, but there is a good chance that you know, or have a direct connection to the person who answered so learning more is much more probable.

After we had lunch with Alison, we had some time to ourselves to wander around downtown for a bit. I visited the Ferrari store, which was crazy expensive, $100 for a stocking skullcap. From Ferrari a few of us headed stores like Oakley and Puma. This was a great time to just kinda relax and get a feel for downtown San Fran.

After wandering and unwinding for a bit we headed to Digg. At Digg we met with Matt Van Horn, who is a manager of business development. Matt gave us a quick tour of the Digg office, and then gave us a presentation on Digg. He also talked a lot about good ways to stand out in a crowd of possible employees. Basically Matt told us to be audacious, and to "stalk" the people who have the ability to hire us. Stalk them, flatter them, and show them that their company cannot go another day without you, and that you are valuable to their company.

All of the people that we met with were very laid back and informal. They had a great attitude about talking to a bunch of college kids, especially a group as diverse as ours. Each person had a unique way in describing their company, and a unique way in which they interacted with us. Overall talking to these people really gave me a lot of insight into the world of start-ups and the mindset that people in Silicon Valley have.

After all these awesome meetings we got to go to an event called SFNewTech. This particular time they were focusing on the mobile environment. There were CEO's, Founders, and people from every discipline in a business there. It was a huge networking event. For the first hour or so, we just mingled with random business men and women. The one product that really stuck out to me was an iPhone / iPod Touch app called MoodAgent. It allows you to 'DJ' your music library by adjusting five bars representing your emotions. It will generate a new list of 25 songs in about five seconds of you changing any of the mood bars. It is a free app, so go download it. Also, at this event there were eight people selected to give a presentation of their product to everyone. After their five minute presentation there was a five minute Q&A session. This is when people would ask about business models, exit strategies, and the technical aspects or features that they think the developer(s) may have missed. This acted as the main event.

After SFNewTech we headed back to our hotel. A lot of us were hungry, so we went to get some food. We decided upon the famous, and super delicious In and Out Burger. Sadly, on our way back, it finally started to pour outside. This wasn't that unexpected, because it had been overcast all day, but some bad timing since if it had waited ten more minutes we would have been back in the hotel. Tomorrow is not going to be quite as eventful. But, it is time for bed.

Thanks for reading,

Aaron