Brainient founder Emi Gal had a whale of a time on
this year's WebMission. From networking nights round Michael
Birch's to bumping in to Saleforce's Marc Benioff, here's a
snapshot of his crazy week in the Valley.
I have been on a mission. A "WebMission" to be
precise. It was put together by UKTI, Technology Strategy Board, Polecat and Orrick
Herrington & Sutcliffe, and led by the brilliant Oli Barrett.
Each year, the team selects up to 20 British
companies and takes them to the Valley for a week of intense
meetings - and fun. How's this for a highlight: a night of
"networking" at Michael Birch's house. (For those of you who don't
know Birch, he's the man who sold Bebo.com to AOL for
$850 million in cash. Not as uncommon in the Valley as you'd
imagine.)
I was lucky to be selected this year, and in between
visits to Twitter and Microsoft, pitches to angels and VCs, pub
crawls and ludicrous house parties, I am discovering what really makes the Valley tick: the
people.
People in the Bay Area are smart, laid back, fun,
hard-working. And, most importantly, they're willing to give a hand
to fellow entrepreneurs, even if you come from 5,000 miles away.
More importantly, there's a lot of them: anywhere you go, you'll
likely find someone who's founded or sold a start-up. Millionaires
aren't cool here - billionaires are - but very few of them do it
for the money.
As a matter of fact, one of the VCs I met here in the
Valley told me something interesting: "Most startups in London, New
York and the rest of the world want to make money. Most startups in
the Valley want to change the world. That's what makes the
difference."
My experience this week tends to confirm this. To
give you an example: Marc Benioff started the Salesforce Foundation
before Salesforce.com had made a dime. Its values were, as the
Foundation's vice president of "all things fun, meaningful and
rewarding" Julie Trell explained to us on Thursday morning,
"imprinted in the company's DNA". Today, 70% of their employees
volunteer every year and thousands of companies have been involved
with the foundation in the past 11 years.
On one of the evenings, I had dinner with a couple of
Stanford MBAs working on a social enterprise fighting malaria
through a technology that makes it cheaper to create malaria
nets.
I also spoke to a VC whose fund only invests in
start-ups trying to optimise energy creation for third world
countries.
The list goes on.
On Thursday afternoon, I was in a car with the same
Julie Trell and my good friend Milo Yiannopoulos, when I spotted
Marc Benioff walking down Market Street. We stopped the car and
Julie called over to him. "Hey Julie! I'm running to a meeting but
it's good to see you," he said, and off he went.
He's not the only one in a hurry: as soon as I get
back to the UK, I'll be heading over to the Romanian consulate (I
am Romanian) to apply for an L1 visa. San Francisco is the
Hollywood of tech, and if you want to be a star, this is the place
to go about it.
Emi Gal launched his interative advertising
platform Brainient in 2009. It allows brand owners to embed links,
surveys and even live Twitter feeds in digital media. Find out more
about Emi Gal
or visit the Brainient website.