KIC ICT Growth Program

Understanding the Business

Culture of Silicon Valley

Chris Burry, A3 Collider

 Silicon Valley’s Business Culture is Complex

Extremely Multi-cultural
52% of CEO’s not born in the US
60+ languages spoken in the home
Very large populations from India, UK, France,
Germany, Taiwan and China

No Single Path to Being a Founder or CEO

Many non-technical founders
Founders from all ages (average is 40)
© 2020 Garage Technology Ventures and A3 Global Collider
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 Traditional Business vs. Entrepreneur Culture

Cultural Element Traditional Mentality Entrepreneur Mentality

Risk / Reward Don’t make a mistake Must risk making mistakes
Ethos Ethos of “perfection” Ethos of “Good enough”
Collaboration Know the answer Ask for help
Individual performance Rewarded as a team
Everyone is a competitor Everyone is a “resource”
Zero-sum Accretive

© 2020 Garage Technology Ventures and A3 Global Collider

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 Key Elements of Silicon Valley Culture
1 Storytelling Use storytelling, not fact-telling to communicate with others.
Teams are more important than individuals.
2 Collaboration
Think about partners, not competitors.
3 Trust Trust others without expecting anything in return
Make deals that seek fairness not advantage.
4 Seek Fairness
(Think Win-Win, not Win-lose).
“It is necessary to be Wrong sometimes. Plan to Experiment.
Plan to Fail
5 Plan to Fail. Fail Fast.
Early and Fast
Analyse, Adapt and repeat.
Diversify your networks and connect to others
6 Diversify Connect to people you would not normally, then go and listen.
Open Up.
Perfection is the enemy of good but good enough is perfect.
7 Good Enough
Good enough today is better than perfect in 6 months.

© 2020 Garage Technology Ventures and A3 Global Collider

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 Doing Business in Silicon Valley

Human networks are VERY important

Massive amount of “noise” in the system
There may be as many as 40,000 “young” tech
companies in the Bay Area
You break through the noise through the people
you know
It takes time to build your network. People need
to trust you before they will “open a door”

© 2020 Garage Technology Ventures and A3 Global Collider

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 Doing Business in Silicon Valley

Most decisions are made by teams

The “senior person” in the room is not always
the decision maker
The team often looks to the expert on the topic
(who may be the youngest person in the room)
Decisions can be made VERY quickly

© 2020 Garage Technology Ventures and A3 Global Collider

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 Doing Business in Silicon Valley

Speed and time efficiency really matter

You need to follow up with people in hours, not
days, weeks or months
Failure to follow up fast usually results in you
getting “lost in the noise”
Meetings tend to be very short and “to the
point”
You MUST be on time for meetings. If you are
late, you may lose your time slot
© 2020 Garage Technology Ventures and A3 Global Collider
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 Doing Business in Silicon Valley

The focus is not really about technology

People in Silicon Valley love cool technology
But what we really care about is how you can
create value for your customers with your
technology
If you can’t make money with the technology,
we are not really interested

© 2020 Garage Technology Ventures and A3 Global Collider

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 Questions?

© 2020 Garage Technology Ventures and A3 Global Collider

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