Exploring the entrepreneurial spirit in the sunny Silicon Valley

Sunday 23.8.

We had an early sunday morning flight to San Francisco where we first headed to car rental and drove with two minibuses to eat lunch at Palo Alto. We went to a burger place called the Counter, where you could choose how your burger will be built. Many of us ordered a burger with one pound patty and no one had any troubles finishing their burgers. With full stomachs we drove to our accommodations in San Jose and Santa Clara. There was a small turf war over Santa Clara apartment, which was equipped with a nice backyard and a pool.

Rest of the day we enjoyed the sun and prepared some hotdogs.

One pound burger

Monday 24.8.

On Monday morning we drove Mountain View to visit Google campus, where Google HQ is located. A fellow Prodekoman, Juhana was there to greet us. Juhana's colleague Theresa gave as an informative round tour around the large campus. Out of the 55 000 employees of Google Inc., 13 000 are seated on Google campus area. The campus was colourful and spacious with nice architectural solutions: one building was built tilted so that the wind conditions on the volley ball field nearby would be optimal. We also had the pleasure to meet Stan, the real Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton who is the target of small pranks of the employees.

It was great to see the famous campus of Google, thanks to Juhana for organizing us the round tour!

Pure happiness

Later in the afternoon we had the pleasure to visit Idean, a Finnish design company that has been active in the US around five years. During this time, it has established a strong market presence in the States – over 60 employees out of 150 are based in the US. Idean is a global design firm that offers its customers user interface, user experience, interaction, visual and service design, front-end development, app development and user research services. It has been founded in 1999 in Finland.

Idean’s office was a cute wooden house with a nice backyard, where the company also hosts garden parties. The founders, CEO Risto Lähdesmäki and CDO Jesse Maula told us the story behind Idean and gave their view on what it has been like to establish a market position in the U.S. According to them, Silicon Valley is the place to be for companies: 90% of all the VC money in the world is located in SV and there are talented workers moving to the city all the time. Idean has faced high competition in Silicon Valley, but has been very successful by doing projects efficiently and with high quality. Finnish knowledge has been appreciated in the US. For the design industry, the golden ages are happening right now. Top management of companies have realized the value of design and there exists a need for companies like Idean. Silicon Valley is becoming more and more expensive all the time, and the next tech-hub is already building up in Austin, Texas.

It was interesting hear how a Finnish company has managed to expand in the US. Thank you Idean for hosting us!

After the excursions it was time to go shopping. We drove to the Great Mall nearby. Two hours in the enormous world of retail was a bit overwhelming and exhausting for us, but some of us made some really nice deals.

Tuesday 25.8.

On Tuesday, our schedule started with a visit to Stanford University, the place from which many famous entrepreneurs have gained their academic knowledge. At Stanford, Mark Nelson and Timo Nyberg hosted us and we had a pleasure to attend an innovation workshop with them. The aim of the workshop was to teach us rapid prototyping in the context of joint ventures. Since this Stanford visit was the only official part of the day, we had a bit time for a tour around the Stanford campus after the workshop. We e.g. got to see how the Stanford Solar car project is proceeding.

Since the schedule during the first days on our trip was quite busy, it was nice to have a free afternoon and evening to chill out a bit and to enjoy a warm sunny day in California. To enjoy the free time the most, we decided to take benefit of the local basketball courts and football fields. In addition, we exploited this rare opportunity to arrange a BBQ party at our place to build up team spirit and to plan the agenda for the rest of the trip.