Memorable Start
July 21st, 2009,Tags: day 1Posted in Stanford by qiqi
We, the 3rd batch iLead group finally started our SV trip today after a long flight journey, and it’s a pleasure for us to have Tom as a guide. Our first day is a combination of Stanford tour, Stanford shopping, and talks at Stanford!
During the tour, I kept telling myself that this is where great entrepreneurs met, where great ideas were born, and where SV is originated. The David Packard Electrical Engineering building and its HP story behind it is a live example of how Stanford and SV collabrated and became interdependent of the academic and applied world.
Talk by Tom
The two most important things Tom talked about are the history and factors in the building of SV, including the similarities of differences between SV and Singapore. Like SV, we have lots of VCs and interesting technologies that can be commercialized, and meritocracy culture is also quite strong in Singapore, but it’s really quite difficult to build Singapore into an Asian SV. Yes, we have fewer law firms, accountants, and commercial banks to help startups, and government can always come up with policies to encourage that, but some culture differences are really difficult to change, especially the “ok to fail” and open sharing networks.
However, is it necessary to copy the SV model in order to foster entrepreneurship? The answer is probably no. Singapore alone has various advantages than SV. Though the area and market size is limited within itself, this city-state is situated at the crossroads of international trade routes and you can access a market size of 2.8 billion people within 7 hours flight time, including the 1.3 billion in China. It is also one of the 10 ASEAN free trade countries with more than 500 million people, and has Free Trade Agreement with US, Australia, Japan, etc. All these figures indicate a large potential for the growth of entrepreneurship spirit within Singapore.
Besides, the government is really taking a lot of efforts in fostering new venture, including business-friendly bankruptcy and labor laws, low and quick-to-file taxes, and generally high-tech approach to everything. Various government agencies, like EDB, SPRING, IE Singapore, have many schemes and grants to help SME sector as well. It takes time to build a truly entrepreneurial culture, and I believe the government is constantly doing reflections and improvements to reach that goal.
ok, back to Stanford, and I am thinking about the roles played by Stanford in the building blocks of SV, which include:
1) Talented students (stake in CoI)
2) Technology innovator as a Research Institution (stake in CoI)
3) Incubator (player in CoI)
4) Entrepreneurial and Management skills education (code in CoI)
May be there are other factors and I am waiting for the sharing of our iLead group for more ideas 
Questions to think about in the following days: What are the weaknesses of Silicon Valley? We have always given compliments to it, which seems it’s a perfect paradise to do business. But is there any weakness? I’m sure it has, and I will try to figure out some points in the remaining days of our SV trip.
Talk by Laina Raveendran Greene & Annamaria Konya
What impressed me most from their sharing is: just because it’s kind of ‘save the world’ nature does not mean there’re no business opportunities out of it. We can actually make money while at the same creating merits to the society and the world.
“Think globally” is another learning point. Innovation is all around the world, market can be explored outside your country, collaboration is without limits, and the impacts of the business can be global as well. The conclusion is that in this hi-tech century, the thinking of doing business has been quietly changed …
The direction of clean tech has great potential, but people’s adoption rate of whatever new technology may not be high, especially when the solution is a “nice to have” instead of “must to have”. The example of low-adoption of bio-fuel is an example of this case…
Sharing by Ooshma Garg
While she is a live example of how a young entrepreneur became successful. I think some of the learning points from her include:
1) Be careful about your decision and action as the founder of a company, because “once you create history, you’re responsible for that.”(quote from her)
2) Be prepared to face and solve difficulties and enjoy the challenges! As a startup with limited resources, we need to have the passion to drive the business, and any failures or successes are valuable experiences, and this is just the essence of being an entrepreneur.
3) Creating different pricing model and services catered to different type of customers, which also means to be flexible in business ideas.
4) Take advantage of people and events around you, for recurring and publicizing purposes.
All in all, experiences in the first day is really great, and I’d like to continue learning and exploring during the rest of the exciting trip!
Tags: day 1
