Inspiring visit to the Google Headquarter

The highlight of the first day of the trip was the Googleplex visit. “It was a very inspiring start of the week”, told Urs Stender of Swisscom startupticker.ch. At the Google Headquarters the participants met Daniel Graf, Head of Google Maps. Daniel is Swiss as well and works now for 2.5 years at Google. Previously he founded and successfully sold the Swiss Startup Kyte. Daniel sees the biggest difference between Switzerland and the Silicon Valley in the communication behavior. In the Silicon Valley everybody speaks openly about his startup ideas. In Switzerland this is not the case because founders fear that competitors steal their ideas. In the eyes of Daniel Graf this attitude is not productive. His advice for the startups was:

1. Be open. Talk to as many people as you can about your idea.
2. Don’t worry too much about competitors, focus on execution!
3. Don’t worry about valuation. Ask yourself, do you want to own 50% of a small pie or 10% of a large pie!

After visiting Google the participants drove to Plug and Play, one of Silicon Valley’s oldest incubators. Urs Stender was impressed by the sales guy. He was a real “marketing machine”. In addition the participants saw some pitches of US start-ups which were able to show the customer value accurately and clearly in 30 seconds. “It was impressive to see typical American marketing skills at work. Swiss startups can definitely draw some inspiration from American founders”, comments Urs Stender.

In the coming days the six startups will have a programme tailored to their needs. They will meet representatives of several big players such as Google, Yahoo, Apple, Logitech etc. Some of the companies will visit MobileCON, an important trade fair. Others will meet potential customers. Skiioo for example will travel to Vail and Lake Tapo.

Urs Stender, Venture Associate at Swisscom, accompanies the entrepreneurs and will report regularly about the trip in a dedicated blog at Swisscom StartUp and „realtime“ on Twitter using the Hashtag #SSupC13. Readers of the travel diary and the tweets can win a flight to San Francisco! At Startupticker we will report about the experiences of the six entrepreneurs too. The six winners visiting Silicon Valley are: Iprova, Qloudlab, Skiioo, Terria Mobile, Tooxme and Upicto.