5 Lessons I learnt at Silicon Valley

Hello Rodinhooders,

I have been willing to write about my experience at Silicon Valley as a part of Draper University for a long time.

This is in continuation with all the good things that happened via therodinhoods and your blessings,when I was at centre of all the action.

It has been close to 6 months that I returned from the life changing experience at Silicon Valley.

I finally decided to pen down 5 of the most important learnings/observations I had during the 3 month stay at the heart of innovation and the mecca of Start-ups. Why? Because I believe it is an important step to keep the learnings preserved and also to see if any of the readers has had similar experiences.

I was in Valley from 18th January 2014- 8th March 2014, attending Tim Draper’s Draper University. If you haven’t heard of it yet, please go and have a look, it might just be the thing you have always been looking for. If I go on and talk about how brilliant the program is, it would become a post in itself. Instead, I would say Draper University is a thing to be experienced not written!

Coming back to the lessons, one of the most important personal lesson for me was, if intentions are good and hardwork is in place, things will fall in place at just the right time. I had this burning desire of kick starting the year 2014 at valley. I came to know of the program in November 2013, applied within 10 hours, got selected with a decent scholarship in mid December and left India within a month.

Here goes my 5 most important lessons:-

1. Jobs will be there:- One of the first few tasks that was given to our class was to travel from San Mateo to San Francisco city and get any job. Almost all of us in a class of 40 had a job to show when we returned after a couple of hours.

The intention here was to bring it out in the open that no matter how much you lose in life, if you only have to do a job, there are plenty available, you just have to go out and seek.

Lesson:- In life take risks that scare you to death, because greater the risks, greater are the rewards. Even if you lose, you still have the option of going back to a “job”!

2. Build Things for Future:- Draper University is such an unconventional place that everyday/every moment you are learning/discovering something. Tim Draper the man himself commits time beyond reckoning to make sure you get maximum out of the program(lets not talk funding here 😉 ). Because of his sheer passion day in and day out you have stalwarts from the valley walking to the class and taking you through things you would not bother thinking otherwise.

Here’s a food for thought: Imagine the Founder of EA Sports,Trip Hawkins walking around the class in a way that in a couple of days you start feeling, oh he is also a part of us.And he was only one of them!

One of the things that was continuously stretched during our interaction with Tim and entrepreneurs around valley was,

Lesson:- When building products always try and imagine a future that is 10, 20, 50 even 100 years beyond. Imagine a future that your children/grand children will be living and then build products. This way you are always onto things that are going to become big and redefine human existence.

Too many entrepreneurs get lost in the problems that are being faced currently by minor section of people, the problem fades away quickly, and the product quicker!

3. Pain is Natural:- One of the harsh reality of being at Draper University is that you have to go through what is called “Survival Week”. Survival week here literally means you have to survive a week in some of the toughest conditions and made to go through things that you didn’t imagine yourself doing. I will not write much about survival week,because the nature of it is such that you have to go through it.

You might think, that what learning may come off by going through unimaginable hardship and pain. Well, it is very simple and if I may say so beautiful.

Lesson:- Entrepreneurial journey is going to be full of ups and downs and you will have to go through lots and lots of pain. There will be times when you might think that “this is it”, I cannot continue beyond this point. At that moment, you can recall “Survival Week” and say that if you can go through and overcome Survival then you can overcome any hardship in your journey!

4. Talk less, do more:- One of the personal observation I made during the time at Valley was, people who are serious about getting things done will always get it done rather than talk about it. This observation was striking in the sense that coming from a place where you see a lot of people talking of doing/executing things but end up doing nothing, here I was at a place where all that mattered was getting it done.

Lesson:- If you really want to change the world, go and change it, stop bull shitting!

5.Good things happen:- Two years of being active in the community and helping it grow stronger, I have been subject to many experiences. Time and again, there have been people who have questioned the logic/reasoning behind such passion and commitment. All these years, I always believed that doing good is something that came naturally to me and that good things happen to people who do good.

Lesson:- The last piece is not entirely derived out of valley, but not mentioning it will leave the post utterly incomplete.

When I got selected for Draper University, I was in no position financially to go ahead and attend the program. All I had was a month’s time, and the hope that may be this is the time when good things will happen to me.

People from the Start-up community at Bangalore came forward so strongly to help me raise funds and pack my bags for valley in no time,that I was awestruck to say the least. When I was at the airport catching my flight, I was still wondering, is it for real?

The valley part of the lesson is that, I wrote to a prominent investor during my stay and the very next day he sponsored $1000 of my tuition. To add onto this so many of my friends have raised money from people because the investors(not necessarily conventional) like them without a customer and some without a prototype!

PS:- If you would like to know more about the learnings, please follow this link to see the interview I did with Tim Draper!

First posted here.

With Love,

Prashant