Santiago Bilinkis l Risk and Reward - Trying to live a life out of the comfort zone

Perhaps the most shocking thing of knowing how Venture Capital in Silicon Valley works is to see the huge contrast with what happens in Latin America.

I am a friend of several of the people who lead or work at the main funds in the region. But back from my trip I could not help but feel disgust for how they carry out their role as VCs .

What is the problem? The problem is that Venture Capital is essentially about risk. All the VCs we met during the trip made that very clear.  And here, nobody wants to take risks .

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What impressed me the most in this trip was to find out how the Venture Capital funds in Silicon Valley work. The contrast with what we entrepreneurs in Latin America are used to is gigantic.

Let’s see the main aspects:

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Silicon Valley is an incredible place. In this post I will tell a bit what it is like for those who, like me until last week, have never been there or read much about it. Experts can stop here.

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As anticipated in my previous post, last week I made one of the best trips of my life: I went to the Silicon Valley Tour organized by Endeavor.

Although for business or pleasure I have traveled a lot to the United States since I started Officenet, absurdly I had never been to the West Coast. Therefore this was the first time I went to San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

In the introduction to the first speaker of the event, Wences Casares, the founder of Patagon, Lemon Bank and BlingNation, began by saying that since he was a bit over 20 years-old he set as a rule to, at least once a year, find an excuse to go there. Then I realized that, being myself an entrepreneur, it is absurd that I’ve waited 37 years to go. Because Silicon Valley is THE mecca of entrepreneurship. It’s where the Major Leagues are played. Where most of the main new innovative companies in the world are built.

What am I going to do now is to write a series of posts trying to share with you the most important ideas and learnings from this trip. In the days ahead I’m going to write about:

- How Silicon Valley looks like

- How Venture Capital firms work there

- What was discussed regarding the global financial crisis we are experiencing and how to take advantage of the difficult context

- The visits we made to Electronic Arts, Ebay, Facebook and Google

- The most interesting business concepts I heard for entrepreneurs

- The Endeavor companies that I did not know me and impresses me the most

But first let’s devote this post to my frivolous, irrelevant and / or fun comments:

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At this moment I am for the first time in my life at Silicon Valley, in a tour organized by Endeavor. It is very difficult to tell you in the 10 minutes I have right now the unbelievable experience this is. It will take many posts to digest what I am seeing and learning in this trip.

The agenda starts every day at 7:20AM and goes non stop until 10PM at night. Yesterday we visited Electronic Arts, the largest videogame company in the World. My digital camera did not work, but I took a few pics with my cell phone. The quality is very poor (damned Blackberry ) but for whoever wants to take a look, I ulploaded them to Facebook.

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In the World today there are two classes of people: those who love technology and those who reject it. There is no middle ground.

I clearly belong in the first group and therefore I cannot understand those who call being in an area without email and internet coverage “rest”. That is my definition of “stress”! To the lover of technology there is no bigger feeling of peace of mind than an empty Inbox for being up-to-date. That is why the Blackberry (or iPhone) is our best friend!

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