How to’s for Silicon Valley

I feel Silicon Valley has its own particular way of doing business. Often, all of their conventions are taken for granted, but they were not always obvious for me when I came here. That’s why I’ve decided to start a new set of posts and share some of my leanings and experiences hoping they will sometime be useful for someone else.

I already tried once to summarize my learnings about networking… This is a list of the things I’m going to talk about and you can vote by which do you think I should start :D

umbele means “future”

I attach a letter shared by Xavier Sala-i-Martin in Facebook.

Para una tierra feliz y pobre

Recuerdo que mi primera gran impresión al llegar al Senegal (os hablo, como los abuelos, del año 68) la recibí al constatar que la gente reía con frecuencia. Creía hallar un pueblo agobiado, con las orejas gachas y el rabo entre piernas, ¡y los tíos reían cada dos por tres! Pues no veo yo en qué consiste la juerga, pensaba. Aquí hay hambre, enfermedades, mortalidad infantil, inmovilismo económico, cerrazón política, analfabetismo, sin hablar de todo lo demás (uno se sabía al dedillo los datos estadísticos que hacen al caso). ¿Dónde están, entonces, los lamentos y la tristeza congénita de los desamparados?
Lo bueno del caso es que, ni las estadísticas mentían, ni la alegría era falsa. Sencillamente, era una tierra pobre pero feliz; o feliz, aunque pobre.

why here

I discovered an interesting website today and I wanted to share some of the videos that I found there. The messages given are not new for me any more (after a year living close to American universities and Silicon Valley in general), but they might be useful for my family and friends to understand why I’m here.

• Passion for work (video)
• Persistence pays off (video)
• Experience is overrated (video)
• The strengths of Silicon Valley (video)
• Can entrepreneurship be taught? (video)
• Perseverance: sticking to your beliefs (video)
• A member of the CEO minority (video)
• Entrepreneurs: then and now (pre and post 2001) (video)

Anyone still doesn’t understand why I’m here? ;)

Update: Pepe was in fact the one who found this website and gave me the link and he is requesting a mention :)