Experiencing the Silicon Valley - Social Media Study Tour Day 3

Presentation at Wildfire HQ

After the great introduction to the Silicon Valley by Chuck Darrah  on day 1 today, on day 3, the group (here and here) experienced the Silicon Valley. After a presentation about the Swiss Start-Up Webdoc, founded in 2009, by its co-founder Vincent Borel we visited Youtube, Wildfire, and LinkedIn, a vivid experience of Silicon Valley.

What are the takeaways?

First of all, all four companies have their own corporate culture:

The Google company Youtube meets expectations about a very creative work environment cultivating a start-up culture although it's definitely no longer a start-up. Wildfire as a typical start-up, founded in 2008 and backed by four million Dollar venture capital,  which had seven employees in 2010 and approx. 170/180 today while hiring one person per day until the end of the year. Expectations of the investors - Facebook is among them - must be respectively high. And LinkedIn, founded in Dec. 2002, presenting itself as the most mature company having left the start-up phase way behind. And Webdoc being a typical start-up as well but still in an earlier stage than Wildfire.

Beyond all images the respective companies create to be attractive for investors as well as employees one may not forget that all of them are in a very competitive environment where at the end of the day profit has to be generated.

Overall, even being in the Online- and Internet scene for a while now myself it was a more than exiting insight into the companies behind desktop icons we use every day. In all the companies one could feel the entrepreneurial spirit - let's do something! - from which European companies still can learn.

See the Blog on socialmediaswitzerland.com for further information.

See photos of the visits at Youtube, Wildfire, and LinkedIn.
More photos here.