Saket Vora

Senior design continues on. We’re around 2 or 3 weeks behind schedule from my determination. There is going to be a lot of activity in the final five weeks. Mike was in town last week for his spring break. We were able to talk about his future plans. Nader flew back into town on his spring break from Stanford yesterday, but I haven’t had a chance to see him yet. Yesterday a group of friends got together at Mitch’s to celebrate Win’s 22nd birthday. Recipients of the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship were announced yesterday. This is a very nice fellowship — $30k for three years. My friend Kevin Henderson got one for his materials science work at Northwestern, where he is a Ph.D student. I’ve known Kevin since high school (he is a fellow triplet) and he is on a trajectory for great things. No one else I know got it. Oh well.

I’ve been watching the NCAA basketball tournament pretty closely too. My bracket got nuked by Wisconsin and Washington State losing, but I barely spent any time making mine so it’s fine. There has been no Cinderella story this year. UNC just had an epic collapse to Georgetown. The Final Four includes #1, #1, #2, and #2 seeds. Good job NCAA Selection Committee. On the other side, the Lady Wolfpack had their own magical run. Coach Kay Yow of the NC State’s women’s basketball team has been the most inspirational story of the year. Her cancer re-emerged and after she returned to the team they’ve won 12 of 14 games. They continued to beat odds until they lost to Connecticut in the Sweet 16. Bravo Kay Yow, you are an inspiration.

Finally, my dad is in Beijing this week on business. Not sure if he really wants to be there, but whatever. Interesting times.

On Friday night, I got to see NC State play a tournament game in the venerable Reynolds Coliseum. It was the most exciting sporting event I’ve ever attended.

Despite ‘experts’ stating that NC State would finish last in the ACC in Mens Basketball this season, we were a 10th seed in the ACC tournament and took down #6 Duke, #3 Virginia Tech, and #2 Virginia en route to the ACC Championship game. There we lost in a close game to #1 Carolina, thus ending our hopes of making it to the NCAA tournament. The story of our brilliant run through the ACC tournament (a #10 seed had never won a game before) made national headlines. Instead, we became a #4 seed in the NIT, or the ‘National Invitational Tournament’, otherwise known as the ‘Not Invited Tournament’.

It’s alright. We won our first game, and soon word spread that if Marist beat Oklahoma State, the game would be played in Raleigh. But there was a Josh Groban concert already scheduled at the RBC Center, where NC State normally plays its home games. Enter Reynolds Coliseum, the historic home to NC State basketball, located right in the heart of campus. This is where Jimmy V coached. This is where Sidney Lowe, our current coach, played. This is the building that formed the blueprint for the other venerable stadiums in ACC country.

Marist won. 1600 student tickets would be given out at 10am Thursday morning. By 8 or 9pm Wednesday night students were setting up tents outside Reynolds. I left my apartment and got in line at 7:35am. People had snaked around the building, 150 people already in line. I read my book (see post below) and waited. My friend Win Bassett came soon after. At around 8:30 or 9am, Greg and Kelly arrived and joined me. I had to go to class, but I got a text message later saying that we had gotten tickets.

It was cold that evening, and it had been drizzling. As we drove to park the car, we saw lines forming at every entrance. We met up with Win and Lauren at the front entrance. Everyone was wearing red and buzzing with excitement. At 8pm the doors opened and we made it inside. Reynolds seats 12,000. It’s like a large den compared to the cavernous RBC center. The place was packed a full hour before the game started. A lone Marist came on the court to shoot some baskets and was booed by the whole crowd. Later, the four NC State players who sit at the end of the bench walked in to a thunderous cheer. The cheers continued as other players entered. At one point, some people spotted David Thomspon and a cheer just for him came forth by the appreciative crowd. But where was Sidney Lowe, our coach? Minutes before the tipoff, he emerged wearing his signature red blazer and the crowd leapt to its feat. I’ve never heard a crowd chant the name of the coach, but we did.

The game was great. It’s a different experience watching one in Reynolds. There is a new sense of intimacy to the action on the court. But the crowd made it simply incredible. When the band launches into our fight song, you look around and see everyone clapping and singing along, not just the few scattered student sections in the RBC center. Everyone is on their feet. Everyone is cheering. The officiating for the game was atrocious…absolutely atrocious. One memorable span came when a referee called a technical on Dennis Horner. The crowd was furious. As the lone Marist player takes the court to shoot his two free throws, the energy in Reynolds rose to a new level. People were yelling, screaming, stomping, shouting. It was the loudest moment of the night. The Marist player missed. Not 30 seconds later, the referee calls a dubious travel call on freshman Brandon Costner. As the ref walks to the far end of the court, Reynolds erupts in a ferocious “Ref You Suck” chant, everyone emphatically pointing their fingers at the most hated man of the hour. It echoed and amplified, rising in intensity. I half expected the ref to turn around and give the crowd a technical.

We held the lead for most of the game. Marist started to play dirty and the last 2 minutes of game clock took more than 30 minutes to play out, due to the numerous timeouts and dirty fouls on the part of Marist. After the teams shook hands, I saw senior point guard Engin Atsür stop his teammates and together they showed their appreciation of the crowd. Atsür started basketball when I entered State, and this was a wonderful last game for him to play at home.

What a memorable night. Every year, at least one game is played at Reynolds but it is before ACC play and against some cupcake team. After tonight, every year should have one big game scheduled at Reynolds, and they should pack it with 12,000 students. This was a fantastic event to experience as I’m near the end of my time at NC State.

On my way to get in line for a ticket to the Reynolds game, I realized I’d be sitting outside for 3 hours with nothing to do. I picked up a novel I bought at a used bookstore for 25 cents — The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. I’d heard good things about this non-fiction book from my bio leaning friends. It’s an old book now – published in 1994 – but still relevant and an exciting read. I read over 150 pages the first day and finished it up the second (though my recent bout of insomnia helped). It reads like a thriller novel but is based entirely on actual events. The Hot Zone is about some of the world’s deadliest and most terrifying viruses, like Ebola and Marburg. It recounts when these viruses first appeared in the 20th century, and viscerally describes what happens to its victims as they crash. The second half shows why the history is relevant – in the late 1980s, a monkey housing facility in Reston, Virginia had an encounter with a strain of Ebola. Reston is within sight of the Washington monument in Washington, D.C. It tells the story of how authorities from USAMARID and the CDC sought to tackle the outbreak without inciting public panic.

The Hot Zone is a quick, engaging read. To know it is grounded (literally) in reality makes it even better.

Despite two hours of sleep, I found myself surprisingly refreshed. Greg, Win, and I got ready and went out to the lobby at around 4am. Cameron and Dr. Walsh were already there. I found out from Cameron that Austin had left just 30 minutes ago. Jessie later told us that he drove her and Kelly back from University Avenue and they ended up talking for a long time. Maybe under different circumstances something could have worked out…. Ten minutes later, we were heading to the San Jose Airport. After seeing our groggy faces in the lobby, Dr. Walsh said he’d opt for a 10am flight back for next year. I wholeheartedly agree. Once at the airport, team ARI and Tara took a quick photo with the white KIA van which had truly endeared itself to us over the past four days. The shuttle took quite a while to arrive, but the counter agent had all of our boarding passes ready so in less than 30 minutes we were at our gate. It still amazes me that the tiny airport of San Jose serves the tens of thousands of engineers working in Silicon Valley.

The flights were fine. Most people slept, though I couldn’t fall asleep. I was too busy thinking about the future and what I wanted to do after I graduate in May. This trip to Silicon Valley, and the things I learned while out here, significantly re-focused the direction I wanted to take after NC State. Some of us had a good laugh watching Dr. Miller demo the Gimp software program for Linux to Dr. Walsh by photoshopping a picture that Dr. Walsh took of Jessie while she was asleep on the plane. By 5:30pm, we had landed in Raleigh and the group started to catch their rides back home.

So with that, our trip to Silicon Valley came to a close. Many of us agreed that it would take a while for the significance of this trip to sink in. All of us were proud at what graduates of NC State have accomplished. The Valley cultivates a type of atmosphere that encourages creativity, risk taking, and boldly embracing the future. What can be done to bring that culture to Raleigh and NC State? What will be the next big idea? These are the kinds of questions many of us came away with and continue to ask ourselves.

On a personal level, what made this trip so special were the people. I must have laughed and smiled more these past four days than I have in a year. Credit must go to Dr. Miller, Dr. Walsh, Tara Britt, and Dave Mainella who let us truly enjoy this trip and even joined in on the laughs. Barbara Yde deserves special recognition. She worked so hard to keep contacts, handle the logistics, and coordinate everyone’s plans. Without her, the trip would simply not be the success that it was. Sincere thanks also goes to all the alumni that hosted us and to the EEP Advisory Board who helped make this trip have such an absurdly high benefit-cost ratio. Thank you for your continued support and contribution.

First stop for our fourth day was Applied Signal Technology. Co-founded by NC State alum Jim Collins back in 1984, AST focused early on digital signal processing in high performance products used by the government for signal collection. Their products are primarily used for ‘ISR’, or intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Jim Collins not only had great gift bags for us (with a coffee mug!) but also had a bottle of Coke from the NC State 1983 NCAA Championship year. It was great to see an alumnus still proud of the school. Jim talks in a down-to-earth manner with still a bit of North Carolina in his accent. He gave us good feedback on our questions, and was able to describe the challenges of creating a company whose main and essentially only customer is the US Government. Afterwards, he took us on a tour of his facilities.

After taking a photo in front of the iconic water tower remnant of the fruit factory that used to stand where AST is now, we piled in the vans and headed to Danger. Those who have heard of the T-Mobile Sidekick (popular among celebs) may be surprised to hear that Danger is actually the company that designs the hardware and creates the software that makes it enjoyable to use. Joe Britt, a co-founder and ’91 NC State alum, was Dr. Miller’s student a long time ago. Danger has changed offices quite a bit in the last few years (a sign of their growth) and their new office had the vibe of a Valley startup. Color accented walls, exposed ceiling, a variety of lighting as opposed to the typical fluorescent lighting of most offices. Joe described his company and passed around older versions of the Sidekick and even some development versions. He shared with us his path to starting Danger, the skepticism he got from VC firms because it wasn’t geared for corporations. Danger has no plans to go up against corporate mobile email giants like the Blackberry or Treo smartphones. One thing I wrote down that Joe said was “The Internet has now become relevant to ordinary people.” It sounds simple and obvious now when YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook are all the rage, but back when Danger and Joe were conceiving the Sidekick this insight is quite striking. Joe had a few wonderful stories about what running a startup company entails. Of how they pitched to more than 20 VC firms and were denied each time. Of how the one day the representative from Sharp could visit was the same day as his wedding, and how he and his wife changed clothes between the wedding and the reception just to make sure the meeting went through ok. Of how when they had to RF testing and didn’t have an anechoic chamber, they just built one themselves. This perked my interest, having had worked on a homemade anechoic chamber for a research project last week. We had some nice pizza delivered (not from a chain) and talked a bit more about where his company is headed. Before leaving Danger, he took us down to the lab and I got to look at it. We rushed to take a group picture then quickly loaded into the vans. We didn’t want to be late for Randy Komisar.

Our meeting with Randy Komisar was, by now, taking on some pretty serious buzz. Our whole group had been giving copies of his book, The Monk and the Riddle, which many of us read on the flight over here. Randy Komisar has had a wealth of experience in the Valley, and is widely respected and admired. He founded the Claris Corporation, GO, served as CEO of LucasArts Entertainment, helped WebTV, etc. Now, he acts like a “Virtual CEO” and teaches a class at Stanford University. Oh, and he was just made a full partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the most successful venture capitalist firms in the world. Maybe you’ve heard of some of the companies where Kleiner Perkins was an early investor: Amazon.com, America Online, Google, Intuit, Lotus, Netscape, Sun, Macromedia, Electronic Arts. So yeah, we are all greatly anticipating this meeting. Driving down the famous Sand Hill Rd., home to probably more than a hundred VC firms, we could only imagine the hundreds of billions dollars in the air. Their building follows a sort of ranch style, with light colored wood and skylights for an airy feeling. We entered a massive yet inviting board room, saw already signed copies of the Monk and the Riddle on a table, along with a cheese tray, gourmet cookies, and beverages. Dr. Walsh quietly mentioned how he had made a pitch in this room for his company long ago. Randy soon entered and warmly addressed our group. Not only was I thrilled for the chance to get 45 minutes with him, I’m actually even more impressed about the fact that Randy knows about our Engineering Entrepreneurs Program at NC State. This is a man who works with arguably the world’s best – Stanford Technology Ventures. For him to know about us and to think positively about what our program is doing speaks volumes to the hard work and dedication of Dr. Miller and Dr. Walsh. He was the first person to actively ask us questions and hear our thoughts. Dr. Miller wanted to know his thoughts on the iPhone, considering the issue had been brought up in many of our other stops. Randy asked us what we thought and whether we used Apple products. Later, he was joined by Bill Campbell. Their friendship goes back many many years and it seems that Campbell serves in a similar role to Randy as a ‘virtual CEO’. We did not realize Bill Campbell would be joining us, so we students weren’t too familiar with him. Jason Massey, who hosted us for dinner the previous night and was there to join us, said later that Campbell was a rock star in the Valley…sitting on the Board of Directors for Apple, early advisor to Google, CEO and advisor to Intuit, etc. Back to our conversation. Randy answered questions on the ‘herd mentality’ of venture capitalists, how he and his firm try to see beyond the horizon, and what makes Silicon Valley so unique in cultivating entrepreneurship. Jared asked him something that stemmed from our meeting with Guy Kawasaki – when Randy is looking at a pitch does he approach it from the standpoint of “wouldn’t it be cool if” or does he look at the market? Randy answered straightforwardly “the market.” I enjoyed that contrast, though I can certainly see why their two answers would be different.

We all felt like we could have talked for two more hours, but our time was up. We graciously thanked Randy and Bill for their time, and it looks like they will welcome next year’s group as well. Maybe they can meet at the Konditorei then. Our final stop of the trip was Tesla Motors, a company that caught a lot of attention in recent years for developing a head-turning automobile that can burn Ferrari’s and Porsches in a 0 to 60 race. The catch is that their car is all electric. They gave us a short presentation on the motivation behind Tesla Motors and what they aim to do. One interesting fact is that their battery is actually hundreds of AA lithium ion batteries that are cleverly packaged together. Some pretty sophisticated electronics are needed to maintain a cell like that. Their electric motor is also custom designed and can produce a staggering amount of torque. Their engine has a flat torque line from 0 to 5000 rpm unlike other cars, so even at 5 rpm you’re getting a tremendous amount of torque from the engine. It has only two gears. This is a reason why it can beat fancier cars head-to-head. They didn’t have an actual car at their facility, but they showed us two demo models of them. You have to admit, they are good looking cars. They share some elements with the Lotus Elise. I’ll personally be more interested though when they bring their technology to focus more on consumer cars rather than $90,000 roadsters.

After Tesla Motors, we stopped by the hotel to freshen up then walked down to the California Avenue Caltrain station. We were going to catch a 6:15pm train into San Francisco for dinner. A few of us had some dry remarks about a suicide prevention sign placed near the railroad tracks. California can sure be a strange place. On the train ride Cameron and I bought the winz0r.com name to have a little fun with win. It’s an inside joke, but try pointing your browser to winz0r.com/face. Greg, Jessie, Cameron, and I were sitting in one of the four seat arrangements on the bottom floor of the Caltrain. Jessie’s phone rings and she asks “What is a 650 area code number?” I smiled and said that it was a Stanford area code, and that it had to be Austin calling her. She wasn’t sure if she should take it, but soon our whole group was egging her on. Sure enough it was Austin from last night at the Nut House, and Jessie had to get up to take it due to the fun Greg was making at her. Maybe Austin would be meeting her later that night after we got back from San Francisco.

An hour later, we made it into city. It was already dark, so didn’t get to see much. We walked north to the waterfront and had a nice view of the Bay Bridge lit up. The restaurant, Delancy’s, is actually staffed with recently paroled prisoners as a way of integrating them back into society. It is a nice restaurant, and most of the students took a large table by ourselves. I got some wine advice from Win, Jordan, and Greg and we ultimately ended up sharing a bottle of cabernet. Dinner was fine, if a little slow. Most people had the steak. We schemed to tell the staff that it was Dr. Walsh’s birthday, but that didn’t work out. It was so late by the end of dinner that we simply headed back to the train station to catch the 10pm train back to Stanford. A group of people got off a stop early at University Avenue, but our chaperons and the rest of us were pretty tired so we went back to the hotel. Since Jessie wasn’t with us, I presumed she joined the group going to University Avenue. Maybe she’d get a chance to see Austin again after all. Greg, Win, and I started packing once we got back and went to bed at around 12:30. We’d be waking up at 3am to get ready for the flight back home.

Hotel departure was pushed back an hour to around 8am, and after a surprisingly decent breakfast at the hotel (Belgian waffles and coffee were popular) we headed out to Garage Technology Ventures. We were there to meet Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of the Start, which is a good guide to starting a technology company. Guy is a very laid back guy whose only ‘fee’ for meeting groups is a hockey jersey from where they are from, and he actually asked for an NC State jersey instead of one from the Carolina Hurricanes. Exhibiting a great sense of humor, total avoidance of stereotypical VC buzzword laden language, and preferring to “tell it like it is”, Guy is very approachable and we had a great visit with him. Knowing his background with Apple as a evangelist, we asked about his recent blog post in which he raised several points of criticism about the much hyped Apple iPhone. It was impressive to see him dissect the issue so swiftly on both philosophical and quantitatively practical fronts. We asked him what he looks for as a venture capitalist, and this spawned an interesting discussion at how different VC firms approach ideas. We mentioned how we also read Randy Komisar’s book and would be meeting him tomorrow, but more on him later. First, venture capitalist firms might invest in 10+ companies, but really all they need is one grand slam home run. The next Google. The next YouTube. The next Apple. The next eBay. Guy says that the question most VCs ask is about the market. Is there a market for the idea? How big is it? How fast will it grow? What business model will be used? But, if you look at the examples above, did any of them have a demonstrable market? Or a viable business model? Sergey Brin and Larry Page were two guys who just wanted to build a better search engine. Yahoo was already there, Altavista, Excite@home, etc. And how in the world can you make money with a search engine? With eBay, you’re asking people to sell items that they aren’t sure they will be paid for and to buy items from people who might not ever ship them. How could that be a viable business model? What Guy asks instead is “wouldn’t it be cool if….” He told us to ask Randy to see what he would say. One of us asked him about the craziest pitches he has heard as a VC. One person wanted to build a geodesic dome enclosing the city of Los Angeles. Another person had wanted to target the ‘growth’ market of drowning. Their idea was a way that will help people get spotted by rescue helicopters if they started to drown. They boasted partnerships and support from the Coast Guard, etc. Guy thought they had some GPS or location finding system but it turned out to be red tape. No joke – a spool of red tape that you wave around in the water.

Guy graciously signed our books and we were off. We weren’t due at Cisco until noon, so the ARI van (the ARI team all rode in the white KIA van helmed by none other than Tara Britt) and others went to visit the famous Fry’s Electronics store. Combine a Best Buy, a RadioShack (that doesn’t suck), a bit of NewEgg, and a dash of style and you’ll have Fry’s. Located primarily in California, Fry’s is where many famous startup companies bought parts and assembled prototypes. Cameron bought more than a dozen candy bars called Abba Zaba that proved to be horrible.

A quick rendezvous at the hotel and we made it to the Cisco campus. And what a campus. I thought the IBM campus in RTP was large, but that doesn’t even compare. Building after building after building…it numbers close to forty! And we’re talking large, four to five story buildings too. Our contact here was Wes Chou, an NC State alum who worked at a startup called Netiverse until it was acquired by Cisco. Cisco has made over 140 acquisitions in the 15 years. He gave a company overview and discussed on the strategy of Cisco in how it intends to position itself for the upcoming years. One of the co-founders (an Indian) of Netiverse who also went to Cisco came in and spoke to us about trends in the Valley and in this area. One cool thing that Cisco does is that it acts like its own VC firm. It funds groups within the company to explore new emerging technologies. After lunch wrapped up, we took a tour of their ‘Signals Lab’. Every third or fourth word spoken by the tour guide was over the head of our group…really obscure or advanced networking concepts. Basically, the room was an example of the power of video over IP. From this lab, Cisco broadcasts around 40 channels to all 40,000+ Cisco employees worldwide. All over the internet. They can also provide cable to the entire Bay area if they had to. They also had four large TVs each with a unique high definition video stream that were being broadcast simultaneously over IP using a router…pushing that much data on a network is pretty neat.

The last company stop of the day was QuickLogic, co-founded by NC State alum Timothy Saxe. He is a soft spoken man but clearly sharp and observant. He has had a lot of experience in many different aspects of business. QuickLogic makes the most power efficient FPGAs in the market, but competes with the Xilinx and Atmel juggernauts. He had many cogent remarks on running a startup or a business that I took note of. “The resistance in adopting change can be a big obstacle to gaining critical mass” and “What do you hire for? Skill and talent. What do you fire for? Behavior and attitude. We look for the latter now.” He also re-iterated a point other have brought up – Asia/Pac is very good at manufacturing things, but it is still America where the designs are done.

We finished up the day at around 4:30pm, so the group headed back to the Stanford Terrace hotel. Tara took a group of us to the nearby Stanford Shopping Mall where we killed some time before going to Jason Massey’s house for dinner. I had a good talk with Cameron at the La Baguette place, and Tara hit up the Stanford gift store before browsing the other high end stores. Win and Greg relaxed in the Brookstone massage chairs. Later, with the whole group this time, we made it to Jason Massey’s house who was hosting us with a barbecue. He also invited some students from a local high school to interact with us. Jordan thought he was talking to one and was describing what our ARI company does. The high schooler started asking questions about the market size and features, and Jordan was surprised to learn later that he was in fact a Stanford graduate student helping to mentor the kids. Jason is an NC State alum that worked at an investment firm out in the Valley for a number of years. He’s now heading to Covad to get some operations experience. We got a good sense of the house prices in San Jose / Palo Alto area. His 1400 square foot home cost $1.2 million. Absolutely insane. Greg, Tara, and I had a nice discussion during dinner, and a group of us stood around the smoldering barbeque grills in a talk that ventured into politics. Daniel, who exercises a remarkably sharp wit, entertained us with humorous views on American foreign policy. (He has had experience in Navy ROTC). Jason was going to meet us at Kleiner Perkins tomorrow, so we bid adieu and headed back the hotel.

We had more energy due to only visiting three companies, so two groups formed. One group headed back to the Nut House, this time joined by Tara and Jessie. Dr. Walsh wanted to go by the Creamery, a famous old fashioned diner on University Avenue to get a classic milkshake. He used to frequent the joint often during his time out in Palo Alto, and a few years ago when he and Dr. Miller were there they ran into Joe Britt, co-founder of Danger, who makes the T-Mobile Sidekick. Joe Britt was one of Dr. Miller’s students a long time ago and an NC State alum. Win, Stephen, me, and Jordan went with Dr. Walsh before catching up with the others at the Nut House. We were gathered around a table by the bar, cracking peanuts and enjoying our beverages. Eric or Jordan got a set of billiard balls so our group migrated to the rear of the Nut House with a pool table. We started some pair games while Tara began her scheming. Jessie spotted a handsome guy in a red polo shirt by the bar earlier, but didn’t want to say anything. Tara headed back to our original table and told the guy “hey, the girl in the green shirt wants to talk to you, so you better get back there!” The answer was a no-brainer, and soon Jessie turns around and is face to face with him. The handsome stranger, Austin, turned out to be a graduate student in computer science at Stanford. He and Jessie chatted and soon the pair was squaring off against Jordan and I in a pool match. Cameron, who has relatives in Germany and even attended an international school there for a few years, caught some German being spoken by four guys playing pool behind us. Later that evening, Tara brought them over for a friendly USA vs Deutschland dart throwing match. They were here as interns working for Scimex in the Valley. It was nice to listen to and practice some German with them. I tried my hand at some dart throwing (never tried it before) and wasn’t actually too bad. I even hit the bulls-eye once. But one of the Germans threw a perfect score down the stretch to win the match. As it was nearing midnight, we decided to call it a night and headed back to the hotel. Jessie said goodbye to Austin (a hug was rumored to have been shared) and she even gave him her phone number. The group shared a few memorable phrases (which won’t be uttered here) on the walk back, but a certain girl who had a nice night really wanted to get an ARI tattoo. Ahem. :)

Just a quick update — we’re leaving for the airport now (4am local time!) so I’ll try to type up Day 3 and Day 4 on the airplane. Most likely, it’ll be done by Friday night.

Stay tuned till then, sorry for the delay!

An early start had us (meaning Win) waking up at 5:45am. We got ready in successive fashion, and piled in the van to head to Adobe Systems at 7:00am. Adobe Systems was a short distance away in downtown San Jose. Their lobby reflects the multimedia products they make. Grant Williard, NC State alum and father of Mary Williard (a Park in my class who is now at Stanford), greeted us and took the group to breakfast at the company cafeteria. Grant created a company more than 20 years ago called i Cubed, and they were among the first to create sophisticated CAD tools for mechanical engineering. He was able to bootstrap the whole operation, but meant greater control but slow growth. In 2000 or 2001, he started to explore a side issue with CAD drawings: how do you keep your files secure in a rapidly globalizing economy. You don’t want to invest $100,000 in designing a part, email it to your factory in China, then see the schematic copied and fabricated by others illegally. They created very good software for this, and it caught the attention of Adobe who was looking for something similar for their line of products. In 2005, Adobe acquired a portion of i Cubed and so Grant and some of his employees moved out here. The talk he gave had some very good points, particularly on the topic of ownership. When working on a project, you can either implement a set of specifications or take ownership of the project and take it to greater heights. That’s the spirit of entrepreneurship and you can display it in the classroom, in a corporation, or in your own startup.

After Adobe, we drove to One Infinite Loop in Cupertino, the headquarters of Apple. The presentations certainly had a bit of a recruiting bent to them, but Joe Fischer gave a talk on how product development works at Apple. Joe was an NC State alum in EE back in ‘01, and he came to Apple’s iPod division after a stint at a startup in the Valley. Joe is now the hardware lead for the iPod line. He is a really down to earth guy who enjoys what he does, and why not? He and like 8 people are responsible for the brains behind the iPod…which has sold how many million units? We then heard from the software lead for the iPod and iPhone…who was very passionate about Apple and believed in the company to its core. Maybe a bit too much, but whatever. Still, being able to hear from the hardware and software leads for the iPod and the iPhone was pretty cool. We had lunch at the Apple cafeteria and Tony Blevins (VP of Apple in Operations and who hosted us the night before) pointed out the Ph.D researcher who helped create the “multi-touch interface” for the iPhone. I also admired Tony’s candid remarks about the challenges Apple will face in the next few years.

Before leaving Apple, we stopped by the Apple store where I bought my Dad an iPod shuffle. I figure if I was going to give an iPod to a man who has worked at IBM for 35 years, I might as well buy it at the Apple Headquarters. Heh.

After Apple, we drove to the Googleplex. Parking was a pain (keep in mind this whole time we’ve been risking our lives with Tara’s driving…”Greg is the light red or green?!”), but once inside we met with about five NC State alums who had a variety of roles within Google. Much of the time was spent discussing the “20% time” projects that Google employees use to explore their own ideas and develop projects. The alums talked about how they go about imagining new ideas and a bit about the corporate culture at Google, which even according to the other people we’ve met, is pretty crazy for Silicon Valley. Instead of thinking about monetization, their inspiration is usually “wouldn’t it be cool if….” Our host, Ronner Lee, then took us on a quick tour of the Googleplex. It’s eye-opening, let me tell you. Each treadmill in the gym has satellite TV. All food and drink is free. They have a massage parlor. Every Friday in the main cafeteria, they have an ‘all hands meeting’ where any Google employee can attend. Sergey Brin and Larry Page go up on an informal stage and present some announcements, then any employee can ask a question to them. Drinks and snacks follow in a ‘happy hour’ atmosphere.

After Google, we headed to a much smaller company that works on a cool idea: using broadcast TV signals for geographic positioning inside of building. Todd Young has had a lot of varied experiences: BS in computer engineering from NC State, MS in Computer Science from Cornell, and an MBA from the Haas School in Berkeley. He has worked in Japan for several years and is fluent in Japanese. Rosum, as a company, they are still definitely in the startup phase but have an impressive board of directors and advisors. People are recognizing their technology but it has yet to be implemented in something big yet.

Following a brief stop at the hotel, we headed out to Grant and Laura Williard’s house for dinner. Their house is, without a doubt, one of the coolest homes I’ve ever visited. Stone walls, dark wood timbers, tall ceilings, accent lighting, adobe and hints of Spanish architecture made it very unique. The doorbell was an actual mechanical bell with a pull resembling an old-fashioned water pump. It was really nice to see Mary and Matt again, and even Jessica Badger was there. Grant and Laura are wonderful hosts and even most wonderful people. We talked with Laura for some time about how it was like living out here in the Bay area, especially from someone who has lived for over 30 years in Raleigh. The fact was that it was truly like an ‘adventure’. Towards the end, Greg wasn’t feel so well so the ARI van left early in search of an urgent care center. Turned out it wasn’t streptococcus. Oh Greg. :)

It was only around 9:30pm when we got back to the hotel, so a group of us decided to walk down to the Nut House on California Avenue. This was recommended to us by Dr. Walsh, who used to have an office on California Ave. for his start-up company BOPS back in the heyday of the bubble. Win and Greg stayed at the hotel but we had a fair sized group go. The Nut House turned out to be one of the best bar establishments I’ve ever been to. Good selection of beer with many on tap, pool tables, dart boards, and large TVs. They have a bin where you can scoop up roasted peanuts in the shell then crack them open and enjoy at your table. No trashcans required — just brush the shells aside. They only seem to sweep the place once a week. I talked with Walden and Stephen about their plans after graduating, then Eric and Jordan headed to the pool table to square off. They proved to be very good at pool while playing at Tony Blevin’s house. A few us took turns playing, had a great time, then headed back to the hotel by midnight.

What a great start to the Silicon Valley trip sponsored by the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program. Woke up at 3am and met the rest of the ARI team (Greg, Win, Jared, and Jordan) at Greg’s house. Sapana was driving the van to get us to the airport. We made it with plenty of time to spare, saw everyone else trickle in. The flights were fine, didn’t sleep much because I wanted to talk to people. Most of our group (we numbered close to 13) sat in the very back 3 rows of the plane. It was good. Our departure gate in Houston was directly across our arrival gate…a walk of maybe 30 ft. I went with Jordan and others to get a cup of coffee, but Tara and Jessie and Kelly (the girls) were late and boarded the plane last. The turbulence on these flights were especially bad. We landed into San Jose much like what I remember doing just three weeks prior when I came out here for the Int’l Solid State Circuits Society conference. We took a dying bus to the budget car rental place where Dr. Miller and Dr. Walsh got two KIA vans and a Pontiac sedan. ARI took over the white KIA van with Tara at the helm and boy we had fun. Driving down the highway, fun music blaring, everyone happy. As we approached Stanford I remembered everything…turns out the Stanford Terrace hotel was right on the path I walked everyday to the California Avenue train station. The hotel rooms are much nicer than what the exterior may imply. It was beautiful outside…just wonderful weather. Miller and Walsh went and got sandwiches which we ate at the hotel, then I led a group with Tara to go visit Stanford. We walked around campus, saw the engineering buildings, walked the Quad, and went up Hoover Tower. I tried my best to lead the group having been the only person to have visited Stanford before. Everyone was just blown away by it.

We immediately left to go to Tony Blevins house for dinner…he’s an NC State alum who is now a VP at Apple. We must have driven close to 40 minutes out of Stanford but it’s hard to describe the scenery. The mountain ranges dotted with trees, green hilly pastures with horses, views of the ocean. Tara was especially taken aback…commenting on just how wonderful everything was. Even she was telling me I should come to Stanford! Tony actually lives by Half Moon Bay, apparently quite famous. He greeted our group warming, invited us to drinks, then took us on a walk along the golf fairway that is right in his background. We walked up a hill, marveling at this luscious green golf course, then suddenly we are overlooking the bay and the ocean is in front. We continue up the path and see the 18th hole with a large hotel and a bagpipe player strolling along. It was really quite something. Greg, Win, Jordan and I were talking with Tony and he mentioned about going for a walk by the ocean golf course, which was newer. So we walked along talking about golf. Later back at his house we went down to his game room where he had a pool table. Jordan and Eric surprised me with their pool playing prowess. The dinner was kebabs made by Tony himself. I spent most of the dinner chatting with Joseph Fischer. Joe was an NC State alum who works at Apple and was a project lead for the Apple iPod Nano. This guy is a system integrator for the iPod Nano…basically making it happen. Really interesting guy and we talked alot about how product development at Apple works.

We finally left and headed back to the hotel. It had been a long day for all of us. On the way back we came up with questions for the companies and Jessie wrote them down. Jessie had a pad of paper and wrote down a lot of the funny quotes and comments from people. We’re just back at the hotel now, it’s 10pm our time here but it feels like 1am. A lot of us have been up for 22 hours straight and we’re going to bed. Busy day tomorrow…up by 5:45am.

Who knows…maybe my trip to Apple will finally convince me to buy an iPod.