Saket Vora

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. :)