Our co-CEO, Michael Hughes, recently founded the Silicon Valley Internship Programme (SVIP), a programme in its inaugural year designed to immerse UK engineering graduates in the entrepreneurial world of Silicon Valley.
In this post, he explains the thought process behind this programme, and how it echoes our central mission of solving problems where we see them, whether they are in the world of entrepreneurialism, technology, or simply providing less painful conferencing and online meetings for the business world.
Underpinned by an excellent university network, Britain continues to be one of the great innovating countries of the world. Yet, for all the innovations originating from Britain’s boffins, the ability to commercialize these innovations and build new business models remains embarrassingly elusive. With this in mind, I set about thinking of ways to solve this problem, or at least to contribute towards a solution…
Originally from the UK, I’ve lived in San Francisco since coming to the US 17 years ago to attend business school. I started LoopUp with a friend of mine, Steve Flavell, whom I met at Stanford. LoopUp was founded to solve a whole lot of problems we experienced in our previous roles on conference calls and online meetings. We set about to make these activities a less painful experience for everyday users. Unconventionally, we decide to start our company simultaneously in London and San Francisco and we have since grown to have offices in London, San Francisco, Boston, Hong Kong and Barbados. This position has granted me a good insight into how Silicon Valley stacks up against different business centers, and what sets it apart.
Every few years I join with fellow Brit entrepreneurs in the Bay Area to take part in meetings set up by the UK government. These well-intentioned discussions aim to understand ‘Why Silicon Valley Works’ and to tease out some magic formula that can be replicated back in Britain to reinvigorate the tech sector. Studying a unique ‘cluster’ such as the one that exists in Silicon Valley does indeed reveal a fascinating interplay between companies, financiers, Universities, human capital, local demand conditions and the government. However, no matter how intriguing it may be to analyze this interplay of elements, the output is essentially descriptive. It’s helpful in understanding how Silicon Valley works, but it yields little information telling us how to actually go and build a similar cluster.
Something that always strikes me when I speak with entrepreneurs who have gravitated towards Silicon Valley is how important ‘just being here’ seems to be to their aspirations. Digging a little deeper, you find that the underlying feeling of the Valley is that anything is possible, and if others can succeed, why can’t I? The heady mix of effort, luck and hope (along with a pinch of inspiration) is the attitudinal magic that powers the interplay between the actors and provides the engine of entrepreneurship. To make a somewhat contentious generalization, the natural British response to the new is to analyze and criticize. This feeds perfectly into the sense of humour, but curtails the wide-eyed enthusiasm that gets businesses started. The dirty secret of entrepreneurship is that it is a portfolio game: you need lots of people trying lots of different things and one of them, whether by luck or judgment, will succeed. If success has a healthy mix of luck to go with the judgment, then an enthusiastic community (which sees failure as good experience for the next attempt) will always outperform a community where analytical criticism rules and fewer, though better-conceived, attempts are made. Natural selection is a powerful force in entrepreneurship!
Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley have found that attitude is one of the biggest benefits of being here and this attitude makes them realize that all those successful entrepreneurs are not so different from you and me. They also understand that the biggest and most important thing about starting a company is simply starting, even if you don’t have the perfect idea (and it will change anyway once you begin).
Given this world view, the question remains, ‘What can be done to help the UK’s tech sector?’ The answer is easy: try out some ideas and see what works.
Enter the Silicon Valley Internship Programme, which takes newly minted software engineering grads from the UK and pairs them up with hot entrepreneurial technology companies for a one year ‘internship’. What better way to help people understand what’s going on here than to bring them over to work in the environment and be part of the evolution of a tech company? We have been able to quickly pull together what we need to make it happen with some tremendous help from the SV start-up community, the British Consulate and so many kind people who’ve gone out of their way to help.
As TechCrunch’s article on SVIP noted, “Of course a handful of grads aren’t going to change ingrained, prevailing British attitudes to failure on their own. But…the network of people they will plug into will reach much further. So although the SVIP is a small initiative, its heart is definitely in the right place. And its impact might hopefully end up being greater than the sum of its inaugural parts.”
We are looking forward to seeing the impact of these UK engineers, both in our own company and within Silicon Valley. Hopefully when they return to the UK next year we will also see the UK technology scene benefit from their experiences in Silicon Valley.
