I am currently in Cupertino, the home of the Apple, the city of Steve Jobs, the location of '1, Infinite Loop' the address of Apple computers HQ.
The Capital of Apple Empire...
In this area, everyone and his grandmother possess Apple Products. They have the Apple Macpro for the desktop, iPhone to talk, message, download and upload iPhone apps, iPad to interact with Social Media, listen to music and take photographs and finally the oldies still have their iPod touch to listen to music...
In this Apple world, I, with my Dell 6300 with its curveless and boxy design and with the Windows XP OS, feel almost like an alien from Mars. I am looked down upon as I walk around with my Sony Camera (Buy your iPad for photos, dude? which ancient world are you in?) and it is almost sacrilegious to talk to my friends using a Samsung Galaxy 1-1903.
Eyebrows get raised, if you see what I mean...
But what excites me is the level of energy, innovation, excitement that pervades this part of the world.
Wherever you go, the talk is about the next path-braking iPhone application. The conversation focuses on the latest meeting of Angel Investors and the thoughts focus on the latest one billion acquisition of Instagram by Facebook.
Face book paid one Billion for a company which was liberally valued at 100 Million at the most. At USD 1 Billion, the valuation of the Instagram by Facebook was almost 100 million for each of the 11 engineers in that company !!!!
Amazing. Let me say it again. Astounding....
I checked out Instagram on my Sister-in-Law's iPhone. I was impressed with the application. It is an application which you want to download (especially since it is free) and play around with. No wonder it had about 25 million users within a very short span of time.
Wherever you go, be it the restaurant, the gym or the nearby park, you overhear discussions that invariably focus on the following topics. Latest Startup in the valley, the newest applications that are being launched, the next meeting of angel investors who can provide funding to your venture or, the holy grail of a Silicon Valley Entrepreuner, the latest funding from a VC Fund...
Of course there may be failures. There may be startups that fold without funding, there may be applications that no one uses. But no one speaks about failures here.
Wherever you look in the valley, there is an overwhelming sense of Optimism, of Innovation and of new ideas. People walk with spring in their steps and light in their eyes.
It is contagious. You can't escape evolving into a different person. Version 2.0 as it were.
All these days, despite many of my friends having moved to US, I refused to budge. I thought that India is a pretty comfy place to be. And it is. But once I am here in the valley (for just three days), I am already a changed person.
I am more excited, optimistic, overawed and amazed at the kind of money and opportunities available. I look forward to the future as full of potential.
Looking at the cycle of effort and planning a startup has to go thru, and looking at the kind of efforts and rigorous planning that these guys put in and looking at the positive way in which they look at the whole process of the Startup Cycle (remember, for every startup that succeed, there are thousands out there that go out with a wimper), the positivity in this environment is electrifying.
Startups are the new Goldmines, they are the new Diamond mines and the Engineers and the technologists that develop new products and solutions are the new prospectors....
Let us raise a big toast to them for making our life more easy (mobile transfer of money), productive (all those task planning apps on the mobile platform) and happy (take a look at tomcat, won't you) and ridiculous (take your self picture with Instagram, and change it to a Black & White background).....
Keep up the good work, guys...Keep taking risks, the future is yours and it needs you...
Face book paid one Billion for a company which was liberally valued at 100 Million at the most. At USD 1 Billion, the valuation of the Instagram by Facebook was almost 100 million for each of the 11 engineers in that company !!!!
Amazing. Let me say it again. Astounding....
I checked out Instagram on my Sister-in-Law's iPhone. I was impressed with the application. It is an application which you want to download (especially since it is free) and play around with. No wonder it had about 25 million users within a very short span of time.
Wherever you go, be it the restaurant, the gym or the nearby park, you overhear discussions that invariably focus on the following topics. Latest Startup in the valley, the newest applications that are being launched, the next meeting of angel investors who can provide funding to your venture or, the holy grail of a Silicon Valley Entrepreuner, the latest funding from a VC Fund...
Of course there may be failures. There may be startups that fold without funding, there may be applications that no one uses. But no one speaks about failures here.
Wherever you look in the valley, there is an overwhelming sense of Optimism, of Innovation and of new ideas. People walk with spring in their steps and light in their eyes.
It is contagious. You can't escape evolving into a different person. Version 2.0 as it were.
All these days, despite many of my friends having moved to US, I refused to budge. I thought that India is a pretty comfy place to be. And it is. But once I am here in the valley (for just three days), I am already a changed person.
I am more excited, optimistic, overawed and amazed at the kind of money and opportunities available. I look forward to the future as full of potential.
Looking at the cycle of effort and planning a startup has to go thru, and looking at the kind of efforts and rigorous planning that these guys put in and looking at the positive way in which they look at the whole process of the Startup Cycle (remember, for every startup that succeed, there are thousands out there that go out with a wimper), the positivity in this environment is electrifying.
Startups are the new Goldmines, they are the new Diamond mines and the Engineers and the technologists that develop new products and solutions are the new prospectors....
Let us raise a big toast to them for making our life more easy (mobile transfer of money), productive (all those task planning apps on the mobile platform) and happy (take a look at tomcat, won't you) and ridiculous (take your self picture with Instagram, and change it to a Black & White background).....
Keep up the good work, guys...Keep taking risks, the future is yours and it needs you...
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