Author: Kevin Hoch

This summer, I was a part of the cohort for Duke in Silicon Valley, a course led by Duke’s I&E department. This project-based program was centered around preparing us for our journey into the startup landscape while innovating solutions to imagine a workplace for a prominent startup.

As we continued our research for the project of designing the workplace of the future, we had several visits to companies in Silicon Valley to learn from their experience adapting to the pandemic and picking the brains of top entrepreneurs to prepare us for our journey.

Through our visits, we picked up on many interesting quirks of offices in Silicon Valley, our favorite one being, of course, unlimited free food. As we marveled over huge kombucha bars and large meditation rooms, we realized how important it is to take care of the people who make a company. Be it through fun activities organized or clever conference room names, company culture seemed crucial to a successful workplace.

A highlight of our trip was our visit to Oracle Park. After watching the San Francisco Giants play San Diego, we had the opportunity to get a tour of some of the highlights of the park from the Senior Vice President of the team: Bill Schlough. Along with breathtaking views and some unforgettable stories about the construction of the park, and showing us his championship rings, Bill talked us through his journey to where he is right now and gave valuable insights for us to keep in mind.

One of our most interesting activities in class involved practicing negotiating in a context that most of us are likely to encounter: a job negotiation. For this exercise, everyone in the class was given roles that dictated which factors were important to us in the negotiation along with other contextual information to make us aware of the circumstances.

As some pairs struggled to come to a compromise that satisfied both parties, others realized that there in fact, was no need to compromise in many areas since often negotiating partners have shared interests.

“Yes, and…”

These two words we learned play a crucial role in innovation. Building on the ideas of others instead of changing them or shooting them down creates a collaborative atmosphere that fosters unparalleled innovation. To practice this, Duke in Silicon Valley students took the stage with BATS improv in San Francisco and developed skills pertaining to brainstorming and innovating through simple yet engaging exercises.

The concept of empathy and collaboration has echoed throughout the classes we have had with Professor Amato as we try to learn as much as we can from the experiences of people who have worked in different styles and innovate a proposed system of work for the growing startup.

In addition to this project, this course has facilitated growth in each student as they try to learn about being an entrepreneur from so many people who have done it. Here are some quotes from our guest speakers which I found valuable.

• “What does your future self wish you did today?”
• “The reputation you leave behind really matters. Do the work!”
• “If you help lots of people, lots of people will help you. Say yes!”
• “You are at the age to optimize risk for learning.”
• “Startups don’t run out of money, founders run out of energy.”
• “Be surrounded by the smartest people you can find!”

I’m thankful for the opportunities this course has offered me and hope to continue to capitalize on all the priceless knowledge I have encountered this past month.

Aditya is a rising sophomore at Duke University – pursuing a double major in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science. Aditya enjoys building products, watching Formula 1 races and spending time with his family. At Duke, he is a member of a premier pre-professional business organization Delta Sigma Pi (DSP), is a part of the Duke Academy of Model Aeronautics and the HackDuke organizing team. Over his gap year, Aditya worked on his EdTech startup where he talked to people involved in the startup space in Silicon Valley. He is now excited to meet more people to prepare him for his journey into solving problems using technology.

Have you ever stared into a pond and marveled at how effortlessly a duck can skate across the surface? If only the water was translucent, then you would see the fervent struggle that their two tiny legs are engaged in to keep the rest of the body afloat. This analogy was brought up countless times as we traveled through the depths of Silicon Valley over the past two weeks. Startup founders, CFOs, and Product Managers advised us to keep the cool of a duck on the surface, but paddle your heart out underneath to sustain your business. Whether it’s in a negotiation, a board meeting, or even a non-work situation, modeling the duck-in-the-pond seems to be a good strategy: remain calm, present yourself well, don’t let them see the blood, sweat, and tears it took to get here, and you will coast by. Thanks to the Duke in Silicon Valley program, I no longer feel like I am splashing among a sea of well-rounded, highly motivated, poised ducks effortlessly drifting across the water. By learning more about others’ tenured career experiences and discovering my own unique passions along the way, I now believe Ravi Gupta when he told us that “nobody actually knows what they’re doing.” At some level, we’re all frantically trying to keep afloat, but it’s those with “confidence in [their] conviction” that look better than the rest of us while trying.

            The following are nuggets of golden advice, conveyed through unusual or distinctive analogies, that I have harvested from the incredible conversations we were able to have last week:

Reed McGinley-Stempel, Stych: Visit after visit, founders would reference the difference between painkillers and vitamins, an analogy which, at first, I didn’t quite understand. Why was a passwordless authentication company or an early stage VC firm asking us, “who took their vitamins today?” I soon learned that using the painkiller-vitamin approach to a product is one of the best strategies in developing product-market fit. You don’t want your solution to be an added–but not necessary–benefit to someone’s daily routine. You want it to be so positively transformative, alleviating a customer’s pain so well that it becomes essential. I have found this framework to transcend the corporate world in guiding my everyday decisions. For example, as I roamed the drugstore aisles thinking about products I wanted versus needed, I faced a budgeted choice: a bigger bottle of Advil for my inflamed tonsils or collagen gummies for my poor nail health. I’ll let you guess which one left CVS with me.

Lauren Levitan, Faire: It wasn’t the crisp white floors or the cold brew andkombucha on tap that dazzled me about Faire, it was the energy. Lauren Levitan and her three coworkers, Jolie, David, and Grant, brightened the room with their excitement for Faire’s growing marketplace, the office comradery, and … cherry tomatoes. Yes, the warm-toned, bulbous fruit (it has seeds) that is the cornerstone of pizza and pasta. The analogy made no sense to us listening, but the Faire employees responded with “ah, yes” to Lauren’s reference. A cherry tomato, she describes, is a small act that, at the moment, seems miniscule in impact, but over time, reaps big benefits in its harvest. Making the decision to forego a fractional unnecessary cost right now can compound into hundreds, thousands, maybe millions in savings down the line that can be reinvested so much more productively into the value proposition of a company. Taking the lesson out of Silicon Valley, doing small yet effective efforts each day towards a larger academic, career, or personal goal can result in a net positive change unimaginable to the initial mind.

Deborah Liu, Ancestry:  “What am I leaving behind?” “What does your future self wish you did today?” Sitting at one end of the U-shaped classroom table, I scanned the room from Bari to my right all the way to Will across from me. As Deb asked us to “step out of today” and into the next 5, 10, 15 years of our lives, I can’t help but ponder what this room would look like then. If the ambition and thirst for knowledge in the room feels forceful now, imagine the success stories that will populate it in a decade. The Duke in Silicon Valley program has brought a group of eclectic, wildly contrasting personalities together through a shared excitement for the opportunities of the future and the hope that maybe we, as individuals or members of a larger team, will one day be the alumni who offer advice to future DSV students.

Penelope is a rising sophomore studying Biomedical Engineering at Duke University with a potential certificate in Science and Society. She hails originally from Dallas, Texas, but is now a North-Easterner living in Greenwich, Connecticut. Growing up, she always found biology to be the most interesting science and now seeks to integrate it with her passions for technology in bio or human health technology. She found Duke in Silicon Valley to be the perfect experience to expose herself to such industries and give her a real insight into opportunities beyond college. Also, as the new director of Duke Campus Enterprises’s Next Ventures division, she is excited to learn from and apply her knowledge from the I&E class to grow as an entrepreneur. Outside of school, she enjoys running marathons, reading, and researching for a cure for Alzheimer’s Disease, which she will formally continue with a Bass Connections Team in the 2022-2023 school year.

This summer I had the incredible opportunity to participate in Duke’s annual Duke in Silicon Valley program as part of an Innovation and Entrepreneurship course taught by renowned faculty member Professor Kathie Amato. The experience has been transformative, not just in terms of the skills of enterprise management I learned but also with regards to the level of quality networking and relationship-building I was able to achieve.

As I sat through classes consisting of informative lectures on business strategies, business models, interview methodologies, product design and case studies as well as speaker sessions from talented and accomplished professionals based in the valley, I contemplated what truly connected all these lessons and experiences together. This puzzlement and curiosity was addressed in one particular lecture. We had an in-class activity where we had been assigned a partner and we had to carry out a business transaction. Confidential information such as role assignment and task details were emailed to us beforehand. I happened to be a seller and my partner, Tim, the buyer in this simulation. As I initiated the offer at $1000 (to ensure profit), Tim made attempts to lower the price and we eventually settled on $700. Reconvening with Kathie, we discovered that had we worked together by sharing essential information, we could have completed a set of items and generated even greater combined profit. Instead, we seemed particularly focused on personal gain and resorted to secrecy and distrust. “Had you exchanged information and collaborated, you would have gained much more,” Kathie ensured. And that’s when it all started falling into place for me.

Silicon Valley is far from a mere collection of corporations competing against each other in a mountainous desert. It is where talent thrives and passion prevails. Where the lone-wolves struggle and the pack succeeds. The DSV program aims to teach students about these very insights into the surrounding region and its socio-economic structure. Our lectures emphasized the need to foster and maintain effective teams, not just through well-developed business models and role assignments but also through a strong social network between peers and competitors alike. Our guest speakers supplemented our learning with discussions on their own experiences in the industry and the importance of collaboration and connection. Kelly Hirano, a Director of Engineering at Meta, mentioned the way his friends were able to help him in his pursuit of early career opportunities; Fred Ehrsam, the creator of Coinbase and Paradigm, underscored the importance of seeking out the perfect co-founders; Max Cohen, CEO of Sprinter Health noted how well his VP of Operations, Ariana Afshar, complements his strengths and weaknesses as they both expand their startup; and Mackenzie Drazan, CEO of MiResource, highlighted how pertinent Duke’s academic and professional resources were in supporting her business while she operated out of her college dorm. These are the stories I shall recall and take inspiration from as I embark on my very own entrepreneurial journey in the near future.

In conclusion, Duke in Silicon Valley and, by extension, the Valley itself is marked by a unique culture of intelligent risk-taking, iterative planning and, above all, a sense of unwavering collaboration and networking. Silicon Valley’s essence lies not in the ideas and innovations it generates, but in the coming together of individuals behind those very ideas as they work to achieve exponentially more than what they ever could alone. As my fellow teammate, Aayushi, reminded us through a quote (which became a lovely inside joke for us all thereafter): “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” I believe this saying rings particularly true for the phenomenon that is Silicon Valley, California.

Muaz is a rising junior, hailing from Islamabad, Pakistan, who is double majoring in Computer Science and Statistical Science at Duke University. He is interested in exploring the development of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms for social good as well as the evolution of network structures, particularly WiFi, LTE and the Internet. Muaz’s dream is to, one day, utilize the skills he will pick up in Silicon Valley and from Duke’s I&E Certificate to start a software venture of his own with his father who is also a software engineer back home. In his free time, Muaz loves to cook, play Wordle in each of the 3 languages he knows and build his souvenir cap collection.

Duke in Silicon Valley has been a behemoth of learning and networking opportunities. Filled with design thinking modules, erudite speaker sessions, and intense collaborative projects, this class has been a true simulation of what it takes to “build a successful enterprise”. This course is spearheaded by our distinguished Professor Kathie Amato, who has acquainted us with an array of avenues that we have used to foster our entrepreneurial proclivities. Just 3 weeks into this course, I can proudly say that my 4 Cs, namely Confidence, Competence, Character, and Collaboration, have blossomed beyond expectations.

The Summer 2021 course has been structured in an interesting format despite the obstructions caused by the pandemic: we spend a portion of our class time learning key concepts viz. the lean start-up, corporate design thinking practices, prioritization methods, negotiation tactics, psychological safety, etc. while the remainder is filled with speaker and/or networking sessions that cover an assortment of fields, from AI ethics to product management, and companies, from FAAG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google) to late-stage start-ups. This process occurs in tandem with completing individual and team-based assignments (via the Mural platform, online videos, or content from the Harvard Business Coursepack) and developing materials for our final class project: designing the Workplace of Future. We have undertaken this project for Google in consultation with its REWS (Real Estate & Workplace Services) team.

Throughout this course, we learned several soft skills such as psychological safety, clarity, and ostentatious listening not only because Professor Amato taught them in class but also because she implemented them by initiating every class meeting with a strong, relevant quote, a high-spirited welcome, and a clearly-devised plan for the rest of the day. The first day began with a bang where we were introduced to the schedule for the summer semester, to the point of contact from Google’s REWS team Ms. Betsy Rives, and to our teams whom we would collaborate with on different tasks. We also analysed some insightful cases such as IDEO’s shopping cart problem and learned key concepts that would be revisited in class such as “the jobs to be done” that day. Mr. Greg Victory from the Duke Career Center led a session on mind maps and empathy maps the next day, which we frequently use to map what our clients feel, say, do, and think. Mr. Ron and Mrs. Carrie Ludwig, who generously endowed this program, dropped in the next day. Their energy and excitement to learn were fascinating. It was fun to listen to their youthful anecdotes and learn alongside them in class. Google’s Project Aristotle and team interaction routines were some interesting things covered in depth that day.

I could really enhance my learning edges the next week when Mr. Robert Chesnut, former Chief Ethics Officer of Airbnb, and Mrs. Jillian Manus, Managing Partner of the Silicon Valley VC firm Structure Capital, came to meet us. The meeting was more productive since we had written an essay on Rob’s notable book “Intentional Integrity” the day before and, thus, went in knowing what we wanted to discuss. “Practice Ikigai in corporate life”, “Be proactive, not reactive when solving a problem”, and “Values=Trust” are some of the many insightful takeaways I had from that session. The following day, we dove into technical models such as the strategic sweet spot, the business model canvas, and the invention cycle when Mr. Tom Byers (Founder of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program), Mr. Blake Byers (Google Ventures Member and the First Investor in the trading platform Robinhood), and Ms. Marty Byers came to speak. The pulse of the valley was eloquently laid out for us as we unearthed the mindset of entrepreneurs who excel. The next checkpoint was ticked for us when Mr. Clay Maxwell, Managing Partner of Peer Insight + PX Venture Studio, came to class the next day and led a practical design-thinking exercise with us on the Miro platform. We used Nike’s subscription-based shoe model case for this session and subsequently learned about business prototyping.

Ms. Mackenzie Drazan, CEO and Co-Founder of the mental health start-up MiResource, came to talk to us the next day. In addition to the space of mental health, we also learned some key business lessons from Mackenzie’s journey: ask as many questions as possible in university since everyone is willing to provide free advice, and use bootstrapping wherever possible to prevent engaging with external fundraising. That interesting session was followed by a presentation to the Google REWS representatives on the next day. Through an extensive collaborative process, our teams presented the top three problems we felt were paramount to be solved for the workplace of the future. We received productive, critical feedback from those presentations that we are now using to build our final solutions. At the end of that presentation, we played host to a panel of product managers from Splunk, Uber, Amazon, Walmart, and GitHub where we learned the ins and outs of PM roles at corporate companies. From not micromanaging to ruthlessly prioritizing work, we had some great takeaways from that session.

The third week of the course began with a blast as we had current and ex-Facebook employees come in to speak with us. The first talk was given by Ms. Deb Liu, CEO of Ancestry and former Vice President of Facebook App Commerce and of Facebook Marketplace. Having been at the company for eleven years, among other things, she delved deep into work culture, luck, dynamism, and the distinction between an entrepreneur and a CEO in her talk. We were fortunate to connect with her and with the subsequent panel comprising a product manager, product marketing analyst, product growth analyst, product designer, and sports partnership team programmer. The next day, we transitioned from that “social network” to the field of AI and Ethics as Ms. Milena Pribic from IBM led an interactive session on designing ethical AI using models such as dichotomy mapping and stakeholder maps. Before calling on our next speaker for the day, we learned about important designing thinking scrutiny metrics to better prepare us for our Google REWS project. The next speaker of the day was Mr. Eddy Cue, who is the Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services at Apple. It was an honour to welcome him to DSV and to embrace his teachings. He broke down for us not only the recipes of Apple’s successful business model but also the intricacies of its disruptive innovations. This series of great talks were followed by a session on Technology Policy the next day. Ms. Kate Tummarello, who runs a non-profit in this space in Washington D.C., led a discussion that interlaced technology and public policy. Through a series of voting-based games, I got to learn a lot about components of this field viz. Section 230, Copyright Infringement Policies, IPC, etc. This session was followed by a deft panel from the Wikimedia Foundation, LinkTree, and the Computer and Communications Industry Association who further explained the topic to us.

As we head into the fourth week of the course, learning essential negotiation skills like BATNA and Integrative Principled Communication, I am excited to see all that this program has yet to offer. Although we could not visit Silicon Valley in person this time, we got a rich exposure to its people and practices. Through the abundant learning experiences we have garnered in this course, I am confident in our ability to go out there and build bridges that better our world!

Naman Parikh is a rising sophomore from New Jersey intending to double major in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science along with a minor in Economics. He also plans on pursuing the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Certificate. Naman is extremely passionate about interlacing commerce and community using technology entrepreneurship. This fascination has enabled him to lead 3 tech-enabled social and commercial start-ups. At Duke, Naman is a member of Duke’s premier pre-professional business organization DSP (Delta Sigma Pi), works with mentors on his entrepreneurial ventures under the Student Founders Program, undertakes engineering projects for companies as part of the Duke Applied Machine Learning Group, is a part of the tech team that organizes HackDuke (the largest hackathon for social good), is a business development specialist for DIIG (Duke Impact Investing Group), and is a developer for BlueTech, a division of Duke’s largest run student Business Campus Enterprises. Other than that, Naman enjoys contributing as a member to the Duke Cyber Club, Duke Rotaract, Duke International Relations Association, and Duke Jumpstart (Teach for America). He is a golfer and soccer player and enjoys doing theatre, playing drums, and releasing music on streaming platforms in his free time. Having visited and worked with a Silicon Valley start-up, Naman is keen on using this program to further his dream of building bridges that better our community.