STUDY TRIP IN SAN FRANCISCO

How Silicon Valley and the magnificent metropolis of San Francisco inspired my future

career in business

My personal impression on visiting one of the most-influencing and far-reaching cities around the globe

Toon Louagie Artevelde University Ghent

International Business Management Talent and Management Development

Tags on my personal paper: City of San Francisco, Stanford

University, the Google Campus, Silicon Valley and the runway accelerators or incubators

San Francisco, a global phenomenon, a buzzing metropolis located in the gorgeous state of California. Well-known for its stunning vistas, economical prowess, beautiful and serene nature, and last but not least deemed as the gateway to the most famous and prestigious business area in the world, Silicon Valley. More infamous names for this alluring municipality are, the ‘Golden Gate City’ or the ‘City by the Bay’, referring to the prominent bay area. Going back in time and observing the historical background of the city, we can start to notice why San Francisco is often praised as being the Golden City, in the already progressive state of California. ‘The Golden Gate City’, is an obvious reference to one of the most distinctive and extraordinary bridges around the world, ‘The Golden Gate Bridge’. However, the nickname of San Francisco actually derives from the ‘gold rush’ period of California. Many gold-diggers sought their fortune in the small, but immensely popular destination of San Francisco. Due to this occurrence, San Francisco was granted the nickname of ‘Golden City’, and even today, San Francisco is regarded as the pinnacle of prosperity. In my personal paper, I will delve deeper into detail about the open-minded and liberal culture of the city, the ever-changing corporations seeking to increase their wealth, the tech-giants’ revolutionary view on modern day’s society and finally, I will conclude this topic by portraying the influential entrepreneurship of many brilliant and enthusiastic individuals, seeking to leave their mark on the innovative business environment.

As already mentioned in my brief introduction, San Francisco’s culture is often regarded as being one of the most enlightened and liberal American cultures in this gigantic country, commonly known as the United States of America. As we were walking amongst the very distinguishable and urbanized areas, located in the heart of the city, I could wonder endlessly about the possibilities and opportunities this city had on offer. While inspecting the local populace and their personal beliefs and opinions, I realized how liberal and open-minded individuals, the inhabitants of the ‘City by the Bay’ were. It came to no one’s surprise then, that most of the residents were voting for Bernie Sanders, in the general American presidential elections of 2016. Democracy was everywhere and the liberty of ‘freedom of speech’ appeared several times during our stay. Needless to say, like every enormous city out there, even San Francisco had problems in terms of homeless people and the unemployment rate was quite high. The Golden City is also one of the most luxurious and expensive cities across the United States of America, offering skyrocketing interest rates on real estate properties. The overall vibe of the city was good and the city was always full of life. Especially market street and union square, the most popular and recognized streets located in the central district of the city, were always really vibrant and full of people. The superb mentality, and hard-working attitude of many inhabitants, greatly influenced my own perspective on my future business career. As I was listening to the wide array of speakers in the runway startup center, located in downtown San Francisco, I started questioning my own ideas and motivation in terms of business related matters. I never really considered opening up my own business, but after hearing these motivating and creative individuals, I reckoned that maybe in the future I could set up something similar and reap what I sow. You see, these entrepreneurs had a clear goal and followed their own path to success. Hearing their intuitive and indulging ideas, I came to the realization, that as long you have spirit and make the right choices along your career, you were always going to end up in a positive and inspiring environment. Another observation that really influenced my reasoning and thought-process, was the diverse ethnicity and cultural groups present in an international city such as San Francisco. Unlike Belgium, were most of the inhabitants are of European descent, the large metropolis of the city by the bay was inhabited by people of an Asian descent, an African-American background or a Hispanic background. This effect creates and forms a multicultural working environment, were everyone accepts each employee working in the designated company, regardless of their own values and beliefs. I think that this concept is quite brilliant, considering how religion and ethnicity have always been a problem in our modern day society. Even though, San Francisco is an American city at its core, the amount of international students and employees working in the Golden City is quite staggering. Take for instance the guest speaker at Yelp, he originally hailed from Germany and has been working for the corporation since a few years. This was for me one of the utmost important perceptions, considering the fact that we are international business management students, willing to relocate to another country in search of our next endeavor. Working and studying abroad in an impressive city such as San Francisco, would be a dream come true. I was quite happy and psyched to see that the cultural diversity and international presence in a million-dollar city like San Francisco, was noticeable right from the get-go. In today’s business world, openness and innovation are two keys to success, and you can notice those two crucial factors in San Francisco. Take for instance the construction of a bigger and better museum of modern arts. This shining and enormous project perfectly illustrates the innovation and mindset of most inhabitants of the Golden City. To prove this aspect even more, we can use the infamous prison of Alcatraz. Why you might wonder, well, let me just explain this argument a bit more in-depth. How innovative was Alcatraz during that time, it was a

state of the art national prison, and home to all sorts of convicts. This is another prime example of how the inhabitants of the city by the bay were ahead of time. There was no way out for those criminals due to the genius and brilliant design of Alcatraz. This greatly supports my view on why the city of San Francisco is creative and inventive in every single way. Another paramount factor in the mindset of most entrepreneurs is the flexibility and design of the open-box offices, stationed in the heart of the city. When we visited most companies based in the city, I could not help but notice how open and inviting most offices were. Yelp for instance, had its own coffee bar, what a treat! Honestly, according to me this kind of environment and open-box office design, stimulates and promotes a more flexible and personal work-style. To conclude my view on how the sparkling metropolis of San Francisco influenced my future in business, I want to highlight the importance of the liberal ideas and creativity. After spending a week in the city, I can genuinely say that the local culture has left its mark on me. I find myself working harder than ever before and thinking about where I want to go in my life. San Francisco has made me realize that we have to excel and be creative at the same time in order to fully succeed in being successful in the ever-changing economic market.

Silicon Valley, commonly referred to as ‘The Valley’ or ‘The South Bay’, is home to top-notch companies and corporations such as Google, Apple and Facebook. Silicon Valley is also home to one of the top-league and most prestigious universities around the world, Stanford University. We actually had the honor to visit the esteemed university of Stanford. For my personally, the visit to the renowned Stanford university was one of the most groundbreaking visits in my personal life. I was itching to visit one of the many lectures or workshops that the university has on offer. I diligently waited for the opportunity to arise, so when it was announced that 20 students could attend one of the many workshops of the prestigious university, I didn’t doubt to subscribe as soon as possible. I wanted to feel how many bright and brilliant individuals experienced these classes, so this event was really special and dear to me. After attending this workshop hosted by a brilliant and caring Canadian professor, I can reflect on how this occurrence has influenced my further career. Going hand in hand with my previously mentioned arguments on how the city influenced my beliefs and opinions, I can state that creativity and intuition played an integral role in the workshop on ‘peace innovation’. During the workshop, we had to create an easy-to-use and developable measure to provide feedback on our internship in the third year of international business management. Since most of the students present during the workshop were international business management pupils, this was the perfect opportunity to reflect on our last and most crucial year of our bachelor program. What really got my attention was the way in which the workshop was presented. They taught the basics about their peace innovation lab, by implementing examples from current first-world problems. For instance, by using the recent terror attacks in Brussels. How could we solve and prevent this issue in the coming years, how would you tackle the refugee crisis in Europe? These were just some examples that were displayed during our brief but incredibly interesting workshop. In the end I can wrap up the principles of Stanford University and its influence by specifying how exactly the cutting-edge university influenced my future business career. The campus, the workshop and the ranking of the university gave me the general feeling of satisfaction and the achievement of saying that I have attended a lecture in one of the most imperative universities around the world, this will never fade away. What I have personally learnt is that creativity and thinking outside of the box, are two pivotal factors in today’s business world. I have to make sure that I’m always up-to-date with the latest technological advancements in order to function in an international corporation, and since I’m striving to work in one of those multinational companies, this information will be central in my future’s career choice.

The next stop in this amazing study trip that I want to discuss is the gorgeous and magnificent campus of Google Inc. The business offices of Google accentuate and emphasize the importance of spacious and accessible business terrains. You can clearly notice that Google opted for a more publicly acceptable and imaginative enterprise environment. This clearly resembles their corporate mission, vision and foundation assumptions since they first entered the worldwide market. Google has always been recognized and seen as the pinnacle of the concept of ‘freedom of speech’. Whenever something new and trendy was circulating on the internet, Google would be the first to take notice of this increasingly important object. Take for example YouTube, as many of you know YouTube was an independent company when it first set a foot in the international market. Since their launch, YouTube has become an integral part of today’s internet user-base, and everyone has already used the services of YouTube. Google saw the potential of YouTube early on and decided to invest and embrace YouTube as their own business operation. Lately YouTube has become increasingly popular since they announced that their platform will support live-streams, with a higher streaming bit rate than their main competitor Twitch. This illustrates how Google is always one step ahead of

their competitors. The Google campus and the immensely popular Google Bikes, painted in the famous Google Colors were also prime examples of Google’s ingenuity and far-reaching influence. After visiting and breathing the Google Campus, I can sincerely say that I was greatly impressed by the way in which Google presented themselves to the general public. I take into consideration all of the aspects and the business culture of Google Inc. and I can honestly say that I’ll never forget this experience. The most important imperative factor that influenced me greatly, was their business culture. Even though, Google is one of the richest businesses around the world, what they managed to create with their headquarters in Silicon Valley is astonishing. They poured all of their ideas in creating this open-spaced and creative campus outing their overall business culture and credence.

Going back to the sparkling and vibrant city of downtown San Francisco, we locate the headquarters of the ever-growing business Yelp. We had the opportunity and honor to visit the increasingly desirable application’s skyscraper in the middle of the financial district. We were greeted by many friendly and open-minded individuals, and as previously mentioned, we were granted access to a free coffee by the personnel of Yelp. Mere moments later, we could enter the speaking room in order to listen to one of the international employees Yelp is currently hiring. For me, listening to what exactly was included in the employee’s job was a different world. I had never ever, heard of a job that contains traveling to various countries in order to assess the possibility of launching Yelp’s mobile application. Talk about having a flexible and fun job! I realized that this would be a dream job for many students among us, including myself. Just imagine the thought of visiting exotic countries such as Brazil in order to evaluate their local culture, local food and local businesses. The entire idea behind Yelp is the formation of ‘communities’. Communities are local people from the countries in which Yelp operates, that form the basic user-base and the bulk of their reviews. Yelp is so fond and proud of their communities that they even organize parties, to which all of their international partners are invited. During these conferences or parties, they can talk about the general progress and prosperity that particular country has seen since the launch of Yelp. Actually, you can compare Yelp as being the TripAdvisor of America, so to speak. The biggest difference for me was that even though I had heard of Yelp, I never really used their application to investigate how good or bad a peculiar restaurant or hotel was. I mostly stuck to TripAdvisor, and let’s face it TripAdvisor is way bigger in Europe than Yelp. Tourists today are heavily dependent on the reviews of their visitor counterparts, those who already visited the wanted hotel or restaurant and reviewed that particular hotel or restaurant. While I was searching for an excellent barber in downtown San Francisco, I actually used the mobile application of Yelp and I stumbled across a very well-rated barber not so far from our youth hostel. I decided to check it out to get that perfect haircut. The reviews didn’t lie, that particular barbershop was one of the bests I had ever visited in my life. Afterwards I talked a bit with the owner and he clearly told me about how important the reviews of Yelp are in the United States of America, he literally quoted ‘Yelp can either make or break your business’. So the power of Yelp and their manipulation was once again not a simple story, it was the actual truth. In the end the corporate business culture and fantastic job offers that Yelp had on offer, made me see that working for Yelp would be one of my biggest dreams. I can imagine myself travelling to a particular country in order to launch and promote Yelp in their domestic market. I also learnt a big deal about how experience and creativity play a huge role in the application process of today’s job hiring application. You have to stand out and be yourself whilst also being different from your main competitors lurking around the corner.

A few streets away from the headquarters of Yelp, are the headquarters of the tweeting and breathing company Twitter. Make no mistake, we didn’t actually have the honor of visiting the headquarters of Twitter, something I was a bit disappointed about at first, but after entering the working-ground of Runway, a small enterprise that focused on promoting and aiding startups before, during and after their initial launch on the market, that feeling quickly faded away. We had the fortuity of attending their speaking event, in which successful startup owners reminisced about their company and talked about the struggle and success of their personal project. The speakers hosting this fascinating event were the owners or co-founders of numerous companies, entailing the following business activities; marihuana promotion, home and personal security applications and gaming projects. When I attended the event, I was so glad that the companies talked about their ideas, struggles and future prospects. This gave me a clear perspective on how these bright individuals managed to create a success story for their newly founded businesses. As we are all international students brimming for action and looking to build the next big thing on the global business theatre, this was a life changing case for most of us, including myself. Before I attended the Runway Accelerator program, I never really had the smallest clue about setting up my own business. I always pictured myself working for a large

multinational corporation, in which I would gradually grow and climb up in the hierarchy of the business. Now, I actually doubt if I’ll become another member and employee of one of the many multinational companies out there, even though I would love to work for an international corporation. I had some experience before with creating a small enterprise on my own. In my last year of high school, I had the pleasure of becoming the CEO of our newly forged young enterprise. During that year, I learnt a lot about running and owning your own business. However, I never really considered opening up my own store or business. After hearing the successful stories of these entrepreneurs, I’m thinking twice about my previously stated opinion on launching my own business. Overall, I think for most of the students, including myself, the runway accelerator program was a wise and perfect opportunity to show how you can achieve a great many things by using your imagination. The famous privateer, Sir Francis Drake, would say the following ‘greatness from small beginnings’, and I can’t deny these wise words that are applicable to starting up your own business.

Finally, I want to finish my personal paper by reflecting back on the study trip itself and the incredible and life changing experience this trip actually was. I reckon that most of us will never get this fantastic opportunity again in their entire student career. The buzzing city of San Francisco, the humongous campus of Stanford University, the innovative ideas and business environment of Silicon Valley and the stunning nature and vistas of California, are stories that won’t fall into oblivion. We are following an international management program, so we have to be open and well-prepared to tackle the international and domestic markets head-on. I had the assumption that this trip was a great preparation for our third year of international business management. Next year I’ll have the honor to study at the prestigious university of High Point, situated in the old north state of North-Carolina. This study trip was the perfect preparation for my studies abroad, and due to the fact that our study trip was held in the United States of America, I had the opportunity to get acquainted with the local culture and routines. Since most of the students will be studying abroad next year, this particular study trip helped most of us with the large cultural differences and especially taught us something more about the American way of doing business. This trip also made it clear that you have to handle situations with the aid of your personal talents and strengths. For instance, my personal talents are that I’m a very helpful and team-oriented person, willing to do everything to reach my goals. While listening to most of the talented entrepreneurs, I could see that each of them operated according to their personal strengths. That’s why all of them raised the bar in terms of doing business. For my future career, I want to achieve the following goals, be a bit more creative, be open to new cultures and the local habits and routines of the designated country and last but not least dream about opening up your own business. I never would have imagined that deep inside of me was an entrepreneur willing to relocate abroad to seek fortune and prosperity. Without the indulging conversations and splendid visions of the young entrepreneurs and large corporations, I would never had found some of my hidden strength and interests. I can now look proudly to the future and think about how I want to leave my mark on the international business theatre, and I’m really looking forward to when the day of reckoning will arrive. I want to finish my paper by mentioning the Latin counterpart of Sir Francis’ infamous quote, ‘Sic Parvis Magna’ or ‘greatness from small beginnings’ will always remain my life motto in my personal life and in my future career.