A Guide to Start Up Yourself with Silicon Valley Educational Tour
There’s no doubt that Silicon Valley is the center of innovation, and it is all about the people and their interactions that make the valley such a place. Wouldn’t it be great if there is a tour that is designed for you to explore and be immersed in the innovative center of the world? Here’s one good way to get involved.
Leave a Nest has a unique network with universities, companies, and incubation centers in the valley. For the past 5 years, Leave a Nest has taken a group of graduate students in science and technology in Tokyo Metropolitan University to the valley for one-week educational tour.
Connect with Silicon Valley Insiders
The tour takes participants to top-class universities and excellent startup companies to meet researchers, business owners, and entrepreneurs there. This is not a sightseeing tour. At each stage of the tour, participants are given opportunities to take up a challenge.
For instance, in the past tour, participants gave a short presentation of an iPhone application idea in front of the investors when visiting an incubation center. People there are always looking for innovative idea. With your knowledge, experience and skills, come up with your own unique idea and test it out.
Find Out the Secret of Self-Driven Career
Besides presentation opportunities, this tour gives you great insights about the career of people in the valley. Various people are gathered in Silicon Valley, thus their career paths are also diverse and unique. Engineers, scientists, or entrepreneurs etc. they are all trying to develop a career by themselves. They will be good role models for you.
University visit
Stanford University http://www.stanford.edu/
University of California, Berkeley http://www.berkeley.edu/index.html
When visiting universities, participants make an appointment with professors who fit their own interest.
You might be worried about professors are too busy to spare any time for you. The answer is no.
Many of the professors are open-minded if you are passionate about meeting them. In the past tour,
participants were successful in meeting at least one or two professors during their visit. One of the
participants asked for an appointment but instead was One asked to give a seminar in the professor’s laboratory.
Company visit
Evernote https://evernote.com
Evernote provides cloud memory storage services that helps remembering
everything. Their developers always welcome feedbacks from users. Try to present
you would use Evernote for and tell them what you want to create as a new service.
Participants gave elevator pitch on their flashy ideas.
Fuji Xerox Palo Alto Laboratory http://www.fxpal.com
FXPAL is a leading multimedia research company. Their researchers develop
information technologies related to address key issues in supporting businesses
and society.
Prior to the visit, participants prepared business applications of their new multimedia
technologies and gave presentation to the researchers. In the same visit, the
president of FXPAL gave a career talk for them.
Fujitsu Management Service America http://www.fujitsu.com/us/about/other/fmsa/
Fujitsu is an information technology company which is originally from Japan.
Participants engaged in a discussion about international career development.