The New Paradigms of Tech

This is the Chapter 3 of my e-book Silicon Valley for Foreigners, that can be downloaded for free on www.siliconvalleybook.com or purchased for $2.99 on the iBookStore and Kindle. A new chapter will be posted on this blog every week.

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At first glance, Silicon Valley seems like a place that you will not be able to figure out. Its unique culture and best practices are still unbeknownst and misunderstood by outsiders. It takes time to deep dive into the ecosystem and the best way to learn about it is from within.

After living in San Diego for three years and in Shanghai for two, I remember vividly when I moved to San Francisco in December of 2010. At the time, a friend from Palo Alto confided to me, enthusiastically, about his investment in a startup called Airbnb, of which I had not heard before.

He patiently explained Airbnb’s business model and asked me what I thought. Before thinking much, I replied with confidence: “This is never going to work. Who would rent their own place to strangers?” I was so sure Airbnb would be a flop that I asked myself how my friend could have invested in such a lame idea.

Six months after this conversation took place, Airbnb announced incredible traction and raised a hundred million dollars from top investors. I was shocked and my head was spinning in disbelief. I wondered how an experienced entrepreneur like myself could have missed the sharing economy trend. Half a decade later, Airbnb would be valued upward of $30 billion dollars.

This anecdote illustrates the importance of always keeping an open mind to ideas that, at first glance, seem counterintuitive. Technology does not care about one’s opinion, ideology or cultural background as startups’ success is directly correlated to good metrics. Customer satisfaction and the business overall health can be captured, measured, and interpreted by using the right analytics tools. In 2010, my friend knew about Airbnb’s metrics and that is why he was so confident it would work.

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are constantly experimenting and betting on crazy ideas. They know disruption comes from bold founders who defy logic and common sense. History has proven that new tech innovations seem stupid until they become popular.

For this reason, in the last years, it has become harder to differentiate potential unicorns from startups that will fade into oblivion. As we get more experienced, we naturally disconnect from younger generations and newer innovations, underestimating their impact. I have learned from Silicon Valley to be constantly reinventing myself due to the fast changes in technology and digital behavior.

Actually, anyone who wants to avoid obsolescence must reset their brains several times during their careers. In technology, no one has the privilege to rest on their laurels anymore. Kids as young as fifteen may learn faster and outsmart any of us before we realize what is going on.

The formulas for achieving success have changed and, in a way, technology has been working as an equalizer. Any person, from anywhere, can learn anything from scratch, start a company or become a domain expert. These new paradigms change everything. Experience is overrated, so is education.

Elon Musk founded a rocket company that revolutionized the aerospace industry without having any experience or knowledge about rocket science. He learned from books, people and by searching on Google. The list of disruptors with no previous experience or expertise in their market segment is enormous, from Airbnb, Uber to Tesla and several mobile gaming companies.

Silicon Valley became a place geared toward open minded entrepreneurs obsessed about learning fast and being the number one. If you are humble, patient and smart, there are many lessons to be learned from this ecosystem.