A Postcard from Silicon Valley to Australia

Silicon Valley is both an unassuming region of Northern California and a generational symbol of entrepreneurial progress and global success. Natasha Munasinghe had a recent brush with some Valley alumni and came away inspired. 

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It’s not often that your mind gets shattered open with confronting and very challenging possibilities – this was one of those times.  It was at an event I recently attended called Silicon Valley Comes to Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, in the wake of Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Jawed Karim, a co-founder of Youtube, Konstantin Guericke, co-founder of LinkedIn, Naval Ravikant who founded Angel list and is an investor in Twitter, Jonas Kjellberg former Marketing Director at Skype, as well as Jeff Hoffman CEO of Priceline, were just some of the mega personalities that attended.

I flew over there out of sheer curiosity – to observe for myself how they think and work.

And, in typical Silicon Valley style – it was jeans, T-shirts and a very large beard, that were the custom.

There were two important takeaways which have struck a deep imprint in my mind post Kuala Lumpur. One of the standouts was the capacity of these Silicon Valley-ers to think in a mind blowingly B-I-G capacity.

We hear the phrase ‘Think Big’ so often that it stands in dangerous ground of becoming another cliché. So it was refreshing, and quite challenging, to be in the midst of people who live and breathe this such that when they think of solutions or ventures, they approach it in terms of a planetary scale from the very start.

The second lightning bolt was the sheer sense of adventure, fun and collaboration with which they approach their entrepreneurial endeavours.

Many of the investors mentioned that what they value the most before parting with their capital is the people and the team behind the idea – and not necessarily the idea itself. True collaboration and working with people is an essential requirement in the Valley. It seemed to be a beautiful balance between competition and collaboration had been struck.

One of the speakers stressed that the community around Silicon Valley, especially when things aren’t going your way, is a key factor that makes it such an innovative and entrepreneurial hub – instead of being judged at your weakest moment, you are enabled and guided.

I am a firm believer that Australia has its own brand of entrepreneurship to build and generate. But on the path to doing this, I think we will benefit if we integrate the practices of these Silicon Valley techno-preneurs into our own mould.

Natasha Munasinghe is a solicitor, graduating from the University of Sydney and Australian National University. She now is the MD of The FRANK Team, a leading training and education company. Natasha is a sought after commentator on entrepreneurship and the emerging generational trends. Most recently she has been a judge at Australia’s first Clean Technology Open.  She also co-founded and runs Springboard Education, a non profit venture which delivers education to disadvantaged young people globally.