WHERE THE FUTURE ALREADY STARTS TODAY

“Once we’d gotten over the exhausting flight across the Atlantic and even more exhausting customs controls, we finally found ourselves standing outside of the airport in San Francisco.

There it was: the downtown skyline and we immediately got excited about the journey ahead. We were finally there. We could start enjoying the trip we won at the YOUNG FOUNDERS contest in the summer.

We ordered an UBER ride to our downtown hotel. It would be a bit misleading to say we had proper plans for the first two days, so we just got on with getting to know the city. We saw the seamless transition between Chinatown and the financial district. They say you experience the future in California a couple of years before it hits the rest of the world. And we did: There were electric scooters everywhere, and autonomous cars – as if it’s quite normal. We even got to try out an Amazon Go store. They’ve got cameras that notice when somebody removes an item from the shelf. When you walk out the front door, the price of the item is debited to your personal Amazon account – completely automatically. No cashiers behind a checkout.

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On the Saturday, Professor Högsdal joined us and we finished our sightseeing trip around San Francisco by visiting Golden Gate Overlook. From there, we traveled on to Silicon Valley where some exciting encounters awaited us. In the evening, we met Björn Hermann, the founder of Compass, who won YOUNG FOUNDERS in 2005. We also visited the Airbnb headquarters and went to the Transatlantic Sync conference in the evening.

Over the next couple of days, we visited the headquarters of Facebook, Apple, and Google. We also viewed the Tesla factory in Freemont. We got to see startups, accelerators, and makerspaces like BirdEye, the German Accelerator, Hothouse, and D-School. We went to Stanford University and met professors and students, founders of startups, and their co-workers. We got to talk about different economic models and the successes and failures of experienced founders.

Afterwards we drove down from Silicon Valley to Los Angeles, where our journey ended. There are so many things we brought back with us from the discussions we had and visits, such as the work cultures of the big players, which are really different. At Apple, they’re quite secretive and every detail of the Apple Park building has been designed in the Apple style. At Google, we sat in a surprisingly simple building and the culture felt more open. At Airbnb, a lot of devotion had gone into the meeting rooms, so they had things like the first rented Airbnb apartment and a replica of the War Room from Dr. Strangelove. The company’s a bit younger than Google and Apple, and the culture almost feels a bit playful. For example, a couple of years ago they still had a Head of Inebriation who was responsible for alcohol procurement. But they’ve still got ping-pong tables in the offices, beer after 4pm, and a bubble ball bath. The one-on-one sessions with Björn Hermann, Michael Pollmann, Jenna Danielson, and Frederik Hermann were a good opportunity to gain some insights into everyday life in Silicon Valley and the mentality there. We also heard from Björn and Frederik what work is like at a startup.

The Transatlantic Sync conference was the ideal chance for us to forge networks with other German people in Silicon Valley. The line-up of speakers was really impressive: Andy von Bechtolsheim (founder of Sun Microsystems and investor), Christoph Keese (author of the book Silicon Valley, which we could also listen to as an audio book on the car journeys), and John Hennessy (professor at Stanford and a board member at Google).

Of course a lot of the impressions we gained were just buzzwords and hot air. But Silicon Valley is and will remain an impressive and inspiring place – a place where the future is already happening today. During the week we spent there, we enjoyed the American lifestyle and even started to adjust to it. We sat in an eight-seater Ford rental car and listened to two audio books about startups and the Valley, and sometimes we listened to American music from the 70s. For us, our lasting impression of life in California was of huge all-you-can-drink beakers, oversized cars and refrigerators, but also the cheap and yummy burgers at In-N-Out.

And here’s an overview of our trip in numbers: 7 travelers, 7 nights, 1,300 miles on the road, 43 burgers, 3 startup visits, 3 tours of big companies, and countless impressions and unforgettable experiences.”