Back in 2015 PwC’s Ignite incubator programme selected four local companies, - Ardbrin, Datactics, DisplayNote Technologies and Flowlens, for a year of mentoring support and guidance from PwC, culminating with a trip to Silicon Valley to experience first-hand, the reality of California’s tech community.
Day one and the team heads for San Jose… and PwC’s Noel Culbert takes up the story.
PwC’s Ignite programme literally took to the air on Monday with the four participants,accompanied by PwC’s Noel Culbert, make the trip from Dublin to Silicon Valley for an action packed week.
Tuesday morning and the semi jet-lagged participants convened in PwC's downtown San Jose offices with Claire Hayes, Managing Director of PwC’s Emerging Company Services Practice, as the host. Claire had pulled out all the stops for an information fuelled day of experience, insight and challenge.
Up first was George Liu, controller of one the Valley’s hottest new companies Eeros - a home wifi network and a product we all acknowledged could easily improve the home connectivity. George told his story in an honest and frank manner providing real insight into what in his view makes a good valley business and a great valley business and his top-five tips for success were:
you’ve got to maximise the customer experience
you need to live with scrappiness - don't seek perfection, you haven't time
get a collaborative, engaged team and deliver good communication from the top talent
don't be afraid to speak out
Claire also gave an insight into Valley life from an advisors’ perspective, then we were joined by Bruce Dallas, corporate law partner in Davis Polk. Bruce opened the can on some of the legal pitfalls he regularly sees in start-up companies and provided some invaluable advice on how to stay ahead of the game and avoid the pitfalls. He then faced a string of tricky questions from the participants, as they sought to maximise the opportunity of free legal advice from a very expensive Silicon Valley corporate lawyer.
During a relaxed lunch, we were joined by Danny Wallace who put the Ignite participants through their paces with some great challenges to their business, their products and their markets. Displaynote's founder and chief, Paul Brown even managed to do a demo of his Montage production which received really positive reactions around the room.
The afternoon saw the tone move to the more serious side of investment and M&A, with some of the Valley's key market intelligence on VC investment being showcased with the Moneytree report. That brought a reality check for all four Northern Ireland companies when they saw the breadth of the gulf between funding availability in the Valley and the significantly less developed market back at home. That said, the message was very much around, “think big, make your business investor ready and always be prepared for the exit conversation.”
Some key quotes from our day-one in the Valley were:
'It is not about how good the idea is but how you execute it'
'We need to ensure we think big around our opportunity and don't curtail the size of the prize'
'George's story was fascinating and a real inspiration around reinventing yourself'
'While things have slowed a little in the Valley, the money available provides a real opportunity to get ahead'
That’s it from day-one of PwC’s Ignite team adventure in Silicon Valley. So much to absorb and we’ve only been here a day… we’ll be back with another update, later in the week.
