One of the nice things about living in Silicon Valley is that I end up at all these conferences and things, and I get to listen in on the zeitgeist.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I've spent a good part of my life in Silicon Valley, California, and I really like that place.
Everyone knows that Silicon Valley is chock full of fabulous people who 'do good while doing well.'
What people often ask me is, 'What are the ingredients of Silicon Valley?' While the answer to that is complex, some of the ingredients I talk about are celebrating entrepreneurship, accepting failure, and embracing a mobile and diverse workforce.
I love what the Valley does. I love company building. I love startups. I love technology companies. I love new technology. I love this process of invention. Being able to participate in that as a founder and a product creator, or as an investor or a board member, I just find that hugely satisfying.
Since the 1970s, I've been a big fan of attending conferences as a great way to learn, network, socialize and enjoy a new environment. It's always refreshing to get out and see a whole new world.
Silicon Valley is a mindset, not a location.
One of the great things about Silicon Valley is, irrespective of how competitive you might be with another company or how closely you might be working with that company, there's a great sort of give and take, and camaraderie from - between - some of the executives in the valley and some of the other investors in the valley.
Silicon Valley has a lot of noise, a lot of hype. People are very excited about all of the Facebook stuff, Facebook applications. It's just been a huge hype over the last year when actually... there isn't really that much value.
In Silicon Valley, if you spend a lot of time thinking about the obstacles, you'll talk yourself out of everything, because the more you look at it, the less logical something sounds, since no one has done it yet.
One of the great things about moving to Silicon Valley is that you're surrounded by all these people who've done it before. This place is an assembly line that takes a couple of twenty-somethings and walks you through everything you need to learn.