Silicon Valley Path for Latvian Startups

Rihards Gailums

Twitter: @RihardsGailums

[email protected]

Silicon Valley isn’t a town, a neighborhood, or a zip code.

It’s a concept. Ecosystem.The epicenter for the most revolutionary

advances in technology.

Pro/Cons for Valley

‐Largest access to tech mentors, capital, tech enterprises;

‐Largest homogeneous market [US];

‐Insanely expensive;‐Spend your time (burn money) EFFECTIVELY

Goals of visiting Valley

‐Business Tourism;

‐Just Listen and Learn;

‐Pitch and Learn / Funding;

WELCOME to San Francisco!

You are an entrepreneur now!

‐ Azure Capital Partners - 2100 Sand Hill Road

‐ Greylock Partners - 2250 Sand Hill Road

‐ Highland Capital Partners - 2420 Sand Hill Road

‐ Benchmark Capital - 2480 Sand Hill Road

‐ The Blackstone Group - 2494 Sand Hill Road

‐ U.S. Venture Partners - 2735 Sand Hill Road

‐ Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers - 2750 Sand Hill Road

‐ Andreessen Horowitz - 2875 Sand Hill Road

‐ Charles River Ventures - 2882 Sand Hill Road

‐ Draper Fisher Jurvetson - 2882 Sand Hill Road

‐ Battery Ventures - 2884 Sand Hill Road

‐ Redpoint Ventures - 3000 Sand Hill Road

‐ Sequoia Capital - 3000 Sand Hill Road

Latvian Tech Ecosystem inSilicon Valley

How to connect to Valley

‐Meetups;

‐Silicon Vikings, GABA, SVForum events;

‐Industry or Vendor conferences;

‐Co-working communities (Hacker dojo);

‐Invitations only events (from network)

How to connect to Valley

Make yourself a BRANDYou should be recognized

Nvidia Early Stage Challange

IN partnership

ACCELERATUM

HOMEWORK

Vocabulary and comprehension

MVP, minimal viable product, Iteration, Guerrilla Marketing,

Growth hacker, Conversion funnel;

Acquisition, activation, retention, upsell, cross-sell;

Burning rate, Funding runway, Pivot;

UI/UX design,Wireframe, Front-end, back-end;

Pitch, Elevator pitch;

IPO, VC, SAAS, NDA;

Term sheet, Scalable, scalability;

LEAN, Lean startup, Bootstrap, Agile;

Exit, Exit strategy.

PrerequisitesReady to answer following questions:

‐ Opportunity. Why now?

‐ Problem. Problem definition you are trying to solve. Who cares?

‐ Solution. Why you? What is your special sauce? What is your competition and why you are better? Do you offer pain killer or vitamin?

‐ Market (who, where do you fit, dynamics). Product market fit. Who are your customer?

‐ Product and business development plan. Scalability plan.

‐ Go to market strategy. Who and why should buy?

Art of Pitching

‐ Be prepared for different length: Elevator, 2 min, 5 min, 7 min, 20 min (Q&A);

‐ 10/20/30 Rule (10 slides, 20 min, 30pt font);

‐ «So What?» Answer Little man on shoulder;

‐ White on Black;

‐ Shut Up, Take Notes, Summarize and Follow Up;

‐ Rewrite from scratch