During the course of the first week and a half, the Hacker Exchange cohort had the fortune of visiting tech companies in the heart of the technology capital of the world. This part of this program was most anticipated by most of the group. The first company visited was called Mixpanel. Mixpanel is a software company that specialises in business analytics and is valued at over $800 million today. At the Mixpanel office, we were greeted by a panel of Mixpanel employees. The different areas covered on the panel included design, software engineering, recruitment, technical writing, marketing and sales. The panel also included a few Australians who had made their journey to the Silicon Valley. The tour of the Mixpanel office and panel provided insight on Mixpanel’s company culture and the diversity of its employees, in term of gender, culture and technical backgrounds.
The next company visited was Zendesk. Zendesk is a software company that monopolises the customer service software industry. Through touring this office, we were walked through the history of the company, that started between two danish men and has grown significantly since its first angel investment in 2008. A facet of this company that really stood out from the typical large tech companies was its social responsibility values. The current Zendesk building was moved from the financial district to a much less affluent area. This was in attempt to encourage other large tech companies into the area to reduce the wealth disparity in different areas around San Francisco.
The final tech company visited, that doesn’t need any introduction, was Google. Our group was given a tour of the Googleplex campus by Devin Mancuso, a fellow Australian, working as a UI/UX designer at Google. We were able to observe the Google employee perks including being provided lunch. A commonality with all these companies was to provide as many perks to their employees as possible. Then we interviewed a panel of Australians working at Google who detailed their journey from Australia, to the US and how they ultimately landed in the Bay Area.
Although these visits were extremely interesting, there was a slight disconnect from the things being taught through the program and our visits to these companies. We mostly receive brief overview of the office or campus and also got to see the difference in company culture between tech companies and the traditional companies that we know or have worked at. These tours did show that even for a company at the level of Google, each unicorn starts from ideation and as a startup.
Another site-visit was to Berkeley Skedeck at the University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley Skydeck is an innovation program through the university that invests in startups to provide them will support, funding and office space until they reach a seed funding round. One of the more known startups to have gone through this program is Lime, the electric scooter platform. Another company in the Berkeley Skydeck program is Humm. The CEO and co-founder of Humm, another Australian, Iain Cameron McIntyre showed us his product and startup. Humm is a device that is placed on your forehead and changes the electric activity in your brain for a short amount of time. This enhances your memory and focus by a significant amount for around 48 hours after.
Seeing this startup, the level of technology and the tangible impact of this technology was really inspiring and aligned really well with my personal career interests. In addition to Humm, the Berkeley Skydeck program boasted a huge portfolio of deep tech and biotech startups that had extremely impressive technology. These visits encouraged me to look further into smaller tech companies for what I am interested within the Silicon Valley ecosystem.
The Hacker Exchange 1.8 