FAU Silicon Valley Fall School

On the first day, we had a kick-off meeting for our FAU Silicon Valley Fall School in San José (USA)! But wait it‘s not a school, it‘s a start-up, at least that‘s what Gurmeet our partner from San José State University told us. See what happened in the next days…

On the second day of the School, our participants learned all about start-ups and what makes the culture in Silicon Valley so special. The ultimate formula for a successful start-up consists of: Competence- + Trust + Fun! Our inspirational speakers shared some great insights like: It‘s always better to try out rather than not to try our your ideas. You CAN fail, the importance lays in remaining trustworthy. The day ended with a visit to Falcon X – THE Tech Incubator in Silicon Valley where FAU and local Start-ups got the chance to pitch their ideas followed by a dinner at an Italian Restaurants where we got introduced to many amazing entrepreneurial Silicon Valley personalities!

On the third day, leading AI and Ex-Google senior manager Ajay Malik inspired our participants with the latest opportunities in AI and Quantum Computing. Highlight followed highlight –  Mr. Maliks talk was followed by speeches from a senior manager of Credit Karma – the largest Fintech in US and Stanley Chang – IP and Legal tech expert in the Silicon Valley. At the end of the day, our group took a tour of Stanford University campus and had an interesting session on how innovations are implemented there.

What to do on a Sunday in Silicon Valley? As our program host says, Sunday is like Monday here. Thus, we started the day with an amazing session of one of the world leading experts in UI/UX Design (former head of UI/UX at Oracle & SAP). Then, we went on to one of the former TESLA board members, who started his own mobility business concerning green heavy duty vehicles. Followed by an inspiring talk by THE Californian sustainability evangelist Danny Kennedy, we finished off the day at the amazing vineyards of Napa Valley.

We started our day at 7am this morning at Facebook where we had a chance to learn about the security measures they take and got to tour the amazing campus facilities. It seems like an incredible place to work at. We then headed to Google where we got to have lunch with all the Google employees at their cafeteria! Our last stop of the day took us to Amazon where we got to tour their facilities and get insights into the whole logistics processes. Really impressive how much technology they have in place.

On our last lecture day, we‘ve learnt life-lasting lessons from the co-founder of Hyrecar, Mr. Smile Chopra – a 300million $ real estate entrepreneur, Mike Horan – expert for mobile energy solutions, Prof. Banafa – THE Blockchain and Cryptocurrency expert in Silicon Valley and Sukhi, now 70 years old- founder of a billion dollar, family – owned food enterprise, who even brought us dinner. So entrepreneurial success is not about whether you are young or old. It’s not about gender nor about your origin. It all depends on your personal strength, your character and how passionate you are to pursue your dreams. Now we are off to San Francisco for 3 days of TechCrunch Disrupt Conference.⠀

Today was the start of the Disrupt SF TechCrunch conference, where innovative start-ups from anywhere in the tech sector show what they are made of. So what do you do when you’re Germany’s #1 innovative University? Naturally, we couldn’t miss out on the many start-ups presenting their solutions in exciting fields, e.g., Artificial intelligence, security and privacy, IoT and Robotics, and of course blockchain. Already impressed by this wide array of innovation, we were even more blown away by the insights gained from the additional talks from industry experts happening in parallel! All in all, this has been an amazing event already and we are hyped for the upcoming additional two days!

On the second conference day, we checked out even more start-ups, participated in a Lenovo survey and test. There is even a Hackathon taking place during the conference and furthermore, there are many networking opportunities with outstanding entrepreneurs. It‘s great to see so many new innovations, technologies, and entrepreneurs coming together in great businesses.

Last day of the FAU Silicon Valley Fall School: Once again we were able to see great presentations and the finals of the hackathon and pitch event. Ashton Kutcher was also part of the jury and the CEO of Snapchat stopped by. We also had a final meeting with our host from San José State University where we all received our official certificates.