"Only Those Who Dare to Fail Greatly, Win Greatly"

-- by Yuval Oren

It is soon time to pack my luggage with all the new insights and inspirations i have collected in the past 4 weeks, and get back to the real life. The trick now, is to se what of all I've seen here will actually stick, and how could I implement this in my future actions.

I think that the events I've been to during the last few days in many ways sum up this experience for me. We began with an event called VC Task Force. This event was an excellent opportunity to see how entrepreneurs pitch to VCs in real life. I thought that it was very satisfying to see how the last 3 weeks have changed my mind set; I could see the exact structure the different entrepreneurs used for their pitch, noticed small "mistakes" they have done, and then heard the panel of VCs correct these exact things in their feedback. I found the VCs feedback to be especially interesting, as it opened my eyes to the exact issues they care about: e.g. amount of costumers needed to break even,  why are you uniquely suitable to run this company, how much money do you ask for, how will you use this money, present your team and so on, and so forth.

The following event was the Clean Tech Open 2011 Global Forum, in San Jose, CA. This event allowed us to enter a very special environment of entrepreneurs and investors and hear how developers of different products and services pitch their ideas and how VCs responded to that. Furthermore, this event gave us a great networking opportunity. I pitched www.fundtalent.com to many different people and companies, including the HR managers from PWC, and came back home with great feedback and a stack of business cards. The highlight of the evening for me without a doubt, was hearing the presentation of Edward Lu, former NASA Astronaut who spent 6 months in space. He brought forward NASA's innovation view - "To predict the future - invent it!".

Perhaps one of the most inspiring meetings we had during this trip was the one we had with Juha Christensen from Progression Partners - one of the founders of Progression Partners, as well as a board member and/or president in several other companies. Juha has a great knowledge base in the development of Startups. He gave us a very critical and useful point of view regarding what they look for in new startups, in order to take them on board. I have pitched www.fundtalent.com to him, and he found it very interesting. I plan to keep him in touch and try to use his advice as much as possible. I especially liked Juha's final remark: "When creating a startup, aim for big ideas. If you aim for a multi-billion exit, even if you hit around it, it will still be a success. There is no point wasting all that time on a small idea". This for me is Silicon Valley in a nutshell. I love it.

In the last few days of our stay here we tried to take all the great pieces of information we got during this trip, go out and try to process it all and come out of some take-home key points. Hiking in Yosemite Park, cruising to Alcatraz Island, and simply walking across the Golden Gate Bridge, reminds you how beautiful this area is, and how good life is here. It is my personal view that when life is good, when you are calm and happy, your mind is open to create great things. Not to counter the "Necessity is the mother of all invention" which I greatly agree with, i believe that this area is so amazing, that one simply gets in the mood to take over the world. And this leads me to my bottom line; The beautiful thing in Silicon valley is that everybody wants to take over the world, to be the best there ever was. This is done through the understanding that it is sharing rather then fighting with everybody, and hiding in your basement, that leads to the greatest of improvements. People are open to new ideas, to new people, always want to hear about a new concept, a new point of view. It is by pitching and explaining your idea a thousand times, hearing a thousand different responses and feedbacks, and pivoting the original idea again and again until it is perfect - which leads to truly inventive ideas, and to success. Be all you can be.