First Day In Silicon Valley
Where do I start. In the second semester of my junior year at Babson College I received an offer for an internship with a venture capital firm in San Jose, a city that labels itself the ‘Capital of Silicon Valley’. I probably got the interview because I emailed the CEO and he forwarded the email to the hiring manager. I probably got the job because in my interview I mentioned analysis I did on Jack Dorsey’s Square and emailed a copy to my interviewer after the conversation. One economy class U.S. Airways flight later I’m on the West Coast for the first time. I was not listening to Tupac or The Notorious B.I.G., unfortunately. I was re-reading ‘Think and Grow Rich’ by Napoleon Hill.
A family friend, whose house in Redwood City I would be staying at temporarily, picked me up at the airport. Driving on the highway from San Jose to Redwood City was an experience. I’m from Toronto, Canada and haven’t spent much time in cities with omnipresent mountains in the background. In front of the mountains I’m seeing rolling hills shaded six different colours and lined with palm trees . The biosphere in the Bay Area reminds me more of Africa than anything else. California seems environmentally more like Africa than Florida; the humidity, the topography, the vegetation.
I find out where I’m staying in Redwood City is up on one of these multicolored hills-that-become-mountain ranges. People have houses all the way up the hill and at the top are (balling) estates and gentleman farms. It’s a nice area. Upon arrival I find out my family friend raises chickens. This is a 30 minute drive to downtown San Francisco; definitely different than suburban New England or Canada. I am writing this as I hang out on the back deck where the chickens are walking around. Somehow everything is reasonably clean, though. I spend my first night in California attempting to decipher public transportation for my first day of work tomorrow.