San Francisco - seems like a great city that I would LOVE to visit again, but with four meeting a day and only 20 minutes of sightseeing I didn't see much.. Loved what I did see though, and business was great!
Monday morning, the city is buzzing. We head down to Innovations Norway's offices and meet up with Åse and Veslemoy to go over the weeks meeting agenda. One of the nice things of being associated with them is that they have a large network of contacts, so they had arranged meeting with with several of those in addition to a list of companies/people Nils had identified.
At noon we head for Silicon Valley to the first of many meetings with VC's etc in that area. We soon learn that 4 meetings per day is max as we scramble to get from location to location, sometime getting lost on the way, but Nils's luckily has gps on his phone which saves us several times. We have tons of great meetings, connect with many influential, successful and inspirational people both investors and entrepreneurs that have built up billion dollars companies !!
I'm surprised how helpful and friendly many of these people are. They are very professional, but also laid-back and willing to give us advice and share some of their stories not only in regards to fund the company, but how to best build and expand, resources needed and also introductions to people that can help us.
Regarding arriving late at some meetings, we actually had to move one meeting an hour back on very short notice as an other meeting run late (we usually got more than the initial our set aside for us - a good sign :). We were told by a partner at a large VC firm that we had 20 minutes as he had to leave by 6pm. An hour later we are still there and his wife has called several times getting annoyed he hasn't left his office yet to join her for dinner! Another investor told us he was very busy, 20 min max. We spent 90 minutes at his office :).
Anyway, so we had a very busy schedule which resulted in long and exhausting days (but also exciting), typically we did not arrive back in SF before 7-8pm often falling a sleep on the hour ride back from the Valley (luckily for Olav he brought his inflatable pillow!). Unfortunately not much time for sightseeing so the last night we decided to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge coming back from meetings. It's 8pm and as we approach the bridge I'm snapping pictures like crazy, however my battery goes dead so I have no pictures from the bridge or the view of the city from the other side :( .
We ate all dinners at the quaint Kuletos Restaurant adjacent to the hotel, typically we would experience other restaurants as well, but we were so tired at night that it just made sense to go next door especially since this is one of the best restaurants in the city with great food and service :)
Nils and I had 30 minutes to take the cab Friday morning before a breakfast meeting and shopping was done in a souvenir shop next to the hotel. So a very productive week, not much time to experience the city, but I can always do that later.
Olav is ready for more meetings!
Mårten Mickos, the founder of my SQL offered some
great advise! I might just keep asking for more....
I love this! What other place in the world will
you find commercials like this?
I used to watch Full House when I was a kid, and looooved it!
And I loved the San Francisco scenery dreaming about
riding the cable cars. On our last day in the city,
we had 20 minutes available for sightseeing and took
the cable car up this hill, and down again. Loving it and
can’t wait for my next trip to San Francisco to go for a longer ride!
