Today is the start of the 2023 Villanova in the Valley program. Our cohort will be busy from the crack of dawn to when the night falls every day. However, this will not stop me from journalling and I will summarize the days with some viewpoints and remarkable stories.
Here are 10 bullet points of the first day of the 2023 Villanova in the Valley Program. We visited Equator Coffees, Supergiant Games, Kleiner Perkins, and had dinner with Jim Maggats from MX Technologies.
- Equator Coffee is third-wave coffee, which is a movement in coffee marketing, that emphasizes high quality. Their beans are sourced from individual farms and are roasted lightly to bring out the coffee flavors,.
- PJ is the kind of guy that has an entrepreneurship mindset but doesn’t need to create his own company. Instead, he took tons of big risks in his life, hopping around different companies and making strategic moves to bring them to a much higher level. He changed the way I thought about entrepreneurship completely! Now I aspire to be like that too because I would like to take more risks than I am right now!
- When PJ was a Housing Director in SpO, he went to New York and his car got broken into and they stole all his paperwork, which was necessary for room booking a few days later. He was really desperate but he and his committee were able to figure it all out over again together after many sleepless nights and made things work! This reminded me of when I was in Middle School, I spilled my ink all over my math homework. I was very scared because there is no second worksheet. So I decided to use my Word skill and type up the entire worksheet, all by myself; same exact format and questions. The next day when I submit it, the teacher still never found out!
- PJ got the job because the founders called him. They remembered him for his kindness: “you were the nicest guy in the room,” they said. So the lesson learned is to be kind and look out for people because it’s the best way to build a relationship
- Supergiant Games has spent $0 on marketing so far. However, they are able to gain a crazy amount of success because they benefited from free marketing, such as WOM, awards, and top trending on Microsoft and Twitch platforms.
- Super Giant Games ‘ HADES 2 has 3D elements to help with technological scaling. However, they are still designed like the 2D style and the company tried hard to make this change as subtle as possible
- Finishing something is WOT, and creating something is a collaboration
- When you approach someone with questions, make sure you make it very specific. For example, saying that you’re interested in tech is too broad, try narrowing it down to robots
- Gwen remained positive because he looks at things from the big picture, where he sees products on the shelf and people’s happiness when the firm becomes successful. You should reflect but don’t get beat down by that!
- Jim said there are 3 things we need to have in life: 1/ a mission, 2/ a skill, and 3/ tell people about you because they aren’t mind readers
I would trade being in the Commons for eating the super delicious avocado toast from Equator Coffee and visiting the Golden Gate Bridge anytime
We visited Lombard Street, the most crooked street in the world! The picture that I took couldn’t show the street’s curviness, so I had to borrow a bird-eyed view picture from Wikipedia
Supergiant Games Office. We were also super lucky to receive a ton of authentic merch as gifts from them!
Kleiner Perkins Office, where many historic deals happened, including their deal with Google and Amazon. Fun facts, Google didn’t receive funding consensus from all KP partners; Amazon was selling $3 books without proper logistics, and Uber started as a black car company
Trang "Tee" Nguyen 