Silicon Valley Culture
I just got back from Silicon Valley where I spent more than a week. I was able to take the ten startups that are going through the acceleration program that I am running in Bogota and show them around and introduce them to key players. We had fireside chats with investors and entrepreneurs such as Nivi (co-founder of Angel List), Ranjith Kumaran (co-founder of YouSendIt and PunchTab) and William Hsu (CodeEval). We also spoke with investors such as Mike Hennesey and Dan Bragiel. As usual, I was able to count on help from some great people including Jeannine Jacobson from the Founder Institute in Los Angeles and the above mentioned people in Silicon Valley in addition to a host of others that I’ll thank privately so as not to make them so public without their consent. 
We also visited successful companies such as Facebook, Google and Evernote to understand their innovation cultures and how the built these from their start as small startups to big companies. We were able to also meet with the CEO and co-founder of Xactly Corporation, Chris Cabrera, who spoke to us about the opportunities in creating SaaS companies. During all of these visits, we heard about the innovation cultures ingrained in these startups as well as the founder vision behind each of these organizations.