Business

10/20/2016

By: Jessica

Techies all the way! … Our latest trip to Silicon Valley

In the past posts, we have talked about different experiences in the Silicon Valley, last week ScreenIT CEO and myself visited San Jose and the Bay area with the purpose of bringing new development projects to Mexico and specifically to Queretaro.

Business meetings aren´t always protocolary, there are various “paths to Rome” including having fun and sometimes unexpected and awkward situations that accompany every business trip, which probably not a lot of companies are willing to deal with.

from the great Silicon Valley Business Journal (SVBJ). When we arrived to this key meeting we couldn’t find the restaurant… as it was inside the big and famous Fairmont Hotel and of course we didn´t know it. (our mistake). Finally, we found the place thanks to a friendly taxi driver (he was wearing a turban, which is one of the interesting things about San Jose and in general in US: it is plenty of people from many different countries, long live diversity and respect for all!).

Coming back to the meeting, by the time of our arrival (about 8 minutes later) our counterpart, Robert Robledo was already there (shame on us, you should never appear late when talking about business, actually you should NEVER appear late…) Fortunately he was comprehensive and at the end, the night was great and Robert offered a great way for our company to partner with his great Journal and to be further introduced  into the Silicon Valley (releases coming soon).

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Another meeting was with the great Matt Mahood, President of the Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce, who is a key senior executive in San Jose and its tech industry. Along with Matt, was the great Chris Horton, with his unique high level PR abilities as the Membership Executive for the Chamber. A little back in time, this reunion was possible due to previous digital networking with Chris! and specially thanks to Robert Robledo!

Matt and his team were so kind and they fully opened their capabilities and those of the Chamber for supporting our efforts in seeking broader, effective and quickly penetration in Silicon Valley and ScreenIT is most proudly becoming a member of the very prestigious Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce! So much luck we have with this! Good will pays off!

LESSON 1: “Networking is magic (sincere networking is!)”: Pay a lot of attention and spend some time to meet and to establish good relationships with new people. We were able to meet Robert and Matt thanks to a month and a half exchanging conversations by LinkedIn and e-mail.

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Through our new business partner and client to be, Mario Chaves, expert for two decades now on the nearshore industry, and thanks to his generosity, we were able to corroborate we are doing things right and with every needed metrical to continue doing so…

We weren’t so lucky with a couple of meetings, Andrew Heywood, an awesome Recruiter Director of an important wearables machines company said (the same day of the appointment) he couldn´t be able to meet us. We are much looking forward to meeting you soon Andrew!. The other one was a potential provider of social media marketing.

LESSON 2: “Be sure of having a plan B” … or a good friend/client to visit when your agenda doesn’t come up the way you expected.

Simple technology solutions and apps are always appreciated, and Silicon Valley is where a lot of famous startups were born, like Airbnb. We rented an apartment in Sunnyvale using this app, which I can confirm is pretty useful. So here comes another tip I would like to share: The need of evolving to new ways of doing normal activities. Booking a hotel room became almost unnecessary (at least it was for this trip), thanks to this app, we saved a significant amount of money, without mentioning that to sleep in a house and to have all the commodities of it, are better and nicer than to sleep in a little hotel room and have to leave it at a certain hour.

LESSON 3: “Learn, use, live technology” (With no interest of sounding like a promo) Apps make life simpler.  Don’t be afraid of trying new things, or even better, dare to launch your own app, I know from ScreenIT that Mexican devs have a lot of potential!

Although we have no pics… (as we forgot to ask) we also had the great opportunity to meet with Mimi Hernandez, Senior Business Advisor for the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in San Jose, we met Mimi thanks to our dear Robert Robledo. The warmth and vision of Mimi were very enticing for us! We look forward to a long business relationship with her.

We also met Deputy Consul General of Mexico in San Francisco, Mr. Enrique Maldonado, whose large expertise and long range vision where of opening eyes for us. Thank you very much Mr. Consul General Maldonado!

Finally, we have immense thanks to Mexico´s Trade Commissioner in San Francisco at ProMexico, Ms. Azul Ogazon who has been helping us with highest added value and detail. Azul has helped us land a very important and large project with a top cloud company from San Francisco. We do not have enough thanks to give you Azul along with the Regional Director for ProMexico in our home State of Querétaro Ms. Greetel Chable whose drive and executive abilities are key for ScreenIT.

Still lots of effort to do, being partially in Silicon Valley is challenging. The business field is enormous, we recognize that we have to keep working on bringing more business opportunities and servicing all clients with excellence, fully understanding and satisfying their needs.

Good news are: We have two new development opportunities with Cloud and PHP technologies. If you are a developer, we want to invite you to be part of this new project, you’ll be working with many other talented mexican people in a multicultural environment… Projects always challenge people to be the best version of their technological being.

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In the other hand, if you are looking  to expand your nearshore business, trust us at ScreenIT. We are so much looking forward to serving you!

contactus@tas-screenit.com, we offer a guaranteed, capable and very talented IT team according to your requirements.

 

Liz & Jess

View Jessica Aguado's LinkedIn profile View Jessica Aguado’s profile

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 Special collaboration:

Rafael J. Cortes