StepOne Blog

The Wall Street Journal recently wrote an article about the “next youth-magnet cities.”  San Francisco wasn’t on this list….but Washington, DC, Seattle, New York, Portland, and Austin were.  Why wasn’t San Francisco on there?  Aren’t we supposed to be the mecca of entrepreneurship?  Or is our high cost of living “costing” us?  http://bit.ly/3yavpS

I attended the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Cleantech conference in San Francisco (Reinventing Fire) last Friday.  Not only did I get to meet up with a fellow Harvard Business School grad, Lionel Bony, who works at RMI, I heard a great panel of speakers: Amory Lovins, Dan Reicher (Google.org), Paul Holland (Foundation Capital), Bill Joy (Kleiner Perkins), Aimee Christensen (Christensen Global Strategies), and Catherine Zoi (Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Department of Energy).

One big takeaway for our European clients is: Catherine Zoi talked about the Obama Administration’s mandate to grant $400M to companies that can help promote and scale energy efficiency to a national level.

I attended my second ASAP (Association for Strategic Alliance Professionals) event last night.  It was held at Cisco’s offices in San Jose, and I was very impressed by 2 things.  

First, the “technology” of the event was extremely well-integrated with the speakers.  For instance, audience members were able to record their responses to several polling questions that the speakers asked.  The speakers then were able to integrate this real-time data into the presentation.  Of course, this is not new technology — but it was the first time that I felt a presentation was actually enhanced by technology.  This is especially interesting to me since part of StepOne’s value add for our European clients is to prepare them for presentations they may give or meetings they hold in the US.  Anything that enhances a speaker’s message is something that I will keep an eye on for our clients.

Second, on the topic of how social media can enhance strategic alliances, the speakers referenced 2 source materials that I will definitely track down and read.  The book, Groundswell (http://bit.ly/1CgLph), and the Conversation Prism (http://bit.ly/65Hnr) by Brian Solis.  Have any of you out there read or used these?  What do you think?

Yesterday morning I attended a talk given by Ron Leuty, the life sciences reporter for the San Francisco Business TImes.  He gave valuable advice about how life sciences companies need to communicate better with their wider audience, not just with their potential equity investors.  I think this advice is true for technology companies in general, not just biotech ones.  Executives in tech companies need to be able to explain their technology in simple (but not dumbed down) terms.

C-YA does not have to mean “get lost!” In fact, it simply means keeping up with good friends and alumni of Stanford. Last Thursday, you could find yours truly at Nola in Palo Alto, kicking back some suds with recent Stanford Alums.

The environment was decidedly not stuffy, and business only made up some of the conversation, but that’s what makes C-YA events so fun and inviting. There were electrical engineers, MBAs, biologists, and even some social science degrees (guilty as charged!) in attendance. Come on out to the next C-Ya event in Palo Alto or the larger Bay Area. I’ll see you there!