This document provides an overview of topics relevant for someone interested in working in Silicon Valley, including: - The pros and cons of working for big companies versus startups versus founding your own company. - Strategies for getting a job in Silicon Valley, such as networking, building an online portfolio, and leveraging internships. - Computer science classes that teach relevant technical skills like web development. - Resources for staying up-to-date on trends and events, such as blogs, news sites, and conferences. - Example technologies, companies and business models to research, such as collaborative consumption, mobile, big data and the Internet of Things.

1. Consumer Internet
& Mobile BBL
What you need to know to get started in Silicon Valley
Maisy Samuelson / @msamuelson / msamuelson@gmail

2. Topics
• Why Silicon Valley?
• Big company v. small startup v. starting
your own
• Getting a job in Silicon Valley
• Classes to take
• Staying up to date
• Further learning

3. Why Silicon Valley?
• Pros • Cons
• Leveraged • High Risk/Reward
(Gambling)
• Meritocratic (no set
career path) • Few obviously
exciting companies
• Growth industry
“Software is eating • Less
the world” structure/more
chaotic
• Work w/
interesting people • Limited location
choices (SF, NYC,
• Flexible lifestyle Austin, Boston,
(not client services) SEA)

4. Established Co v. Startup
Bigger companies: good way to start, learn best
practices, established brand, meet people, little risk
Smaller startup: More growth opt/upside (if startup
does well), fun work environment
Don’t work at a startup for the sake of doing a startup!
What matters: 1) smart people, 2) good product 3) good
brand
Don’t assume that smaller company means greater
impact
Don’t get to caught up w/sector

5. Getting A Job
• Approach companies with specific ways that you can help solve a problem
they have (i.e. wireframes for how you would improve a specific part of the
site). SV companies value doers more than talkers.
• “Check your MBA at the door.” An MBA is not necessarily a positive in SV.
• Participate in Quora/Twitter
• Leverage LinkedIn (find interesting companies. Reach out to
people/companies that interest you)
• Follow companies you’re interested in on Twitter
• Look at VC/angel websites for list of portfolio companies
• Make a portfolio/website/blog
• If the company not too big (e.g. <100 people) take any job and transfer
internally. Don’t worry too much about seniority of original role--there’s
room to grow and move!
• Network early, but realize that startup opportunities come very late in
recruiting season (often May/June)

6. Getting A Product Job
• PMs are risky hires for companies because they control very expensive
engineering resources and make decisions that can make or break a
business/product. To mitigate risk, companies look for people who already
have PM experience and a technical background. If you don’t have both, you
need to be strategic:
• Write a sample spec for the company and make wireframes using Balsamiq
Here’s a spec template.
• Exhibit these traits ... Intelligence (“you can’t fix stupid”), product sense,
ability to lead engineers without direct authority. Check out Ken Norton’s
famous blog post on how to hire PMs
• Get hired for an easier role and do an internal transfer (only realistic if
company <100 people)
• Take the CS classes on the later slide and build something
• Get a summer job at Amazon/Microsoft. It’s useful to have the words
“Product Manager” at <Company people have heard of> on your resume

7. Classes To Take
• If you work at an internet/mobile company, it’s invaluable to
understand how to build websites/mobile apps. These four classes get
you 95% of the way there. They’re a lot more work than GSB classes, but
grades don’t matter and they’re totally worth it.
• CS106a: Programming methodology in Java (take this in the spring
of year 1, so you can take CS142 in the fall).
• CS142: Webs Applications (Only offered in the Fall and need to
take CS106a first. This is the best class at Stanford).
• CS193P: Developing Aps for iOS
• CS106B: Programming abstractions in C++
• Learn SQL, html and CSS on your own (lots of good web tutorials)
• Check out iTunes U, Coursera

8. Staying up To Date
• Fred Wilson • Quora
(@fredwilson)
• TechCrunch
• Brad Feld (@bfeld)
• PandoDaily
• Chris Dixon (@cdixon)
• Techmeme
• Paul Graham (@paulg)
• Angel List
• Aaron Levie (@levie)
• Crunchbase Weekly
• Bill Gurley (@bgurley) Newsletter (fundraising &
acquisitions)
• HackerNews

9. Events
Subscribe to Startup Digest!!
Recurring Annual
•Hacker Dojo events • TechCrunch Disrupt
• SXSW (Austin)
•Hackers & Founders
•Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought
Leadership

10. Themes/Companies To
Research
• Collaborative Consumption
• Sidecar, Lyft/Zimride , Zaarly, TaskRabbit, AirBnB
• Consumerization of the enterprise
• Asana, Box, Zendesk
• Payments
• Stripe, Square, CardSpring, Google Wallet
• Content discovery
• Pinterest, Spotify, Quora, Pulse, Prismatic
• E-Commerce
• Fab, TheFancy, Etsy, One King’s Lane, Nasty Gal, Warby Parker, Quirky,
• SoLoMo
• Highlight (et al.), Nextdoor
• Ed Tech
• Edmodo, Coursera
• Phone as remote control
• Uber, Exec, eBay Now
• Big Data
• Cloudera, Palantir
• The Internet of Things
• Nest, Lockitron

11. Topics to Research
• SEO (app store and web)
• SEM (spend $20 to experiment buying google adwords and FB Ads)
• Analyze Business Models: How does X make money?
• Technology buzzwords (HTML5, JQuery, NoSQL, Bootstrap)
• Mobile
• iOS and Android platforms and apps. What does each platform allow
developers to do? Characteristics of top performing apps? App stores?
Download a bunch of apps and observe design/mechanics.
• Trends
• Alexa, Comscore, Compete (monthly page views, uniques visitors, time
on site etc)
• AppAnnie (iOS and Google Apps)
• AppData (Facebook apps)

12. More Reading …
• Quora (Ian McAllister)
• All of Paul Graham’s essays
• David Weekly’s intro to stock options
• Blake Master’s notes on Peter Thiel’s startup class
• HBS Platforms and Networks materials
Design
• A list apart
• Dribbble
• Principles of User Interface Design