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Packed house for #princetoneclub hack classes! Sensei Rishi showing neat iOS tricks

#princetoneclub

Golden Gate Bridge

Beautiful day to walk along the San Francisco Bay #TigerTrek

Last #TigerTrek visit: @Path with @DaveMorin and @mvanhorn

Insight on the ups and downs of starting a company from @davemorin #TigerTrek

Amazing view from the @path office. Thanks to @mvanhorn for having us! #tigertrek

#tigertrek

Greylock Blog Post by Andrew Cheong

As the group entered the Greylock Partners' building, many of my fellow Tigertrekkers, as well as myself, were taken back by the beautiful interior that was sprinkled with Halloween festivities. Once the trekkers were comfortably seated, Asheem Chandna, a partner at Greylock, welcomed us and the discussion fired off. I personally found it fascinated by the organization of all the partners. Greylock splits its partners by whether a company serves in the consumer or enterprise space. Asheem was one of those partners who was more focused with the enterprise software sector. But one thing that stood out for me is that Asheem explained that partners at VC firm really have the best interest in mind for all their portfolio companies as well as potential companies. He told us a small story of his willingness to meet new potential companies on weekends even when he himself was very sick. These extreme measures defined what type of partner Asheem is. I guess I entered California with a very unfair misconception of VC partners but hearing the stories by Asheem made me quickly realize that these views were skewed. Of course not all VC partners are like Asheem Chandna but without a doubt many excellent partners exist. Cheers, Andrew Cheong

Ariosa Diagnostics

Even though every company we have visited has been amazing, one company that is really unique for several reasons was Ariosa Diagnostics. It was the only biotech company on the trip and also had a founder who was a venture capitalist before becoming a CEO rather than the other order which was more typical. Unlike some of the internet tech companies with college dropouts calling the shots, almost everyone at Ariosa has their MD or PHD or both. Ariosa is a company which is trying to take the promise of the human genome project out of the laboratories of academia and into people's every day lives using the start up as the vehicle. Their first product is called the Harmony Prenatal test and it is a safer and more accurate test than the standard amniocentesis for telling expectant mothers about possible genetic trisomies. Ariosa runs the test from their location in San Jose and has recently expanded to make the test available not only in the US but also in the UK. Ken Song was nice enough to give us a tour of the facilities and answer our questions about the company and how he came to be CEO. Because the medical market involves so much testing and regulation, a quick cycle of iteration might be 9 months rather 1 week at a software company. Also, there are four main players that Ariosa must make happy to succeed. Rather than just the customers, who are the first priority, Ariosa must also convince the doctors to prescribe the test, the insurance companies to support the test, and the regulation boards to approve of the safety. However, Ariosa really tries to put the customers first, in both the low price of the test and the type of feedback they give to sell peace of mind, and in this sense of focus on the customer, they are like many of the other startups we saw. Ken told us about how very important it is to choose really smart people who you can rely on no matter how things are going. He had found the team of scientists who developed a new method of testing while he was a VC at Venrock and joined them to make it a real company back in 2010. Only a few months in, they raised more capitol and realized that the method they were planning to use wouldn't actually work. Over the course of a few stressful hours and practically in front of the other investing parties they were able to figure out the method which is successfully used today. Ken says that every startup will hit bumps like this that will really test the team, so it is crucial to have not only smart people but people who you can trust and work with when the times aren't good. One of the things we were curious about going in was how the culture would be impacted by the much slower moving industry and the much higher levels of education required to make a difference. While there was a subtly higher level of professionalism and perhaps a few more ties worn to work than hoodies, the Halloween decorations in all the cubicles and the foosball table in the break room convinced us that they were a real startup after all.

Day 1 in the Valley

Our first full day here in the Valley was absolutely packed with visits to Nest, Khan Academy, Piazza, and Shasta Ventures.

In the evening we attended a Startup/Y Combinator Mixer hosted at Microsoft HQ where we heard from two Microsoft employees - Matt Thompson and Dan'l Lewin (Princeton Alumnus).

The following panel also presented and answered our questions:

Hai Nguyen spoke about his experience starting Appfluence while studying at Stanford, consulting for Ebay, and managing other part-time commitments. He explained that Appfluence was a bootstrapped startup (it didn't raise venture capital) and became profitable with over 50,000 paying customers today.

Lee Linden (Facebook Commerce) spoke about his experience as part of one of the early Y Combinator groups and how he went on to found Tapjoy and Karma -- the latter of which was acquired by Facebook around six months ago.

Steven Yarger talked about working as a mobile product manager at Trulia. He discussed the role of mobile in a more 'traditional' vertical like real estate.

Ray Bradford (KPCB) shared insights he learned while working for Amazon in cloud computing (Amazon S3). He also explained a few of the key factors he looks at when evaluating potential investment opportunities at KPCB including technical, market, and team risk.

After the panel presented, our questions prompted further discussion on a variety of interesting topics.

We discussed the value of an MBA, the central role of engineers in today's startups, and the debatable claim that creating a billion dollar company (in yearly revenue) is near impossible on existing platforms such as the App Store. Further questions prompted discussion on the contrasting "lean startup and minimum viable product" approach vs. extended product cycles and development typical of hardware companies such as Apple. We noted that there is certainly a difference between hardware and software companies and no one size fits all approach to iteration and prototyping. We also discussed Peter Thiel's assertion that there is a shortage of real deep innovation present in the country, with people instead adding incremental features on existing platforms.

The trip has been awesome since then.

Hafiz Dhanani '16