French insight to Microsoft’s culture during Seattle Industry Tour

Microsoft… Well, unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past few decades, you must be pretty familiar with this name. Let’s briefly remind us the Microsoft success story.  It has been founded in 1994 by Paul Allen and Bill Gates (you know, the guy we’ve all dreamed of sharing a bank account with). The name Microsoft comes from the fusion of the words microcomputer and software. Indeed its activities are focused on computer software, hardware and consumer electronics. Its products are in our daily lives under the famous brands Windows, Office, Skype, MSN or Xbox and many others. Microsoft has a worldwide presence and in 2015 registered a revenue of 93.58 billion US dollars.

Koru outlines to GEM & SFU students career development issues during Seattle Industry Tour

On Thursday February 11, 2016,  we had the pleasure of visiting the headquarters of Koru, a startup which aims at reducing  unemployement of college graduates. The company’s offices are located in Boston, Seattle, and San Francisco. In the United States, a lot of graduates currently encounter problems with finding a job. They often do not fit the required standards of corporations, 53% of them are un-employed or under-employed.

Mitchell Cuevas, Techstars, talks to GEM & SFU students about entrepreneurship during Seattle Industry Tour

On Thursday February 11^th 2016, we went to Techstars Seattle and met Mitchell Cuevas who is Sr. Marketing Director for Techstars globally. Techstars is a global ecosystem that empowers entrepreneurs to bring new technologies to market wherever they choose to develop their business. The company is mainly known for being one of the best mentorship-driven startup accelerator. Indeed, from 2006 to 2015, this accelerator helped 526 companies to raise over 1.3 billion dollars. To spread its influence all around the world, Techstars acquired UpGlobal (Startup Weekend, Startup Digest, Startup Next, Startup Week) last summer.

Tom Britton, Elastic Path, talks to GEM & SFU students during Vancouver Industry Tour

    First day of the Vancouver Industry Tour was concluded by a visit at Elastic Path. We were lucky to have Tom Britton, Senior Director Product Development, as our guest speaker. Mr Britton gave us great talk about challenges in product development, innovation, and customized approach to customers.

Radius outlines to GEM & SFU students entrepreneurial challenges during Vancouver Industry Tour

RADical Ideas, Useful to Society. Everything is in the name. Radius is the Beedie School of Business’ social innovation lab and venture incubator. The aim? Helping the new wave of entrepreneurs who want to create innovative rules in the present and complex environment.

Geoffrey Peg, Telus, talks to GEM&SFU students during Vancouver Industry Tour

Geoffrey Peg, Director of Sustainability at Telus, welcomed us in the building “Telus garden” located in Georgia street downtown Vancouver. We started our tour on the roof of the building, where Mr.Peg talked about the building, that they currently share with Amazon and a law firm.

Tony Liebo, Wells Fargo, Seattle, talks to GEM & SFU students about finance during Innovation Business Week

The last company visit of the Business Week 2015 was at Wells Fargo. We were explained that there are two main ways to measure the success of a bank: its assets or its market capitalization. As Europeans, only a few of us have heard of Wells Fargo before. However, Wells Fargo is the largest bank in the world measured by market capitalization. But there are only a few Wells branches in Europe: they are mostly settled in the US and in Pacific Asia.

Bert Tong talks to GEM & SFU students about entrepreneurship during Innovation Business Week

We had the pleasure meet at lunch time Bert Tong who has many experiences in entrepreneurship. Indeed, he launched Crate Away, a storage start-up which failed one year ago. He came to share with us his experience and explain us how he overcame this failure. The key lesson of this meeting is that relationships between co-founders matter the most. He insisted on the need of complementarity between members of a team. Being a successful entrepreneur is not only about having a good idea but about having reliable and trustworthy relationships. The network is at stake above all.

Kara Bauer & Paula Keleci, Value Village, Seattle, talk to GEM & SFU students about social entrepreneurship during Innovation Business Week

Today, we had an opportunity to visit one store of a popular thrift store chain called Value Village / Savers. The company is present in USA, Canada, and Australia.

The visit was very interesting because what this company does is very close to what we have learned so far during a semester in our Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation program. Indeed, Value Village is a social for-profit organisation: they make profits but they give a part their profits back to charity organisations and they help the environment by reducing waste.

Chris Devore, Techstars, Seattle, talks to GEM & SFU students about entrepreneurship during Innovation Business Week

On February 12^th 2015, we started our first visit in Seattle with Techstars, a start-up accelerator. We had the pleasure to meet Chris Devore, the Managing Director of Techstars Seattle.

Seattle’s area is a great ecosystem of companies, including very famous ones as Microsoft, Amazon or Boeing, and investors trying to support them. In that context, a lot of entrepreneurs try to develop their ideas creating their own business. When they need help, they sometimes try to connect with start-up accelerators as Techstars Seattle. Created in 2010, it is part of Techstars, a global network of start-up accelerators based in Boulder (CO).