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Being a trainee at Pipefy gave me the possibility to get to know the culture of the company, something that I consider one of the most essential virtues of Pipe, it also brought me closer to all the operations areas and to the people who make this machine run at full speed. The learnings, the responsibility, and the trust placed in me, and all of the other YG, shaped me professionally and personally for the new challenges that I assumed after the program finished.

From the very first day at the company, Pipefy fed me with diverse contents regarding technology, innovation, investments and startups, precisely the ones that I would come across almost a year later in California. Beyond all that, the YG still gave me the most important professional experience of my life so far, one month working at Pipefy’s office in San Francisco.

Now that I’ve shown all of my kindness for the Young Guns program, I’m going back to the moment I landed on SFO, and yes, that moment is remarkable. Because it was there that I began to understand what is the Silicon Valley. Just outside the airport, I came across several outdoors, all of them very different from the ones I used to see in Curitiba, the clothes and real estate outdoors were replaced by the tech companies advertisements, such as SalesForce. It seems like a silly change, but it was already possible to realize the huge culture difference, people in the Valley consumes massively innovation and the solutions that facilitate their lives. These details that shape the culture of this region do not stop there, throughout the text I will tell more stories.

I left Brazil with my schedule almost closed, besides my work routine in the office, I had already scheduled meetups, lectures, workshops, benchmarking visits, and courses. Therefore, I will separate the text on some of these topics.

My day-to-day at San Francisco was greatly facilitated by the exceptional reception I had from our American team, everyone helped me a lot during the period, making my stay even better.

My work there was divided between the usual demands that I had from Brazil and new demands from the American market. Certainly, this was one of the highlights of my experience: I had the opportunity to attend meetings and modeling processes for enterprise customers. The frequent contact with people of greater seniority and with processes of a higher degree of complexity were important factors to leverage my professional maturity and to increase my confidence in situations of more significant responsibility.

My current role in Pipefy does not put me in close contact with the company’s commercial department, so it was very nice to be able to participate in several calls and understand how is the sales approach applied in the Valley. Especially for larger customers who have a longer sales cycle and therefore need a deeper relationship. So, even though I stayed for only a month in the SF office, I had a daily basis schedule with these clients, in some cases, I maintain the work with them until today. Still, on this commercial topic, I had the opportunity to visit one of the startup’s meccas in the heart of the Valley, a place called Plug and Play in Palo Alto and watched a several startups pitches including one from Pipefy.

Regarding the valley work culture, I imagine that it was shaped the way it is, because everyone who is from there, often hear success stories about how a small technology startup has become a unicorn. I believe that many of these stories are famous for the execution, focus, and sophistication of the teams; plus the fact of those companies possessing a great product as part of the plot. Thus, wanting or not, the valley professional ends up been contaminated by this mentality of intense, productive and 100% data-driven work. In my perception, due to the high exchange of ideas and the consolidated culture of Pipefy, people from the Curitiba office were also highly contaminated by this ability to overperform.

It’s not all the companies in northern California that have these characteristics, but then the Valley itself eliminates them from the game, with less attractive rounds of investments and its skyrocketing real estate values. Fair enough. Mountain View would not be able to bear a few thousands “new” Google’s, but it certainly, still has room for more overachievers like Pipefy, right, honey badgers?

I will end this topic with two more “silly” stories that show a bit of the valley culture. On the first day of work our team decided to have lunch at a place called Foccacia, by the name of the restaurant, I instantly thought about the pasta that I would eat to start my US fitness project. Arriving at the restaurant didn’t have tables to take a seat, we ended up getting a wrap of chicken with salad and having lunch in the office between one call and another. I have two conclusions from this story to share with you; the first is that time is money for the San Francisco worker and the second is that people in California do not have that popular American fast-food mentality, they are much more healthy than anywhere else that I had visited in the US. It’s easier to be fit there; the San Francisco Bay at the sunrise or sunset is one of the bests places in the world for a good run.

The second story shows a little more how everyone is knowledgeable about the tech world that takes care of the region. Picking up an uber on the way to work, the driver asked me what I was doing in town, and I replied that I was working at a technology company. Then, he asked me if it was related to the cryptocurrency, when I said no, he wanted to know about my knowledge on the subject, I said I knew, obviously, but did not have a complete understanding. So, he gave me a free 30-minute lesson on Bitcoin and its relatives.

Every day in San Francisco and the surrounding cities there are numerous events called meetups, open conversations with some of the most renowned speakers in the valley, where business people take the opportunity to network and discuss a hot topic of the moment. Besides the work in the office, this was the activity I did the most there, almost every day before or after the work I participated in one of these events.

In total, it was 12 meetups, where I sought to bring content to all areas of Pipefy’s operation and also improve my professional know-how. I attended meetups of the most diverse subjects, enhancing my knowledge in Artificial Intelligence, RPA, Machine Learning, Data Science, Sales, Design, Customer Success, Lean Management, among others. Besides, I was pleased to listen to tips and guidance from successful entrepreneurs, important people from the venture capital world and even the technical director of Pixar Studios.

The networking sessions of these events are something extraordinary and showcase much of the valley culture, not only by the eats and drinks but because you meet people of all kinds, from subject enthusiasts to founders of small startups and consecrated entrepreneurs. The coolest of all is that everyone is open to talk, pass advice and learn, even when a 22-year-old Brazilian almost without professional experience arrives. This is because the journey of all the valley entrepreneurs ends up being similar, a current CEO of some unicorn company, one day had to take advice from someone “bigger” between a glass of wine and another in some meetup of San Francisco. Therefore, he ends up having the motivation to do for others what someone did in the past for him. Of course, that’s my perception, in all the meetups I went I had the same treatment from all the people present.

The experience in the valley will not be complete if you don´t get out of your comfort zone and get your hands dirty to learn in practice some themes that you´re not so familiar. In San Francisco, one of the best places to do this is the General Assembly School, a place that offers daily workshops focused on business, coding, UX, and data science.

I participated in two workshops, the first related to business, with the focus in sales and that brought to light some mental triggers that can leverage our ability to convince. Again, the great variety of people at the workshop was a highlight, some people in the class were seeking to improve their skills for job interviews, others who sought to learn how best to persuade their bosses to increase seniority, and others who tried to leverage their knowledge to give a boost in their sales. The high interactivity of the workshop made it possible to learn a lot with each one present.

Something that I noticed in most of the events I attended and especially in this workshop is that to defend their theses, or to convey their teachings the speakers always seek to apply their theories to real examples, lived by them or even by the people of the audience. This is what makes the knowledge much more palpable, and you leave the event already knowing how and where to apply what you just learned.

My second visit to the General Assembly building was for an API workshop, where we understood the API theory, and then we had to do some coding in one of the examples passed by the instructor. It was not enough to become a developer, but it gave me a basic knowledge that is fundamental for the work I do today at Pipefy.

I have a great affection for this place, even though I had spent only one weekend there, I have already understood why the university is so recognized and why the best professionals from the USA and the world came from there. The campus is sensational and makes you glow at the entrance, it’s hard to explain, but you feel different energy being there, clearly a place of excellence in everything they do.

I attended a course called “Seven Essential Steps to Selling and Closing More Customers,” as its name says, geared entirely toward sales. The course professor had previously been a sales director for various types of businesses, such as technology companies, consultancies, and venture capitals. It was very cool to realize that Stanford teachers are all very active and renowned outside the academy, working directly with large corporations or startup projects.

Even with a product-oriented mindset, the Valley ecosystem targets all areas of the business like sales, after all, they know that a poor sales or marketing strategy can devalue an incredible product and that’s why Stanford Business School is so strong and has a crucial role in forming founders who create innovative products and sell them with mastery.

The course itself was of great value, the dynamics and materials passed by the teacher were of high quality. Based on the examples of the material, we had to apply each of the steps into our reality and discuss them with the whole class. Each step involved real cases and applied examples in different types of industry, since the students came from different markets, from a technology startup salesperson to an Ernest Young sales manager.

Again, I will return to the topic that the Valley will always aim to take you out of your comfort zone, and that is what makes you evolve. At the end of the course a session in doubles of “buyer” and “seller” was done to apply the seven steps learned, I was never a salesperson in my life, but that day I had to sell a business to a director of an investment fund. Once again, I had the opportunity and the pleasure of debating with people of a level that I would never have imagined at the beginning of my professional career.

I’m sure that my lack of experience and knowledge on the subject, made me able to absorb and advantage of the dynamics, the material, but also the experiences of other classmates. Before arriving in Stanford, I already had this thought in my head but after the course, it was even more consolidated, the Valley culture is even stronger and more valuable for those who are starting their journey because this person can see and extract value from everything and everyone.

It is complicated to convey in words the intense moments lived in those 30 days. But I’m confident that the focus and the excellence in the execution surprised me, the people made me believe, and the culture contaminated me. This entire article was a summary of my experience in San Francisco, but it could have been a love letter. I miss you, Silicon Valley.

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