Silicon Valley Successes

Today we interview Ralph Leung

Ralph is a proven senior executive with 20 years of diverse blue-chip leadership experience across strategic finance, corporate strategy, and operations at companies ranging from early-stage startups to Fortune 100 companies globally. Over the past 7 years, he has also advised extensively high growth technology companies, helping them navigate through early-stage strategic and operational growth.

Currently as the Chief Financial Officer at Jyve?”

Throughout his career, he has strategically built companies, teams, and partnerships that sustain strong growth. He has also successfully helped companies scale, transform, and exit; completing 80+ strategic transactions and exits for $90+ billion of M&A value and raised $60+ billion of equity/debt capital.

What are the most common mistakes you help to fix when you work with a company?

At what stage in a company’s development is your toolset most useful or when do you prefer to enter the picture?

How do you decide on who you work with?

What is something a company might be lacking that they don’t know they are lacking or are in denial they are lacking?

Can you give some examples of working with founders and what you did or are doing with them to help them progress?

What do startups need to know about raising funds from overseas investors, what are similarities and differences, (especially US investors and Chinese Investors)?

What type of paperwork do startups need to have ready before looking for investment?

What are some common mistakes startups make when raising their first round of capital and what are the solutions to these mistakes if any?

What mistakes do they make with later rounds of capital?

How do the investors change as each investment round progresses?

When do startups use investment bankers to help them raise funds, when do they do it all internally?

Phil Solk is a managing partner at Opero Partners. Providing strategic advice and hands-on implementation services to companies seeking to significantly enhance their growth trajectories.

He is a seasoned executive (former C-level, VP and directors) with functional expertise in marketing, sales management, operations, product & technology development, finance strategy, funding & M&A.

We interview him on Sales techniques, best practices, and advice for startups.

Today on Silicon Valley Success we interview Whit Howland who is a sales consultant. He has worked with all stages of companies from around the world. We focus todays interview on early stage companies, startups, the problems they face, whether they are from they US or from overseas coming here.  We talk:

A startup sales strategy

The complete Sales Cycle

A startup first sale-idea to reality

Why consumers buy a product

Sales and Marketing and how they work together

Pricing your product to sell

And Whit gives some of the Best Sales Advice ever

Today on Silicon Valley Success we interview Junhwah and Chris who help startup go to Korea or from Korea help them setup in other countries with focus on Silicon Valley.

We talk about:

Setting your company up form the US to Korea, or from Korea to the US

Some of the areas that company fail in

Startup fund matching with the Korean Government

How to go about getting money from the Korean Government

And More

Diversity and Inclusion with startups. Today’s guest Irma Zoepf and Ceser Teague go into detail about the importance of having a wide perspective, and input from many different sources at any stage in a company’s life, even when it is just an early stage company with a very small team. We talk about the problems and opportunities of culture and language training and the awareness of communicating with different groups from around the world and how opportunities are available to those who really try to learn and listen with who they are trying to do business with.

Sergio and Jason are Serial Entrepreneurs who have started several companies. In their life journey, they have had some great successes and many failures. From these life experiences we focus on the aspect of “pivoting” in a company. What it means, why do it, when, how it impacts the team, the investors and more.

Carlos and Mary are top Commercial real estate agents in Silicon Valley who work with companies at all stages to find them the perfect office space. We talk about the leases that startup enter and what they should know when looking for a space such as; where their employees live, transportation, proximity to companies they can recruit from... We talk about working with landlords and items they might be flexible on, what tenant improvements are and how they effect a lease, finding out what office space might be more appropriate depending the needs of the company and the product or research they do and more. Watch this before signing a commercial lease.

Maya is a founder at Wave.ai, using Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence to allow anyone to create their own song is less then 5 minutes, revolutionizing the music industry. We talk about the changes from academia to being a founder of a company. The surprises and the excitement and the challenges.

On this week of Silicon Valley Successes, Jock goes intro great details on the different social media platforms startups and businesses should use in planning their social media strategy. We talk about the relationship with Sales and Marketing, how a media plan success could be measured. The story behind a social media plan, the goal the aim and Jock history in social media and going from hating to loving it.

Matt from Unit City, the largest Tech park in Ukraine, introduces himself, and explains the background and idea behind the Tech park Unit city, the power of combining a lot of complimentary resources in a small area

US companies going and setting up operations and outsourcing in Ukraine. The advantages of outsourcing to Ukraine engineers, how it can benefit startups to outsource to save cost and have access to abundant amount of talent. What is it like to work with Ukraine programmers verse programmers from other countries such as countries in Asia. What is it like to higher programmers from Ukraine, the process and what someone should expect. Who should you try to work with as a middle man to help bridge the gap between US and Ukraine. How that can scale to all sizes from contract developers to having a subsidiary I Ukraine.

The Resources in Unit city the largest tech park in Ukraine. The 42-coding school where tuition is free. How can a top college education be free? The difficulty Ukraine startups face when scaling. When startup from another country to Silicon Valley and the initial reactions and how people on arrival represent themselves. How can a startup get the most out of visiting Silicon Valley? How long does it take a person arriving to Silicon Valley to acclimate to the area? The list of some successful startups from Ukraine that have come to Silicon Valley. Recap on what we have talked about

What areas are Ukraine startups in the forefront of? What areas Ukraine Startups lacking? What advice would you give to a Ukraine startup before coming to Silicon Valley? What is the difference between investors in Ukraine and in Silicon Valley?