RSSEP Tour to Silicon Valley | Day 02 | Urvika Agrawal | Akshat Sharma

We started our day 2 reeling with the aftershocks of the extensive ‘hike’ from our visit to The Stanford University. As the day before, we had another simple and informative session by Sijo. It focused on ‘Building an alpha pitch deck’. According to him, there’s no such thing as an idea. It is always a solution to the problem that you have identified. Building an alpha pitch deck revolves around- the capability of the team and the number of iterations the team does, to get to the next version. Hence, we are to understand ‘the need of the customer’ and therefore, have 3 specific sections in the deck, catering to

1. the problem,
2. presence of the substitutes, and
3. the solution we offer.

Our takeaway from the session- ‘ONE MUST BUILD SOMETHING THAT INCREASES HUMAN OUTPUT AND DECREASES THEIR EFFORT.’

Next, we visited the ’42 Silicon Valley’. It is a remarkable place for the ones interested in learning to code. Why? Because there are no teachers or professors to teach you. All you have is a community of extensive coders who are your peers. And the best part, everything is free. You only need to earn it.

Lab at 42 Silicon Valley

We had the opportunity to interact with a lot of the students residing in the 42 Coding School Campus. We had an extensive discussion with Danny Saetern about the hardships one faces on his journey to build a startup, like investments and market analysis.

Akshat Sharma with Danny Saetern at 42 Silicon Valley

It was an all and all learning experience. One doesn’t need a professor to learn. Just a helping hand and the will to learn.