“There can only be one Silicon Valley”

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25.10.2016
Toni Schneider True Ventures

Swissprenuers conducted an interview with Toni Schneider, the former CEO of Automattic (the company behind Wordpress.com), and Co-founder and Partner of True Ventures. Having spent over 20 years in Silicon Valley, Schneider gives startup founders some tips, and advises them not to try to copy Silicon Valley, rather identify their own uniqueness and focus on that to build a successful startup.

Toni Schneider was born in Zurich and later moved to the United States where he attended college and built his career. He gained his first working experience through internships and from his first actual job in a virtual reality startup. He built onto that and found his way up as CEO and founder. He established his first company Uplister, a venture-backed music recommendation startup in early 2000 and later became the CEO of Oddpost, which was later sold to Yahoo. While at Yahoo, he met Om Mallik with whom he established Automattic, the company behind Worldpress.

Automattic is a distributed company with over 500 Automatticians in 50 countries speaking 69 different languages. Worldpress is a democratized platform where anyone can publish an article or blog for free regardless of income, gender, politics, language, or where they live in the world. This structure became a long term business vision for both Toni and Matt who sought to retain it, such that when the company no longer existed, people would still have the access to the open source service. As a result the project grew rapidly and became famous across all demographics worldwide. Currently, WorldPress is used by more than 26 percent of all websites on the internet and have over 100 million users. After 8 years as CEO, Schneider stepped down but is still involved with the company in the board of Directors.

Founders are not alone in the ecosystem
Just like any other startup CEO, Schneider faced a number of challenges however, he became successful along the way. Based on his experience and lessons learnt, Schneider urges startups to use their networks wisely and get in touch with their customers. He says;“Be where your customers are, have personal contact with people to make sure that everything works.” He believes that founders are not alone in the ecosystem. “Everyone is going through the same process. Take advantage and learn from others.” He therefore urges startup founders to form circles with like-minded people with a personality fit and ambitions. Mentors and advisors are also very helpful and have a large network startups can benefit from.

Moreover, Schneider believes that in order to run a successful company, founders ought to, firstly, think of the company in stages. They should have a clear vision for their company, find good people and trust them and also find the right person who to advise them on the decisions they make. Secondly is scaling the business by creating and organise a team in a way that will help develop the company. Thirdly founders should understand that the company changes along the way and that the job keeps changing. Therefore as the company grows founders ought to grow with it.

Switzerland is not and cannot be Silicon Valley
Schneider has observed that Swiss startups are similar to other startups in the world. Switzerland is one of the best places to initiate a business because it has an innovation based economy mindset with several investment opportunities, and continuous support from universities and other support organisations. Although Swiss investors do not engage in high risk capital investments like the Silicon Valley investors, they have enough funds for startups. The general Swiss startup scene is growing. Schneider describes the Swiss startup ecosystem as slow but competitive because Swiss startups – in contrary to Silicon Valley – have long term perspectives due to the Swiss neutrality, stability and safety. In Silicon Valley, startups and investors are rather high-risk-takers and have a short term perspective for the startup. He thus urges Swiss founders not to try to be like Silicon Valley, rather to identify their uniqueness and focus on that.

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(RAN)

1Comments

Axel Schultze @ 27.12.2016 11:22

This is a very interesting perspective Toni. However, after moving from Silicon Valley to Switzerland I began to wonder if your point of view can hold. Here is why: 1) Silicon Valley has already been copied - even moved from the original Silicon Valley, between Palo Alto and San Jose, 40 miles north to San Francisco. I happened to be part of that move and it was an amazing transformation. 2) Silicon Valley is not a geographic region but a mind set. And while copying anything is generally speaking not very intelligent - applying a successful model else where is. 3) The assessment about US investors is actually not quite accurate. On the surface it is true that US VCs in aggregate have much more money to spend than European VCs in aggregate but this is a very superficial statistic. a) The $87 bn spend in startups and fast growing companies in 2015 is not the capital spend by US investors but approximately 50% of that sum came from European and Asian investors investing in US funds. Our local investors basically reduce the amount of capital invested in European startups significantly and inflate the US investment. It has nothing to do with conservatism as investing in foreign economies - no matter how cool they look - is an even higher risk. But investors don't trust European or Swiss startups for that matter that they have a chance to get as big as US startups. And to complete the ironic picture: approx. 70% of US startups come from Europa and Asia. After I rationalized that picture, I began to reconsider everything I know about the startup world and moved after 20 years Silicon Valley back to Europe - to Switzerland to be precise. I would absolutely love to explore this further with you. Axel http://society3.com/AxelS (my social credentials)

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