Dreams make life beautiful. We are all dreamers at some point in our lives. It seems as though life isn’t quite the same without our hopes and dreams. Dreams come in different shapes and sizes. Dreams have geographic affinity, too. Take Hollywood for example: It’s the quintessential tinsel town, attracting a huge number of aspiring movie stars. You are probably not going to build a successful movie career as an actress or a scriptwriter sitting in Dayton, Ohio, your entire life, even in this day and age with distractions like the Internet. You have to go where the action is.
I live in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, where it’s not that difficult to figure out what kind of dreamers flock to this region. Techies with an insatiable appetite for startup success walk around every street corner in the Silicon Valley. Every other guy and gal here often dreams of becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg or Caterina Fake, just like a whole bunch of wannabe Brad Pitts and Demi Moores hanging around LA.
Dreams need an outlet and dreamers need enablers who can help. It is also good business because you are both helping and feeding off of people’s dreams – a proverbial win-win situation for both sides. This explains why there are so many startup incubators and accelerators in the Bay Area that make it their business to help aspiring entrepreneurs succeed.
One such organization is the Plug and Play Tech-center or Plug and Play for short. With 3 campuses across Silicon Valley in Sunnyvale, Redwood City and Palo Alto, Plug and Play provides office space to over 300 startups at any given point in time. While office space rental is the most obvious service they provide, they are much more than that and call themselves “Silicon Valley in a box.” They have built an entire eco-system for startups that provide budding entrepreneurs a very encouraging environment that fosters innovation and business expertise.
“Plug and Play is a business accelerator that focuses on what I call the ‘five pillars of success’” says Canice Wu, President of Plug and Play. “Those are access to capital, our corporate network, mentor network, Silicon Valley network and facility. Our mission is to help startups grow and we accomplish that mission through a number of strategic partnerships, including 175 investors who participate in regular screening sessions exclusive to Plug and Play’s members.”
They host more than 100 events every year which provides great exposure, learning and networking opportunities to budding startups. They also have a data center in-house that companies could leverage.
“We have EXPOs every quarter where about 30 startups showcase their product and interact with potential investors, partners, employees and customers,” says Wu. “In addition to all this, we also provide legal, accounting and recruiting services. These services help companies with their incorporation or tax laws or help them come up with a NDA (non disclosure agreement), their employment agreements, or things that can be challenging to a young business.”
Plug and Play’s biggest complex is the one in Sunnyvale. The sheer size of it will shock you if you are not familiar with the technology startup craze. Home to a myriad of companies - small and micro, you see the extent of people’s dreams and imagination in full flow right in front of your eyes. Smart, motivated dreamers of all colors, shapes and sizes from pretty much everywhere in the world operate out of Plug and Play working on their startups.
You’ll see a company or two in each aisle and in some areas of the building, every office cube is a different company. You will see several lone rangers typing away on their laptops in these cubes hoping to build the next Facebook or Google in the not-to-distant-future. You also see areas that are boxed and semi-cordoned off and those are for relatively larger startups that employ 15 to 20 people within Plug and Play’s complex.
“Usually companies come in when they are ready to commercialize. That’s the entry point,” says Wu. “Typically they are ready to leave and build their own identity when they grow to around 20 to 40 employees.” There are some companies that are bigger. For instance, one of their biggest occupants currently has over 75 employees and is growing.
“The average tenure of stay here for a company is between 18 to 24 months, that’s excluding the outlier companies who stay here for years,” says Wu. “But companies do continue their relationship with us and benefit from a lot of our services and the network even after they move out.”
Plug and Play’s complex features several pavilions signifying the various specialties, government, and corporate partnerships that they are involved in. They have a special area for venture capitalists (VC) and “Executives in Residence” (EIR).
VC’s get their own parking spots too – not a bad idea given that they are carrying the big wallets. Plug and Play has active international, university, and corporate divisions to create an ecosystem of innovation. They have created a soft landing platform for more than 75 international start-ups, partnered with 16 foreign governments to host their Silicon Valley incubators. You will see Canadian, German and Portuguese pavilions that house entrepreneurs and companies from those respective countries who are using Plug and Play’s services as part of their government programs.
The various flags and symbols add a lot of color and character to the walkways. You will also see an Indian flag at a couple of places and will even run into a lot of Indian entrepreneurs in the complex. Indians are an integral part of the Silicon Valley culture, and a startup accelerator like Plug and Play brings all nationalities together with one common goal: Building a successful business.
“PnP, either on it’s own or through partnerships, has several satellite organizations in Singapore, Malaysia and Luxemburg and we are interested in expanding into China, Russia, the Middle East and hopefully India,” says Wu. “Since it’s hard to replicate the Silicon Valley eco-system all over the place, Plug and Play’s approach is to create an interconnected network that links the local eco-systems in countries like India to the thriving environment here in Silicon Valley.” Plug and Play has a larger business portfolio and is interested in investing in some of these startups.
Dropbox, Zoosk, Twitvid, Credit Sesame and Nor1 are some of the more successful and flourishing startups that are either part of Plug and Play’s investment portfolio or have had their office space at Plug and Play’s complex at some point or both. Startups can approach Plug and Play’s investment team, where they will then conduct a business assessment to see if they are ready for an investment.
If not, this team also provides coaching to help them get ready for a critical step in their evolution. If they do like the idea and are ready to invest in the business, Plug and Play will work with their investment partners and help raise money with Plug and Play potentially becoming a co-investor.
At this point, the relationship between the startup and Plug and Play obviously becomes tighter. Since it’s founding in 2006, companies residing in Plug and Play have raised over $1 billion in funding. Just in 2011, companies have raised over $350 million in funding and over $500 million in acquisitions (M&A). One can only imagine the number of successful (and failed) startups that have walked through those doors.
If you are a techie or a budding entrepreneur, I recommend visiting their Sunnyvale complex. It will definitely be an interesting experience. “The most exciting part of my job is working with innovative entrepreneurs and new technology every day,” says Wu. “I am grateful for having this opportunity to work with a lot of smart people on a daily basis.”
And he can rest assured that many of those budding entrepreneurs are grateful to have access to all of the services that Plug and Play puts at their fingertips.