View of the sunrise and San Francisco Bay Bridge
(By Benjamin)
After three months in Germany's former capital, I had to pull up stakes and leave for San Francisco. I worked on some interesting projects during that time, including the launch of a new cyber security product. However, being at the source of all major innovations and looking into potential partners are exciting prospects as well.
Magenta 1, Bonn
There are probably not many greater contrasts, coming from the smaller family town of Bonn and arriving at a busy and loud American metropolis. One thing I noticed immediately was that you hear the sirens of ambulances, fire trucks and police cars all the time. That either means they overuse their sirens or life is more dangerous in Fog City. Located on the same latitude as Athens, the climate is very mild and tolerable. The temperatures in October ranged from 16-25°C as opposed to 8-12°C in Germany. San Francisco is indeed foggy, but we still get a lot more sun hours than in Germany, including great views at sunrise.
View during my way to work: Bay Bridge and Treasure Island
In my first week at the scouting office, I went to a small pitch event at the infamous Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale together with my colleague Vishy. It was very interesting to listen to a few pitches and talk to the founders afterwards, evaluating a potential partnership fit for Deutsche Telekom. Later that week I had the opportunity to attend TEDx San Francisco, an independently organized event with various speakers about different topics. This year's event in October offered many insightful and inspirational talks, for example about entrepreneurship in China, the blockchain revolution and using blockchain to combat fraud.
TEDx San Francisco on October 6 at Herbst Theatre
The next projects that I will work on will cover artificial intelligence and its applications for enterprises, industries and consumers. Among other topics, AI is one of the hottest topics in Silicon Valley. Google, Amazon, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft even created an AI alliance and just recently Bryan Johnson, founder of Kernel, went one step further and invested USD 100 million into enhancing human intelligence. San Francisco and Silicon Valley are pulsating, innovative places and incredibly fast-moving. I am excited to follow this innovation hotspot for the remaining two months! You are welcome to follow me on Instagram to see more photos of my time in San Francisco @bnjmnch