A Discovery Mission is a professional group visit designed to explore the culture, practices, institutions, and methods of the world’s most successful technology environment: California’s Silicon Valley. Participants are usually executives from start-ups and relatively young technology firms, in the IT, Telecom, Life Sciences, and Clean/Green Tech industries. These people are already international entrepreneurs—a Discovery Mission can set them on the path to be a true Silicon Valley Entrepreneur.

A Discovery Mission involves visits to the campuses of successful Silicon Valley technology firms, to discuss the history, practices, and reasons these companies have risen to the top. Previous Discovery Missions have visited firms such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Intel, Oracle, Orange Labs, and many others.

In addition to the firms themselves, Discovery Missions visit the institutions that make up the infrastructure of Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial environment, such as the Office of the Mayor of San Jose, the US Market Access Center, and universities such as Stanford and UC-Berkeley.

Discovery Missions also has partnerships with the professional and business social organizations that facilitate Silicon Valley’s famous networking environment, such as the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs (SVASE).

Every Discovery Mission is completely customized to your specific goals and objectives. As an example,  our’ consultants ‘dive deeply’ into online gaming, social media and mobile applications, or create a program that fully explores such themes as; diversity, risk management, corporate social responsibility, women entrepreneurs, software quality, or engineering management.

In addition, our Discovery Missions provide pre-visit preparation and post-trip follow-up, so that participants are better equipped to take what makes Silicon Valley a success and apply the lessons to their own companies in their home countries.

Since we know that startups and young companies have budget constraints, we strive to keep the costs of the Discovery Mission reasonable. Discovery Missions are typically all-inclusive 7-14 day programs. Elements typically include:

• Complete management of visits to all size companies (public firms to hot startups), local government entities and our famous universities.
• Panel speaker selection and roundtable discussions can be arranged.
• Spacious hotel meeting rooms and beverage service to facilitate presentations, working sessions, roundtable discussions, reception, or debrief and reflections.
• Visits to venues such as NASA Museum, Computer History Museum, Chabot Space and Science Center, UC Berkeley Hall of Science, San Francisco city tour, Golden Gate Bridge, Napa Valley wine makers and artisanal food producers, or Gilroy outlets
• A IB Program Guide to manage the scheduled visits and activities
• Accommodations, with high speed Internet, that can range from 5 star hotels to university dorms, depending on the budget and needs of the participants
• Full days of transportation with 2 airport transfers included (Note: Airfare to and from the U.S. is not included)
• Farewell group dinner at the famous Santana Row in San Jose or on the San Francisco waterfront

For more information, please contact Chris Pineau at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , or Greg Marus at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .