As somebody who's spent his, his entire career in a very structured, hierarhical kind of work environment, just what seems like is this, this very relaxed atmosphere, the, the empowerment at the lowest level. You know, I, I had a, one of their lunchchats with them and, and I was just asking, do you guys even have to come to work? Is there something, can you be late for work at this place? It's just a, a very different environment that seems to support the indi, individual. And that is, I know that that is going on in the Silicon Valley as well, maybe even started in the Silicon Valley, but I personally have never gotten to see it up close and I find that fascinating.
I think that the, the companies that have already been, the United States has been successful, definitely make it easier and at least in the, the Valley. The Estonian Mafia is known, the Silicon Vikings are known, and they are thought of very highly.
Yeah, one of the things that we do understand is that at least there's lots of discussion around the fact that when we, if and when we have a successful start-up and they get funded by the United States VC, and then they, they go away, they, they leave Estonia and, and then we have discussions that that's a bad thing, right, that, that are going away, we, we should not encourage them to travel to, to Silicon Valley.
I'm, I'm, right, I'm, I'm actually, this is my last assignment, I'm moving back to California, where I left 33 years ago, and I grew up in the Silicon Valley before it was the Silicon Valley, and I'm going back there and I'm really looking forward to that.
Do you have any, any insider, any, probably you have lots of ideas, why is Silicon Valley Silicon Valley? As you said, you live there before it, it became Silicon Valley, so what made Silicon Valley?
And social. So it's, it's, it's an area that is tremendously open, tremendously tolerant and it attracts people that wanna live in that area. And I think that the development that occurred in Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley is the end result of it attracting just all of these very bright people that wanted to live there, so you put that together. Silicon Valley's,
Absoluutselt, et they are all-related and I think the fact that the Silicon Valley's folks really do pride themselves on disruption, that is, that is an element. I don't want to overly romanicize it, because it's also big business and a lot of people are there for the money. But there, there, it is an environment that supports all that. And that, that's a little bit, no, that's very related to why the embasi has been so active with the start-up community here in Estonia. Because we just said very quickly that there is that connection that you are talking about, between this start-up mentality. And the entrepreneur and it really, it is not just an occupation, it is, it is a world view and a way of life. And it is a world view that is very supportive of personal freedom, of living your life the way you want to, of tolerants, of disruption in a positive way. All of those are element of the entrepreneurial community. And those elements have been very successful here and we've worked with Estonian entrepreneurs to help transplant add a little bit to other areas, like, like Belarus, we've done projects with Garage48 in Tunisia, we've supported them, I know, in the, in the Palestanian authority in Uganda, so this element of personal freedom that supports. kind of demokracy and open societies is very much part of the entrepreneurial environment and there, there's a connection that we've tried to support.
But how big is the role of university, mille, Stanford is there, if, if, if talk about Silicon Valley, it seem to be that, that you always need a very strong and very powerful university to, to actually help these kind of things?
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