Travelling to San Francisco (SF) with an open mind offers a world of opportunity. Spend just 10 minutes in a local coffee shop and you will have a good chance to spark up a conversation with a like minded individual who is working on an innovative problem. Innovation is at the very root of SF’s culture and you see it at nearly every corner in forms of; robotic food delivery, fully autonomous vehicles crawling up and down the mountainous streets, or the hundreds of people occupying all available cafe real estate with their laptops.
The community that has established in SF is incredibly generous and supportive of any problem solver, and it is easy to see why the city is such a magnet to them. There is a collective appreciation for this kind of undertaking and most resources required to make it a success are at your fingertips. The startup path is so well known and trodden in SF, that there is no doubting the advantages to being within it. Simply put, there are just more people who have faced the same challenge or know of someone who could help that accelerates business growth.
One chance meeting we had with an industry expert while in SF, was a window into the energy required to be successful in a US market. They genuinely loved their market segment and could not support it enough. The passion for their pursuit was conveyed in the very first sentence and you cannot help but align. There is no room for wavering attitudes or self doubt - this is what it takes to own a market segment in the US and it was on full display. Bring your passion and energy and the US market will respond in kind.
I would encourage all entrepreneurs to travel to SF to experience the culture and hustle. You may see one or two people working from your local Australian cafe, but there is an entire workforce that packs out most cafes in SF day to day. If you are looking for people in an environment that supports innovation, SF if the place for you.
If you'd like to follow Idle Australia on their journey through the Plus Eight program, you can follow the co-founders, Dylan Hrurukvit, James Stretch and Thomas Rayden on LinkedIn, as well as each of their business networks here:
https://www.idleaustralia.com.au/
https://www.facebook.com/idleaustralia/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/idle-australia/