DreamForce & BootstrapLabs Event in SF

There are about 150,000 extra people in San Francisco this week. Once again it is time for DreamForce, Salesforce’s annual conference for customers, vendors, and developers.  Billed as “the premier event in the tech community” and San Francisco’s largest tech event, DreamForce attracts people from around the world.

On Monday, we hosted a Silicon Valley Insider program for a large group of French business people who were here for DreamForce. Representing companies such as Accor Hotels, Pernod Ricard, SNCF,  and AXA, these senior managers and executives wanted to get behind the scenes introduction to Silicon Valley before heading off to the exhibits, workshops and after-hours parties.

BootstrapLabs’ co-founder, Ben Levy, started the morning with a presentation titled “Silicon Valley: Unicorn Factory”. Ben covered topics such as disruption and innovation, explaining why what happens here in Silicon Valley is not yet replicable anywhere else in the world, and why creative entrepreneurs are still motivated and obligated to come join this vibrant and exciting ecosystem. At BootstrapLabs we have been talking about many of the important trends we are seeing – IOT, FinTech, and the Future of Work – and Ben shared some interesting facts and stats, stressing the importance of execution.

        

The event for our French visitors continued with some short presentations from startup companies working in location tracking technology (Navisens), on demand marketing software (Doz) and supply chain security solutions (Vantage Point Analytics). We concluded with a presentation on data science, and the need for more trained data-scientists to manage, understand and derive business metrics from all the “big data” that is being created daily. As they heading back into the crowds of DreamForce, the attendees of our program left with a better understanding of the technology, startups, and investors that come together to make Silicon Valley happen.