I am a product of Silicon Valley. I dream Silicon Valley dreams. I speak in the hopeful, future-oriented vocabulary of a Silicon Valley dreamer. And I believe in the promise of Silicon Valley…
Have a vision that creates value. Believe in that vision. Get others to believe in that vision. Roll-up your sleeves. Collectively work like hell. Actualize the vision. Create the future. And you will be rewarded for it.
I moved to Silicon Valley when I was 5 years old (it wasn’t really called Silicon Valley just yet). I spent my formative years, and then my first entrepreneurial years (after a stint on Wall Street), in the center of the technology universe. It was – for a time – amazing.
And then things changed. Things changed for many different reasons. From economic bubbles being pricked around the world, to the redirection of capital from funding dreams to funding assets and commodities and fungible things, to people realizing that there are lots of other really interesting opportunities to invest or start careers in elsewhere in the world. The point is, Silicon Valley became less about dreams and the people who believe in them, and more about predictable, fundable innovation.
And that’s just fine. That’s what happens when things mature.
And then there’s China.
Consider this: Nearly every millionaire in China made their money sometime in the last decade. Nearly every millionaire in China is first-generation rich, and has one or more parent who – by most global measuring sticks – was (at one time) dirt poor. And most millionaires in China (certainly the ones I’ve met) was an entrepreneur who worked really, really hard to get to where s/he is.
Sound familiar?
China is fertile ground for dreamers. It’s a place where the people who became successful got there by either creating something that didn’t exist before, or by making something substantially better that enabled them to outcompete their peers. That sure sounds a lot like innovation to me.
Like me, Symbio is a product of Silicon Valley. Our vision is to make the world a better place by creating tomorrow’s technologies.
We believe in creating the future. We believe in the power of dreams. We support those who have a vision that creates value. And by doing so, we will do good by our partners, shareholders, employees, and friends.
And that’s why we’re in China. We are bringing the promise of Silicon Valley to China.
This is my first blog posting as Symbio’s CEO. In future postings, I will talk about some of the other exciting things we are doing at Symbio, and some of the challenges we face.
It will be an interesting journey!
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Posted in Outsourcing
Symbio is a product of Silicon Valley in California, which is famous for its free-wheeling management style. Americans are very practical people; for the most part, the rule in Silicon Valley is “If it works, do it!”
A combination of factors have brought Symbio to China. This has included the ethnic Chinese roots of the founders and management, and more importantly, the growth opportunity in China. In China, we can deliver on the promise of Silicon Valley, which I define as: Have a vision that creates value. Get supporters who believe in that vision with you. Roll-up your sleeves and work like hell. Create the future and get rewarded for it.
Why are we in China? Simply put, there is no market in the world which offers the kind of growth opportunity China does.
Many American companies came to China seeking cheap labor, but now the opportunity is in the market itself. Our commitment is to the Chinese market and to the ingenuity of Chinese talent; businesses which are in China only for the cheap labor create very little added value.
Because of our American roots, our management works in an American style. They are empowered to make decisions within their area of expertise, with important decisions to be discussed with and made by executive management and the board.
In China though, management styles are very different. For the most part, decisions are made by founders/entrepreneurs and senior management; middle managers usually have very little authority. Frequently this means that the decision process is not orderly. China has a very “boss-centric” culture.
At Symbio, we deeply believe in empowering individuals. Our engineers, who are mostly Chinese, frequently come to us because they know that working at Symbio is like working in Silicon Valley. They hear through the grapevine that we empower individuals to think and to make decisions and to be accountable for results.
Do they always make the right decisions? Obviously, no. It takes time for someone to learn on the job, and sometimes they will make mistakes. Management needs to understand this; after all, that is how they learned themselves. The important thing is that their mistakes are of a manageable scope, and are mistakes which will not affect our clients and our commitment to them.
As our Chinese engineers and associates grow in their Symbio careers, they realize that communication skills frequently become more important than their technical skills. Programming languages come and go in popularity, but communication skills never change. That is why we ask everyone to explain the rationale for their decisions.
If someone can persuasively explain their decisions to a client, or internally within Symbio, then the quality of the decisions made at Symbio will continuously improve.
Empowering individuals, encouraging openness and bottom-up discussion and input while staying relevant to the topics at hand are what Symbio is all about.
If there is a single challenge for companies today, it is about how to add value.
In a service business like Symbio’s, where our main assets are our people and processes, it becomes even more important. Some of the questions I frequently ask myself are:
Symbio is a rapidly growing company with our main assets in the fastest growing major economy in the world, China. We are at a very exciting juncture in our history. The opportunity to be a major player in China’s export software foundry business as a leading outsourcing firm is something we take very seriously.
We need to reach for the brass ring.
At the end of the day though, it all adds up to how we add value.
