Lego, cupcakes, and rainbows!
Hellooooo Orla, Rebecca and Chris from Rubrik!
Rubrik
So awesome to see you again and this time at Rubrik HQ in Palo Alto. We had so much fun at our last event in Sydney at UTS a few months ago coding chatbots with our Tech Girls.
And what a visit! Thank you so much for the generous 12-month subscription to CodaKid for all 11 students across our three teams to keep coding with game design, and the Lego robotics kits that the teams can take back to their schools. Not to mention the unique opportunity and time with your CEO and co-founder, Bipul, who shared great advice for the teams around considering the ‘triggers for first use’ for their apps – seasoned Silicon Valley advice from a venture capitalist, startup founder and CEO.
John and Julia from the Marketing team shared fantastic feedback for each of their teams on their marketing approaches and pitch videos. Such valuable insights around how critical it is to think about who might have the problem that you’re trying to solve, to create an emotional connection with your buyer, and that you are always competing for your user’s attention. Sharing the ‘Backup Things’ ad that your team created really showed us why keeping messaging short and simple matters, and that telling stories in a different way is far more impactful than just telling facts. And to be authentic: so fun to see Rebecca and Chris on screen in the ad! And Chris in a dress! We loved it.
Such a diverse range of women from across Rubrik for the panel discussion – there were nearly more of them than our tech girls which was amazing! We learnt about journeys and advice from legal to sales, tech dev, finance and business and product management. Most importantly, we learnt how important it is to have good people around you, be challenged to learn and grow, and to believe and advocate for yourself. So many happy surprises at the Rubrik visit, the Rubrik’s team authenticity, effort and attention to detail really made our visit fantastic and we felt very special and looked after. Customised cupcakes with the Tech Girls Superheroes’ team logos, t-shirts for the girls, the interactive Lego build activity, and the Rubrik Lego minifigure HEART.
Rainbow Mansion
Then what a wonderfully homely surprise to end our last day, by venturing up the hill along the curiously named Rainbow Drive. Could there be a pot of gold at the end? Almost! The houses get bigger and bigger as we head up the hill to the… Rainbow Mansion! Imagine a house full of Silicon Valley young professionals working at companies such as Google X, Parc, Google Daydream, iRhythm and the NASA Ames Research Centre – where the tech is so out there (science fiction like!) that they can’t really tell us what they’re working on – yow!!! Great to hear about the journeys of how the residents came to Silicon Valley, and what it’s like to live in a sharehouse bursting with ideas, brainpower, and a lively community (with pizza!).
This is definitely the ultimate sharehouse hang, with a makerspace in the garage (thanks for sharing your inventions with us Jeremy!), regular tech talks and Sunday community dinners. And just for our visit today, the NASA engineering crew setup an impromptu display about the next Mars helicopters currently in development to show our tech girls first hand! We were so excited to not only see the future in Mars exploration right in front of us, talking directly to the engineering team working on it and the wind tunnel simulation, we crossed our fingers and toes for their successful mission in July 2020. Minds blown!
Thanks so much to Alex, Jamie, Jeremy, Crystal and Witold and the NASA team for sharing your home and stories with us – parting words of wisdom from our host Alex to our Tech Girls: “Don’t think about what you want to do, but what you want to try.” So what are the 3 things that you’d been putting off or want to try??
The end of Friday evening fast approaches and we don’t want to leave… but alas, even Superheroes have to go back to school and work. A big thank you to all of our hosts this week across the Valley and Bay area, we’ve had an amazing week of inspiration, hearing your stories and journeys, taking on super insightful advice and feedback, and seeing tech that seems beyond this world. Watching our tech girls grow so much in such a short amount of time, being amazing ambassadors for not only us but for STEM and entrepreneurship in Australia, we could not be prouder of their professionalism, hard work and enthusiasm on the trip and beyond.
Although this is a wrap for the Tech Girls tour of Silicon Valley for 2019, we’ve already started conversations on visits and new sights for next year – stay tuned for info on the 2020 competition! Winners of the 2019 competition to be announced at our showcase events. Dont miss out and book your tickets now.
A huge thank you to Technology One for sponsoring our trip, and to Stockland and the many other sponsors who helped teams fund their way to the USA – for a trip of a lifetime.
