to Silicon Valley Life in each episode you'll get an insiders look at what makes Silicon Valley special how people pursue ideas deal with failure and enjoy life you can find this show on all the major platforms including YouTube LinkedIn Facebook Apple podcast Spotify and on our website Concordia ventures.com now here are the hosts of Silicon Valley Life Naim Zafar and Mina mayapan hello everyone welcome back it's another episode of silic and Valley life I'm here with my co-host Mina Mina how are you I'm doing great good morning good evening and some people it's probably afternoon uh I'm doing great and I'm looking forward to this podcast session with you Naim yeah you know people keep asking about you know what is Silicon Valley Life what's unique about Silicon Valley what what is it where is it which zip codee is that and I tell people it's not a physical place it's a state of mind it covers maybe I don't know a 50 square m 50 mile radius but this is where the term was coined in 71 tell me what are you going to say I was just like I was laughing and I want to interrupt you and say where does the name silicon valy come from let's talk was used by a journalist in 1971 in an article and it's stuck because because you know maybe already know maybe you can talk about it a little bit transistor radio or transistor was invented in 1947 in Bell labs and three people who got the Nobel Prize eventually 19 I think 55 56 they got the Nobel priz so shakley one of the three came to Silicon Valley in paloalto and set up a company shle semiconductor to start making some electronics and in then bunch of interesting things happened like he was a great inventor but a terrible manager so all of his senior people was called traitorous 8 they all quit in the same day oh my yeah and then they started company like Fairchild semiconductor and after Fair travel then came out Intel in 1968 in 1970s there were like 120 plus companies designing and fabricating chips not just that uh nobody KN knew how to make chips it was a completely new process we figuring it out so people used to all Gather in a bar on Mountain View in Middlefield called The Wagon Wheel wow okay and they used to over time exchange ideas like probably secret stuff hey Bob did you get the transistor fabricated no it's not working did you try you said the certain thickness of silicon oxide let's try the again they were exchanging spilling ideas collaborating because nobody knew how this thing will work right so that sense of collaboration is so ingrained in Silicon Valley that is not in other places I I would say that's the unique culture when you talked about a bar midle Middlefield I will tell you every single startup that I know started over a social coffee or a tea nowadays it's a cafe people sit down and they chat about things that bother them and even you take a small thing like YouTube it came out of the fact that everybody just wanted to see everybody else's face when they were playing video games a simple idea among a set of friends so that is the Silicon Valley like essense of like discussing problems and solving them and taking the risk a lot of people here love risk or addicted to it I would say addicted well see risk in many countries many cultures consider something negative to us risk what people looks like we're taking risk taker in fact entrepreneurs are not any like Risk anymore than anybody else the main difference is entrepreneurs are comfortable living in the fog you can throw me in Gobi Desert and I know within three months I'll be selling something to the locals I trust you would do that really yeah I have no idea what it is but I'm confident I'll figure it out so that mindset allows me to enter situation which I don't know how it will play out but I'm pretty sure I'll figure it out so that look to other people looks like a risk taker to me that's not risk-taking surv I avoid risk as much as the next guy so this mindset yeah that that's the mindset now let's focus a little but but how the silic and Valley environment you know Fosters all this right because that's one aspect of it is the people but this environment Fosters a lot because if you really look at it look at the climate look look at you know all the different you know things that are accessible to you that is not you know available in a lot of other places let's let's focus on that a little bit yeah I think I love to hear your comment but to me I feel more at home here than I feel back where I grew up because this I'm a bit of a misfit of society and I know you are whether you admit it or not don't the cat out of the bag name you know here we are normal that because other people are like that it's not common in one team to see two guys from China one guy from Taiwan two Israelis one Iranian and three pakistanis and four Indians working together that's normal nobody even talks about it that and we celebrate our difference that's so muchat unique to this place I don't think this happens everywhere that that is the part that I say is unique to this environment particular and provides that right because we're here to solve problems people come together and share the uniqueness and it becomes available to other people so if you really look at it there are so many cultural festivals that go on in Silicon Valley I've never seen anywhere else you can go and see a Greek festival one day then next day you can go for a Danish one and you can go for Indian Pakistani I mean it's very unique and you get to experience what their lifestyle was from their countries in one place right which is very rare from my perspective and it's also reflected in the food yes correct that's what I was leading you to because within my arms distance I don't even have to drive a lot I can experience all kinds of foods very easily and very not very expensive either I don't have to go to Michelin star all the time to get that experience yeah so that's I think this this culture from so many countries melting together working towards a common I won say common goal but a common purpose yes you know there's a purpose that we have a responsibility to do good things to the world how do we create how to simplify by things use of Technology improving Society we kind of driven by that and that attracts people no matter which country come from which culture they come from is a they adopt the unique culture of Silicon Valley and that makes this place very very different and very interesting I I would say one thing I as as we are all people like that tend to focus a lot of impact and high stress jobs because of the way we work lifestyle here you know we are constantly solving something and a mind gets wrapped around it this environment I want to back to the environment because it's it's a beautiful weather here California has beautiful weather anytime I can step outside and take fresh air like I'm not worried about I don't like the snow I'm being honest though you know I would like to ski once in a while I don't like the snow I don't like cold weather I don't perform very well so I like this mild climate where we experience where I can be more an outdoors person and take my stress relief breaks I do take a lot of walks and a little bit of my lifestyle is I do a lot of calls when I'm walking it just helps me you know like you uh kind of Disconnect from the last you know session I was in take a little bit of a breather and be healthy at the same time so the outdoors for me is very attractive in this Valley there's so much you can do U the trails are there the hikingscotland you could be hiking there's so much availability and really the best weather I think in I think at temperature ranges probably from 40s to high 70s most of the time most of the time it's more like 60s and 70s ear right right I would agree with that and that's also you know funnily enough that's why we have more problem we face more problems than average you know set of people because it's so diverse environment is diverse right the climate's a little bit more diverse so we get get to experience real time what some of those challenges might be to solve them I mean even if you really look at climate change a lot of them are California stups am I correct about that yeah yeah because what's the reason because we experienced climate change very heavily in here our WIS right we didn't have rains for a very long time in Silicon Valley and suddenly now we have rains that's pretty much flooding in two three years the whole scene has changed so you have seen from drought to overly like you know high high you know rain seasons and what you're solving for in drought doesn't make sense when you're having the rain so you come up with different ideas to address all these things by the way what is your view on climate change since you brought up the topic um what is impact in the world in the next 10 to 20 years and how do we plan to wrestle this down or can we wrestle it down so it is a very challenging question right um it it impacts everything it impacts your lifestyle right and the food you eat right so I will it connects to everything right our lifestyle the food and also like our entire ecosystem of when you step out and go outside and what it feels like to breathe right so when I look at it it is a it and it's everything we do in our life impacts the climate even from a bottle of water we drink plastic bottle of water impacts the climate and we get rid of it we're not able to recycle it so it impacts the climate so that's a very good topic and a lot of people in the valley have like seen some of the dramatic changes in weather in California I would say because of just climate impact so to you many people see as a gloom and doom scenario that we're going going downhill a slippery slope the whole world is coming to an end how do you see it I don't see is the world coming to an end I see it as we're going towards unhealthy B balance and that unhealthy balance has consequences on your health uh and on the people and the next Generations that are going to be born that's the way I see it and how do we deal with those consequences if we don't deal with the base of what climate change is what is the root cause of climate change okay so there are two two breaking down to one is can we slow down or possibly reverse the climate change which is a very bigger question and lot of Technology needs to go in that direction but there's I see another opportunity because I'm optimistic by Nature so I see they will be different patterns for rain and droughts this gives us an opportunity to grow crops more intelligently which can be grown in deserts or fruits and vegetable which could be harvested in the new climate and this is the opportunity which we should be undertaking that what's happening climate is inevit inevitable we haven't seen the climate of the Earth has changed multiple times in the last you know two million years or last for that matter two billion years but to me it's just adaptation we need to adapt different way of eating different way of in different way of uh that's life for you life I thought I turned off all my digital noise but there's more and more I'm becoming over off in my house that's good to know nothing we cannot conquer and fix easily so yeah so my feeling is that isn't this gives an opportunity to grow different wheat and different rice and maybe change the eating habits is it a doom and gloom or is just adaptation so question is okay um maybe that's one part of the solution what about the others because these are all micro connected to each other so if you change the type of food we eat the body needs to adapt right there is a there's a period where the body has to adapt today we consume so much of microplastics today the body consumes a hell lot of microplastics that is scary and we don't know the consequences to the health because it takes a full cycle to see the all the water bottle we use water from that's microplastics yes the water that you're drinking has microplastics because it is being filtered from a mountain or an some other source that has had Plastics leeched into it yeah and so we are constantly taking in Plastics because of the way we have you know conserve food or you know try to resell food and things like that so the consequences of microplastics no one understands today fully right and that's like a full human cycle so as you're talking about the adaptation the human is always behind because the environment has changed but the human is behind it takes time for the human to you know go through that cycle and there's that in between face that is very difficult it provides a lot of challenges to people and are we ready to face that right I mean that's the way I look at this so talking about food any good restaurants you've been to lately um absolutely I would like to talk about a little Bakery that's my favorite one I like cafes if you get know me personally over this podcast U my favorite little one is uh Mana Manresa bread that was spun off the Michelin star restaurant called Mona and they're available in uh downtown loscos and I think they have a train now in um uh I think P Alto in California as well as in downtown Campbell so you can see where I you know kind of frequent a lot which bread do you get I I like the rice the Ry bread that I like whole grains so what about you name where where have you been around talking about food but let me ask you one more question because I know you're a bread maker you make your own bread what is what is that deal I never understood this so let me talk about this uh it comes back to food and the impact that we have caused um in food uh when you look at the wheat that today is available it most people talk about celiac disease right and it's because of how we have hybridized wheat over the years traditional wheat that you go back to does not cause celiac disease consumed so with that in mind right I mean I've been a big fan of eating more natural foods as you get to learn more and more about it it's much more healthier for us so I I'm a big fan of buying the grain from scratch and I buy traditional wheat or whole grains like rye and things like that we grind it we have our own grain grinder Silicon Valley Pro provides amazing missionary digital missionary I can grind it to the coess that I like and yes go away from the Chucky and at if you know from indiaan or Pakistan we don't have to do that this this automatic machine does it for you and I get the coarseness we need and then we bake it on the day we you know we of course soak it forment it and then bake it in a very ordinary oven out here it's not that hard it's just it takes time but is it taste better than Manda for me yes I once you get used to a particular taste it's very hard to compare and contrast yes Mona's bread is definitely top of the line if you're busy and cannot make your own bread and get you know a perfect slice slice of bread from your house so yes I would say so so my uh food place I want to recommend today is little Mexican family Run Place in Mountain View on Villa Street 240 Villa Street called lafesta I've been going there for 20 plus years it's run by like one brother and Five Sisters Alejandro Lucy and Pablo and uh so it's a little family run place they have a truck which brings fresh ingredients from Mexico once a week and really delicious I see everybody finish the plate is wiped clean every time and now I'm going to ask you a question you like this Mexican food because very close to home Foods spiciness am I correct a spicy level no spicy level is uh is very neutral because you can add spicy sauce on top of it but it comes if you don't add any sauce it's not spicy it's just delicious so so my favorite is the chili Reno with the rice and beans is like so good but of course I have to skip like eating the next two meals after having a plate of that because you have to finish it you can't leave behind makes absolute sense and now we come back to a little bit about silicon valy life we talked about food a little bit any events that you went to that pop up on your mind so I think the event which I am working today towards is tyon Ty stand for the tie the indust entrepreneurs to Ty on.org you can check the website so we do an annual conference which attracts about 3 to 5,000 people in person and been doing it for 27 years so it's it's in the first week of May May 1st 2nd and 3rd it's really is a fantastic agenda is a three-day conference there are dozens of sessions three days of Jensen Wong the founder CEO of Nvidia will be one of the keynote speaker as well as uh the CEO of Pao alter network but there'll be much richer agenda so I'm doing a full day boot camp called startup boot camp on May 1st Wednesday the May first in which we're GNA take all the entrepreneurs with a gleam in their eyes of raising money from investors we're going to take them in a one day how to raise money in Silicon Valley so we start the day with sort of a a workshop teaching them what how to be investor ready how to tell the story in a way P will be heard then after in the after lunch they will sit down in a table with the mentors three or four teams and they'll pitch to them their 10-minute pitch and we'll select some of the best on each table and do a second round of elimination different mentors you're still pitching refining based on the feedback we got so by 4:30 p.m we have selected four best teams and they'll present the 10-minute pitch to a panel of venture capitalist and they will rank them and give them feedback by 5:30 we have gone through the whole process so that's startup boot camp part of tyon I'm working hard towards making it happen that is neat that is so neat so I will share what I have been doing which is slightly different from what you've been doing so I've been focusing on a nonprofit Credit Union um and I went to a couple of sessions where we talk about the economy and you know like how you know how to deal with the you know changes the you know interest rate either it's going to go up down and how do we handle the economic impacts of that so it was been very interesting topic maybe for a next session we should talk about little bit of the Silicon Valley the impact the economy and its impact on it too because that's what we've been discussing and it was very eye openening to meet so many experts uh from various different financial institutions share how they see the economy impacting Credit Unions which are actually nonprofit banks in some ways because it's all member run it's for the members so yeah that I found that all this puzzling so you're a techy person yeah why would a bank or otherwise known as credit union want you on their board they must be paying you big bucks to attract you to be on the board what's the deal here it's a n first of all it's a nonprofit volunteer position right it is an opportunity for somebody who's in high tech to really look at how do you bridge a low Tech environment because it's very Community focused it's very personal focused it's about coming into a location taking care of people right the other side of AI That's exactly where they are and they were built on affinity group so Credit Unions share like focused on supporting an affinity group and their finances so that's what they are about so it's it's mostly about a volunteer position but all the credit unions also would like to understand more about the you know the digital Financial age and you know how people are moving what are the trends because they have new generations of people that are going to be different right and so having some like you know me on the boat will help them Bridge a little bit of both they'll never get to a perfect highly digitalized environment and credit units because I think I don't think that is the goal that they are trying to achieve but how do they move some of the products and services to the communities that they serve in a safe and slow manner because they're never in a hurry so it's the anty of a highly Tech environment it it teaches me how to slow down and it helps me contribute to something that I care most about community so let me ask you this question because in my mind right role of bank is about to change dramatically let me let me tell you why I think that why do we need a bank the fact is we need a trusted third party if you buying something from a importing something from overseas we need to make sure that those people get the money when the merchandise has been delivered so it's a letter of credit or people want to deposit the money someplace so they can access the get a loan isn't this true that we are with a web three and the blockchain infrastructure this will change because the trust will be within the blockchain we don't need a bank to transact to borrow from we can borrow from a group of people do you see any of that being discussed or this is only in my mind it it is totally being discussed right Credit Unions discuss about it but even an average the adoption of you know this cryptocurrencies and the web 3 is still like not in full application so they discuss about it they look at the trends when they look at the smaller Trends actually they're focused on smaller things they can do with safely right so I I don't think they're fully on the journey as yet but they're conceptually looking at where do we need to be still but I think yes credit Tunes are not known to be in the Forefront of Technology of course but yeah banks are yes or am I am I wrong in that no that's correct that's correct the banking industry or even I don't even know if banks are it is digital payments the Forefront Runners of all things that we want to change right like you talked about Bitcoin is all about I don't need to have is I don't need to have physical cash in my hand I can transact anywhere any place so I think yes digital payments then comes Banks and then comes credit units because they move slower behind everybody now I think you make a good point if you think about Uber Uber did not come from a guys who were in the taxi industry Airbnb was not started by somebody in the hotel industry so next innovation in banking will probably come from somebody outside banking I would think so I wouldn't be surprised if it was a credit union because they look at things very differently very different LS compared to Tech yeah yeah so the good so you point is you are involved in addition to your high stress job you're also involved with this nonprofit activity which is uh which is beautiful which I think again shows you that we all have multiple purpose in life it's not about yeah making money changing Society want to add value wherever we can so that's why I also involved with several nonprofits either helping them guiding them raising money and whatnot and that's what makes you know we you and I have accumulated knowledge over the last few years see if we can put it to some good use and that's what this podcast is all about so we can talk a little bit and provide little insights and deeper in some cases so we appreciate the time that you spend with us keep your comments coming in because we can focus on those areas too and support you through our podcast because we're all about supporting based on our experiences and also learning from everybody on the on the show too absolutely I we look forward to your suggestion about kind of guest talk about or even topics you want to talk about but we are here we can pull out all kinds of people as part of our conversation so we look forward to seeing you in the future episodes thank you very much and see you all very soon thank you bye you've been tuning into Silicon Valley life with your hosts Naim Zafar and Mina mayapan you can find this show on all the major platforms including YouTube LinkedIn Facebook Apple podcast Spotify and on our website Concordia ventures.com thank you for your 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