Planby will be visiting Silicon Valley once again, this time to participate in the founders retreat hosted by 500 Global and Seoul Business Agency (SBA). Planby applied for this founders retreat in April, in hopes of visiting Silicon Valley again to connect with fellow start-ups, meet potential investors and to conduct market research on local architectural firms. 5 other start-ups in different areas of business will be joining the trip, making the experience more rich and diverse.

As soon as we arrived there, we were greeted by the officials at SBA who had set up our seats and drinks. We also saw some familiar faces like Peter and Blaire who have been taking care of us since their investment in Planby Technologies last year. We had also met some of the founders of other starts-ups who were participating in the retreat. It was a great chance to catch up with them and talk about their plans in the future.

The session began with an introduction to the program with the full itinerary explained in detail. The schedule included sessions led by renowned experts in the start-up scene, visiting HQs of Silicon Valley-based firms like Stripe, Salesforce, Mercury, Notion and etc. We are especially looking forward to the sessions in pitching to potential investors and sales training. These sessions will certainly help us increase our firm’s attractiveness to investors and gain traction in the US market.

Followed by the introduction to the program, we were presented with the legal and moral issues we have to be careful for while we stay there. Since it is a program ran under the names of 500 Global and SBA, we are going to have to do our best to well represent the organizations that support us. Additional people who are going to accompany us during the program shared a briefing on the sessions and activities they are going to be involved in.

Lastly, we were given tips on how to make the most out of this program. This included who to talk to frequently for getting tips on getting investment, what kind of IR decks we should prepare, what kind of elevator pitches are the most effective in Silicon Valley, and even how to get around the neighborhood with rental cars. The SBA officials were also kind enough to share tips on how to execute the budget allocated on the trip so we could use it to actually help with our business activities that go beyond the scope of the program.

With 2 weeks remaining before we head off to Silicon Valley, we are doing our best to prepare for what we can. We hope to meet a lot of people, learn a lot of things, get inspired and make a noteworthy progress in our business while we are there.