No, unfortunately I wasn’t the one visiting Silicon Valley but the privilege went to Shinta Dhanuwardoyo, the former CEO Plasa.com and currently the Managing Partner for Nusantara Ventures. She visited Silicon Valley to meet some of the most influential people in the tech industry, and she’s kind enough to share her story with us (so we don’t need to go to Silicon Valley ourselves).
warning : photos attached can cause severe envy-ness!
So Shinta, what’s the story you can share with us?
I was invited to the Facebook office, after Javier Olivan head of International Growth of FB attended and spoke at IDBYTE 2011. He told me he was impressed with Indonesia and he wanted me to go to Palo Alto’s office to talk to his team regarding Indonesia’s digital landscape especially on Mobile. Javier also told me that I will be meeting with Sheryl Sandberg during the visit. So on that occasion I decided to visit them in Palo Alto last July 28, at their Headquarter. I got the honor to meet with Sheryl Sandberg and spoke with her a bit on Indonesia and her initiative on the Women in tech.
She was excited for my visit and of course I was thrilled to meet her. She told me that she would want to visit Indonesia soon, especially that she acknowledged the leap growth of Indonesian FB users and the mobile aspect of it. The office is really cool, the concept is just open office even Sheryl and Mark are out on the floor with everyone else. I didn’t got a chance to speak to Mark Z, however, I got to see him inside the glass meeting room. I presented regarding Indonesia to Javier’s team which included in front of Ran Makavy the Snaptu’s founder (the Mobile app company that was bought by Facebook). They were impressed with Indonesia’s mobile landscape, since we know most of Facebook users in Indonesia are using mobile to connect. Then got to eat lunch with his team at the Facebook diner and did the tour around the office.
I notice that you went to meet Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO and Katie Stanton, Twitter VP of International Growth. What was that about and how did it went?
I visited Twitter office on the first day of my SF trip on the 27th of July. Unfortunately, I didnt get a chance to meet with Katie, since she was on vacation but she asked me to meet up with Jana Schmidht, Director of Mobile and Laura Gomez from Localization. From the mobile, Jana said she would like to support Indonesia from mobile side and from Laura, she talked about Twitter in bahasa Indonesia and the translation. Jana mentioned she would love to be more engaged with Indonesian mobile landscape.
How do you think Facebook and Twitter sees indonesia, strategically speaking? Any plans from them you can share?
Facebook is always concern from the users side, they want to grow users and so for Indonesia since it is mobile that drive the growth in this country. Snaptu is one acquisition that they made to make mobile experience for FB to the next level: “mobile for all ” on FB. Twitter on the other hand admitted had not focus so much on Indonesia yet in terms of mobile landscape, but they realized already the potentials and will be on their toes soon.
How is the startup and entrepreneurial scene in SF compared to Jakarta? Anything we can learn from SF? The notorious geek-party perhaps? 
I was also invited by Sarah Lacy to the Techcrunch First Mobile Crunchup Conference and Techcrunch 6th Annual Summer Outing at Palo Alto. Thanks to you Rama, for hooking me up with Sarah….appreciate it. The conference was mobile specific, so they had speaker from Foursquare, Bump, Instagram etc. Seems that Foursquare is still one of US favorite LBS. Other than Foursquare, there were a number of mobile companies. Kevin Systrom, CEO of Instragram announced that the Android version will absolutely happen for Instagram. The event took place in AOL building, an amazing and vast space devoted for start ups. I had a great chat with Sarah Lacy as well, who is going to pregnant on her last trimester and yet she looked so energetic talking about her upcoming trips after she is giving birth. Thank you Sarah, for inviting me to such a cool event.
Afterward, I went to the Techcrunch 6th Annual Summer Party which was hosted by August Capital. This was the scene for the Valley’s tech meet up, and this was where I met a number of VCs and lots of startups and even people from Google, Facebook and other more established Tech companies. I met a number new companies that I have not heard of before like Wishpond, isocket, etc. It wasjust a networking session but I can feel the air was difference with a blanket of excitements from various startups able to mingle with the more established companies and a pool of eager VCs.
Some articles said Indonesia could be the next silicon valley. After you visit the real SF, how do you see this statement?
I say Indonesia has the potentials, except for Indonesia startups they have to work harder on the business model. The valley’s startups are mostly banking on the advertising model which they likely to survive on that. But I always believe that we Indonesian can become the next silicon valley as long as we start to put ourself to become producers rather than just users. And to any start up in Indonesia, just be really passionate in building you company and don’t just think of having a short term vision of selling the company. More like long term goal to make the company happens should be envisioned.
Any other stories besides Twitter and Facebook that you would like to share?
Other stories, I met up with Craig Newmark of Craiglist. He mentioned that he is happy to be able to support such a great event like Bubu Awards….and he was glad to be part of the board of judges. I also went to visit Linkedin office and met up with Torrey Lincoln, Director of Western Region Marketing Solutions. He mentioned that Indonesia and Asia pacific region has become a very important market, that Linkedin has opened a Singapore office and Arvind Rajan is now heading that office as Managing Director and VP for Asia Pacific and Japan. He was previously the VP of International based in the US.
Then I met up with your friend Dian of Flipboard. She is such a cool girl….I told her to go home after a year or so, so that she can contribute to the country 
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Thanks Shinta for sharing the awesome story about your visit to Silicon Valley, hope you all enjoyed it
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