Tom Werner, Eng ’86, is having an especially busy day. His schedule as CEO of SunPower — the maker and installer of the world’s highest-efficiency solar energy systems — is so packed this fall Thursday, he barely has time for his next meeting.
But the visitors waiting in a glass-paneled conference room at SunPower’s headquarters are too important to reschedule.
“Hello. Glad you’re here,” he says, slipping into a chair at the end of the table where the guests are clustered — six Marquette undergraduates who have traveled from Milwaukee for a true inside view of Silicon Valley, as provided by leading tech executives like Werner.
Despite his tight time limit, the CEO has plenty to pass on. He helped create the two-year-old initiative that brought the sextet here — the Silicon Valley Experience coordinated by Marquette’s Kohler Center for Entrepreneurship — to strengthen the talent pipeline between Marquette and the world’s innovation capital, to help promising students learn from and tap into the region’s increasingly robust alumni network.
So, for the next 24 minutes, the students see their new surroundings through his expert eyes. The string of low-rise communities stretching from San Jose to San Francisco comes alive as an “ecosystem” that excels in turning ideas into startups and the best of those startups into market changers that reimagine much of our modern lives. Born of a design breakthrough by a brilliant Stanford engineering professor who found the necessary financial backing and right management team (led by Werner) to take the company public in 2005, and then keep innovating, SunPower is one of those former startups turned market leaders.
Before turning things over to two top managers for a headquarters tour, the chief executive even personalizes his take on the Valley, so the five Marquette seniors and one junior can better imagine themselves here. For computer engineering major Natalie Kalinowski and computer science major Nathan Ireland, he touts the data science boom that is “digitizing everything, including energy.” For Parker Dow, he extols the crucial role mechanical engineers play protecting SunPower solar cells “from hail and 100 mile-per-hour winds.” For Seamus Herson, there’s excitement about the lucrative rewards at the end of lengthy approvals for biomedical engineering startups.
And for Ashlyn Adams and Jake Brozynski — majoring in marketing (and entrepreneurship in Brozynski’s case) — there is respect for a subject Werner underestimated back in school. “I couldn’t have been more wrong,” he admits. “At some startups, it’s like, wow, as a marketer, you’re the most important person because you can take the concept and make it relevant to somebody who’s going to pay money.”
The second company visit of their three-day trip is packed with wisdom. In their final minutes with Werner, the students return the favor in the best way possible. They ask a series of savvy questions — about the company’s IPO and its culture, about reducing end-of-life waste from solar panels and other topics — that show him they’re feeling ever so slightly like parts of this ecosystem themselves.
A startup is born — Marquette style
The Silicon Valley Experience got its start not in an incubator — or a garage like Apple — but at a 2017 leadership dinner with President Michael R. Lovell attended by Werner and other Silicon Valley alumni. There and in conversations that followed, the tech leaders began connecting some interesting dots. Alongside its unparalleled clustering of entrepreneurs and innovators, the San Francisco Bay area also boasts the nation’s largest concentration of Marquette alumni outside of Milwaukee and Chicago, a network rich with leadership and valuable connections.
The ingredients could be there, they thought, to create a signature program — a Silicon semester akin to the Aspin Center’s government-oriented program in Washington, D.C. With much coordination from Dr. Sissy Bouchard, senior philanthropic adviser, and Megan Carver, Comm ’08, associate director of the Kohler Center for Entrepreneurship, the three-day experience emerged as a more practical but still ambitious step, and it debuted over Marquette’s 2018 fall break.
Preparations for the second installment of the Silicon Valley Experience got rolling last spring when 60 students answered the call to compete for six coveted spots. Written applications and short videos helped a team — Carver, Dr. Eric Waters, assistant professor of communication studies, and Kate Trevey, Bus Ad ’04, a director of leadership programs in the Opus College of Engineering — select the students. The students then met weekly with Carver early last fall to discuss assigned reading, update their LinkedIn profiles, network with previous-year program participants and research the companies participating in the experience.
Thursday > 10.17 > 8:20 a.m.
Hilton Garden Inn > Palo Alto
Six hours after reaching their hotel in the wee hours of the Thursday of fall break 2019, the students are downstairs for breakfast. Waiting for them is Victor Szczerba, Eng ’89, an executive who has become something of an architect of the experience. He delivers a rousing opening lecture that helps the students understand the roles played by the firms — startups, market disrupters, venture capital firms, tech giants
— whose doors he and fellow alumni will open for them. Szczerba overflows with enthusiasm both for student mentorship and for the Valley culture that hooked him in the early ’90s, its embrace of risk and new ideas making the more conventional business climate of his native Chicago seem stifling.
A series of innovation waves — silicon chips, networking, mobile apps and now artificial intelligence — and positions ranging from general manager at a software giant to founder of his current startup, Yeti Data, have only stoked his passion. Still, one of the most memorable takeaways from this opening chat concerns rigor not passion. “The way of working here is not haphazard. It’s about finding — and solving — customer problems,” he advises them. “Fall in love with the problem first, understand it and then figure out a way to solve it.”
Thursday > 10.17 > 9:35 a.m.
Baylands Park > Sunnyvale
The students’ first Valley encounter is with a true startup, Cape. CEO Chris Rittler, Eng ’86, persuasively describes the firm’s efforts, with special Federal Aviation Administration clearance, to reconceive of drones as resources controlled remotely via laptops — as first-responders to crime scenes, for example. In the field, senior Jake Brozynski takes command of a Cape drone — a special thrill since his experience running a profitable aerial photography business, Inflight Drone, strengthened his application for this experience. (Dr. Henry Medeiros, an engineering faculty member along for the experience, also uses drones in his research with intelligent imaging.)
After stories back at the office of Friday barbecues and adventure outings from Cape’s tight-knit team — tighter after the firm adjusted its business model and got leaner in 2019 — students are intrigued with the dynamic, if fluid, startup environment. “As a young person, now may be the time to take a risk,” says Seamus Herson, whose interests extend to sustainable energy and sustainable transportation, “rather than being 55 and regretting you never did it.”
Friday > 10.18 > 9:05 a.m.
Sequoia Consulting > San Mateo
This fast-growing firm’s employee benefits solutions put it in a sweet spot for the visiting students, who are naturally curious about issues such as work-life balance and career development. In a stylish conference room with mountain views, Jonathan Moore, Sequoia’s youthful director of product marketing, spells out the challenge facing the firm’s tech-centric clients. “For every two job postings in the Valley, there is one candidate,” he says.
In response, Sequoia, originally an employee benefits broker, has evolved rapidly into a tech-savvy retention specialist, partnering closely with clients such as Dropbox to make their workplaces and benefits experiences so good that employees will stay well beyond the 1.5-year Valley average.
In the lobby afterward, with students sold on Sequoia as an attractive employer itself, Seamus Herson gets laughs sharing news that he’s already added Moore on LinkedIn. “It’s not your typical Silicon Valley company, says the arranger of the visit, a pleased Victor Szczerba. “And they don’t hire typical Silicon Valley workers. In addition to hard skills, they want soft skills. A Marquette graduate grounded in the liberal arts — that’s really what they want.”
Friday > 10.18 > 11:45 a.M.
Shorebird Park > Foster City
During some downtime between visits, Dr. Henry Medeiros, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and a faculty adviser accompanying the students from stop to stop, gets them to open up with a probing question: What if they received identical offers from each of the firms visited so far? Which would they choose?
With a mild Bay breeze blowing, Natalie Kalinowski quickly identifies Sequoia’s people-focused innovation culture as a deciding factor. “I don’t want to just clock in and clock out, and not have anything out of it other than a paycheck. I want to have those relationships with customers and the people I’m working with,” she says.
Parker Dow sees unique strengths in each but feels especially drawn by SunPower’s leadership in addressing a colossal challenge. “They’re creating a product with also a big, big goal in mind — less reliance on fossil fuels and a move toward renewable energy.”
Friday > 10.18 > 8:30 p.M.
Embarcadero wharf > San francisco
The rented van containing six students, two university guides, Medeiros and other guests crisscrosses the San Francisco Bay area, treating the students to 12 distinct experiences. Sissy Bouchard — the university advancement official who coordinated the conversations that spawned the experience — drives the van and Megan Carver of the Kohler Center serves as navigator. Both share guidance all the while and observe up close the effect of the experience on the students. “The three days ignite a passion for solving problems and seeking knowledge,” says Carver. “It equips the students with the insights, expanded network and tools they need to succeed in the innovation economy after graduation.”
Other highlights include a couple of hours at Microsoft’s “Garage” collaboration space hosted by Christine Matheney, Eng ’13, and Peter Haubold, Bus Ad ’89; and a visit to SoftBank, “the most disruptive checkbook in the Valley,” says Szczerba. Some memorable conversations occur over meals, including a lunch with young alumni; a dinner hosted by Victor and Jolanta Szczerba, an Uber executive, at their home; and a closing dinner and reflection led by Denelle Dixon, CEO of Stellar Development Foundation, and Harvey Anderson, Eng ’84, deputy general counsel of Hewlett-Packard and an early experience champion. And the last stop? A group photo with one of San Francisco’s iconic bridges in the background; the students insist on it.
One Month Later
707 Hub > Marquette Campus Milwaukee
Stranded in Denver by a flight delay on their return trip, the students talked about the intense days they just shared and how they’d keep alive the close bonds they’d formed. Before they arrived home, they had their answer, one that feels especially appropriate to their situation. “What’s the natural thing to do to stay connected with people?” jokes Parker Dow. “Start a business, right?”
Showing how closely they listened to Szczerba and other new mentors, they’ve found a problem in need of fixing — an online group that started as a basketball ticket exchange for Marquette students but devolved into a chaotic bulletin board where non-students hawk everything from cars to furniture. A month later, they’re still going strong, meeting most Friday afternoons in Marquette’s 707 Hub to work on plans for The Marqet, a secure, convenient platform where students can quickly find other students offering exactly what they need from tickets to books to rental subleases.
The technology could even be transferable to other universities or businesses, they believe. “We’re all from different majors,” says Jake Brozinski. “Each of us brings a different value to the team.”
Their weekend in Silicon Valley hasn’t left them with any delusions about an easy path ahead for their startup — task №1 will be determining if revenue streams from students or advertisers will be enough to support the service. But already, there are signs the experience itself is paying off dearly. “Before I went out there, I didn’t have any clarity about what life was like after school,” says Nathan Ireland. “After the trip, I have a clearer view of where I can go after I graduate.”
Now if only they could truly explain what happened to others. “As I’m telling people about it, it’s like I can’t even put the trip into words,” Ashlyn Adams says to her trip mates at one of the Friday sessions. “It’s like only you guys understand what we actually experienced.”
