It’s Not Silicon Valley…and That’s a Good Thing

Lift 99, Tallinn, Estonia (July 2018)

Back in June 2018, as an active Silicon Valley angel investor, I did a little tour of startup ecosystems in Europe. This was after going to Slush in Helsinki, Finland, twice (my favorite startup conference) and attending 4YFN in Barcelona, Spain.

Despite being from San Francisco and living in the heart of Silicon Valley, it was very clear to me that I lived in a bubble. The more time I spent outside Silicon Valley, the more obvious it became that the problems Silicon Valley thought were important weren't necessarily the problems the rest of the world thought were important.

It was pretty frustrating as an investor, and probably more so for founders.

It’s one of the many reasons why I (mostly) quit angel investing. But it’s THE reason why I think there are still amazing opportunities around the world, and even across the US in less recognized or less popular locations.

My eyes were opened to the global possibilities in late November 2016, when I first went to Slush and saw what was happening in the Nordics, especially in digital health. I talked to founders and investors from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia and loved the way the founders were defining the problems that needed to be solved—and how they were solving them.

In February 2017, I had the opportunity to go to 4YFN in Barcelona and once again meet and speak with founders and investors, including learning about how startups were getting funded and their desire for access to broader markets, including the US.

Meanwhile, I was beginning to look at angel investing opportunities outside the Bay Area. Deals were getting too expensive, and I wasn’t excited about who was getting funded or the problems being solved.

After going to Slush again in late November 2017, I wanted to take a closer look at some of the local ecosystems in Europe and put together a tour beginning in Paris with Techstars Paris. From Paris, I flew to Tallinn, Estonia.

In Tallinn, I spent an afternoon meeting one-on-one with nine founders. Some of the problems they were working on were distinctly connected to Estonia itself: startups built around the country's genome project, two companies addressing HIV, and a founder in a wheelchair building a product from her own experience trying to navigate work with physical limitations.

Reading that old post eight years later reminded me what I loved about exploring startup ecosystems outside Silicon Valley.

The companies told me something about the place.

My biggest takeaway was that founders in smaller European countries did not always fully comprehend that there is no single US market, especially in healthcare. It is truly fragmented. Many were better off continuing to develop and refine their product offerings and go-to-market strategies while building revenue closer to home.

From Tallinn, I flew to Nice, France, to spend some time at the Allianz Accelerator and understand what they were trying to accomplish and how they were doing it from Nice. I met with three startups from their summer batch. I re-read a blog post from that day, and what strikes me now is how much attention they were paying to the human experience and, in the case of Knot, the impact on the local environment. I was pleased to see that all three are still alive and kicking.

From Nice, I flew to Berlin, Germany, for a fireside chat at Silicon Allee with women founders from the Ada program (you can read about my day here). I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Min-Sung Kim after spending a few hours at Bayer talking with Aline Noizet of G4A (Grants4Apps).

After talking with the women founders in the Ada program, I left absolutely determined to focus my investing and advocacy on women founders and on getting more women actively investing. That also led to my focusing on women founders, women investors, and those in the ecosystem actively supporting both on my podcast, Piloting Your Life.

That wasn’t the end of my global startup experience. I mentored startups in 2018 and 2019 through Oxford’s Panacea Stars program and others through Nordic Innovation House’s REACH program.

Then, in 2020, I took a break from angel investing, mentoring, and advising as my world got very small. I focused on keeping my family safe and watched Silicon Valley investors narrow their investing lenses. As the world opened back up, I continued to witness the myopic focus of a lot of early-stage investors and decided to stay out of the game.

In January 2024, I convinced my husband to launch Zeke & Terri Adventures so we could inspire people over 50 to get out, get uncomfortable, go adventure, and better navigate modern midlife.

It became our personal startup.

Two and a half years later, we are looking at our own market opportunity, and after spending the summer doing the analysis, I’ve decided it’s time to pivot.

I never stopped looking outside Silicon Valley and San Francisco to see what’s happening elsewhere, understand what’s possible, and see where my experience might be useful. I've spent decades working in technology, invested in and advised early-stage companies, mentored founders looking at the US market, and built a global network across technology, investing, healthcare, and entrepreneurship. I also love connecting people who should know each other.

With Zeke & Terri Adventures, we took ourselves out of California (although it truly is our favorite place to return to) to learn about history, culture, art, architecture, nature—and to meet people.

This past spring, our seven-week trip took us to Rome, Vienna, Budapest, Marseille, Tunisia, Madrid, Morocco, France, and Canada.

In a few days, we leave for a six-plus week trip including Amsterdam, France, Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Romania, Bulgaria, and back to France.

Over the summer, I realized that I missed using part of my brain.

The part that allows me to see and connect things across seemingly unrelated worlds. The part that lets me leverage my global network and decades of diverse experience. The part of me that walks into a place and wants to know not just about its history, art, architecture, and culture, but what people there are building, what problems they are trying to solve, and why.

That part can no longer be denied.

So while we are exploring some very-new-to-us parts of Europe this fall, I'm turning my global startup network back on.

Where specifically will that take me? I don’t know yet.

The plan is literally coming together as I write this. I'm looking at startup hubs in Tirana, Korçë, Skopje, Bucharest, Plovdiv, and Sofia. I'm looking for conferences that happen to coincide with where we'll be. And I'm reaching back out to people I haven't talked to in years to see who they know.

I'm open to introductions. I'm open to meetings over coffee. I'm open to walking into a startup ecosystem and finding out what people are working on. I'm equally happy to answer questions, share what I've learned, make connections, or be useful while I'm there.

And I'm especially interested in one question:

What are people building here—and what does that tell me about this place?

It’s not Silicon Valley.

And that’s exactly the point.

❤️ Terri