Undergraduate students from the Singapore Management University (SMU) spent ten days in Silicon Valley in July 2007 on a Business Study Mission led by Prof. Jason Woodard. As part of a short term course, the students examined management, entrepreneurship and innovation in Silicon Valley and the broader San Francisco Bay Area. As such, the group focused the majority of their activities on company visits.
The students visited such companies as Oracle, eBay, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Apple and many other famous Fortune 500 companies. However, this is just one component of management, entrepreneurship and innovation in the Valley and the group leader turned to GEP to fill the gap.

To give the group a balanced view on the Silicon Valley environment, GEP arranged a networking event for the group which featured CEO’s and Founders of successful start-up companies, officials from San Jose State University and a tour of Plug and Play Tech Center which incubates over 100 start-up companies.

The key note speakers included Amir Arbabi, the V.P of Business Development for Midomi.com; Seth Sternberg, the CEO of Meebo; Anand Jagannathan, Founder and CEO of Kriyari Inc.; and Yahya Mokhtarzada, Founder of FreeWebs.com.
GEP was honored to have the opportunity to provide this networking event on July 26th, 2007 for this group that allowed the students to tour a Silicon Valley incubator, meet with officials from SJSU and hear key note speeches from successful start-up companies.