After 4 months in San Francisco, I'm finally beginning to understand the magic of Silicon Valley. It's the American "Just do it" mentality, it's either go big or go home. People here take a lot more risks, which is also why they throw a lot more money at ideas that have the potential to work. It's like buying an insanely expensive lottery ticket.

“People here take a lot more risks.”

The level of ambition in Silicon Valley is INSANE. As  Cuberg, the company where I'm interning, makes their plans to grow, my first instinctive reaction was, are you crazy? How do you expect to grow that fast? Where are we going to get the money? The people? The space?

During a long-term strategy session with all the senior leaders of the company, which opened with: "This is what the market is going to look like in 2030,  we expect to grow by X%, so this is where we need to be in 2026.  How are we going to make this happen?" Everyone casually and calmly started discussing how to achieve this growth, like it was nothing. No one even debated the growth target. People provided each other with constructive feedback and collaboratively developed a plan to achieve our goals. It went great!

After the session, I was curious about how my colleagues felt about the goals and they simply responded "it's ambitious, but we can make it work", and "It's doable".  This attitude is not unique to Cuberg. Looking at most of the other founders I've met in the area, it's all about growth... and fast.

In the Netherlands,  it feels like we are constantly coming up with reasons why NOT to do something. I call it the 1,000 reasons why not.  We're a lot more risk-averse, cautious and hesitant. It leans a bit more towards, slow and steady wins the race.

However, let me highlight, I don't mean to put the American culture on a pedestal. There are upsides and downsides to both approaches. One thing I miss in the Netherlands is the relaxedness of it all, but work-life balance in the US vs. the Netherlands is a whole other topic I'll write about another day.