I’ve been away from the blog for awhile becasue a crew of Rady students, myself included, went to visit companies in the Bay Area last Wednesday through Friday. We signed our permission slips and headed up to home base at the Marriott in Foster City. Known as the “Bay Area Trek,” this has become a yearly event at Rady, and for good reason: it’s a rare chance to see work environments up close and hear about immediate challenges facing these companies, all presented in a very straightforward way. In other words, these visits help us imagine our future.
We stopped by IDEO in Palo Alto, a company I’ve mentioned before on this blog – this was one of the main reasons I decided to go on the trek, and it was definitely well worth my time. But there were also some companies that pleasantly surprised me, most notably Bank of the West. The office we visited was in a nondescript building hidden in the San Francisco financial district, which is consistent with BotW’s positioning as an under-the-radar bank. One of the presenters, who had a background in marketing and human resources, discussed how the bank is at an inflection point between post-startup and subsequent expansion into a major player in the banking industry. To date, BotW has been successful with a low-risk and low-yield strategy, but they have simultaneously been expanding geographically and are now facing challenges presented by sprawl. It was a particularly nice visit because the presenters were happy to have our interest, as MBA students tend to focus their visits on bigger banks, but of course Rady has a niche in entrepreneurship and dealing with issues like the ones BotW is facing at the moment. They were so happy to have us, in fact, that we all got little stuffed BotW golden bears! Definite swag win.
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