Day 3

I skipped a day. Sorry.

On day 2 we had our first official site visit at Life Sciences 9 (LS9). We were hosted by Jonathan Seaton who did a great job of giving an overview of the company, the technology, and how startups function. LS9 takes e-coli bacteria and sugar cane, applies some genetic engineering, and turns that combination into diesel fuel!

In the afternoon we met at the home of Sarah Lacy, author of Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good. Elliott has a great overview of the day on his blog http://elliottadams.squarespace.com/

On Day 3, we started our day in Silicon Valley traffic. It took a full hour to get from Santa Clara to Palo Alto. The drive was worth it as we got to spend an hour and a half with Guy Kawasaki. After our meeting with Guy we soaked up the Silicon Valley atmosphere, and the unseasonably warm (73 degree) weather. It helped to know that the wind chill back home was somewhere around -40!

We had lunch with Charlene Li, author of Groundswell at Zibibbo in Palo Alto.

After lunch we had some time to kill so we hiked down to the Stanford campus and visited the bookstore. It is a huge campus and very beautiful.

Our final visit of the day was to Tesla Motors This is an amazing story. In just 5 years Tesla has gone from startup to production on a fully electric roadster. Compare that to the decades its taken the big 3 to produce a car and it really makes you wonder. More details on the day can be found on Jake's blog Right Where I Neeed to Be. You will also note who got to sit in the roadster for the picture :-) Wes also has a good description on his blog.

We ended the day at Darbar, an Indian restaurant in Paolo Alto. Craig Cornelius met us there and we had a great visit with Craig. Everyone was very adventurous with their orders and it was great.

Finally we have a big flickr photostream started here: Luther College Live in Silicon Valley Photos right now its kind of a firehose of information but we'll get them organized eventually.