Approximately 85 MBA students from MIT visited Plug and Play Tech Center on Thursday, January 5th 2007 as part of their annual Tech Trek to Silicon Valley. The students toured the Center, enjoyed a complimentary cocktail and networking session and received presentations from several start-up companies based at the Center.The companies that presented to the group were Adesto Technologies, Retrevo, SigmaQuest, and AnswerU.com; the founders of AnswerU.com happen to be alumni of MIT Sloan.  The presenters addressed issues surrounding experiences in their start-ups and provided valuable advice on how and when to start your own business.  Of course, not surprisingly, they spoke about the culture of Silicon Valley and how most of them moved to the California Bay Area specifically to start their business. 

Global Educational Program was happy to arrange MIT’s visit to Plug and Play Tech Center on the Center’s behalf.  The students commented that hearing from start-up companies was a great why for them to balance their experience between large organizations and start-up companies; which is truly representative of the Silicon Valley culture.  GEP also assisted in arranging visits for MBA’s from Cornell and Harvard to the Center.

“Our visit to the Plug and Play Center was fantastic. Students heard from experienced, successful entrepreneurs and got a ground-level view of what high-tech start ups in Silicon Valley are really like. This was one of the great highlights of our trek, and we’d like to thank Syed and Shobeir at the center and Chris at GEP for setting up this terrific event.”

               ~Glenn Wilson, 2007 Tech Trek to Silicon Valley Program Coordinator