Silicon Valley organization helping Start-ups get millions in capital

Global Business

The goal is to help new companies around the world succeed. The organization called Startup Grind hopes the events they put on will help. Mark Niu filed this report from San Francisco.

Silicon Valley organization helping Start-ups get millions in capital

The goal is to help new companies around the world succeed. The organization called Startup Grind hopes the events they put on will help. Mark Niu filed this report from San Francisco.

Startup Grind has more than 160 chapters globally in places like The United States, Europe, Latin America and China.

The Silicon Valley group’s event called Startup Grind was sold out in Redwood City, a town outside of San Francisco. More than 1500 entrepreneurs including representatives from Washington, DC’s One-hour Translation and Same Page filled the theater where the event was held.

Matt Rogers, co-founder of the smart thermostat company Nest, talked about how Google bought his company for $3.2 billion U.S.

“Some people call the sale of a company an exit,” Rogers said. “For us, it’s almost a beginning. It’s the next evolution of the company. We’re in it every day building a dream.”

Another company moving closer to the dream is smart watch-maker Pebble. They originally acquired funding on the crowd funding site Kickstarter and have recently outsold Samsung Gear smart watches in the U.S. Pebble’s next challenge is a face off with Apple’s version of the smart watch.

“It’s going to be insanely cool. It’s going to attract an incredible amount of attention and inquisitiveness into the space I’ve been working on,” Eric Migicovsky, the founder of Pebble said. “our entire company is laser focused on it.” Migicovsky added.

One major goal of Startup Grind is getting young entrepreneurs to make the extra effort to reach out and make contacts. There’s a wall where engineers and entrepreneurs can list their talents in the hopes of brokering a deal. Venture capitalists with deep pockets were in attendance including Matt Miller from Sequoia Capital. Sequoia has invested in everything from Google to LinkedIn.

Miller warned start-ups to be cautious as valuations rise.

“There are some examples of some companies out there that everybody could point to that may have an opinion that this particular one is overvalued, but there are some that are getting epic valuations that probably deserve it,” Matt Miller, Partner, Sequoia Capital said. “You’ve gotta be very careful in an environment like this to pick who you are gonna pay a big price.”

One of those companies that Sequoia Investments is getting behind is the online payment group Stripe. The company was founded by two Irish brothers who are still on leave from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“When they said this wasn’t possible or it wouldn’t work, we didn’t know we shouldn’t believe them.” Patrick Collison, the co-founder of Stripe said. “In hindsight, I’m glad we didn’t listen. One of those people who told us it wouldn’t work went on to launch his own Stripe clone.”

Stripe has raised around $200 million and is valued at $3.6 billion.