In November 2013 I left the hustling streets of New York City for windy San Francisco. I was immediately taken back by the intense start-up pitching culture that seemed to be present everywhere I visited. I decided to set out across San Francisco and Silicon Valley to photograph the locations where young entrepreneurs frequented and document their latest ideas.
On a breezy Sunday afternoon at Dolores Park in San Francisco I came across what seemed to be hundreds of millennials sharing an elaborately packed picnic or just a few beers while overlooking the breathtaking skyline. The park, perched on a steep slope, seemed to offer the best of both worlds for my project.
Later, I spent a day walking along University Avenue in Palo Alto. Amid the strollers, yoga outfits and Stanford branded attire; most coffee shops were packed with people hunched over their laptops. From Coupa Café to Paris Baguette and The Old Pro sports bar, I took my time scoping the culture and diversity that surrounded me.
Throughout the project, I found that while the word ‘start-up’ has shown a deep emergence in the technology industry, many of these ambitious entrepreneurs have ideas a world away from microchips, software and telecommunications.
On a breezy Sunday afternoon at Dolores Park in San Francisco I came across what seemed to be hundreds of millennials sharing an elaborately packed picnic or just a few beers while overlooking the breathtaking skyline. The park, perched on a steep slope, seemed to offer the best of both worlds for my project.
Later, I spent a day walking along University Avenue in Palo Alto. Amid the strollers, yoga outfits and Stanford branded attire; most coffee shops were packed with people hunched over their laptops. From Coupa Café to Paris Baguette and The Old Pro sports bar, I took my time scoping the culture and diversity that surrounded me.
Throughout the project, I found that while the word ‘start-up’ has shown a deep emergence in the technology industry, many of these ambitious entrepreneurs have ideas a world away from microchips, software and telecommunications.
"You know one of the biggest hurdles that we've had to deal with is you know, getting away from design. We're all designers. What we really want to do is design the perfect product to make this thing that everybody is just going to love. And what you have to do is you have to get out, you have to get in front of people. You have to take your baby and put it out in front of them and let people tell you what they really think and that could be a challenging process. One just putting it out there because you never really think it's perfect and two, really being willing to take people's feedback."
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"The design that has been built up over the years to market this product, to market this chocolate, is so alluring and sexy and brilliant and enigmatic that you couldn't get it anywhere else. And you would only have to see that, you would only have to see the box, you would only have to have that first bite to know that this was an experience that was imbued with someone’s care and intentionality and true passion."
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“We think that people are more motivated by seeing other people showing or demonstrating their willingness to be fit, so it’s less about counting steps but more about showing visually like what I did to stay healthy. People post their videos, pictures of their routines. We’ve got a big ‘CrossFit’ following in our app today. So people like to share what they’ve done to workout, show their milestones, their personal records. We’ve got people who are just beginning to semi-professionals using the app today.”
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“I’m originally from Pennsylvania so I just packed my stuff up and moved out here and just told myself you need to do everything possible to make your dream happen. That’s when I decided that taking art and hair/makeup and putting it into one would be like runway."
“One of the tag-lines is "Auquip yourself with flavor." It is basically a reusable flavored water bottle that hits the market gap between completely disposable bottles and reusable bottles and it hits that gap in a really interesting way that gives it a lot of benefits. Like, you can turn your water into whatever flavor you want. And you can mix flavors and do all these sorts of crazy cocktails and make it a truly fun experience to get hydrated.”
