I’m not sure how to summarise Paddy’s Valley so I’ll write a few posts instead of one long one. This one being on those who went.
What a bunch of … really fun, interesting and intelligent people. I can barely not kill my friends after a week’s holiday yet I’d happily spend two or three weeks with some of the crew that went over. There’s a lot of raw talent in the group and a seriously amount of talented people all round. It’s a pity that not everyone that did the pitch training got to pitch on the Tuesday night but hopefully the pitching at Yahoo! Brickhouse made up for it. I make a yearly (I only actually started this last year) “ones to watch” list and I’m thinking a lot who I met last week should go on it. It’s like this, were the crew stationed in Palo Alto and not Ireland, I have no doubt they’d be very successful so it will just take a little longer on this side of the world.
It was a pleasure to spend my week with them and I really hope that they make Paddy’s Valley redundant by doing their own versions and dragging people over. I hope they evangelise how people in the Valley operate and maybe inject their enthusiasm into Irish culture. Wouldn’t it be nice if the Paddy’s Valley idea wasn’t in anyway special and something that happens a lot?
In terms of brain power, I was chatting to some of the Irish CEOs that were attending the Leadership 4 Growth (their use of a number, not mine) in Stanford and I was saying that the PV group as a whole would make a great sounding board for any company.
There’s talk of a meetup in January where the PV crew will talk about their experiences. Anyone interested in coming along and picking the brains of everyone?
Thanks to everyone that came to Paddy’s Valley, we all rocked. 🙂
Photo sets: Marcus, Jess, Conor, others
