Article by ethan briens

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Ethan Briens 1

Left is a picture of Julie’s home office which is where she runs her company from.

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alking into the familiar house of our family friends, I recalled all the memories I have had in their home. However, today I came for a different reason than celebration or a family dinner. I came in search of answers and stories about a previous life two years earlier, living the stereotypical startup being ran out of a living room. When I talked to Craig Ciesla, the original co-CEO of Tactus, about starting his company he immediately lit up and began explaining the moment of realization he had: “So the idea for Tactus came about on the kids. So I was thinking come out called the iPhone, thinking that the iPhone would be very hard to out how to solve that an ‘Ah-ha’ moment of make the screen change “Ah-ha” moment is CEOs and founders commonly referred as “the The spark that is commonly in a young graduate from Julie is a very avid supporter of co-founder of Sliced Bread Design firm. User Experience is a profession and usability of an interface and with those interfaces and services. raises an incredible challenge.

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a Saturday afternoon walking with about this new phone that had just and I had a Blackberry, and looked great but that it type on. Trying to figure problem and then had where maybe you can shape…” (Ciesla). This often described by many across the board. It is also spark” of inspiration. shared was also very prominent Stanford University in Palo Alto. women’s rights and is co-CEO and which is a User Experience design that focuses on the testing, design service and also how people interact Running a startup in Silicon Valley

Above is a picture of Skipper, Craig’s Dog

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he task of running a startup can only be completed by a select few, and our two stars are the ones for that job. Craig went to Heriot-Watt University and studied applied physics, a field that focuses on particular and practical uses of physics in technology. It is also closely connected to engineering which is where Craig has the ability to engineer the prototypes and understand the physics behind the materials used in his product.

Julie, on the other hand, went to Stanford University where she declared to be a public policy major, which didn’t last long. Shortly after that she decided that she would move into symbolic systems. She explains, “I moved to a different major that was not CS (computer science) but is symbolic systems, which is kinda a mix of computer science, psychology, philosophy and linguistics like all smashed together” (Stanford). Coming out of college Julie had a lot of different opportunities in startups and companies in the Bay Area. Julie explains the reason behind starting her own company: “We both

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were just like we don’t ever want to work for someone ever again, we’re (Business Partner) just going to have our own company. We’re going to have a business that doesn’t do unethical things, we’re going to treat our employees fairly because it’s ridiculous” (Stanford).

As a child some of the most influential people in your lives are your parents.

They are the reason you are here and the influence that they provide can shape and mold your future. Julie recalls, “my parents were in the technology industry and when I grew up I saw that they worked a lot and I had it in my head that I wouldn’t be in the technology industry because I thought it was going to be too much work. I wanted to have more of a relaxed lifestyle. So instead for reasons that now seem absurd to me I thought this more like relaxed lifestyle would be maybe if I became a lawyer.” (Stanford).

Craig recollects a different experience: “So I think a lot of my interests in

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technology and dabbling with things came actually from my mother’s father, so my grandfather Beady who was an electrician and spent a lot of vacations with him.

And he would always encourage me to play around with stuff like make things and help me build stuff and take things apart. So that’s where I think the curiosity came from. I spent a lot of my growing up just being very curious about how things worked, and I would take a lot of things apart at home like TV’s... and usually get them back together” (Ciesla).

Tony Patron, CEO of Earth Baby, finds his childhood experience significant as well: “I grew up in Oregon, I sorta spend my high school age in Oregon, and I moved out here for college and went to college at Santa Clara University. I’m sure it does.

Oregon is very progressive, at least on the western side of Oregon.”

These varied childhood experiences have one thing in common: they all reflect how parents influenced young entrepreneurs

on their paths of Right is creation that continue a picture today. One interesting of Craig difference is that Julie Ceisla was in the hotspot for growing electronic companies, but she decided, for reasons absurd to her now, that she wanted to go into law. The confusing and windy path to success is not an easy one. Along this path there are many temptations to give up and forget where you came from and why you started your company.

Today, in the ultra-competitive Contrary to popular community of the belief, many of the Silicon Valley, startups less recognized CEOs fight to gain traction and companies come in a world full of out of an unsuccessful technological giants business venture much like Google, Apple, happier and better and Facebook. All off than prior. of these companies Those entrepreneurs started with that come out of those brilliant and bold companies are more entrepreneurs. Some prepared, equipped and startups have made determined than before their creators millions to go on and come up of dollars; those are with new ideas and the success stories, thrive. The pressure of but what most people success pushes these don’t know is 90% of entrepreneurs to their startups fail (Forbes). limits. According to However, those who Paul Graham’s “Why “fail” are not always to Not Not Start a regarded as failures.

I would say if you’ve got an idea and you’re passionate about it, go try it.

-Craig Ceisla

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Startup,” “Even the founders who fail don’t seem to have such a bad time. Of those first eight startups, three are now probably dead. In two cases the founders just went on to do other things at the end of the summer.”

Two prime examples of these successful entrepreneurs are Craig Ciesla and Julie Stanford, two entrepreneurs who stood up and decided to try to make an impact. One aspect of startups that clash is the competition of different companies trying to do the same things and being the first company to do so successfully. Most of the time the competition is when the company first begins because a lot of the time people start their own companies to fix a problem or to do something better than someone else. For companies to be successful in being the first and the only ones to do something, they must have patents.

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Patents are very important because they give job security, vast ownership of the area of work focused on and a good chance at getting picked up by a larger company or planting yourself in the garden of success known as Silicon Valley.

Looking into their backgrounds, Julie and Craig have two very different upbringings. Julie having grown up in Silicon Valley almost all her life does not surprise many when she says she works in technology.

However, if you were to wonder what a Scottish Engineer was doing, you would think that he could have landed anywhere in the world, but instead he created his own company in the heart of Silicon Valley. And most people do not know about the failures and crumbling of companies.

The untold story of a utopian society is failure, to Bay Areaers failure is not an option.

These accounts are proof that making a 7-digit salary is not a requirement to be successful.

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Works Cited Baptiste, Jason. “14 Reasons Why You Need To Start A Startup.”

Advice and Insights for Entrepreneurs, OnStartups.com, 15 Nov. 2010, onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/24525/14-Reasons-WhyYou-Need-To-Start-A-Startup.aspx. Accessed 14 Feb. 2017.

Ciesla, Craig. Personal Interview. 21 February 2017.

--- Personal Interview. 4 April 2017.

Graham, Paul. “Why to Not Not Start a Startup.” Why to Not Not Start a Startup, Mar. 2007, paulgraham.com/notnot.html. Accessed 27 Feb. 2017.

Patron, Tony. Personal Interview. 4 April 2017.

Stanford, Julie. Personal Interview. 15 March 2017.

Vital, Anna. “How To Start A Startup - Infographic.” How to Start a Startup - Infographic, Funders and Founders, 13 May 2013, fundersandfounders.com/how-to-start-a-startup/. Accessed 13 Mar. 2017.

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About the Author Ethan Briens is a junior at Mountain View High School. He has a passion for design and creating new ideas and creating art hands on. This project was interesting for him because it allowed for a more open mind and how to approach design. He aspires to run his own business and study industrial design in college and continue to play soccer at a national level. Ethan is a very creative person and has a good eye for design. He is not afraid to share his ideas and stay late to complete his projects.

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