University at Buffalo School of Management

18 Buffalo Business Autumn 2019 Silicon Valley tour connects and inspires BY KEVIN MANNE A lifelong interest in starting his own business brought Joshua Israel, BS '19, to Professor Robert Neubert's entrepreneur- ship class in the fall of 2018. Israel wanted to get a feel for what life would be like as the founder of a startup. Halfway through the semester, Neubert, who is a serial entrepreneur and educator who transitioned from the phar- maceutical industry, told the class about the Tech Trek: an experiential learning op- portunity to visit Silicon Valley and get an inside look at large tech companies, emer- ing startups and prominent venture capital fi rms—directly from founders and execu- tive leadership. Israel was hooked. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportu- nity to see the diff erent facets of startups through the eyes of UB alumni," he says. So he signed up. And for fi ve days during winter break, Israel and a group of School of Management students went on a whirlwind tour of San Francisco (co- ordinated by the School of Management's Career Resource Center and its Alumni Engagement Offi ce). Stops included the Bank of the West, Delanges Mitchell and Linder, Google, GoPro, HP, Optimizely, Toll Brothers, Virtual Offi ce and Visa. It was on the stop at Toll Brothers that Israel met Dan Weatherbee, MBA '11, the company's senior project manager. Toll Brothers is a nationwide residential devel- oper—which piqued the interest of Israel, who is beginning the dual MS Real Estate Development/MBA program at UB this fall. In the Bay Area, Toll Brothers is fo- cused on multifamily developments, one of which Weatherbee took the students on a tour of: a 34-acre construction site with 1,000 units. He also showed them a demo of new virtual reality technology the compa- ny is using to sell homes. "Traditionally when you sell a home you have a model to pick from, buy and build on a lot," he says. "Here we can't do that, and it's hard to sell someone a mil- lion-dollar home without them seeing it, so they get to experience the homes through VR and renderings." Israel says the visit gave him the op- portunity to envision his future career. "It's exactly what I see myself doing in the future, whether it be in Buff alo, Silicon Valley or another part of the country," he says. At GoPro, the students met Mary Rose Machajewski, BS '13, a Buff alo native. She moved to San Mateo, Calif., a er gradua- tion to work at GoPro, the action camera company. Machajewski is the company's digital merchandiser for e-commerce, curating the digital marketing experience for cus- tomers around the world. During the GoPro stop, students got a workplace tour (including a stunning view of the Pacifi c Ocean), heard from a panel of employees and visited a space known as "the barn," featuring oversized chess piec- es, foosball tables and games where the com- pany holds what it calls its "family hangs." "When you're in Buff alo it's very dif- ferent than out here in California," says Machajewski. "So if I can help any student through a conversation, hosting at my

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