As many of you know, it's often quite difficult to conduct business outside of your own country and/or culture. There are so many nuances in behavior. Shaking hands, exchanging business cards, and other simple gestures take on a special significance as they reflect the sensitivity of an individual from Culture A to the mores and etiquette – not to mention, the traditions – of an individual from Culture B.

While my husband and I were enjoying dinner at one of the hosted parties at DATE in Munich in March, we were taken aback by a comment made by one of our European dinner companions sitting across from us at our table. He had observed our end-of-meal process of aligning our fork and knife parallel, coincident with the center of the dinner plate, and positioned at approximately 2 o'clock.

He gestured towards our plates and said, "Oh my. The two of you must come from extraordinarily high-class families. I've never seen any Americans before who knew how to handle a fork and knife at the dinner table!"

Wow. That was a showstopper. I didn't know if we should be flattered or insulted – flattered that our refined manners had been noted, or insulted that my country of origin had been so thoroughly dissed.

The lady sitting next to the European gentleman – she was also European – snorted and said to him, "Don't be ridiculous. They're just cultured. It's not a matter of nationality, it's a matter of culture! There are people in every country who are cultured. And there are people in every country who are not! These people are obviously cultured!"

My husband and I sat rather frozen in the moment.

Should we say, "Oh please. Don't come to blows on our account!"

Should we say to the gentleman, "How rude! If you were in America, nobody would say such a stupid-ass thing to you at a business dinner – suggesting that your country of origin is peopled with sloths."

Should we say to the lady, "Please don't speak about us in the third person. We're sitting right here!"

Needless to say, the wine smoothed over that particular speed bump, and within moments we were all laughing again and enjoying ourselves, behaving for all the world like we really were compatible, of like minds, and enjoying each others' company. Of course, it was all a charade. Europeans don’t really like Americans. And Americans return the sentiment. Please don't gasp. You know it's true and so do I.

But you know what else? There's nothing new here. To prove the point, if you can name the author of the following statements, I'll send you ten bucks – in Euros.

"In democratic countries, manners ordinarily have little grandeur because private life there is very petty. They are often vulgar, because thought has but few occasions to raise itself above preoccupations with domestic interests."

"Men who live in democracies are too mobile for a certain number of them to succeed in establishing a code of social graces and to be able to keep it in hand, so that it is followed. Each therefore acts nearly as he pleases, and a certain incoherence in manners always reigns because they conform to the sentiments and individual ideas of each, rather to an ideal model given in advance for imitation by all."

To paraphrase – People who live in democracies are simple, and without guidance or couth.

From that same author, however, consider the following:

"In aristocratic nations, all those close to the first class ordinarily strive to resemble it, which produces very ridiculous and very flat imitations. If democratic people do not possess in themselves a model of grand manners, they at least escape the daily obligation of seeing wretched copies of them."

To paraphrase – Power to the people.

Now to be fair, that little dinner exchange regarding the presence of manners, or lack thereof, on the part of my husband and myself was quite trite. But to be profound, that dinner exchange was not trite at all. It reflected the great divide that exists between countries who 'have history' and countries who do not.

Between peoples who see their present and future as an extension of their (inevitably grand) past, versus peoples who see only the present and the future and are (hopelessly) oblivious to the past.

Between countries and economies where coming from the right family or being educated at the right institution has a passel full of influence on one's long-term success in life, versus countries and economies where family of origin or alma mater play a significantly lesser role.

To overstate the case – Between countries where people are cultured and countries where they are not.

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Fast forward now, if you will, to Wednesday afternoon at DATE. When we last left our heroine, she was limping away from a cheerful – albeit brutally early – meeting with her friends from Applied Wave Research. (The Road to Munich & Back - Part 1)

The remainder of the morning was spent:

* attempting to get on-line access in the ICM Business Center (a real "bargain" at 30 Euros an hour, which bought you on-line access, but no word processing at all). Others were similarly engaged, as the Hot Spots in the convention hall were all overloaded and therefore completely dysfunctional;

* attempting to stay chipper and alert through various pre-arranged meetings with various companies in the DATE Press Room;

* attempting to look past the overt squabbles going on in the Press Room between various players there;

* attempting to gulp down as many cappuccinos as possible from the Mentor Graphics booth (appropriately rumored to be serving up the best on the show floor);

* and attempting to salvage the day by stopping by some of the events happening out in the Exhibit Hall during that afternoon.

One of the panels I wandered into was in the midst of a lively discussion when I arrived. The panelists were speaking of technologies and those who invest in them. The general point of the conversation was to compare and contrast the investment strategies and mindsets of venture capitalists in Silicon Valley with those that characterize venture capitalists in Europe.

As I choose to neither name nor directly quote any of the panelists speaking there, the comments here are only my impression of the panelists' impressions – and not their impressions verbatim. Europe, as it turns out, is not a great place to track down oodles of venture capital. Silicon Valley, however, is.

European venture capitalists are quite cautious, slow to decide, and difficult to deal with over the early stages of development for a start-up company. Silicon Valley venture capitalists, on the other hand, are aggressive. If they can be convinced that your technology has chops, you may get funding faster and at higher levels from a Silicon Valley VC than any VC in Europe could ever conceive of.

Europe can be stodgy, Silicon Valley can be nimble. Europe believes the large players on the continent will do cutting-edge development in-house. Silicon Valley believes innovation comes out of small organizations. Europe is ponderous. Silicon Valley is Peter Pan.

That's the good news if you plan to look for money from Silicon Valley. The bad news, however, is geographical.

If you're a European start-up, if you've got a hot idea and want to move on it fast to complete development and get it to market, if you're a European and you believe innovation comes out of small organizations – you better plan on setting up a shop of some kind in Silicon Valley.

That's because early stage venture capital is always local. Silicon Valley's legendary VCs – just like the VCs in the U.K. and on the Continent – like to be able to keep a personal eye on their portfolio companies. They like to drop by to attend monthly board meetings. They like to have a look at the books to see how their investments are (or are not) coming along. They also like to know that the people who are playing with their investment dollars are living frugally, and that can only be monitored in person.

So, given that everyone on the panel agreed that there's a difference in the mindset between Europe and Silicon Valley, is it okay to ask why that is? What is it that causes one place to harbor the status quo and the other to harbor change and disruptive thinking?

Well, let's make some wild statements based on metrics that can't be quantified, on theorems that can't be proven. Europe is a place of history. It's a place of refined manners, momentous wars, great kings, writers, thinkers, artists, poets, and aristocracy. America – Silicon Valley in particular – is not a refined place. We don't honor aristocracy and we don't honor poets. As my ex-brother-in-law used to say – and he was a Brit – "The only thing that marks the measure of a man in America is the amount of money he has." How many times has that been said in particular about the folks in Silicon Valley?

The funny thing is – the folks in Silicon Valley come from all over the world! They come from traditional societies, societies that harbor the status quo, societies with aristocracy and manners, societies with a sense of history, poetry, culture and great food. They also come from poor societies, where class structures are rigid and a man simply can not plan on ever escaping the role that he has been born into in life. They also come from other places in the U.S. where the weather's not so great, the lawyers, VCs, tech support, and infrastructure are not so intact. In other words, Silicon Valley's a place without a past. It only has the present and a future. People don't come to Silicon Valley for the history, the poetry, the refinement, or the culture.

They come for something else, and it's not just to make money. They come to explore ideas, technologies, implementations, concepts, business models, partnerings, investment dollars, and a legal and venture capital community who think outside the box, and definitely don't honor the status quo.

More profoundly, the atmosphere in Silicon Valley doesn't honor democracy and capitalism as much as it honors equality. Here in Silicon Valley, every man starts out as an equal. Equally able to succeed. Equally able to fail. It's not always a fair process, it's not always a democratic process, but equality is definitely what makes the place tick.

If people who are cultured, people who have a sense of class, want to succeed in Silicon Valley, they first need to drop their obsession with table manners. They need to foster instead an obsession with innovation, creative thinking, and moving forward – ever forward. No matter the consequences.

The fact is, a whole lot of people in Silicon Valley know how to handle a fork and knife at the dinner table. And a whole lot of people do not. Interestingly enough, Moore's Law cares not a whit, which is which. Do you?

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"The charms of equality are felt at all moments, and they are within reach of all; the noblest hearts are not insensitive to them, and the most vulgar souls get their delights from them. The passion [and technology] to which equality gives birth will therefore be both energetic and general."

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March 31, 2005

Peggy Aycinena owns and operates EDA Confidential. She can be reached at peggy@aycinena.com

Copyright (c) 2005, Peggy Aycinena. All rights reserved.