In July 2026, I became a teaching assistant for NTU's Silicon Valley Entrepreneurship Exploration Program — here in Silicon Valley for two months!
Week one was packed with group activities, running from about 10 AM to 10 PM each day. In just a few days, we visited three major companies and exchanged ideas with San Francisco's Taiwan Technology Commissioner Dr. Hong-Wei Yan, Jade Mountain Technology Association Honorary Chairman Li-Min Hu, 30+ NTU alumni in North America, 20+ industry mentors, and Taiwan startup founders in Silicon Valley. You could really feel the enthusiasm these seniors had to share their experiences! For aspiring entrepreneurs still exploring, it was truly a fortunate opportunity and connection!
This program is a brand new course from National Taiwan University (NTU) — the first time Taiwan and NTU have sent students to Silicon Valley for a full 7-week hands-on entrepreneurship exploration!!
Global Innovation & Entrepreneurship: Silicon Valley Exploration Practicum, guided by Professor Yu-Ze Zhuang!
From nearly 100 applicants across NTU's various colleges, 15 students were selected to participate. The program starts with a week of company visits and innovation ecosystem exchange activities. Over the following weeks, each student (or team) conducts an Exploration Project based on their own interests.
Throughout the program, students independently interact with startup founders, engineers, investors, researchers, and other professionals across Silicon Valley's innovation ecosystem. With the guidance of industry mentors, they gain deep insights into Silicon Valley's startup environment while developing their own exploration projects.
Startup Island Taiwan - Silicon Valley Hub was incredibly supportive. Thanks so much to Chen Kai-Er & You-Li Su for their full assistance in providing such a great venue for everyone to exchange ideas!
Day One: Google Visit and Welcome Reception
At Google, four senior Googlers shared their insights. Many thanks to our host Yen-Ju Cat Chen:
- Chao Huang Chen — NTU Management Information Systems alumnus, ML Infra at YouTube Shorts, Engineering Manager
- Janet Kuo — NTU MIS alumnus, Senior Staff Engineer in Cloud, one of the core foundational leaders of Kubernetes, SIG Apps chair & TL, Kubernetes AI Conformance lead
- Sam Lin — Senior Staff Technical Solutions Engineer in Android Auto, Founder of CS Equality AI effort
We even had lunch and went biking at Google — it was so energizing!
In the evening, we held a welcome reception. Special thanks to San Francisco Taiwan Technology Commissioner Dr. Hong-Wei Yan and Jade Mountain Technology Association Honorary Chairman Li-Min Hu for coming to encourage the students, along with the warm welcome from Northern California NTU alumni and our program mentors:
- nurol.ai founder Yale Lee
- NATEA Silicon Valley chapter president Jenny Lin
- Outliers Fund Poseidon
- Maolin Photonics investment manager Jeff
- Taudia CEO Paul Hung
- F50 Nexus Partner Eric Tao
- Degree Capital / Harvard visiting professor William Lin Yi-Chuan
- Product at Dropbox, Meta Wen-Hsiang Hsiao
- Norman Liang, Sustainable Impact Capital (SIC)
- Anita Huang, Sinovation Ventures
Professor Zhuang and I also took the opportunity to introduce NTU's Entrepreneurship and Innovation Eimba program — Ei is now making its Silicon Valley debut too!
Day Two: Synopsys Visit, SIT Hub Exchange, and Formosa Founders House
At Synopsys, Brandon Wang, VP of Corporate Strategy Group, shared insights about the company:
- Technology roadmapping in rapidly changing industries
- Identifying emerging technology opportunities
- Contrasting corporate innovation and startup innovation
- Building sustainable growth through ecosystems and partnerships
At lunch, Jimmy, a venture capitalist, and I discussed our thoughts on startups and the future. Jimmy was very generous in sharing ideas and we're both looking forward to more exchanges!!
In the afternoon, we had a SIT SV Hub member exchange and gained lots of entrepreneurial knowledge and insights!
- Influenxio (Allan Ko, Founder & CEO)
- MirWork (Kevin Hsieh, Founder)
- Cortex Advisory (Alan Chen, CEO & Co-Founder)
- Arklex.ai (Arbit Chen, Founder & CTO)
- Echomode.io (Sean Hong, Founder & CEO / Kenny Hong, Co-Founder)
They shared openly about fundraising, product development, and business — the process was humorous and engaging. We also discussed product-market fit (PMF). If a company's revenue growth is driven purely by adding more headcount rather than organic growth, it might not have found PMF yet. That really resonates with me in my own PR industry!
In the evening, we welcomed the long-anticipated Formosa Founders House members. I've known CK for 5-6 years, and he's one of the founders. Through Uly's introduction, they went through YC, and founder Wei Dai brought a crew of six entrepreneurs to the hub — this was their first visit!! I'd heard of David through chance encounters before, and meeting online friends in person was lovely! We'll have more fun and exchanges together moving forward XD.
Speaker lineup:
- Wei Dai — Formosa Founders House founder
- Peter Wang — Co-founder of Hermai AI and resident at Formosa Founders House
- Tomy — Robinhood, resident at Formosa Founders House
- Grace Chao — Hearing Action Inc. Founder / Audiologist
- Lilian Lee — Pic pet Founding Engineer
- CK Sun — Drone Founder (incubated at Founder.inc)
We used a Speed QA roundtable format, and everyone left wanting more! The day was packed but incredibly rewarding!
Day Three: Ambarella and Stanford
On day three, we visited Ambarella, Inc. Founder Fermi is an NTU alumnus who has been incredibly supportive and generous in sharing his story!!!
Ambarella is a semiconductor design company founded in Silicon Valley, pioneering ultra-high-definition image compression technology. In recent years, it successfully transformed into a leader in edge computing AI chips, focusing on developing low-power computer vision system-on-chip (SoC) solutions. The company is now publicly listed on NASDAQ (ticker: AMBA).
Ambarella's chip strength lies in enabling deep learning and analysis using image data without relying on cloud infrastructure. Products are widely applied in:
- Automotive Electronics: Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), smart electronic rearview mirrors, dash cams, and autonomous vehicles.
- Smart Security: Enterprise and home high-definition intelligent surveillance systems, facial recognition, and object tracking.
- Consumer Electronics: Wearables with electronic image stabilization (EIS) and high-performance image processing.
To visit a NASDAQ-listed company and hear the founder share his journey — we were truly fortunate!!
In the afternoon, we were welcomed by the Stanford NTU alumni association and senior students. We exchanged ideas with seven Stanford postdocs and students at the campus center, toured the campus, and took our first-ever cohort group photo. I'm sure each of these photos will become historical records for the future!
Teaching Assistant Reflection: On "Entrepreneurship"
As a teaching assistant fully immersed in this program, I've made over 100 connections and gained new perspectives on entrepreneurship:
- How do you raise capital when you're still at the concept stage based on the "dream-to-reality ratio"?
- After raising funds, how do you manage and tackle the various challenges of entrepreneurship?
- What defines startup success? What does growth look like to VCs and what are their expectations?
The gap between being a founder and developing a business is real. Thinking about my own situation, having to rebuild everything from scratch is genuinely daunting.
As for why Silicon Valley — people from around the world flock here, exchanging new ideas and concepts daily. You might meet a founder who just raised tens of millions on the train. Failure and challenges are everyday occurrences. Worrying about others' judgments is meaningless. You can do anything here, anything is possible. What matters is the value you create and whether you can get people to buy in.
The main takeaway is: #A product that solves pain points is the best marketing.
Looking forward to the next 6 weeks — I can't wait!!
