Entrepreneur Tony Falkenstein (middle right), with some of the students who made the trip to San Francisco and neighbouring Silicon Valley.
Entrepreneur Tony Falkenstein (middle right), with some of the students who made the trip to San Francisco and neighbouring Silicon Valley.
It’s one thing to read about the home of the world’s biggest tech firms, and its most fertile hub for startups.
It’s another to visit it.
But that’s what happened over late August and early September as a group of 15 Auckland University students were taken on an all-expenses-paid studytour of Silicon Valley and neighbouring San Francisco by philanthropist and entrepreneur Tony Falkenstein.
The itinerary included site visits to tech giants Amazon and Google, and a workshop hosted by Allbirds - the sustainable footwear brand co-founded by Kiwi Tim Brown, which is currently restructuring after a rollercoaster ride since its 2021 listing on the Nasdaq.
The students also visited Synthego, a hot biotech that works with Crispr gene-editing technology, and start-ups including ClassDojo and Drop Station.
They also met with expat entrepreneurs working in the Bay Area including Bowen Pan, who was behind the creation of Facebook Marketplace; Bethanie Maples - the one-time Google AI lead who recently founded Atypical AI; Divya Dhar Cohen, VP of product at Cognito Therapeutics, which is investigating neuromodulation (electrical or chemical stimulation of neurons) as a way of addressing Alzheimer’s disease; Luke Baxter, chief product officer at Handshake - which bills itself as a platform for students to build a career without any connections; and Priyanka Shekhar, the former Bose head of advanced technology who is now handling immersive audio for virtual and augmented reality at Facebook as a lead at Meta Reality Labs.
The “Vanguard” trip was also bankrolled by the Onehunga-based Falkenstein, the former Bartercard owner and founder of NZX-listed Just Life Group - which owns the Just Water water-cooler business.
The NZ Business Hall of Fame member has now donated a total of $1.2 million to the University of Auckland Business School’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, to facilitate the travel.
“I set up the Vanguard Programme with the intent of sending up to 20 UOABS students and two faculty members to San Francisco and Silicon Valley,” Falkenstein told the Herald.
“Covid interfered with this intention, and it was only last year that the first group made the trip. The amount committed was $600,000 over five years, and based on the success over these first two years, my wife and I have just committed a further $600,000 to another five years of this programme.
“I was fortunate to accompany the Vanguard group to Silicon Valley in September 2023. I was able to observe how successful the programme was in terms of opening the eyes of participants to the realities of the global world. We visited Allbirds, Amazon, Google and Stanford, and met with several startups, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists,” Falkenstein said.
“The students said the trip was life-changing and I am sure that is correct.”
Falkenstein earlier donated $500,000 to Waikato University’s School of Management to run a similar student travel programme - but with a focus on travel to east-Asian countries, including Vietnam, Singapore and China, over the next five years.
He also donated $300,000 to Onehunga High School, which he attended in the 1960s, to establish a business studies programme.
Entrepreneur Tony Falkenstein (left), with some of the students who made the trip to San Francisco and neighbouring Silicon Valley.
Ironically, the son of German-Jewish refugees did not set any academic records in his early days. He scraped through School Certificate before failing University Entrance twice. He began his career as a pastry chef - although two years later he did make it to Auckland University, where he enrolled for a BCom.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
