Sarah, Myoni Co-founder
The Myriad innovation festival was an amazing experience that was preluded by more action-packed madness in San Francisco. I didn’t sleep a whole lot that week. In the lead up to my trip Myoni was in Sydney for the Natural & Organic Tradeshow for more fun pre-launch word spreading.
I arrived in Los Angeles and navigated three different models of transportation (not including a random guy called Kevin’s boombox playing escort to the bus stop which involved transversing incoming traffic and several invites to join him later at the beach followed by insisting we run for the bus only to say just joking it’s the next one, funny guy) caught up with former employer and friend for brunch, Lilly who runs amazing programs for artists launching their careers in the US. We then went vintage shopping before I met up with two friends I went to uni with in India, one of whom, Tiki, runs a small recording studio and the other Priyanka, was in town to attend a film festival (which her film, Maun, won). There wasn’t a lot of sleeping those first few days. Then I hopped to Arizona for a bit of nature.
Sedona was a peaceful retirement village until the rich and famous started buying holiday houses, western films got made and many spiritual seekers and nature enthusiasts flocked here for the beautiful desert rocks.
Thankfully I had my prototype Myoni cup because my cycle came early after a day of walking around Bell and Courthouse Rocks.
Myoni on location.
After some quiet time in Sedona I whipped to the Grand Canyon for the day, before heading to San Francisco to begin the Myriad pre-event festivities. We thought it would be cool to also tap into the co-working and co-living scene of SF so I stayed at Start Up Base Camp. I also had lunch with my friend, who works for Lucas Film we checked out some Star Wars paraphernalia and enjoyed her workplace’s on tap Kombutcha!
Star Wars concept sketches.
We visited the headquarters of some of the world’s largest companies. The game of business operates at another level there and at a faster pace. From office tours at Cisco Meraki and Palo Alto, we got an insight into all the employee perks and quirks - from parking stations for dogs to multiple meal stations and vending machines with keyboards in them - it was worlds away from the humble lunch room.
Even the female toilets come well stocked.
Then, the networking and socialising kicked up a notch. We had arange of events where steamed brussel sprouts were served beside the best beers. Or low lit bars with daggy music played too softly to enthusiastically sing over the top of without drawing excessive attention to oneself. We also had a beautiful walk through the Redwoods. The Myriad pre-event experience was filled with social entrepreneurs, bankers, corporate business people, students, Startups, Venture Capitalists, Government staff and a handful of celebrities.
Then it was time for Myriad Air. The first of its kind, an experiment of sorts where a bunch of innovative thinkers were invited to fly from San Francisco to Brisbane together to attend and co-create the Myriad Innovation festival.
Then the Myriad innovation festival began a few days later. There were a range of speakers, workshops and networking opportunities as well as a mini expo set up and a pitching contest. We met a myriad of interesting people who opened up several new doors that we excited to walk through and we appreciate you, for coming along with us. Every piece of feedback fuels us to create the best product we can. As you know, its taken much longer than we’d have hoped. Its constantly teaching us humility and patience. We knew that doing things in a way that was fully aligned with our values would not be fast and cheap, and we’re so grateful that our community gets that.
Here’s our NZ neighbour Rod Drury at Myriad, he created the accounting software we use. We are one of 1.4 million of this guy’s customer base.