Priya Guha was Britain's first Consul General to San Francisco, effectively a 'mini-ambassador' to... [+]
If Silicon Valley is a stage then the giants of Apple, Google and Facebook play the leading parts, while startup founders, venture capitalists and the press play supporting roles.
Ever heard of that other supporting role, the ambassador?
Priya Guha spent five years as the United Kingdom’s Consul General to San Francisco (the first female in the role) and much of that time trying to convince tech startups that they should start their global expansion plans with an office in Britain. It's a behind-the-scenes supporting role in the Valley, but one being increasingly played by diplomats from other nations too.
Guha has just been checking messages on her phone when I meet her in the elegant lobby of Brown’s Hotel in Central London. She’s half Indian, half English, and spent most of her career bringing people from different countries together. Today she’s heading up the British division of Silicon Valley accelerator RocketSpace in London, but for most of the last five years she was in San Francisco, networking with the Valley’s entrepreneurs and investors and persuading them on the merits of the U.K.
Being a diplomat involves some marketing expertise, because you’re essentially trying to convince a company why your country is better than others for expansion. Britain has the benefit of English as a first language, and it’s also been doing diplomacy in Silicon Valley for longer than other nations like China, Guha says.
Did she ever find herself competing with diplomatic counterparts from the likes of the Chinese embassy in San Francisco? Guha says no, since many startups who wanted to expand out of America’s west coast did so in two directions at once: east to Shanghai or Beijing, and west to London at the same time.
Among her success stories: her team helped Yammer, the enterprise collaboration tool, make London its first international office outside San Francisco in 2012.
Part of her team's strategy was to work with the U.K.'s office for international trade in San Francisco to track which startups in the Valley were raising new money.
“When a company gets funding, it’s likely they’re going to think about internationalization,” she says. As soon as a new round closed, the team would pounce, contacting them to set up a meeting and “put the right statistics on the table.”
Guha finished her job as Consul General in August 2016, just a couple of months after Brexit vote. You could call that good timing, since her successor, Andrew Whittaker, must now make the case to Valley startups that Britain’s step towards isolationism won’t hurt its role as an international hub for innovation and business growth.
“The core of what’s in the U.K. hasn’t changed,” Guha argues. “You still have a talented workforce and research credentials in the U.K., and a legislative framework that’s pro-business… The reality is there is uncertainty about the future,” but that tends to be a harder problem for bigger companies than for startup founders. “Uncertainty for entrepreneurs is easier to deal with.”
Many in the tech sector would disagree with Guha on that. Is she slipping back into diplomatic-speak? She crosses her arms, sits back and looks up at the ceiling to think about this for a moment. “That is what I think,” she finally says.
“It’s tougher for bigger companies. It’s easier for entrepreneurs. We are where we are and I think there’s an opportunity to be seized from that for people willing to be risk takers, who see technology as unconstrained by global boundaries.”
Global boundaries were the driving force for Guha’s last job. But if they’re becoming less important that means the role of any diplomat to Silicon Valley is changing too, and forging a path for any startup founder continues to be anything but straightforward.
