Future-Proofing You

12Remote Workers Are Your New Competitive Advantage

To win in the marketplace you must first win in the workplace.

—Doug Conant, co‐author Touch Points

IF YOU EVER HAPPEN to visit Woodside, California, along a narrow tributary of Bear Creek, nestled in an old grove of oaks, sits a world renown restaurant. Buck's Restaurant of Woodside is not famous because of its BBQ Bacon Burger or Bodacious Hot Fudge Pie; though both are local favorites. It's not famous for its wild décor complete with an eclectic array of flying machines dangling from its ceiling, a human‐size Statue of Liberty holding an ice cream cone, or the giant wooden sculpture of a spawning salmon out front. What makes Jamis MacNiven's zany eatery famous is the legendary role it has played in Silicon Valley startup history. Located just four miles from Sand Hill Road (where iconic venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital, Accel, Greylock Partners, Menlo Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Andressen Horowitz, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and others are headquartered), many startups without offices of their own had some of their earliest meetings at Buck's. Hotmail, Netscape, PayPal, Tesla, and many others met with VCs here. So large is the fabled status of this restaurant that venture capitalist Bill Draper begins his book The Startup Game: Inside the Partnership between Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs with a chapter titled “Breakfast at Buck's.”

Restaurants aren't the only places to hatch startups. HP, Disney, Amazon, ...