We Got Quoted $500k for a Silicon Valley AI Trip – Alternatives?

2 points by bendtb 1 year ago | 7 comments

I work for a commmodity / trading / shipping company. We wanted to invest and bring the whole management group for 5 day trip to Silicon Valley, focused on AI and LLM technologies.

The idea was to expose a cross-functional group to the epicentre of innovation – to learn how leading tech companies actually use AI commercially, and bring back insights we could action.

The price tag? USD 500,000 for a week-long program for 10 people. That included visits, some programming, and facilitation. Unsurprisingly, we decided not to go ahead – but the desire to learn at the source is still very much alive. Our idea of a reasonable price tag is around USD 150,000 (where we recon half will go to flights and hotels).

So I turn to the Hacker News community:

1. Is it possible to arrange meaningful company visits to places like Google, OpenAI, or Anthropic without going through a costly middleman? How accessible are these companies for learning-focused groups?

2. Are top-tier universities like Stanford or Berkeley open to group visits, guest lectures, or curated AI sessions for international teams?

3. Are there local Bay Area companies or freelancers that help organise high-impact, cost-effective tech immersion trips?

4. Have you done this kind of trip before — what worked, what flopped, and what should we absolutely not miss if we self-organise?

Any advice, contacts, or shared experiences are welcome.

Thanks!

thecupisblue 1 year ago |

Unless you're working for a high frequency trading company, you will probably not receive over 10K USD of value from the this.

First off, visiting companies and universities - building LLM's and using them are quite different beasts. If your management team is not highly educated in the area of ML, this will mostly be useless to them, besides any "business development" discussions one might have with people who do that at OpenAI or Google.

What you are looking for is an "Applied AI" course. And still here, you'll get sold a lot of cheap bullshit for a high price. The amount of people actually good and capable of using LLM's at a high level is still quite low, but the amount of hustlers and influencers selling basic prompts and cheap ideas is large. I've seen people do this training and it basically turns out "heres this 5 popular tools, here's how to ask ChatGPT, heres a few good prompts" and thanks for the money. Beware of that, as you'll probably get peddled that by software agencies as one step in their funnel.

What you'd need, and what you can definitely get for that price tag, is a week long curated education program based on both the tech skill level of your management group and your industry. IMO, this would look quite a bit different and here's how it would ideally look:

1. Having an interview with the people included to estimate the skill level

2. Be given an insight into your workflow and a chance to observe it

3. Prepare a program dedicated to your team/industry

4. Get everyone out to a large bnb somewhere for a week

5. Have a combination of talks, QA's & "hackatons", where you will learn, build, learn again, build again, while having a chance to ask somebody real questions.

You'll get out of this with more insights and experience than a few random visits to companies, and with the building, develop an intuition for how actually it works and what you can do with it.

bendtb 1 year ago | |

Thank you for the thoughtful and direct response. This is exactly the kind of grounded critique I was hoping to receive by posting here.

I fully agree with your point about the noise in this space, this is what we are trying to cut through :-).

A lot of what is marketed as “AI inspiration” is little more than buzzwords and recycled content. Your suggestion of a curated, immersive off-site experience, with hands-on workshops, industry-specific examples, and a structured learn-and-build format, is genuinely compelling. The idea of starting with interviews to assess skill levels and tailoring the programme accordingly is especially relevant for us.

If you know anyone who delivers this kind of applied AI learning in a serious and thoughtful way, I would very much appreciate an introduction.

Thanks again for the honest feedback.

thecupisblue 1 year ago | | |

Hey, no worries! Don't want to see people get grifted by snake oil salesmen like it's agile certificates all over again :)

If you're interested, hit me up on the email in the profile, could help set something up.

duxup 1 year ago |

Is there some reason this has to be a trip to the Valley?

Depending on your teams current knowledge, it might be a waste of time to “learn from the source” if you’re just getting started on this topic.

bendtb 1 year ago | |

We are fairly AI positive, have pro chatgpt licenses for all and have our own software division building custom tools. So we feel ready to "take the next step".

There is also other elements: it sounds fun, offer great inspiration, support collaboration across teams, and help build a shared language around digital opportunities in the company.

Could we go to XYZ place in England, yes. Will it create the same magic, I doubt it.

Please note it is the Cowners idea, so he is willing to spend money on this out of his own pocket.

MrCoffee7 1 year ago |

It seems like it would be more cost effective to take your group to a business focused AI conference or to hire a faculty member from the Bay Area and have them come out to your site for one week to brief you on the current state of AI.

bendtb 1 year ago | |

We are not 100% focused on cost, life also have to be fun - but paying USD 50.000 to much is different from paying USD 400.000 too much.