New Venture Lab: Equipping Christian Entrepreneurs

The following summaries were developed by Philip Crissman during his participation in the recent Startup School 2008 at Stanford University:

David Lawee, VP Corporate Development, Google; founder, XFire.

Main take-away: Hurry Up. David emphasized the role of speed in a startup, and how the modern timetable is considerably shorter than a more traditional "2 years until product launch" strategy. Your ability to turn on a dime and do things quickly is highlighted as a major advantage for the startup.

Sam Altman, Founder, Loopt.

Main take-away: If you can avoid having to raise money, then don't do it. If you do need to raise money, get it out of the way and get back to work; many startups have been sidetracked by the money-raising process, even fizzling out along the way.

Jack Sheridan, Lawyer, Wilson Sonsini.

Main take-away: Some legal decisions that you may make early on never go away; pay close attention to these sorts of issues.

Know:

• Who owns the company
• Who owns the technology (IP)
• Who controls the company
• Who gets what in a liquidity event (sale, IPO, etc.)

Paul Graham; Founder, ViaWeb, YCombinator.

Main take-away: Build something people want + Don't worry too much about money = Non-profit. Doing "good" is a strategy. The "Tamagotchi" effect -- making something that attracts users and a community gives you something to take care of; this can be a powerful motivator.

Greg McAdoo, Partner, Sequoia Capital.

Main take-away: Greg's wave & surfer metaphor. It takes a great surfer (entrepreneur) to ride a great wave (business/social/technology trend). The surfer has to pick the wave, but can't control the wave.
Know your market; as much about it as possible.
Have a market "whose hair is on fire" -- who needs your product badly, now.

David Heinemeier Hansson, creator, Ruby on Rails, partner, 37Signals:

Main take-away: Your odds are better to not try to be the next Facebook/YouTube/billion dollar acquisition. You can do very well just creating a great product and charging money (gasp!) for that product. Don't be in such a hurry, don't try to be so big, don't look for a wave.

Paul Buchheit: creator, Gmail, founder, FriendFeed.

Main take-away: On listening to users; listen != obey. Listening to your users, you don't necessarily do exactly what they tell you they want; interpret their feedback to try to determine what the real problem is. Then find a solution to that problem.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon.

Main take-away: Cloud computing will be increasingly important, and doesn't need to be an industry with a single winner.

Mike Arrington, blogger, TechCrunch.

Main take-away: Getting press for your startup: have a compelling story. Stand out; stand out in a different way than other people have stood out (used Seth Godin's purple cow analogy).

Marc Andreesson, Founder, Netscape, Ning, etc.

Main take-away: Be so good they can't ignore you (via Steve Martin).
Be prepared for everything to look like it will fail... and nearly doing so. Don't quit.
Have a business model that doesn't depend on a great economy (especially right now).

Peter Norvig, Director of research, Google.

Main take-away: Start small, go fast, iterate rapidly. Leverage data; especially other people's data. A challenge: anyone can go out onto the web and get 1.7 billion words. Go get them and do something (analysis, algorithms, searching, etc.) with them.

Source: OnStartups.com