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Lessons from Entrepreneurs & VCs

Our last class in Entrepreneurship & VC featured all three of the instructors - Andy Rachleff (co-founder of Benchmark Capital), Peter Wendell (founder of Sierra Ventures), and Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google) - individually talking for 45 minutes, giving us parting advice. It was one of the best single classes I've ever had. I thought I would share here some of my key take-aways.

- Successful people listen. You have two ears and one mouth. Use them in that ratio. You learn more when you listen than when you talk.

- Putting on "the cloak" of leadership. A large part of your role is to inspire and motivate your employees, and people will look to you for confidence. If you were on a plane with engine problems, you don't want the pilot to say "I am exploring a number of options and hope that...", you want him to say, "I will do whatever it takes to land this plane."

- The importance of passion. When Warren Buffet finds people to run his business, his key criteria is to find somebody who would do the job whether they would get paid or not.

- Just when you think you've got it 100% right, you can be taken down. Look no further than what happened to JetBlue in February. In January, a mistake like this by JetBlue was almost unthinkable.

- People who are lucky make their own luck. And you only make your own luck by staying in the game.

- You will only be as good as the people you will recruit. Media & culture celebrate individuals, but teams succeed.

- The best scientists can explain complex issues in simple terms. Pretty good scientists can explain complex issues in complex terms.

- A's hire A's. B's hire C's. Always strive to hire people better than you are.

- Be a clear, fair manager. For example, when speaking to a business unit leader that isn't succeeding, say: "I want a strategy to win in 1-page and the objectives we need to hit each quarter to reach them."

- When considering a business:

- Look for change. What inflection point are you taking advantage of? Without change, there is rarely opportunity.

- Always look for the 80/20. 80 percent of the value is delivered by 20 percent of the product/service. Focus on that 20 percent.

- Does is answer a real pain? Who is the user and what is their pain point?

- Just keep selling. Not a bad default strategy to communicate to your team.

- Be humble. The markets are brutal to those who are arrogant.

- Understand what you don't do well. Surround yourself with people and resources that can do these things well.

- Practice self-discipline. Set targets, have timetables, have clear unambiguous goals. Life passes quickly - days, weeks, months, years, a lifetime.

- Be yourself. In group settings, you usually serve the group best by thoughtfully expressing exactly what you are thinking. Not necessarily what the group wants to hear.

- You've got to give trust to get trust. Treat people as you would want to be treated. Sometimes people take advantage of you. That's fine, don't do business with them again.

- Shoot for the moon.To be successful, don't follow the pack. If you want to win, don't hedge.

Chad & Steve on Why YouTube Won

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Chad and Steve, co-founders of YouTube, came to our Entrepreneurship & VC class. I was fortunate to have lunch with them afterwards as well. One of the questions that I asked them was:

Given that there were dozens of video sharing sites before YouTube (indeed, iFilm had seemingly "won" in the space, being acquired years before), what specifically did YouTube do that everybody else missed?*

So, I will generously paraphrase the answer, but basically they said that it came down to two big things. First, although they were a relative late-comer to the online video space, they were the first to add easy embedding of videos in other pages. This allowed them to ride the MySpace phenomenon. Second, YouTube had a highly scalable back-end, so when "viral videos" brought down other services, YouTube stayed up. It turns out that much of the success of these services is based on these viral videos, so this led to YouTube's continues success.

Of course these two major factors were in addition to thousands of "little things" that YouTube did right every day in executing their vision. However, it's instructive to think of the major factors that allowed them to win in a space crowded by so much money and talent.

* Long-term readers may have noted that this is a topic I'm generally interested in. See my post referencing Danah Boyd's thoughts on why MySpace beat Friendster.

Steve Ballmer Comes by for Lunch

Steve Ballmer came by for a lunchtime talk at Stanford GSB. I had to finish an assignment, so I only got a chance to see a bit of it. Here's a run-down from the San Jose Merc News and some good commentary by Scoble (1/2 way down). Funny side-note was that Eric Schmidt was eating lunch in the cafeteria while Steve was upstairs giving the speech.

PS - I'm outrageously excited to have finished the bulk of my work for the quarter! I'm off to LA tomorrow and then to Hong Kong and Beijing next week.

Good to Not-So-Great: Debunking Hot Business Books

Great new book out of Wharton: "Phil Rosenzweig rips into some of the most popular business books of recent years, including the bestsellers In Search of Excellence and Good to Great. Along the way, he argues that many of the pat principles bandied about in the business world are based on misguided thinking and flimsy research."

The Halo Effect: Debunking Some Hot Business Books with One of His Own

In my final strategy class last year, I asked our professor for any book or magazine suggestions. He thought for a minute and could only offer the Harvard Business Review. At first, I was shocked, having been a long-time reader of popular business books. However, after two years at business school, I have become far more critical of mainstream business books and their methodologies. The only two books I know consistently recommend are The Innovator's Dilemma and The Tipping Point. Any others I'm missing? Let me know in the comments.

[thanks for the link, Andrew]

Essential Software for MBA Students

I wrote an article for the Stanford Business Reporter this week about productivity-enhancing software programs. As the suggestions are more broadly applicable, I am republishing a condensed version of the article here.

(Note that I haven’t included some of the big ones; I’m assuming you already know about Office, Firefox, Skype, anti-spyware etc. Also, apologies to the Mac faithful – we are just doing Windows this time. Enjoy!)

Stop Cutting and Pasting: Anagram (link)

You get an email about an appointment. You then painstakingly copy and paste the info from the information into your Outlook calendar. No more! With Anagram, you simply highlight the information, hit F12 and all the information goes straight into your calendar! Anagram parses through the text, placing the proper information in the appropriate fields. Anagram also works with email signatures, bringing them quickly into your Contacts. If you only download one program from this article, this should be it.

Paste Unformatted Text: PureText  (link)

Find yourself “referencing” Wikipedia in your PowerPoint presentation? If so, you may have noticed that annoying links and formatting get copied over when all you wanted is the text. PureText is a tiny, neat liitle app which allows you to paste text into another application, without getting all the formatting from the original source. PureText is easy to use, simply use WINDOWS+V instead of Ctrl+V.

Keep Your System In Shape: TuneUp Utilities (link)

When you get bloated, unhealthy and slow, you go to the gym. What can your computer do? Why, use TuneUp Utilities.  TuneUp Utilitie has a one-click wizard which makes your system faster, slimmer and more secure. All important aspects of system configuration, security, cleanup and maintenance can be accessed through an slick, easy-to-use interface.

Create Cool Screen Shots: Snag-It (link)

I used SnagIt for all the cool screen shots in this post. Yes, I know you can capture screen elements with PrintScreen, but PrintScreen is to SnagIt what pre-made sandwiches are to In-n-Out burgers. SnagIt lets you grab images of Web sites and software applications. Editing tools allow you to circle important areas, and add arrows and text with a single click. You even can capture video and record screen action.

Tiny PowerPoint Files: NX PowerLite (link)

NXPowerLite is a great little app .NXPowerLite optimizes Powerpoint documents – crunches presentations from several MBs down to a hundred KB or so, with minimal data warp. Works great for emailing a large project to your group.

Photos: Picasa (link)

I thought everybody already knew about Picasa, but I was over at two consecutive dinners last weekend where the host didn’t have it. Simply put, it’s the best and most fun way to organize and share photos on your computer.

Easy Online Backup: Mozy (link)

Sure you may own a backup hard drive, but when was the last time you actually used it? Mozy doesn’t require any external hard drive, it automatically and securely backs up your system to a secure and private online backup whenever you turn on your computer. To be honest, I have never used Mozy (I use the similar online backup service Carbonite), but my friends Erik, Kayne, and Walt Mossberg swear it’s better, so I defer to them.

Fast Email Search: Lookout (link)  X1 (link)

It can take ages to file and sort through all of your emails. Lookout is fast search for your e-mail, files, and desktop integrated with Microsoft Outlook. Lookout X1 will find your search terms hiding nearly anywhere in your Outlook or public mailbox - subjects, bodies, phone numbers, addresses, etc.

I should note that many swear by other desktop search products such as X1, Copernic and Google Desktop. I decided to recommend Lookout here as it is the simplest and doesn’t slow down your computer.

Note that if you have Outlook 2007, you may want to stick with the default Windows Search application.

MyLifeOrganized (link)

MyLifeOrganized is a turbo version of Outlook Tasks. It’s a great little app for people who like to prioritize. The task outliner will help you to organize your goals, projects and tasks into a tree. The to-do list will generate actions that require immediate attention to keep you focused.

Hope you found this helpful. For the computer geeks out there, I’m sure this will spark debate and other recommendations, so let the nerdfight begin in the comment suggestions.

Next issue of the reporter I will be featuring “Useful Web Sites” – so let me know of suggestions.