A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. Mark Twain Venture Capitalists who are serious about turning their firms into more than one-fund wonders may want to have their associates actually start and run a company for a year. Running a company is distinctly different [...]
Filed under: Venture Capital | 69 Comments »
I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. (Thanks to Kristo Ovaska and team for the fabulous logistics!) I presented to 1,000’s of entrepreneurs, talked to 17 startups, gave 12 lectures, had 9 interviews, chatted with 8 VC’s, sat on 4 panels, talked policy with 2 government ministers, 2 members of [...]
Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan, Customer Development, Teaching, Venture Capital | 15 Comments »
I spent the month of September lecturing, and interacting with (literally) thousands of entrepreneurs in two emerging startup markets, Finland and Russia. This is the first of two posts about Finland and entrepreneurship. —— I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. (Thanks to Kristo Ovaska and team [...]
Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan, Customer Development, Teaching, Technology, Venture Capital | 19 Comments »
Not understanding and agreeing what “Entrepreneur” and “Startup” mean can sink an entire country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. ——— I’m getting ready to go overseas to teach, and I’ve spent the last week reviewing several countries’ ambitious attempts to kick-start entrepreneurship. After poring through stacks of reports, white papers and position papers, I’ve come to a couple [...]
Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan, Business Model versus Business Plan, Teaching, Technology, Venture Capital | 59 Comments »
Silicon Valley was born in an era of applied experimentation driven by scientists and engineers. It wasn’t pure research, but rather a culture of taking sufficient risks to get products to market through learning, discovery, iteration and execution. This approach would shape Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial ethos: In startups, failure was treated as experience (until you ran out of money). [...]
Filed under: Lean LaunchPad, Teaching, Venture Capital | 25 Comments »
Scientists and engineers as founders and startup CEOs is one of the least celebrated contributions of Silicon Valley. It might be its most important. ———- ESL, the first company I worked for in Silicon Valley, was founded by a PhD in Math and six other scientists and engineers. Since it was my first job, I [...]
Filed under: Lean LaunchPad, Teaching, Venture Capital | 30 Comments »
While on vacation I had a phone interview with Kevin Ohannessian of Fast Company who wanted a few “funding stories.” Here are two of them. Apologies for the rambling stream of consciousness. The original interview in Fast Company can be seen here. Throw in the Photo and You Have a Deal When we were trying [...]
Filed under: E.piphany, Venture Capital | 12 Comments »
My friend Ben Horowitz and I debated the tech bubble in The Economist. An abridged version of this post was the “closing” statement to Ben’s rebuttal comments. Part 1 is here and Part 2 here. The full version is below. ————————————————— It’s been fun debating the question, “Are we in a tech bubble?” with my colleague Ben Horowitz. Ben and his partner Marc [...]
Filed under: Family/Career/Culture, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Venture Capital | 14 Comments »
My friend Ben Horowitz and I debate the tech bubble in The Economist. This post is the “rebuttal” statement to Ben’s opening comments. An edited version of this post originally appeared as part 2 of 3. Part 1 is here. ———————————————————————————– You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em Know when to fold them Know when to walk [...]
Filed under: Venture Capital | 16 Comments »
My friend, Ben Horowitz, and I debate the tech bubble in The Economist. This post originally appeared as part 1 of 3 ———————————————————————————– We won’t get fooled again We don’t get fooled again Don’t get fooled again No, no! The Who 1971 First, let us start with a definition of a tech bubble. A tech [...]
Filed under: Venture Capital | 32 Comments »
Last week I had 15 Finnish entrepreneurs out to the ranch (Aalto University has a partnership with Stanford’s Technology Ventures Program.) Monday we hosted 40 Danish entrepreneurs for dinner and today its graduate students from Chalmers University in Sweden. Looks like the ice is melting in Scandinavia. Welcome to the democratization of entrepreneurship. Hermione Way of TheNextWeb grabbed [...]
Filed under: Technology, Venture Capital | 2 Comments »
There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come Victor Hugo When The Boardroom is Bits A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. It’s time to ask why startup board governance has failed to keep pace with innovation. Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since [...]
Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan, Business Model versus Business Plan, Lean LaunchPad, Teaching, Venture Capital | 32 Comments »
There are none so blind as those who will not see. Jonathan Swift What’s Wrong With Today’s Board Meetings As customer and agile development reinvent the Startup, it’s time to ask why startup board governance has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since the early 1900’s. [...]
Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan, Business Model versus Business Plan, Lean LaunchPad, Teaching, Venture Capital | 18 Comments »
In April 2010 I received an email that said, “I’m an incoming Stanford student in the fall and working on a project that a number of people suggested I get in touch with you about.” Ok, I get a lot of these. Is this some grad student or post doc who wanted to do some [...]
Filed under: Customer Development, Teaching, Venture Capital | 23 Comments »
Om Malik runs Gigaom, probably the most interesting and technically accurate sites on the blogosphere. He had me in for an interview. We covered a wide range of topics. 0:22 – the Entrepreneurial explosion 1:45 – Are we in a Bubble? 3:20 - The Last Bubble 6:30 – Rules for the New Bubble 8:05 – Metrics [...]
Filed under: Customer Development, Teaching, Venture Capital | 4 Comments »
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