Yesterday we had Bruce Dulnevie in our Entrepreneurship & VC class. Bruce is one of the founding partners of Benchmark Capital, the VC firm behind companies like eBya, Palm, and AOL.
When asked about what pattern he has seen in successful return his reply was:
1. Competitive instinct
2. Smartness - they give u the answer to ur question right away
3. Stamina - this is no easy trip
I am trying to think what classes should I take on this year. It was kind of frustrating because, first, it is relatively too late to think of this, and second, it is not easy to have classes that don't conflict with each other.
My main goal now is to get as much Entrepreneurship classes as I can. I believe while there are many great things at the GSB, learning about Entrepreneurship is one thing that can't be matched by any other schools.
I am already listed in "Managing Growing Enterprises" in the Spring with Grousbeck, which is great. But at the same time I'll miss taking three classes that i would have loved to take; "Formation of New Ventures" by Mark Leslie and Andy Rachleff, "Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital" by Eric Shmidt, Andy Rachleff, and Peter Wendell, and "Aligning Startups with their markets" by William Barnett and Andy Rachleff. The first two have been filled during the super round last May. The latter has a time conflict with "Managing Growing Enterprises" which I hadn't noticed when I applied.
Still the GSB provides several other options. For "Formation of new ventures", I'll try to get into the Garth Saloner class in the Spring. Saloner is believed to be a very good professor, however, the class will be less tech oriented and will miss having a prominent VC as an instructor. I'll also try to get into the other section of "Entrepreneurship and VC" which is given by John Glynn. I don't know much about Glynn, but i wouldn't expect this section to match one that has the CEO of Google among the instructors. 
Finally there is "Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability" - a joint B-School and D-School class. This seems to be a great class. It combines social entrepreneurship with innovative design. This class requires an application, so I'll have to put some effort in that.
Although i still have a "chance" for a great entrepreneurial academic year, if there is one advice i would give to a first year MBA student, it would be to start figuring out what classes to apply to early on.
Today i gave up most of my Saturday to attend communityNext - the viral marketing conference. I was hoping to get some insights similar to those you get from reading something like "Tipping Point", but this time hearing it from those experiencing it first hand. Unfortunately i got very little of that.
Except for one or two speakers/panelists, i really didn't get anything concrete that can be reapplied. Telling you that the main thing is to have a really good product, doesn't really add much. The over emphasized fun factor was starting to sound like irresponsible and goalless. This is not to say that there weren't a couple with meaningful things on their hands. But there was a big portion of people that are doing things that "they" think is fun and period; a not seemingly-interesting person broadcasting his life 24/7, a blog that has to do with cats and cheese burger, and a guy who thinks its extremely obvious that booze is so cool with email and have nothing to add more than that.
It's a different world out there. And they are the ones millions of people are downloading their apps on facebook. It's interesting to get to see it from the inside, but i don't seem to belong to it. Maybe I would have a different opinion if i were in their shoes playing around to start the next big thing, or maybe the next not very big thing.
Yesterday i finish reading "Crossing the Chasm", which i started reading less than ten days ago. I am usually not that fast with books, but this one was very special. It took me through a series of flash backs to the years i spent in software startup selling enterprise software. Lots of "Aha's". I believe anyone who's embarking on selling software to business would find it extremely useful.
The main theme is how a startup go mainstream with a disruptive high-tech product targeting the enterprise customer. There are a lot of basic marketing covered in the book. There is the typical segmentation, targeting, and positioning, and various elements of the 4 P's. However, the books main proposition is superimposing the product lifecycle and identifying different types of customers that are served in each stage - technology enthusiasts, visionaries, pragmatists, & conservatives. It adapts those marketing elements to the stages of that life cycle, and fleshes those high level concepts into more concrete images and tactics.
Much closer than I would have imagined 2 years ago, BUT not as close i could have or would have liked.
The closest i got was once having dinner with a founding partner of one of the big VC firms in the silicon valley, and the other was having dinner with a partner of another reputable VC firm, this time with a group of his portfolio companies. These dinners allowed for a deep discussion of how they think as VCs and what they are looking for in a startup.
I attended a handful of panels or presentations made by entrepreneurs, VC's, or both. Although those featured entrepreneurs with very catchy startups - Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, SimplyHired, Meebo, and others, they weren't as insightful as dinners, and didn't have the one-on-one feeling.
One thing i wish i did was seeing VCs and Entreprenuers in action. One chance to do this that i missed was this program that allows GSBer's to audit startups pitching their ideas to VC's. I should try to get into a similar thing next year isa.
I am one of Facebook's 24 million happy users. Having joined around 6 months ago, together with stumblevideo.com, facebook became my primary online destination. And as many ppl, reconnected me w/ ppl that were almost wiped from my memory.
But my interest wasn't just as a user. I spent some of my time this quarter working on a follow-up case on facebook for one of Prof. Barnett's classes. The main focus was to examine the actions they along the past year. This was nicely concluded with attending the session where the class discussed the case in the presence of Mark Zuckerberg. This is the third time i see Zuckerberg talk. Despite how young he is, 23 years old, he's an extremely smart grounded person that knows what he's doing.
I also attended the facebook f8 launch and hackathon a week earlier, of course i never knew what that was until i was there. That was a nice thing to see, developers from all over the place, coming in one place, to literly start coding their f8 applications.
That said, it's worth commenting on their platform launch. I think it's definitely the right move for an extremely ambitious company. It's the move that facebook needs to have its valuation rise to $8 billion as its owner said its worth. This said, it's not an easy move. The resemblance with Microsoft is initially dazzling, but a more careful analysis points out that it is a different situation. According to Zuckerberg, their value proposition is in an active social graph. I would modify that to say that their value proposition, at least to me, is an active social graph of a friendly nature. This might change with the opening of the platform.
Endeavor is one of the leading companies that focus on cultivating entrepreneurship in developing countries. Today Co-founder and CEO Linda Rottenberg talked at the GSB.
According to Linda, Endeavor seeks out countries where entrepreneurship is not part of the culture and tries to change that. Key to this is local buy-in from high profile investors and consultancy firms. The first step is to form a network of these investors and firms which would typically form endeavor's local board of directors. The next step would be to seek entrepreneurs who have potential for having a high impact - generating revenue and job opportunnities. Then they give them professional advice and give them access to the high level network they have formed to seek capital or further advice. 
The most interesting aspect of all this is that they are coming to Egypt by the end of this year. I knew from Linda that this was lead by Naguib Sawiris. Are you surprised? I am not. Time after time, the Sawiris family is proving they bring great value to the country, not only by the impact their businesses has on the economy, but also through directly investing in development efforts.
I'll try to get in contact with the person who is in charge of Endeavor come in to Egypt. Sounds Interesting!
I am in a middle of a big dilemma. What's the best thing to do next summer? (1) Join a big high tech company, (2) Join a high tech startup, or (3) join a not-for-profit in South or East Africa.
When it came the time to accept my Amazon offer a week ago - the only one i had at that time - i realized how confused i was, so i boldly (crazily) declined it. Now I am getting a second chance to be insane, yesterday Yahoo contacted me for a marketing internship. Everyone says Yahoo is not at its best times, but i have an initial liking to the people there. I think it depends on the project I'll be working on. Right now the most exciting would be a big company that has a big stack in the online video space - think TiVo, YouTube, GoogleVideo, or Apple Tv. I hope Yahoo has big plans there especially after the NBCUniversal/NewsCorp new company.
As for startups, most people say the best thing is to join a growth company not at a very early stage - think Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or eHarmony. However, this needs close networking which will take time and I it would be a huge risk. Another alternative, which is what i am working on, is to try and find a really cool early stage startup set to disrupt an industry - think powerset, joost, or xoopit. Here i have an advantage of the ESP funding offered by the Center of Entrepreneurship at the GSB to cover part of my compensation. I can land something quicker here but it requires more judgement.
The int' development at Africa is a huge decision. A big shift. I don't know much about what to expect. However it seems to be the kind of thing i can feel most comfortable and satisfied to contribute too - think acumen fund, kiva.org, or one-acre-fund. Kiva is great place because they combine social entrepreneurship with interent technology, however, they don't offer summer internships. The ultimate thing though would be to Win-a-trip-Africa. I can't think of a more life changing experience than this one.
Some would say i am making too big of a confusion for myself, but i think it is worth.
Someone asked me yesterday what's was an unexpected thing i experienced so far at Stanford. After some thought, i figured out that the most unexpected thing was the growing interest in social entrepreneurship and int' development.
First, the portion of those interested is unexpectedly high considering the primary focus of a business school. I would argue that at least 50 people in class have serious interest, many of which already have relevant experience. 
Second, there many organizations out there that are combing creativity, entrepreneurship to eliminating poverty. A company like kiva.org has tapped into a previously non-accessible market of micro donors that now relate directly to the recipients of their donations across the globe. Acumen fund is trying to use relatively low philanthropic capital to invest in startups that
bring innovative solutions to problems facing people at the bottom of the pyramid in poor countries in South East Asia and East Africa.
Third, the business school itself has programs, clubs, and courses tailored to meet this growing interest. There is the Public Management Program under which there are so many socially orietened clubs. There are also courses like "Social Entrepreneurship", "Strategy for non-profits", and "Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability". The latter focuses on innovative designs of affordable solutions for under developed countries.
This has had a big effect on the way i think. Before coming i thought public work is something i mate do late in my career. But now as appears from many of my previous posts, it's consuming a bigger portion of my thought.
Just came from one of VLAB's interesting panels that was held at the GSB. I had go to it despite having one of my finals tomorrow. The panel was about "Next Generation Search".
At the center of the event was Barney Pell the CEO and Founder of PowerSet - the startup aiming at disrupting online search through the use of AI. Barney made a very informative presentation about his vision about search and PowerSet's potential.
It was interesting to know that PowerSet's technology is based on exclusive rights to some of PARC's NLP technologies that weren't widely applied. I would typically think a startup develops all its core technologies from scratch. This said, PowerSet has added value by adapting this technology to serve online searchers and advertisers.
Among the things Barney presented was the results searches like "who did IBM acquire?" as obtained from PowerSet and Google. The discrepancy in the relevancy of results was impressive. Despite this being a highly controlled experiment, the potential is clear.
Among the panelists, was Munjai Shah, CEO and Co-Founder of Riya that had launched like.com. Munjai pointed out the relatively high indexing cost both linke.com and PowerSet have - Powerset cost is 100 times more than Google's. This requires huge CapEx giving Google a big advantage. PowerSet offsets this by renting processing power from Amazon at relatively low costs. Nice interplay with AWS.
Another concern is language sensitivity, not to mention dialects. From Barney's response, it seems there would be considerable discrepancy in the accuracy across different languages.
Despite these shortcomings, the promise of PowerSet remains compelling. And it would be nice to see how this will develop in the future. It was very interesting to be int the middle of this active discussion because i was just proposing to my strategy professor to do an independent study about incumbents and entrants in consumer Internet with digital media and search as the first two suggestions.
For such events and interactions, i don't want to leave the bay area in the summer :( and go to Amazon.
Yesterday I had one of those special experiences I get at Stanford GSB.
I attended a panel organized by Charles Moldow of Foundation Capital who brought in the founders of 4 of his portfolio companies - an exceptionally smart gang: Barney Pell of Powerset, Ketan Shah of Weblistic, Gautam Godhwani of SimplyHired, and Bijan Marashi of Xoopit.
The group shared with us their challenge of targeting huge existing markets like search and email in contrast to creating new markets. They talked about how they compete with incumbents like Google, Yahoo, and Monstor. Brave thoughts!
After the panel around 10 gsb'ers went out for dinner with the group where we had more detailed discussions. I sat next to Charles Moldow so i had the chance to learn more about his experience both as an entrepreneur and VC. He shared his views about various issues related to Venture Capital - successful venture capitalist, seed investment and private equity and their impact on VC, investment in cleantech...
At the end we had a group discussion about how entrepreneurs seeking their first round of investment, valuations, term sheets, and investment shopping.
