Startup School 2009

I'm down at Berkeley for most of the day to attend Startup School, a very popular one day conference hosted by Y Combinator. The line up could be found on their homepage and I typed up notes for most speakers except two (too sleepy for that presentation and the other one wasn't that interesting...). There are about 700-800 technologists attending today.

Paul Graham

Paul asked founders who he funded about what have surprised them the most:

Emotional roller-coasters are much more extreme

Persistence is key

Think Long term

Lots of little things

Start with something minimal: over-engineering is poison

Engage users

Determination with flexibility: Fast iteration is key

Don’t worry about competitors

Expect the worst with deals

Investors are clueless

You may have to play games

Luck is a big factor

The Value of community

You get no respect

Things change as you grow: Roles of founders

Don’t expect startup is like a job

Summary: Overall, pretty good advice about what to expect when doing startups. The lines and quotes will be posted online soon. Many theories echo with the lean startup movement, which is all about iterating and launching fast and early.

Greg Mcadoo (Sequoia partner)

Economy doesn’t really affect the determination of entrepreneurs

Horrible economy headlines instead create innovation

- willing to try new things

- Often without choice

- especially trying to save money

- competition is less irrational

- landlords are ready to deal

- Everything is at fair price

- Recession rewards much more discipline

- Cash register Ringers: earn revenue early

- Committed Crew

Jason Fried (Founder of 37signals)

Bootstrapping- Day 1 bootstrapped company looks to make money, funded company looks to spend money

Practice making money, learn the art early

Funding is crap and an addiction

You can be as successful as you want to be on your own, don’t need others to anoint you

Best way to get feedback is to price it

Planning is Guessing

Useful > Innovative

Software has no edges

You can’t make just one thing

Apologize the right way: say sorry

Failure is not a rite of passage

Summary: Like last year, 37signals tries to debunk many glorious myths of being an entrepreneur. They are also big proponents of selling products for a price.

Chris Anderson (Chief Editor of Wired Magazine)

Freemium:

- Minority subsidize the majority

- Freeloaders cost little

- Free samples are the best marketing

- Multiple tiers of products

- Market segmentation

- Conversion = loyalty

Games: people will pay to save time, lower risk, things they love, status, if you make them

Feature Limited, Capacity Limited, Seat limited, Customer class limited

Summary: Talked about his freemium theory which is essentially different pricing structure with a free version for people to experiment. Quite applicable to the iphone platform and is what we're practicing with our PURI!

Paul Buchheit (founder of Friendfeed and gmail)

Limited life experience + Overgeneralization = Advice

Shared delusions in organizations if one works too long in it

Don’t be too comfortable

Way of internalizing knowledge is by trying and doing

Summary: Paul is obviously a brilliant entrepreneur. He had all the characteristics since he was young and his advice is to just do it and try things out because there isn't a formula to success and everyone has different background and circumstances.

Twitter (Evan Williams and Biz Stone)

So what if it’s just fun and not useful (think ice cream)?

The team likes the product and engages with it.

Engineering: Don’t go overly-clever

Make real effort of communication. Don’t assume you know what others are working on.

Advice they took is gut-checking

API is huge

Summary: Nothing too interesting here. They are probably hiding a lot of things that they couldn't share.

Mark Zuckerberg

Build an incentive structure to share information

Learnt from watching how people use the site

Went after the least receptive audience

A lot of mistakes could be overcome if you’re building something valuable

Management team has steadily evolved and improved

Focusing on technology culture

Google has a more academic culture

Facebook prides on building things fast, keeping a good engineer-user ratio etc.

Biggest risk you can take is to take no risk.

Be measured about doing things that are bold

He’s big on trends on openness and transparency

What tradeoffs are you willing to have to set the direction and values of the company?

Summary: First time listening to Mark speaking and I was impressed by his responses to most questions. He focused a lot on talking about Facebook culture and how it's different from that of Google. He's also big fan of iterating on both products and the management team.

Tony Hsieh (founder and CEO of Zappos)

Two books he recommended: Good to great, Tribal Leadership

Most parts of the talk are similar to the pitch that he gave at Stanford which I blogged some months ago.

What’s the larger vision and greater purpose in their work beyond money or profits?

Difference between Inspiration and Motivation

Don’t keep making compromises regarding hiring

Alignment: It doesn’t matter what your core values are…as long as you commit to them.

Vision and culture can inspire passion and purpose

Happiness: Perceived Control, Perceived Progress, Connectedness, Vision/Meaning

Types of Happiness: Pleasure/Rock Star (Chasing the next high), Passion/flow (Engagement- time flies), Higher purpose/Meaning (Being part of something bigger than yourself)

Summary: As usual, Tony loves talking about culture, vision and how Zappos could deliver Happiness to customers. This time, he has a little more analysis on Happiness and how we could break it down and analyze them.

Mark Pincus

- Control your destiny

- Aspire to be a great CEO