mwmanning.com

Startup School Liveblog

Finally got an Internet connection. I wanted to post pictures, but I broke Rebecca’s camera in an unfortunate luggage accident last night. Sorry, Rebecca! I’m going to buy you a new one.

Greg McAdoo is talking now. Here are the notes I have from the previous speakers.

9:00 AM PDT
david lawee
    -Launch early
    -Don’t take capital or make hires that you don’t need.

9:30
sam altman
    -don’t raise money that you don’t need
    -make exec summary and deck
    -run fundraising process in parallel
    -meet each firm 2-8 times or until get a monday meeting
    -help through due diligence process
    -demand by proxy
    -ride someone else’s wave (need 10 - 100x return)
    -”customers with hair on fire”
    -an unfair advantage
    -Story for investors
        1) exploding market
        2) all current solutions suck
        3) we have best solution
        4) no one can catch us
    -super pro rata (scares off new investors)
    -talk to as many VCs as possible (2-firm deals are good)
    -talk to CEOs funded by your VC firm whose company failed
    -every company has a rocky beginning
    -tell an exciting story

10:00
jack sheridan
    -4 basic questions
        1) Who owns the company?
            no oral promises
        2) Who owns the technology?
            -confidentiality and assignment agreements
            -know where your employees come from
            -narrow the risk of IP exposure (don’t hold up fundraising until IP is completely nailed down)
        3) Who controls the company?
            -The board
            -the shareholders
            -section 2115 of the california corporations code (different from delaware corp)
        4) Who gets what if the company has a liquidity event?
            -Liquidation preference
            -Participating preferred (VCs get their money back and stock)
            -Dividends - noncumulative, or cumulative
            -Acceleration of vesting?
            -Other payments due on change of control

10:30
paul graham
    Make Something People Want
    Don’t worry too much about money
    very successful startups look like nonprofits
    craigslist doesn’t worry that much about making money
        -upwind of enormous revenues
    google looked a lot like a non-profit in the beginning (no ads for first year)
    behave benevolently to people who have money
    when you’re small you can’t bully users; you have to charm them
        -you grow big by being nice, but you can stay big by being mean
    if you feel like you’re helping people, you’ll keep working even if you feel like you’re doomed
    maybe most important effect of launching early is that you build user base you need to support
    if you’re benevolent people will rally around you

11:30
Greg McAdoo
    -look for “hair on fire” problems
    -don’t try to create waves, ride them
    -get on a wave that is small and ride its growth
    -no time for rambling; come up with 1-liner to describe your business
    -small companies’ advantage are stealth and speed
    -figure out how to leverage disruptive opportunities (big companies can’t compete because of their structure)

12:00
David Heinemeier Hansson
    -talk is called “The secret to making money online”
        1) Great application
        2) ??? (Price!)
        3) Profit
    -everything doesn’t have to be free; people will pay for good services
    -37signals, fogbugz, faxitnice are good examples
    -chances are much better of creating a small, profitable subscription business than creating a large, advertising supported business
    -lots of space for medium size businesses on the Internet
    -start a business that you will grow gradually; don’t be obsessed with flipping
    -zappos another good example (”they sell fucking shoes!!”)

12:30
Paul Buchheit
    -Pay attention to what users really need, not just what they’re asking for.
    -Try to find at least 1 person who’s enthusiastic about what you’re building
    -Listen to yourself

2:30
Jeff Bezos
    -ZDnet quote “Amazon will be like a bookstore that sells cocaine out the back door. Books will just be a front to sell cloud computing.”
    -shorter Jeff Bezos: “Can you believe how fucking awesome AWS is?”
    -Why does this guy get an hour to pimp his business when everybody else got 25 min? He must have helped to sponsor this.

3:25
Mike Arrington
    -tactical advice for getting press for startup
    -interested in stories people don’t want ridden
    -”purple cows” by seth godin; “innovators dilemma”
    -yank the leash (don’t become background noise); one big event to get press, not constant nagging
    -use twitter and digg, write a blog, be a part of the discussion
    -embrace critisizm
Q&A
    -Arrington seems genuine
    -findmyphone guy asked funny question about being trashed on techcrunch
    -Everything that he says seems to come back to, “If you stop doing what you love, you will fail.”

4:15
Marc Andreessen
    -this one is done as an interview, cool
    -doesn’t think current credit crisis will affect startups that much since they don’t use a lot of credit
    -”be so good that they can’t ignore you” - advice from Steve Marin
    -attract good people by being on track for a good product; be engineering-centric
    -how to keep mediocrity from creeping in as company grows:
        -each level of company is as bad as the worst person at that level because rankings are relative
        -hiring and promotions are in reference to worst person on team
        -always try to raise average quality at any level of company with a promotion or hire
    -luck is very important;
    -book “fooled by randomness”
    -success is often random
    -timing is critical but hard to judge
    -biggest mistake made by technical entrepreneurs is not focusing on the product

5:00
Peter Norvig
    -slide
        -start small, leverage what you have
        -go fast
        -build in positive feedback
    -data is more agile than code
        -leverage other people’s data
        -use known learning algorithms
(lots and lots of examples of this)
    -iterate
    -start now and go fast, but constantly re-correct your course