Startups, Entrepreneurs, Brands and The Power of Empathy (video)

Putting Innovation into Action: The Power of Empathy

Video above published Nov 22, 2016 by Stanford GSB: The global beauty company Bare Escentuals (domain: bareescentuals.com) is putting innovation into action by embracing the power of empathy. Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor Jennifer Aaker visits the company’s San Francisco headquarters and speaks with Executive Chairman Leslie Blodgett and CEO Simon Cowell. They discuss how the company uses empathy to build the brand and create community and connection with its customers. This video is part of the case curriculum in Dr. Jennifer Aaker’s Stanford courses, Power of Story to Fuel Innovation and The Innovation Playbook.

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Bill Barnett: Where Great Companies and Leaders Come From (video)

Stanford GSB Professor Bill Barnett: Where Great Companies and Leaders Come From:

Great leaders push for innovation despite fear of failure. How does initial group consensus or disagreement affect perception of success? Video recorded on October 14, 2016, as part of the Stanford Graduate School of Business Fall Reunion/Alumni Weekend. 

Speaker: William Barnett Thomas M. Siebel Professor of Business Leadership, Strategy, and Organizations, Stanford GSB Affiliated Faculty, Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford. Video above published Oct 21, 2016.

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Branded Pictures: Uncovering Hollywood's Hidden Brands

J. Todd Harris: Uncovering Hollywood's Hidden Brands:

J. Todd Harris has produced many different kinds of films, from the Oscar-nominated indie The Kids Are All Right to low-brow crowd pleasers like like Piranha 3D. He says Hollywood's insatiable appetite for new material, combined with cost-cutting at major studios, has created an opportunity for independent producers to cheaply buy the rights to brands that could become the basis of next summer's blockbuster movie. And he says he's searching for those brands in some unexpected places. It's not just books, plays and TV shows anymore. It's board games, children's toys, theme park rides, video games, musicals and even individual songs. Harris earned his MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1986. Video above originally published Jan 9, 2014.

Find out more about J. Todd Harris' new production company Branded Pictures Entertainment: http://brandedpicturesentertainment.com

Learn more about Stanford Graduate School of Business: http://www.gsb.stanford.edu

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Entrepreneur Austin McChord, His Startup Datto and Cybersecurity

How to Protect Your Business From a Ransomware Attack:

Published Oct 21, 2016: Datto CEO Austin McChord talks about cybersecurity and why he turned down a seven-figure offer for his company.

Datto (datto.com) is an American company that provides products and services for business continuity, planning and disaster recovery. It offers a combination of on-premises, virtual, and cloud-to-cloud data protection--Wikipedia.org

CEO: Austin McChord (2007–)
Founder: Austin McChord
Founded: 2007

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Startups That Will Thrive in the Sharing Economy (video)

These Are the Startups that Will Thrive in the Sharing Economy:

Startups That Will Thrive in the Sharing Economy | Fortune.com Video

Transcript via YouTube.com:

0:01

when we talk about the sharing economy everybody always goes to Uber and Airbnb

0:08

but its many more companies but they're even these niche companies that will

0:13

allow people to share space in their closet or parking space or even read

0:18

about one that's space in your doghouse I mean it's like it's getting a little

0:21

out of control but it is on

0:23

are these really gonna be you know how many how many companies will be

0:26

legitimate big players in the sharing economy over time do you think and what

0:30

are some of them

0:31

well i think in the accommodation space a B&B is going to be the dominant player

0:37

for short term accommodation there are other kinds of longer term accommodation

0:41

or commercial real estate where you've got companies like we work and we live

0:47

in common that might start to establish a presence in the transportation sector

0:52

i think you know it's limitless at this point because we've only scratched the

0:57

surface without the early stages of a really fundamental shift and how we get

1:02

our mobility how we get our transportation and uber may have an

1:06

eighty-five percent market share in the United States but they have maybe . one

1:11

percent of the market when you look at the total transportation market is why

1:15

they have so many competitors they have a lot

1:17

absolutely and so like you know the space is still open i'm keeping a close

1:21

eye on healthcare and energy interesting um I think once the battery technology

1:25

is sophisticated enough to store solar power we will see crowd based energy

1:30

solutions that becomes our mainstream commercial low and healthcare certainly

1:34

not open heart surgery but you know things like you know assisted living and

1:38

I cut my finger cooking and needed stitched up

1:41

well i know many more applications that i think we've really thought about

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Different Stages of Stress When You Launch a Startup

The Different Stages of Stress When You Launch a Startup:

LearnVest’s CEO shares her experience with launching startups. Published September 15, 2016

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Kathryn Shaw: Three Things All Good Bosses Do (video)

Kathryn Shaw: Three Things All Good Bosses Do:

A good boss can make a big difference. But what makes a good boss? Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor of Economics Kathryn Shaw found good bosses use similar strategies and have a lasting positive impact on their employee’s careers. Here's how they do it. Published June 22, 2016.

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Getting Your Startup Idea Funded by Venture Capitalists (video)

How to Get Your Startup Idea Funded by Venture Capitalists:

An oldie but goodie from Google Developers, Google I/O 2011: Don Dodge, Joe Kraus, Paul Buchheit, Seth Priebatsch: Have an idea and want to start a company? Learn how to attract investors, and what they want to see before writing a check. Hear from entrepreneurs who have raised money and VCs who have funded them. Published May 13, 2011, by Google Developers, Google I/O 2011.

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Mark Leslie: Leadership in Entrepreneurial Companies (video)

Mark Leslie: Leadership in Entrepreneurial Companies - Takeaways from the 2015 Stanford Graduate School of Business Entrepreneur Symposium. Published on Oct 6, 2015

re: Proprietorship vs Stewardship and other entrepreneur, startup management issues

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Key to Startup Success, Purity of Motivation, Compelling Value Proposition

Imagining the future is not a science but an art. This description from Botha about what he is looking for is qualitative: “The key to start-up success is purity of motivation… If they can weave a believable story with a compelling value proposition, they’ll have us hooked.” (source infra)

A Dozen Things I’ve Learned from Roelof Botha about Venture Capital and Business | 25iq: "Many businesses described by founders as needing venture capital are really just small businesses looking for what amounts to small business finance. The people who start these businesses are genuine entrepreneurs. Often they are better off with bootstrap financing or borrowing money in the form of a loan. The businesses created by these entrepreneurs are very important businesses, and a key part of building an economy and creating jobs. But they are not the sort of businesses that are suitable for venture investing. Again, that’s OK.  the total amount of venture financing is overall a relatively small part of an economy. Because of its impact on innovation and productivity venture capital punches far above its weight in terms of impact, but the absolute dollar amount invested per year is relatively small." (read more at link above)


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Hedge Funds Boosting Tech Valuations to Dangerous Highs

"Hedge funds and mutual funds that once shunned venture-style deals are flocking to the market’s hottest corner, paying 15 to 18 times projected sales for the year ahead in recent private-funding rounds, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. That compares with 10 to 12 times five years ago for the priciest companies, one said. While some of the startups may become profitable, others are consuming cash and could fail. The torrid action is spurring talk that 15 years after the collapse of the Internet bubble, the market may be setting itself up for another bruising fall. “Some of the valuations are mind-boggling,” said Sven Weber, investment manager of the Menlo Park, California-based SharesPost 100 Fund, which backs late-stage tech startups...." read more at Hedge Funds Are Boosting Tech Valuations to Dangerous Heights - Bloomberg Business


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Kevin Rose, New Startup North, New Model of Incubation

Kevin Rose Steps Into Part-Time Role At Google Ventures To Build A New Startup Called North | TechCrunch: "... His newest venture will be called North, and will be focused on building a series of mobile and social products. In an interview with Rose, he told me the plan is to start with a small team of about three and to create a new product each quarter. And if one of those products becomes a hit, Rose says he’ll recruit a team and try to build a company around it. If the model sounds familiar, that’s because it was kind of the idea behind Milk. But the world has changed since then, according to Rose. “The biggest thing that’s changed in the last three years is that back then we spent a lot of time spent building out the back end… But the scaling piece is a solved problem,” Rose told me. Nowadays he says, a lean startup can work specifically on product and design, and leave the infrastructure side of things to someone else. He envisions North as a team that has one product person, one design person, and a full-stack engineer to get products going, while outsourcing much of the actual development work to trusted friends and colleagues. Rose isn’t the only entrepreneur operating under that type of model: Uber and StumbleUpon co-founder Garrett Camp has Expa, Twitter founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone have Obvious Corp., and PayPal co-founder Max Levchin has HVF. In each case, those founders are operating on a model of incubating a portfolio of interesting products and then building teams around them...."

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How to Start a Startup (video)

Lecture 1 - How to Start a Startup -

Sam Altman and Dustin Moskovitz start off the How to Start a Startup Course. Sam's topic is "Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution, Part I" and Dustin's is "Why to Start a Startup". (published 9/23/2014)

http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec01/ [has slide decks]


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Anatomy of a startup

Anatomy of a (un)fundable startup from Venture Hacks

Venture Hacks presentations

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When Your Startup Neither Fails Nor Succeeds

What To Do When Your Startup Doesn't Fail, But Also Doesn't Succeed - Business Insider: " . . . . 5. Don’t shut down - airBnb had to sell cereal at one point to keep their company alive, in the early days of FedEx their CEO gambled his money at blackjack to win and make payroll. Evernote the night before closing its doors received a $500k investment from a user in Sweden and Blogger (which sold for rumors between $20MM and $50MM) to Google had to lay off every single employee before finally getting acquired. That founder, Evan Williams went off to start what is now Twitter today, so the greatest thing a founder can do when their startup isn’t failing is to make sure it doesn’t die. Timing is everything." (read more at link above)

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Biggest pivot in YC history

The biggest pivot in YC history. This post outlines our story up to now and encourages all startups to never die. . . .(source infra)

Soylent: " . . . The original project phased out in November. Our roommates were part of Imagine K12 and ran out of money around the same time. One of our co-founders went back to finish his degree and another of our roommates went off to grad school. We were able to recruit the other roommate (John) to join Rob and me on hacking up anything and everything. To cut our burn rate, the three of us moved from a five bed house in Sunnyvale to a cheaper apartment in San Francisco. John, our new recruit, sleeps in the living room of our two bedroom Tenderloin apartment. By the start of 2013, we were working on a handful of projects. Sometimes collectively, sometimes independently. One day, Rob said, “There must be a more efficient way to eat.” He researched the human nutritional needs and was frustrated to find that nutrition is not quite a hard science right now. Regardless, he identified the essential ingredients the body needs to thrive and, a few days later, began constructing his alternative diet using supplements purchased on Amazon. Pleased with initial testing, he committed to his newly invented diet for 30 days. . . ."

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A must read for anyone doing a startup

Here's an excerpt (go to the link for full article)--

The One-Person Product – Marco.org: " . . . . We tried to hold out as just two (and then just three) people as long as possible. We were scared of growing the staff, so we just put it off — for too long, in retrospect. Eventually, David knew that we’d need to expand to handle the load, but his job never changed: rather than become a businessperson, he just hired one. Then Tumblr began its most challenging growth: David needed to become a product manager, start overseeing a lot more people, and delegate some of the duties he really wanted to keep doing himself. . . . ."

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SEC and Section 15(a)(1) of the Exchange Act

SEC's Division of Trading and Markets Grants Relief from Broker-Dealer Registration for Online Platform that Permits Investment in Start-Up Companies | Holland & Knight LLP - JDSupra: "On March 26, 2013, the SEC's Division of Trading and Markets issued a no-action letter indicating that it would not recommend enforcement action under Section 15(a)(1) of the Exchange Act if a venture capital fund adviser and its management company (collectively, the "fund") operated a platform through which its members could participate in Rule 506 offerings. The no-action letter is the first relief from broker-dealer registration for a platform that provides investors with a means to invest in start-up companies following the enactment of the JOBS Act. However, the no-action letter does not in any way address the JOBS Act's crowdfunding exemption, or the ability to conduct a Rule 506 offering using general solicitation, as those final rules have not yet been adopted by the SEC." (read more at link)


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Tory Burch Great Advice

Tory Burch : Great Advice : Get Inspired | Tory Burch Foundation:
"WHEN STARTING A COMPANY YOU MUST...
Have a unique idea, absolute focus and the tenacity to follow through.
THE BEST BUSINESS ADVICE I'VE RECEIVED IS...
Always be transparent and straightforward.
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE...
The importance of being an information gatherer and doing thorough research.
I LOVE WHAT I DO BECAUSE...
It's the perfect balance of being creative and entrepreneurial.
NEVER BE AFRAID OF...
Change. It's usually hard but often is essential.
MY GREATEST TALENT IS...
Recognizing talent in others and building a fantastic team. . . ."

Just in Time for Valentine’s Day: When Employees Place Bets in the Workplace Dating Pool… | Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C. - JDSupra: " . . . A recent survey from Vault.comshowed that 59 percent of employees admitted to having engaged in a workplace romance, both in the form of a fling (23 percent of men, 15 percent of women) and a long-term, serious relationship (14.7 percent of men, 22.2 percent of women). The survey also suggested that nearly a third of all employees engaged in an actual “romantic encounter” (this is a family blog, folks) while at the office, with 4 percent being caught in the act. The most interesting stat to me, at least from a human resources (HR) standpoint, is that of those who have once had a workplace romance, 63 percent of those surveyed would do so again. At the same time, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reports that in the 2011 fiscal year, 11,364 charges of discrimination were filed alleging sex harassment. Granted, this was the lowest number since 1997, but still represents a significant percentage of the overall number of charges filed in this country. Since every charge filed costs the company in terms of time (and, more often than not, money), anything the company can do to limit the likelihood of a harassment claim should be considered, if not implemented. . . . " (Read more at the link above)


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Juggle More Than One Startup

Can You Really Juggle More Than One Startup? | Fast Company: " . . . Others, however, like to juggle multiple interests. These entrepreneurs have passions pulling them to Germany, Taiwan, and India; they’re intrigued by the possibilities inherent in mobile marketing, gaming, and trading. Their varied interests consume them all at once. But does this latter group accomplish anything? They do if they court their ventures properly. What it Takes for Serial Entrepreneurship to Work - Every entrepreneur has to remember one thing: Entrepreneurship works within limits. We have a lot of good ideas thrown at us, but we simply can’t do everything. We must carefully consider the best of the bunch, investigating and analyzing our options to ensure we’re putting our money and effort behind ventures that have true potential. Here are key indicators that simultaneous serial entrepreneurship is worth considering:

• Time: Can you dedicate enough time and attention to each interest? How long will these ventures take? Are you remodeling a building in a handful of weeks, or are you constructing a resort over two decades?
• Money: Do you have enough cash to support the growth of your interests in the short and long run? Businesses can be as high-maintenance, or low-maintenance, as significant others.
• Location: Does one require you to be in Alaska, while the other demands you be in Australia the next day?
• People: Who’s involved in your situation? Do you have partners polluting--or supporting--your relationships? Do you have the right people to handle the workload and supply talent?
• Sequence: Is one development already underway, or are you jumping into bed with both from day one?
• Experience: What experience do you have as an entrepreneur? What kind of knowledge do you have in the field you’re adding?"

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