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Eric Schmidt on how he uses 5-year plans to predict if a startup can become a $100 billion company “If you went to business school, you would’ve been taught: build a great product, organize a sales force, charge a fair price, make the customer happy.” But, as the former...

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58,465 просмотров • 1 год назад •via X (Twitter)

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Фото профиля Startup Archive
Startup Archive1 год назад

Watch the full @StartupGrind interview with Eric Schmidt here:

Фото профиля Startup Archive
Startup Archive1 год назад

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Фото профиля in essence
in essence1 год назад

So, Tesla’s FSD feature. Learn from your users and sell fsd with increased safety over any one person. Are there any other companies that do similar? X? Learn behaviors from a hive mind and sell grok.

Фото профиля New account @rd_leclerc
New account @rd_leclerc1 год назад

His fund must be killing it!

Фото профиля DAO Dev
DAO Dev1 год назад

@MunirulAbedin

Фото профиля KO_Sulli
KO_Sulli1 год назад

Like Russia and China?

Фото профиля kame hame
kame hame1 год назад

@readwise save thread

Фото профиля Joanna Accordi
Joanna Accordi1 год назад

Spot on!

Фото профиля AIXEL
AIXEL1 год назад

@readwise save thread

Фото профиля brandon kim
brandon kim1 год назад

easier just to feed the milatary industrial complex

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Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt explains how he uses 5-year plans to predict if a startup can become a $100B+ company “If you went to business school, you would’ve been taught: build a great product, organize a sales force, charge a fair price, make the customer happy.” But Eric explains that strategy is insufficiently scalable in the Internet era. “It’ll produce a reasonable business, but it’s not going to produce a huge business. It’s just too hard to hire all of those salespeople, work with every customer, and so forth. You have to have a more clever strategy.” He continues: “All of the really big companies have invented a new way to access information or a new way to do something that didn’t require [a large salesforce].” Eric argues that lots of the startup ideas he hears are good, but not good enough. He tells these founders to create a 5-year plan and map their growth rate. Then try to figure out what a more scalable strategy might be. For example, if you’re building an app that you want to charge $10 for, Eric asks: “Why can’t you give the app away for free and then upsell the users?" This is similar to the advice of Peter Thiel who famously asks founders: “How can you achieve your 10 year plan in the next 6 months?” Thinking big and optimizing for scalability is one key factor that separates the ultra successful companies from the rest. Another way to use a five-year plan to determine if your company can be a $100B+ company is to ask yourself what the big platforms will be five years from now and make sure your company is aligned with those platforms. In this interview from 2016 and he predicted that Android, iOS, and machine learning would be the dominant platforms of the next five years.
2:59

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt explains how he uses 5-year plans to predict if a startup can become a $100B+ company “If you went to business school, you would’ve been taught: build a great product, organize a sales force, charge a fair price, make the customer happy.” But Eric explains that strategy is insufficiently scalable in the Internet era. “It’ll produce a reasonable business, but it’s not going to produce a huge business. It’s just too hard to hire all of those salespeople, work with every customer, and so forth. You have to have a more clever strategy.” He continues: “All of the really big companies have invented a new way to access information or a new way to do something that didn’t require [a large salesforce].” Eric argues that lots of the startup ideas he hears are good, but not good enough. He tells these founders to create a 5-year plan and map their growth rate. Then try to figure out what a more scalable strategy might be. For example, if you’re building an app that you want to charge $10 for, Eric asks: “Why can’t you give the app away for free and then upsell the users?" This is similar to the advice of Peter Thiel who famously asks founders: “How can you achieve your 10 year plan in the next 6 months?” Thinking big and optimizing for scalability is one key factor that separates the ultra successful companies from the rest. Another way to use a five-year plan to determine if your company can be a $100B+ company is to ask yourself what the big platforms will be five years from now and make sure your company is aligned with those platforms. In this interview from 2016 and he predicted that Android, iOS, and machine learning would be the dominant platforms of the next five years.

Startup Archive

611,873 просмотров • 2 лет назад

How Google’s CEO predicted ChatGPT in 2016 “It’ll use Android/iOS, fast networks, and powerful machine learning… The model where you crowdsource information in, learn it, and then sell it is a highly likely candidate for the next $100 billion company.” As Eric Schmidt explains, it’s much easier to predict what the great platforms will be in five years than the specific companies. Five years before this talk, he predicted that the future will be “apps that are on smartphones, that use Google Maps GPS, and do something useful.” ”What I should’ve said was Uber,” Eric admits. Eric believes one way to generate huge startup ideas is to identify huge technology waves and figure out useful new ways of leveraging them. Jeff Bezos is perhaps the most famous example of this approach. He saw that web usage was growing at 2,300% a year in 1994 and that it could be used to invent a new kind of book store. Video source: Startup Grind (2016)
2:37

How Google’s CEO predicted ChatGPT in 2016 “It’ll use Android/iOS, fast networks, and powerful machine learning… The model where you crowdsource information in, learn it, and then sell it is a highly likely candidate for the next $100 billion company.” As Eric Schmidt explains, it’s much easier to predict what the great platforms will be in five years than the specific companies. Five years before this talk, he predicted that the future will be “apps that are on smartphones, that use Google Maps GPS, and do something useful.” ”What I should’ve said was Uber,” Eric admits. Eric believes one way to generate huge startup ideas is to identify huge technology waves and figure out useful new ways of leveraging them. Jeff Bezos is perhaps the most famous example of this approach. He saw that web usage was growing at 2,300% a year in 1994 and that it could be used to invent a new kind of book store. Video source: Startup Grind (2016)

Startup Archive

11,254 просмотров • 1 год назад

Ben Horowitz explains the two things every successful technology startup must do 1. Build a product that improves how some large group of people does something by 10x. “You have to build a transformational product. There is no way to build a great new company without a great product… If you look at the great technology companies, the thing that distinguishes them is the ability to keep coming up with a better way of doing things.” 2. Taking the market. “You can come up with the best product, but if you don’t [take the market], you really don’t have a company. Most technology businesses are network effects businesses. You have to win… If you’re an engineer, what business skills do you need to build a technology company? They’re all around the skills that you need to win the market. How do you out-market, out-sell, and beat the competition?… Do you build a good enough company that you go win?” Video Source: UC Berkeley
1:50

Ben Horowitz explains the two things every successful technology startup must do 1. Build a product that improves how some large group of people does something by 10x. “You have to build a transformational product. There is no way to build a great new company without a great product… If you look at the great technology companies, the thing that distinguishes them is the ability to keep coming up with a better way of doing things.” 2. Taking the market. “You can come up with the best product, but if you don’t [take the market], you really don’t have a company. Most technology businesses are network effects businesses. You have to win… If you’re an engineer, what business skills do you need to build a technology company? They’re all around the skills that you need to win the market. How do you out-market, out-sell, and beat the competition?… Do you build a good enough company that you go win?” Video Source: UC Berkeley

Startup Archive

77,268 просмотров • 2 лет назад

Marc Andreessen on the 3 things he looks for when investing in a startup The first thing Marc Andreesen looks for is a big market: “Is there a big existing market that you think you can go after and displace incumbents? Or do you believe there will be a new market that will be big?” The second thing he looks for is a 10x better product: “Is there a fundamental technology or economic change that justifies a new company? And the way I always think about that is: Is there a 10x change happening in the technology landscape? Is something 10x faster, 10x cheaper, or 10x better? If it’s not 10x, we as both VCs and entrepreneurs have to ask ourselves if it’s really worth doing because it’s really hard to start new companies . . . Existing companies are usually pretty good at what they do. So for a new company to exist, it has to bring a product to market that’s so much better than what exists that it punches through the status quo.” The third is the team: “Is the team outstanding? . . . You want to have a founding team of complementary skillsets. You want to have at least one super strong technologist — quite possibly more than one. Some of the best startups are actually more than one founding technologist. And then it often helps to have someone who is a marketing or salesperson who has a really good understanding of business.” Marc believes that you need all three of these, but if you’re going to compromise on one of those as an investor, it should be the product: “A great market is a lot easier to make up for with iterative product execution. The problem with a poor or small market is that even if you do a good job on the product, there just aren’t that many customers so it’s hard to ever get big and people get demoralized . . . And then we evaluate the team of a startup by its ability to get into a big market with a good product.”
2:43

Marc Andreessen on the 3 things he looks for when investing in a startup The first thing Marc Andreesen looks for is a big market: “Is there a big existing market that you think you can go after and displace incumbents? Or do you believe there will be a new market that will be big?” The second thing he looks for is a 10x better product: “Is there a fundamental technology or economic change that justifies a new company? And the way I always think about that is: Is there a 10x change happening in the technology landscape? Is something 10x faster, 10x cheaper, or 10x better? If it’s not 10x, we as both VCs and entrepreneurs have to ask ourselves if it’s really worth doing because it’s really hard to start new companies . . . Existing companies are usually pretty good at what they do. So for a new company to exist, it has to bring a product to market that’s so much better than what exists that it punches through the status quo.” The third is the team: “Is the team outstanding? . . . You want to have a founding team of complementary skillsets. You want to have at least one super strong technologist — quite possibly more than one. Some of the best startups are actually more than one founding technologist. And then it often helps to have someone who is a marketing or salesperson who has a really good understanding of business.” Marc believes that you need all three of these, but if you’re going to compromise on one of those as an investor, it should be the product: “A great market is a lot easier to make up for with iterative product execution. The problem with a poor or small market is that even if you do a good job on the product, there just aren’t that many customers so it’s hard to ever get big and people get demoralized . . . And then we evaluate the team of a startup by its ability to get into a big market with a good product.”

Startup Archive

17,333 просмотров • 6 месяцев назад

Ben Horowitz on the two things every successful technology startup must do 1. Build a product that improves how some large group of people does something by 10x. “You have to build a transformational product. There is no way to build a great new company without a great product… If you look at the great technology companies, the thing that distinguishes them is the ability to keep coming up with a better way of doing things.” 2. Taking the market. “You can come up with the best product, but if you don’t [take the market], you really don’t have a company. Most technology businesses are network effects businesses. You have to win… If you’re an engineer, what business skills do you need to build a technology company? They’re all around the skills that you need to win the market. How do you out-market, out-sell, and beat the competition?… Do you build a good enough company that you go win?” Video source: UC Berkeley (2009)
1:50

Ben Horowitz on the two things every successful technology startup must do 1. Build a product that improves how some large group of people does something by 10x. “You have to build a transformational product. There is no way to build a great new company without a great product… If you look at the great technology companies, the thing that distinguishes them is the ability to keep coming up with a better way of doing things.” 2. Taking the market. “You can come up with the best product, but if you don’t [take the market], you really don’t have a company. Most technology businesses are network effects businesses. You have to win… If you’re an engineer, what business skills do you need to build a technology company? They’re all around the skills that you need to win the market. How do you out-market, out-sell, and beat the competition?… Do you build a good enough company that you go win?” Video source: UC Berkeley (2009)

Startup Archive

36,753 просмотров • 4 месяцев назад

Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt on the data strategy behind the next hundred billion dollar companies: He explains that he evaluates startup ideas by looking at 5-year growth trajectories and asking whether there's a more scalable strategy available. Take a founder building an app they want to charge $10 for. Eric Schmidt's challenge: "Why not give it away for free and upsell users instead?" But the real insight is his framework for predicting which companies will dominate — and it all comes down to data. "5 years ago, I said publicly that the future will be apps that are on smartphones that use Google Maps, GPS, and do something useful. Now, what I should have said was Uber." So what does he think will define the next wave of massive companies? Systems built on Android and iOS, fast networks, and powerful machine learning, with a crucial data advantage: "They're going to use the crowd to learn something." He illustrates with this example: Pay dermatologists $1 each to categorize skin samples. Feed that into a machine learning system. Then sell the diagnostic service back to them, because a system trained on thousands of experts will outperform any individual. Schmidt summarizes the winning data strategy: "You crowdsource information in, you learn it, and then you sell it. [This] is in my view a highly likely candidate for the next hundred billion dollar corporations." The blueprint: Aggregate expert data at scale → train ML systems on that data → sell superior insights back to the market. This is how the next generation of dominant companies will be built.
1:48

Google's former CEO Eric Schmidt on the data strategy behind the next hundred billion dollar companies: He explains that he evaluates startup ideas by looking at 5-year growth trajectories and asking whether there's a more scalable strategy available. Take a founder building an app they want to charge $10 for. Eric Schmidt's challenge: "Why not give it away for free and upsell users instead?" But the real insight is his framework for predicting which companies will dominate — and it all comes down to data. "5 years ago, I said publicly that the future will be apps that are on smartphones that use Google Maps, GPS, and do something useful. Now, what I should have said was Uber." So what does he think will define the next wave of massive companies? Systems built on Android and iOS, fast networks, and powerful machine learning, with a crucial data advantage: "They're going to use the crowd to learn something." He illustrates with this example: Pay dermatologists $1 each to categorize skin samples. Feed that into a machine learning system. Then sell the diagnostic service back to them, because a system trained on thousands of experts will outperform any individual. Schmidt summarizes the winning data strategy: "You crowdsource information in, you learn it, and then you sell it. [This] is in my view a highly likely candidate for the next hundred billion dollar corporations." The blueprint: Aggregate expert data at scale → train ML systems on that data → sell superior insights back to the market. This is how the next generation of dominant companies will be built.

Big Brain AI

104,511 просмотров • 6 месяцев назад

Marissa Mayer on scaling Google and the internal black market CEO Eric Schmidt created for new hires “One of the things that [former Google CEO Eric Schmidt] talked about a lot was that at every order of magnitude, you should expect every process to break—and you should expect to have to completely reinvent it. It’s very different to deal with tens of people versus hundreds of people versus thousands of people” Marissa shares a story of how one time Eric reinvented Google’s hiring process in a way that initially frustrated everyone: “We had closed the year at about 200 people, and we had a plan to double the size of the company over the coming year. Eric showed up in March, looked at the plan, and said: ‘there’s just no way you guys are going to be able to double the number of employees and keep the quality and culture the way you want it to be.’” Eric then told the company that he would let them collectively hire 50 people that year—versus the 200 they were planning on hiring. And to enforce this, he created 50 laminated dollar bills with Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s faces on them and distributed them to Google’s VPs. Every new hire that year would require one “Larry & Sergey” bill. Naturally, a black market for these “Larrys & Sergeys” developed, and as Marissa describes, it became surprisingly efficient: “What would happen is the Head of Sales would have one and he would really need a new feature to make a sale. So he would [say to the engineer]: ‘look, I’m going to give you this Larry & Sergey but you have to promise you’re going to use it to hire someone who is going to build this feature to secure this revenue.’” She continues: “As painful as it was because there was way too much work to slow down our hiring like this, [the new process] was actually a really good moment for the company because it made us be really thoughtful about how we were scaling and where we were putting our resources. We had to be that much more thoughtful about what to prioritize and where the opportunities were. Yes, hypergrowth is really fun, but you also need to realize that you want that hypergrowth to happen in terms of users and revenue—and not necessarily in terms of the size of the company.”
3:02

Marissa Mayer on scaling Google and the internal black market CEO Eric Schmidt created for new hires “One of the things that [former Google CEO Eric Schmidt] talked about a lot was that at every order of magnitude, you should expect every process to break—and you should expect to have to completely reinvent it. It’s very different to deal with tens of people versus hundreds of people versus thousands of people” Marissa shares a story of how one time Eric reinvented Google’s hiring process in a way that initially frustrated everyone: “We had closed the year at about 200 people, and we had a plan to double the size of the company over the coming year. Eric showed up in March, looked at the plan, and said: ‘there’s just no way you guys are going to be able to double the number of employees and keep the quality and culture the way you want it to be.’” Eric then told the company that he would let them collectively hire 50 people that year—versus the 200 they were planning on hiring. And to enforce this, he created 50 laminated dollar bills with Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s faces on them and distributed them to Google’s VPs. Every new hire that year would require one “Larry & Sergey” bill. Naturally, a black market for these “Larrys & Sergeys” developed, and as Marissa describes, it became surprisingly efficient: “What would happen is the Head of Sales would have one and he would really need a new feature to make a sale. So he would [say to the engineer]: ‘look, I’m going to give you this Larry & Sergey but you have to promise you’re going to use it to hire someone who is going to build this feature to secure this revenue.’” She continues: “As painful as it was because there was way too much work to slow down our hiring like this, [the new process] was actually a really good moment for the company because it made us be really thoughtful about how we were scaling and where we were putting our resources. We had to be that much more thoughtful about what to prioritize and where the opportunities were. Yes, hypergrowth is really fun, but you also need to realize that you want that hypergrowth to happen in terms of users and revenue—and not necessarily in terms of the size of the company.”

Startup Archive

162,101 просмотров • 2 лет назад

Elon Musk: If you are creating a company or joining a company the most important thing is to attract great people "If you are creating a company or joining a company the most important thing is to attract great people, so either be with or join a group that's amazing that you really respect, or if you have building a company you have to gather great people I mean all the company is a group of people that have gathered together to create a product or service and so depending upon how talented and hardworking that group is, and the degree to which they're focused, cohesively, and in a good direction, that will determine the success of the company Do everything you can to gather great people, if you are creating a company"
0:30

Elon Musk: If you are creating a company or joining a company the most important thing is to attract great people "If you are creating a company or joining a company the most important thing is to attract great people, so either be with or join a group that's amazing that you really respect, or if you have building a company you have to gather great people I mean all the company is a group of people that have gathered together to create a product or service and so depending upon how talented and hardworking that group is, and the degree to which they're focused, cohesively, and in a good direction, that will determine the success of the company Do everything you can to gather great people, if you are creating a company"

SMX 🇺🇸

12,251 просмотров • 4 месяцев назад

Mark Cuban says AI will split every company into 2 categories within 3 years "When it's all said and done over the next 3 years, there's going to be two types of companies. Those who are great at AI and those who went out of business" "The biggest challenge for a company is going to be for the CEO to make that decision that we're going to have to blow up a lot of what we do to recreate our company" "We hear a lot of stories about huge public companies that spend a lot of money to try to implement AI and it doesn't really get them a return on investment." "Because you already are running your business the way you've always run it." "The things you've considered outsourcing, your customer call centers, AI agents are perfect for. The stuff you would give to an intern, AI agents are perfect for" "But to really take advantage of AI you have to reformulate your business completely to build it on AI"
5:18

Mark Cuban says AI will split every company into 2 categories within 3 years "When it's all said and done over the next 3 years, there's going to be two types of companies. Those who are great at AI and those who went out of business" "The biggest challenge for a company is going to be for the CEO to make that decision that we're going to have to blow up a lot of what we do to recreate our company" "We hear a lot of stories about huge public companies that spend a lot of money to try to implement AI and it doesn't really get them a return on investment." "Because you already are running your business the way you've always run it." "The things you've considered outsourcing, your customer call centers, AI agents are perfect for. The stuff you would give to an intern, AI agents are perfect for" "But to really take advantage of AI you have to reformulate your business completely to build it on AI"

Jaynit

196,758 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад

Q: Why is it easier to start a hard company than an easy company? In the clip below, Sam Altman tells the class at Stanford: “It’s easier to start a hard company than an easy company. Most people—especially young people—want to pick something that doesn’t sound too ambitious. They say to themselves: ‘starting a company sounds really hard. I better pick the easiest possible company.’” But as Sam explains: “Starting a company is always hard and it’s about equally hard no matter what you do. If you start a hard company though and you inspire passionate people—for example, if you are working on general AI or supersonic airplanes or nuclear power—you’ll find a lot more people who are excited about that than another derivative idea.” He elaborates on this idea even further in a blog post from four years ago: “The most precious commodity in the startup ecosystem right now is talented people, and for the most part talented people want to work on something they find meaningful… An easy startup is a headwind; a hard startup is a tailwind. If people care about your success because you seem committed to doing something significant, it’s a background force helping you with hiring, advice, partnerships, fundraising, etc.” He continues: “Let yourself become more ambitious—figure out the most interesting version of where what you’re working on could go. Then talk about that big vision and work relentlessly towards it, but always have a reasonable next step. You don’t want step one to be incorporating the company and step two to be going to Mars. Be willing to make a very long-term commitment to what you’re doing. Most people aren’t, which is part of the reason they pick ‘easy’ startups. In a world of compounding advantages where most people are operating on a 3 year timeframe and you’re operating on a 10 year timeframe, you’ll have a very large edge.”
0:40

Q: Why is it easier to start a hard company than an easy company? In the clip below, Sam Altman tells the class at Stanford: “It’s easier to start a hard company than an easy company. Most people—especially young people—want to pick something that doesn’t sound too ambitious. They say to themselves: ‘starting a company sounds really hard. I better pick the easiest possible company.’” But as Sam explains: “Starting a company is always hard and it’s about equally hard no matter what you do. If you start a hard company though and you inspire passionate people—for example, if you are working on general AI or supersonic airplanes or nuclear power—you’ll find a lot more people who are excited about that than another derivative idea.” He elaborates on this idea even further in a blog post from four years ago: “The most precious commodity in the startup ecosystem right now is talented people, and for the most part talented people want to work on something they find meaningful… An easy startup is a headwind; a hard startup is a tailwind. If people care about your success because you seem committed to doing something significant, it’s a background force helping you with hiring, advice, partnerships, fundraising, etc.” He continues: “Let yourself become more ambitious—figure out the most interesting version of where what you’re working on could go. Then talk about that big vision and work relentlessly towards it, but always have a reasonable next step. You don’t want step one to be incorporating the company and step two to be going to Mars. Be willing to make a very long-term commitment to what you’re doing. Most people aren’t, which is part of the reason they pick ‘easy’ startups. In a world of compounding advantages where most people are operating on a 3 year timeframe and you’re operating on a 10 year timeframe, you’ll have a very large edge.”

Michael McGuiness

504,007 просмотров • 2 лет назад

Sequoia founder Don Valentine: “The art of storytelling is incredibly important” “The art of storytelling is incredibly important. And many—maybe even most of the entrepreneurs who come to talk to us can’t tell the story. Learning to tell a story is incredibly important because that’s how the money works. The money flows as a function of the stories.” The founder of Sequoia founder explains that the story is how you explain what you want to do, how long it’s going to take, who the competition is, and how much money you need. a16z cofounder Ben Horowitz shared a similar view in a 2014 Forbes interview: “Storytelling is the most underrated skill… Companies that don’t have a clearly articulated story don’t have a clear and well thought-out strategy. The company story is the company strategy.” He continues: “The story must explain at a fundamental level why you exist. Why does the world need your company? Why do we need to be doing what we’re doing and why is it important?… You can have a great product, but a compelling story puts the company into motion. If you don’t have a great story it’s hard to get people motivated to join you, to work on the product, and to get people to invest in the product.” This is the job of the founder and CEO: “The CEO must be the keeper of the story. The CEO is responsible for getting the story right, that it’s up to date, compelling, and can move the hearts of men and women. That’s the fundamental responsibility of the chief executive… The mistake people make is thinking the story is just about marketing. No, the story is the strategy. If you make your story better you make the strategy better.” Video source: Stanford Graduate School of Business (2010)
0:52

Sequoia founder Don Valentine: “The art of storytelling is incredibly important” “The art of storytelling is incredibly important. And many—maybe even most of the entrepreneurs who come to talk to us can’t tell the story. Learning to tell a story is incredibly important because that’s how the money works. The money flows as a function of the stories.” The founder of Sequoia founder explains that the story is how you explain what you want to do, how long it’s going to take, who the competition is, and how much money you need. a16z cofounder Ben Horowitz shared a similar view in a 2014 Forbes interview: “Storytelling is the most underrated skill… Companies that don’t have a clearly articulated story don’t have a clear and well thought-out strategy. The company story is the company strategy.” He continues: “The story must explain at a fundamental level why you exist. Why does the world need your company? Why do we need to be doing what we’re doing and why is it important?… You can have a great product, but a compelling story puts the company into motion. If you don’t have a great story it’s hard to get people motivated to join you, to work on the product, and to get people to invest in the product.” This is the job of the founder and CEO: “The CEO must be the keeper of the story. The CEO is responsible for getting the story right, that it’s up to date, compelling, and can move the hearts of men and women. That’s the fundamental responsibility of the chief executive… The mistake people make is thinking the story is just about marketing. No, the story is the strategy. If you make your story better you make the strategy better.” Video source: Stanford Graduate School of Business (2010)

Startup Archive

258,577 просмотров • 1 год назад

Frank Slootman’s advice for founders learning to be CEO Founders frequently ask Frank (former CEO of Snowflake), “Do you think I can be a CEO?” Frank responds with a question: “Do you want to be?” He explains: “If you want to be, you need to become a student of the role because it’s different.” One of the biggest differences in transitioning to being an “operating CEO” is that a founder’s “reality distortion field” becomes a liability. Frank explains: “Reality distortion is a very useful thing. Steve Jobs wouldn’t have done anything if he didn’t have reality distortion — you have to see the world differently, and you wouldn’t start a company if you didn’t have reality distortion. But when you start running a place for scale and breakout velocity, you need intellectual honesty.” He continues: “You need to see the world the way it really is… Not some version of the truth. And by the way, it’s hard. You have to drive for that intellectual honesty with everything.” A lack of intellectually honesty is where Frank sees a lot of founders go wrong: “They can’t handle the truth. When they have sales problems, it’s always, ‘Oh let’s get a new Sales VP.’ Well, maybe the product sucks. But that’s a conversation they don’t want to have.” Video source: Foundation Capital (2024)
1:35

Frank Slootman’s advice for founders learning to be CEO Founders frequently ask Frank (former CEO of Snowflake), “Do you think I can be a CEO?” Frank responds with a question: “Do you want to be?” He explains: “If you want to be, you need to become a student of the role because it’s different.” One of the biggest differences in transitioning to being an “operating CEO” is that a founder’s “reality distortion field” becomes a liability. Frank explains: “Reality distortion is a very useful thing. Steve Jobs wouldn’t have done anything if he didn’t have reality distortion — you have to see the world differently, and you wouldn’t start a company if you didn’t have reality distortion. But when you start running a place for scale and breakout velocity, you need intellectual honesty.” He continues: “You need to see the world the way it really is… Not some version of the truth. And by the way, it’s hard. You have to drive for that intellectual honesty with everything.” A lack of intellectually honesty is where Frank sees a lot of founders go wrong: “They can’t handle the truth. When they have sales problems, it’s always, ‘Oh let’s get a new Sales VP.’ Well, maybe the product sucks. But that’s a conversation they don’t want to have.” Video source: Foundation Capital (2024)

Startup Archive

91,918 просмотров • 7 месяцев назад

Frank Slootman’s advice for founders learning to be CEO Founders frequently ask Frank (former CEO of Snowflake), “Do you think I can be a CEO?” Frank responds with a question: “Do you want to be?” He explains: “If you want to be, you need to become a student of the role because it’s different.” One of the biggest differences in transitioning to being an “operating CEO” is that a founder’s “reality distortion field” becomes a liability. Frank explains: “Reality distortion is a very useful thing. Steve Jobs wouldn’t have done anything if he didn’t have reality distortion — you have to see the world differently, and you wouldn’t start a company if you didn’t have reality distortion. But when you start running a place for scale and breakout velocity, you need intellectual honesty.” He continues: “You need to see the world the way it really is… Not some version of the truth. And by the way, it’s hard. You have to drive for that intellectual honesty with everything.” A lack of intellectually honesty is where Frank sees a lot of founders go wrong: “They can’t handle the truth. When they have sales problems, it’s always, ‘Oh let’s get a new Sales VP.’ Well, maybe the product sucks. But that’s a conversation they don’t want to have.” Source: Foundation Capital (Nov 2024)
1:35

Frank Slootman’s advice for founders learning to be CEO Founders frequently ask Frank (former CEO of Snowflake), “Do you think I can be a CEO?” Frank responds with a question: “Do you want to be?” He explains: “If you want to be, you need to become a student of the role because it’s different.” One of the biggest differences in transitioning to being an “operating CEO” is that a founder’s “reality distortion field” becomes a liability. Frank explains: “Reality distortion is a very useful thing. Steve Jobs wouldn’t have done anything if he didn’t have reality distortion — you have to see the world differently, and you wouldn’t start a company if you didn’t have reality distortion. But when you start running a place for scale and breakout velocity, you need intellectual honesty.” He continues: “You need to see the world the way it really is… Not some version of the truth. And by the way, it’s hard. You have to drive for that intellectual honesty with everything.” A lack of intellectually honesty is where Frank sees a lot of founders go wrong: “They can’t handle the truth. When they have sales problems, it’s always, ‘Oh let’s get a new Sales VP.’ Well, maybe the product sucks. But that’s a conversation they don’t want to have.” Source: Foundation Capital (Nov 2024)

Startup Archive

18,923 просмотров • 18 дней назад

Q: How do you build a great company? In the clip below, Sam Altman walks through 9 things he has seen the best founders do: #1 Get to know your users really well “The best founders do customer support themselves. They go visit their users—in the case of Airbnb they go live with them. You want to get to know your users really really well.” #2 Have a short cycle time & understand compound growth “The cycle here is basically: talk to customer to understand pain point → build product to address that → get product in front of user → see what they do → repeat cycle. This cycle is how you iterate and improve. The law of compound growth being what it is: if you can get 2% better every iteration cycle, your iteration cycle is every four hours rather than every four weeks, and you compound that over the course of a few years, you’ll be in a very very different place. Make it one of your top goals to build one of the fastest iterating companies the world has ever seen.” #3 Make a long-term commitment “Most companies have a 2-3 year time horizon. But companies are almost always a 10 year project if they work. If you think about it that way from the very beginning, you will make very different and much better decisions. I think this is the only arbitrage opportunity left in the market. Almost no one makes a fairly long-term commitment to a new project. But if you do that, you will think in a different way, you will hire different people, and it will work very well.” #4 Stay lean until everything is working really well “In the early days, when you’re experimenting and zig zagging, you’re like a fast little speed boat and want to be able to turn the whole company on a dime. You can’t do that if you’re a big company—cash burn aside, which is another problem. The flexibility of the company basically decreases with the square of the number of employees, so you want to stay really small until you’re sure things are working. Once things are working, then you can get really big.” #5 Resist the urge to hire; especially resist the urge to hire mediocre people “Vinod Khosla has a saying that I love: ‘the team you build is the company you build.’ This is really true and I never appreciated how true this was for a long time. If you build a team of great people and you have a product that people love, you’ll have a 90%+ chance of success. Those are both really hard to do, and they’re independent variables. But don’t ignore the team component. The best CEOs I know spend huge amounts of their time recruiting and retaining good talent.” #6 Relentless execution “You have to keep going, and do things perfectly, and get all of the details right. You have to care too much about every experience that a customer has with your company.” #7 Startups are about not giving up “One of the very best companies in the last YC batch applied 7 times before they got in. This is just a version of what happens in startups all of the time: you get beat down, again, and again, and again. And that last time when you get pushed down and don’t think you have enough energy to get back up—that’s the time it actually works. This is what you sign up for if you’re going to start a startup.” #8 Fiduciary duty to take care of yourself “This is a 10-year marathon and you have a fiduciary duty to your shareholders to take care of yourself. Some people treat startups like an all-nighter: they don’t take care of their health, they don’t sleep, they don’t maintain their personal relationships. It is true that startups are a bad choice for work-life balance. But you have a duty to yourself, your team, and your investors to take care of yourself.” #9 Clear mission “You don’t have to figure this out on Day 1, but all of the most successful startups I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of pretty quickly—in the first one to two years—figure out a really important mission. It’s this mission that gets people to join them. It drives the founders. It gets the media to write about them. And even if you start off building a project that’s just interesting to you and solves a problem in your life—which is how you should start—remember that you should have a clear mission at some point… That is what will convince people to come help you, and that is how you will build this idea into a huge company with a ton of people that really love your product.” Follow Startup Archive for more tactical startup advice!
5:28

Q: How do you build a great company? In the clip below, Sam Altman walks through 9 things he has seen the best founders do: #1 Get to know your users really well “The best founders do customer support themselves. They go visit their users—in the case of Airbnb they go live with them. You want to get to know your users really really well.” #2 Have a short cycle time & understand compound growth “The cycle here is basically: talk to customer to understand pain point → build product to address that → get product in front of user → see what they do → repeat cycle. This cycle is how you iterate and improve. The law of compound growth being what it is: if you can get 2% better every iteration cycle, your iteration cycle is every four hours rather than every four weeks, and you compound that over the course of a few years, you’ll be in a very very different place. Make it one of your top goals to build one of the fastest iterating companies the world has ever seen.” #3 Make a long-term commitment “Most companies have a 2-3 year time horizon. But companies are almost always a 10 year project if they work. If you think about it that way from the very beginning, you will make very different and much better decisions. I think this is the only arbitrage opportunity left in the market. Almost no one makes a fairly long-term commitment to a new project. But if you do that, you will think in a different way, you will hire different people, and it will work very well.” #4 Stay lean until everything is working really well “In the early days, when you’re experimenting and zig zagging, you’re like a fast little speed boat and want to be able to turn the whole company on a dime. You can’t do that if you’re a big company—cash burn aside, which is another problem. The flexibility of the company basically decreases with the square of the number of employees, so you want to stay really small until you’re sure things are working. Once things are working, then you can get really big.” #5 Resist the urge to hire; especially resist the urge to hire mediocre people “Vinod Khosla has a saying that I love: ‘the team you build is the company you build.’ This is really true and I never appreciated how true this was for a long time. If you build a team of great people and you have a product that people love, you’ll have a 90%+ chance of success. Those are both really hard to do, and they’re independent variables. But don’t ignore the team component. The best CEOs I know spend huge amounts of their time recruiting and retaining good talent.” #6 Relentless execution “You have to keep going, and do things perfectly, and get all of the details right. You have to care too much about every experience that a customer has with your company.” #7 Startups are about not giving up “One of the very best companies in the last YC batch applied 7 times before they got in. This is just a version of what happens in startups all of the time: you get beat down, again, and again, and again. And that last time when you get pushed down and don’t think you have enough energy to get back up—that’s the time it actually works. This is what you sign up for if you’re going to start a startup.” #8 Fiduciary duty to take care of yourself “This is a 10-year marathon and you have a fiduciary duty to your shareholders to take care of yourself. Some people treat startups like an all-nighter: they don’t take care of their health, they don’t sleep, they don’t maintain their personal relationships. It is true that startups are a bad choice for work-life balance. But you have a duty to yourself, your team, and your investors to take care of yourself.” #9 Clear mission “You don’t have to figure this out on Day 1, but all of the most successful startups I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of pretty quickly—in the first one to two years—figure out a really important mission. It’s this mission that gets people to join them. It drives the founders. It gets the media to write about them. And even if you start off building a project that’s just interesting to you and solves a problem in your life—which is how you should start—remember that you should have a clear mission at some point… That is what will convince people to come help you, and that is how you will build this idea into a huge company with a ton of people that really love your product.” Follow Startup Archive for more tactical startup advice!

Startup Archive

407,704 просмотров • 2 лет назад

Vinod Khosla on the right way to execute a business plan Vinod Khosla, who founded Sun Microsystems and Khosla Ventures, likes to say: “Be obstinate about your vision, but be really flexible about your tactics.” He explains what he means by this: “It’s important to have a vision of where you’re trying to go, but how you get there is a series of experiments… What entrepreneurs do is effectual reasoning. They have a big vision, but they don’t try and get there in one leap… You take a step in the right direction so you can garner more resources and then try the next experiment… You try and garner resources for the next step, every step — not do the whole thing in one step.” This, Vinod believes, is one of the reasons raising too much money can lead founders astray: “People who raise too much money get too much confidence in their own plan, which is normally BS. The right way to do a business plan is flex-planning: have a vision, but plan the next 3-6 months to test every assumption you have. A business plan is about testing every assumption. Even if you’re sure it’s true, test it if you can in the marketplace by running an experiment.” He gives another analogy for the point he’s trying to make: “You want to shoot for Mount Everest, but nobody ever got to Mount Everest without getting to base camp first. You build a base camp of a stable place where you’ve learned a lot and where you can tread water for a while… Maybe you get to cash flow breakeven at base camp. But you want to set up base camp where it helps you scope out the path to Mount Everest.” Video source: Startup Grind (2015)
2:40

Vinod Khosla on the right way to execute a business plan Vinod Khosla, who founded Sun Microsystems and Khosla Ventures, likes to say: “Be obstinate about your vision, but be really flexible about your tactics.” He explains what he means by this: “It’s important to have a vision of where you’re trying to go, but how you get there is a series of experiments… What entrepreneurs do is effectual reasoning. They have a big vision, but they don’t try and get there in one leap… You take a step in the right direction so you can garner more resources and then try the next experiment… You try and garner resources for the next step, every step — not do the whole thing in one step.” This, Vinod believes, is one of the reasons raising too much money can lead founders astray: “People who raise too much money get too much confidence in their own plan, which is normally BS. The right way to do a business plan is flex-planning: have a vision, but plan the next 3-6 months to test every assumption you have. A business plan is about testing every assumption. Even if you’re sure it’s true, test it if you can in the marketplace by running an experiment.” He gives another analogy for the point he’s trying to make: “You want to shoot for Mount Everest, but nobody ever got to Mount Everest without getting to base camp first. You build a base camp of a stable place where you’ve learned a lot and where you can tread water for a while… Maybe you get to cash flow breakeven at base camp. But you want to set up base camp where it helps you scope out the path to Mount Everest.” Video source: Startup Grind (2015)

Startup Archive

13,930 просмотров • 7 месяцев назад

Jensen Huang explains how he designed NVIDIA from first principles “With respect to building a company, the first thing you have to do—as with all problems—is start from first principles. What is this machine that we’re trying to create? What is its input? What is its output? What are the conditions that it’s in? What is the industry like? Is it a fast moving industry? Is it a bureaucratic industry? Is it a highly regulated industry? And what are you trying to build?” Thinking about it from this perspective, there were several things Jensen wanted to do with the company: “I wanted to create a company that naturally attracts amazing people, and the reason for that is our company’s mission is to solve computing problems that are barely possible.” He also wanted a company that was “as small as possible” and “empowered people.” “If you want an organization that obeys command and control, then you make it a pyramid just like the military—all the way back to the Roman Empire. But If you want to empower people, you want to make it as flat as possible so that information travels quickly.” He continues: “We also don’t have business units. We don’t have divisions. Everybody works as one, and the company is shaped in a way that allows us to build accelerated computing best.” Video source: Sana (2023)
1:56

Jensen Huang explains how he designed NVIDIA from first principles “With respect to building a company, the first thing you have to do—as with all problems—is start from first principles. What is this machine that we’re trying to create? What is its input? What is its output? What are the conditions that it’s in? What is the industry like? Is it a fast moving industry? Is it a bureaucratic industry? Is it a highly regulated industry? And what are you trying to build?” Thinking about it from this perspective, there were several things Jensen wanted to do with the company: “I wanted to create a company that naturally attracts amazing people, and the reason for that is our company’s mission is to solve computing problems that are barely possible.” He also wanted a company that was “as small as possible” and “empowered people.” “If you want an organization that obeys command and control, then you make it a pyramid just like the military—all the way back to the Roman Empire. But If you want to empower people, you want to make it as flat as possible so that information travels quickly.” He continues: “We also don’t have business units. We don’t have divisions. Everybody works as one, and the company is shaped in a way that allows us to build accelerated computing best.” Video source: Sana (2023)

Startup Archive

63,921 просмотров • 10 месяцев назад

Jeff Bezos on how to build a business strategy “I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?” And that is an interesting question… But I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two.” Jeff argues: “You can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that’s going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery. They want vast selection. It’s impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, ‘Jeff I love Amazon, I just wish the prices were a little higher.’ Or, ‘I love Amazon, I just wish you’d deliver a little slower.’ Impossible. And so we know the energy we put into these things today will still be paying dividends for our customers 10 years from now.” He gives AWS as another example. It’s impossible to imagine AWS customers asking for a less reliable or more expensive service. ”When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it… The big ideas in business are often very obvious, but it’s very hard to maintain a firm grasp of the obvious at all times. But if you can do that and continue to spin up those flywheels and put energy into those things, over time, you build a better service for your customers on the things that genuinely matter to them.” Video source: Amazon Web Services (2012)
2:01

Jeff Bezos on how to build a business strategy “I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?” And that is an interesting question… But I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two.” Jeff argues: “You can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that’s going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery. They want vast selection. It’s impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, ‘Jeff I love Amazon, I just wish the prices were a little higher.’ Or, ‘I love Amazon, I just wish you’d deliver a little slower.’ Impossible. And so we know the energy we put into these things today will still be paying dividends for our customers 10 years from now.” He gives AWS as another example. It’s impossible to imagine AWS customers asking for a less reliable or more expensive service. ”When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it… The big ideas in business are often very obvious, but it’s very hard to maintain a firm grasp of the obvious at all times. But if you can do that and continue to spin up those flywheels and put energy into those things, over time, you build a better service for your customers on the things that genuinely matter to them.” Video source: Amazon Web Services (2012)

Startup Archive

61,894 просмотров • 1 год назад

Peter Thiel on the most important lesson he learned building PayPal The early employees of PayPal went on to build incredible companies like Tesla, SpaceX, LinkedIn, YouTube, Palantir, Yelp, Yammer, and more. When asked about the factors that explain these outlier successes, Thiel suggests that it was probably a combination of several different things: an entrepreneurial culture, lots of strong personalities, and the early 2000s was a great time to start a company. But Thiel also says that the overarching lesson you learned working at PayPal—which had a lot of challenges but ended up succeeding—was: “You can build a great company, but it’s hard.” He contrasts this to the lessons you learn at most startups: “If you’re at a startup that fails, you will learn the lesson that it’s impossible to build a great company and that you should try something less ambitious the next time around. If you’re at a startup where things work too easily [such as Microsoft or Google], you learn the lesson that it’s actually easy to build a great company.” He continues: “Hard is somehow better than easy or impossible. If it’s easy, you don’t need to work hard. If it’s impossible, there’s no point in working hard. So easy and impossible converge to not working hard. Hard tells you you have to work hard.” Video source: This Week in Startups @jason (2015)
1:50

Peter Thiel on the most important lesson he learned building PayPal The early employees of PayPal went on to build incredible companies like Tesla, SpaceX, LinkedIn, YouTube, Palantir, Yelp, Yammer, and more. When asked about the factors that explain these outlier successes, Thiel suggests that it was probably a combination of several different things: an entrepreneurial culture, lots of strong personalities, and the early 2000s was a great time to start a company. But Thiel also says that the overarching lesson you learned working at PayPal—which had a lot of challenges but ended up succeeding—was: “You can build a great company, but it’s hard.” He contrasts this to the lessons you learn at most startups: “If you’re at a startup that fails, you will learn the lesson that it’s impossible to build a great company and that you should try something less ambitious the next time around. If you’re at a startup where things work too easily [such as Microsoft or Google], you learn the lesson that it’s actually easy to build a great company.” He continues: “Hard is somehow better than easy or impossible. If it’s easy, you don’t need to work hard. If it’s impossible, there’s no point in working hard. So easy and impossible converge to not working hard. Hard tells you you have to work hard.” Video source: This Week in Startups @jason (2015)

Startup Archive

105,347 просмотров • 9 месяцев назад

Scott on why conviction in an idea is dangerous as an investor but required as a founder: "From the investor seat, I don't think you want to be in love with an idea. That's a risky thing because you'll find a way to express that by investing and make some compromises on the team because you know this idea is just so good, its time has come. But if the team isn't there, 90% of the time it doesn't work. Then there's a whole thing can you swap out the team? But the whole Founders Fund thesis was always no, you need the founder to run the company. But on the company side, you have to be in love with the idea. It's not that rational to start a company. There's a lot easier, more comfortable ways to make money if that's the goal. So it's got to be about what the company is doing specifically. If you want to actually start a company, it better be something that you're really passionate about, or you think that the problem is really important."
1:15

Scott on why conviction in an idea is dangerous as an investor but required as a founder: "From the investor seat, I don't think you want to be in love with an idea. That's a risky thing because you'll find a way to express that by investing and make some compromises on the team because you know this idea is just so good, its time has come. But if the team isn't there, 90% of the time it doesn't work. Then there's a whole thing can you swap out the team? But the whole Founders Fund thesis was always no, you need the founder to run the company. But on the company side, you have to be in love with the idea. It's not that rational to start a company. There's a lot easier, more comfortable ways to make money if that's the goal. So it's got to be about what the company is doing specifically. If you want to actually start a company, it better be something that you're really passionate about, or you think that the problem is really important."

Patrick OShaughnessy

33,016 просмотров • 3 месяцев назад