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The Best Lectures From How to Start Up – Stanford and Y Combinator

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I watched all 19 classes from Sam Altman’s Stanford and Y Combinator’s How to Startup class over the past month and recommend them fully. Sam Altman, Ycombinator’s President, took all of YC’s internal learnings from investing in 716 startups with over $30b in value created, and produced a masterclass on starting a startup.

If you’re thinking about starting a company, have already started a company or just want to see what starting a startup is really like, please watch all of the classes. I’ve been prescribing certain classes for founders we’ve funded in Magma and I’ve seen good results. If you want to save time, you can read the transcripts below each video, but I strongly suggest spending the time to watch the videos.

But if you don’t have time to watch all 15 hours and still don’t have time to read ~150 pages of text, I’m here to help. I’ve selected my favorite classes so that you can get 80% of the learning in 35% of the time. Before you get started, I reiterate, don’t get lazy. Watch or read all of them. But if you’re lazy, here’s my list.

Lecture 1: Intro: Ideas, Products, Team, Execution

Watch the first half with Sam Altman if you’re an experienced entrepreneur. If you’re just getting started or haven’t started yet, watch the entire class with Dustin Moskovitz, one of Facebook’s cofounders. Altman gives his overview of the class and his view on what’s important in a startup and Moskovitz walks you through evaluation your options when you start a startup.

Lecture 2: Ideas, Products, Team, Execution 2

Sam Altman continues talking about the four most important things in any startup. The biggest take away is that its much more important to build something that a small group loves a lot, rather than something a large group of people just simply likes. This is something I see many founders getting wrong. Watch the entire class.

Lecture 3: Before the Startup

Paul Graham, YC’s founder, gives his advice that he would give to his own kids when they are thinking about starting a startup. The most interesting point for me here that most founders get wrong is that Graham wants founders to do things that don’t scale. In my personal experience, doing things that don’t scale has been the only controlable difference between success and failure. Mandatory. Watch the entire class.

Lecture 4: Building product, Talking to Users and Growing

Adora Cheung of Homejoy, tells her story to illustrate how to build product, find users and grow. My biggest take away is the importance of going to where your users are. Most founders stay in their office too much or when they get out of the office, a la lean startup, they don’t go to where their users are. Watch the entire class.

Lecture 6: Growth

Alex Shultz, VP of Growth at Facebook, talks about growth rates, churn and how to know if your business is sustainable. I had to rewind in places and listen again, as its math centric for a humanities graduate like me. Many founders underestimate how important churn rate is and getting the user to their first magical moment as quickly as possible. Its completely worth watching the entire class.

Lecture 7: How to Build Products Users Love

Kevin Hale, the founder of Wufoo and now a partner in YC, tells his story about how he got his customers to love him. This class is probably my favorite or second favorite and is probably the most or second most important class for entrepreneurs who haven’t found product market fit yet. He also talks about bootstrapping a business to success, which is important in a VC focused course. Watch this class.

Lecture 8: Do things that don’t scale and PR

Stanley Tan from Doordash starts out talking about doing the things that don’t scale when you first start your business. Doing things that don’t scale is very intuitive to some entrepreneurs, but many get it wrong. Stanley’s story is a great example of how you can get started doing things that don’t scale are. Next, Walker Williams from Tspring gives his perspective on doing things that don’t scale and how to get users quickly. Watch these first two speakers.

Justin Kan talks about what PR is good for and what it’s not good for. Like money, PR can paper over problem areas in your business, but if you don’t fix the problem areas, you’ll have played your PR card and are still left with a startup with a bad foundation.

Watch the first two presenters and add in Justin’s if you have extra time.

Lecture 16: How to Run a User Interview

Emmet Shear, founder of Twitch, talks about how to run a user interview and then does a mock user interview after his lecture. This is the most important lecture for a first time entrepreneur or an entrepreneur who is still looking for product market fit. Watch this entire class, but if you’re pressed for time and have experience in user interviews, you can skp the mock interview at the end. But I suggest watching the entire class.

Lecture 19: Sales and Marketing

Tyler Bosmeny is the founder of Clever and he has one of the best overviews of startup sales I have seen. He talks about how to run a sales meeting, how to systematize sales calls, the percentage of time a salesperson should speak on an optimal call and many other topics. If you’ve found product market fit or are close, this is the most important class. Watch the first founder.

Bonus: Lecture 5: Competition is for Losers

Peter Thiel, founder of three billion dollar companies and prolific investor shares his view of the world. This is probably the only class where it makes sense to read the transcript or just go directly to his book Zero to One, as his presentation is choppy and can be hard to listen to. The ideas are interesting and I probably only agree with about 60% of what he says, but it’s worth reading.

If you’ve already launched your business and you can only watch two classes:

Lecture 7: How to Build Products Users Love (full class)
Lecture 16: How to Run a User Interview (first 75% of class)
Class 19: Sales and Marketing (first 25% of class)

If you’re thinking about raising money, Lecture 9 with Mark Andreessen, Ron Conway and Parker Conrad and Michael Seibel’s portion of Lecture 19 where he gives the most clear description of how you should talk to investors I’ve seen.

Forward Technology Conference 2010

Category : Entrepreneurship
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On the flight back from Austin after SXSW last March, I was taking with Jesse about how much fun it would be to have something like it in Madison.  We thought it would be cool to try to set something up for the summer.  When I got back, I pitched the idea to my friend Matt Younkle, who really liked the idea.  In May, over some beers, we decided to try to make a go of it.  As the summer rolled along, Matt, Bryan Chan and I continued to plan Madison’s tech conference.

The Forward Technology Conference took place at the Memorial Union on the UW campus on Friday and was a huge success.  Over 120 Madison entrepreneurs, techies, investors and other tech savvy Madisonians attended the inaugural FTC2010 to hear from some of the most interesting people in the Madison technology scene.

FTC2010 was only a small part of the 10 day long Forward Technology Festival, which was sort of a “taste of Madison” but for all of the tech and entrepreneur focused groups in town.  The Forward Technology Festival was the brainchild of Preston Austin, who had the foresight to try to bring all of the different tech groups in town together in a week long celebration.  FTF2010 included High Tech Happy Hour, Capital Entrepreneurs, Sector67, BarCamp and other tech focused events.

FTC Highlights

The Forward Technology Conference kicked off with a panel called Entrepreneur 101, which featured four successful Madison entrepreneurs: Greg Tracy (Sharendipity), Dan Voell (GoBuzz), Chad Sorenson (Flamedisk) and Roy Elkins (Broadjam) and was moderated by Bryan Chan (Supranet).  The panelists talked about their successes and lessons they’ve learned over their careers in the startup game.  All of the entrepreneurs talked about staying focused as one of they keys to their success.

Next up was All About LLCs featuring attorney Joseph Boucher of Neider and Boucher and Kevin Kelbel an accountant from Smith & Gesteland LLP moderated by Matt Younkle (Y-Innovation).  Boucher and Kelbel talked about the different types of business entities and shared stories about why different companies should choose LLCs, S or C corps.

After a quick lunch break, we did an hour of breakout sessions with topics proposed from the attendees.  We ended up with a wide range of topics and settled on four.  First was how to run an intern program led by Jesse Davis of Entrustet.  The second group was about what a shared hackerspace in Madison should look like, led by Chris Meyer of Sector67.  Another session was about biomimicry, with the last session focusing on the future of the web and HTML5 (hosted by Momenta’s Dan Gordon).

The final panel of the day was all about design, branding and identity.  It featured John Besmer (Planet Propaganda), Wesley Grubbs (Pitch Interactive), Andy Wallman (Knupp & Watson & Wallman), Gage Mitchell (Gage Mitchell Design) and was moderated by Dan Merfeld, (TheoryThree Interactive).  This was one of the more fun panels of the day and featured spirited discussion on the pros and cons of large and small design shops.  The panelists stressed that brands need consistent messaging across all platforms or their marketing won’t work.  My favorite quote of the day came from Besmer “If you’re thinking about your marketing when its time to do marketing, its way too late.”

We rolled on into my favorite part of the day: Pitch Your Biz.  5 startups had 5 minutes each to present their ideas to the crowd and then the crowd had 5 minutes to provide feedback, ideas and ways to improve the business.  Biz Pitchers included Heidi Allstop (Student Spill), Derek Swoboda (Golf Links Cafe), Joseph Beck (Loacsys), Justin Beck (PerBlue) and Mudit Tyagi (Open ADC).

I love this format because it keeps the participants and the audience on their toes.  The audience can’t fall asleep, since the pitches come fast and furious and there’s a new one every five minutes.  All of the startups did a great job, as did the audience.  My personal favorites were Student Spill, which I think has the potential to be a game changer by bringing support groups online, but with a tweak and PerBlue.  Justin Beck from PerBlue is always an entertaining speaker because he is right to the point, provides compelling stats and doesn’t mince words.  All five startups did a great job and Laurie Benson (Innacom) was a phenomenal MC.

Fred Foster of Electronic Theater Controls was the keynote speaker and told the story of how he founded ETC while he was still in school at UW.  He told war story after war story about his battles growing the company into what it is today: $200m in revenue and 700+ employees.  Foster had the audience laughing every few minutes and I could have listened to him tell stories for as long as he wanted to talk.  I thought it was awesome that when he started the company, he wanted to sell theater controls to The Met and 20 years later, he actually did it.  Talk about perseverance!

After the keynote, we put on a reception above the union terrace, right on the lake.  The weather was perfect and I enjoyed talking with all of the attendees and learning about their current projects.

I really enjoyed FTC2010 and am hoping to make it an annual event.  I know that with a full year to prepare, we can do an even better job and get more people in town to attend.  Madison is turning into a startup hub in the Midwest.  TechCrunch noticed.  Forbes noticed and the local media is starting to take note.  The Forward Tech Conference is another step in the right direction and one that I hope continues to put Madison on the map!

Did you attend FTC2010?  What was your favorite part of the festival? Do you have any suggestions or feedback?

Burrill Business Plan Competition 2010 and a Look Back

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The 2010 Burrill business plan competition was held yesterday at UW.  One year ago today, Jesse and I won the students choice award for Entrustet.  Writing the plan, talking to the judges and presenting at the competition helped us launch the company.  Almost one exactly year later, we had our launch party in Madison and we’ve been featured on Mashable, The Financial Times and tons of other media.  It’s amazing what a year of hard work on a cool idea can bring!

I went to the 2010 public exhibition yesterday to check out the new companies and invite participants to join Capital Entrepreneurs.  It’s safe to say that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well on campus.  There were some really cool ideas this year, with the top prizes going to im-Bed Biosciences ($10k), Sector 67 ($7k), ProPov ($4k) and MycoLogyx LLC ($1k) with Student Spill taking home $1k and free office space in the Metro Innovation Center.  Buffalo Shoals took home the Green Credit worth $1k.

I took some pictures of some of the cool new businesses I checked out.  I only had my iPhone camera, so the picture quality does not match the business quality.  Sorry for that.

Sector 67 – Chris Meyer

Sector67 is a start up TechShop / Hacker space / Makerspace / Collaborative Environment in Madison, WI dedicated to providing members the opportunity to work on tomorrow’s technology; to build, collaborate, learn, and teach about next generation devices.  It’s basically a place for engineers and others who are trying to improve products or create new ones to use shared equipment and shared space.  Sector 67 is a non-profit and will be an awesome addition to the Madison community.  Chris is also one of the original members of Capital Entrepreneurs.

Student Spill – Heidi Allstop

SPILL is “an anonymous network of students who have formed a venting outlet for college problems that everyone seems to go through, but few people want to LISTEN to. We’re an email based support system FOR and OF college students …just to provide a place to spill your guts or console others who need to vent.”

Allstop started Spill as a student organization and has successfully helped students all over campus.  She has the potential to expand to other campuses across the country and won $1k plus free office space for a year.  Heidi is also a CE member!

ArcherVision Concepts – Raul Correa, Rahul Kamath, Alexander Jacobs, Divya Seethapathy, Sriraman Santhanvaradan

This team has a really cool product.  Many bikers use helmet mounted mirrors to see what’s behind them.  The team created a prototype that updates this system for the 21st century.  They have a camera that goes on the back of the helmet which transmits to a front mounted LCD screen.  They are in the early stages, but have a cool prototype.  Their goal is to embed the camera and the wiring into the helmet so that it will not hurt you if you crash.  Bikers love to spend money on the latest  gadget, so if done right, I could see it catching on and becoming profitable.

Flyboy Carnival – Kevin Burgess, Christopher Martinez

Flyboy Carnival is a cool tshirt company based out of the UW business incubator in the Univesity Square building.  They have some cool shirts, but my favorite part is their creative packaging.   They sell their tshirts in red and white striped popcorn boxes with their tshirts inside. Check out the picture below.

ProPOV – Jon Mumm

Jon has a really interesting backstory. Originally from Milwaukee, he got really good at the first person shooter Counter Strike.  He was so good that he was able to turn pro and earns money playing the game on the pro circuit.  I know many of you are thinking, “what? turning pro to play video games?” but there is actually a well developed professional video game circuit in the USA and an incredibly popular one in Asia.

Jon always had people asking his for tips on how to get better at the game, so he started a website called JuanSource to help teach counter strike players the tips they would need to get really good at the game.  He saved video of him playing the game and commented over the action, helping people get better.  Naturally, he charged money for the commentary and started to have a profitable online business.

His new software the he developed, ProPOV, takes in game commentary to the next level, allowing gamers to comment live over the game.  ProPOV has a nice niche that could be very profitable as it gets rolled out.

Summary

Overall, I was impressed by the quality of this year’s ideas.  You can watch all of the presentations in full on the Burrill website.  I’ve been involved in the competition as a participant or viewer since 2006, and it seems like the ideas keep getting better each year.  30% of this years entries had at least one female on the team, which I believe is a big improvement over past years.  What was even more impressive is that most of the women who entered the competition were doing so outside of fashion, which is a great improvement.  Imagine how many more cool companies there would be if women started startups at the same rate that men do?

The Curious Case of Internet Anonymity

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Marcus Fitzgerald, the younger brother of NFL star WR Larry Fitzgerald apologized for writing disparaging remarks about QB Kurt Warner on his Twitter account.  LB Nick Barnett, LB Robert Henson and C Kevin Love have their own Twitter snafus.  Two Wisconsin Deputy Sheriffs burn a dummy wearing a co-worker’s uniform and post the video on Facebook, leading to their dismissal.  Employees at the National Science Foundation were fired for looking at porn at work for 331 days.  What do these incidents have in common?  They are all examples from the last week of people doing something stupid on the Internet and being SHOCKED when they are caught.

It seems like I hear about another story like this every day and I can’t seem to figure out why.  When the Internet first starting becoming popular in the late 90s, it was not uncommon to hear about people being fired for looking at porn at the office, buying illegal items over the Internet or trying to meet up with underage children.  I chalked that up to stupid people bringing their shady offline behavior to the Internet and not understanding that the Internet is basically public.   I figured that people did not realize that pretty much anyone could find out about what they were doing since the Internet was new.

Fast forward to 2009.  It’s been a decade since people started to become familiar with the Internet.  Everyone in the United States should have heard hundreds of these stories in the last ten years.  It wouldn’t surprise me if most Americans know at least one person personally who has done something stupid online that has led to adverse consequences.  Why does it continue to happen and why are people who slap videos up on YouTube shocked when they are discovered?  Why do people have a sense of anonymity and privacy with the Internet, when in reality, the Internet is probably the least private place in the world?

Why do underage drinkers post pictures of themselves on Facebook for the police or school officials to find when they would not post those pictures on their lockers?  Why do teens send nude pictures of themselves to their classmates over their cellphones or on Facebook when they would never give pass around a hard copy?  Why do grown men go to chat rooms and try to proposition children and go to meet them, even after the popularity of Chris Hansen’s To Catch A Predator, when they would never approach a child on the street (or even on the phone) with the same advances?  Why do people post rants on their Facebook or Twitter pages when they would never put the same information into a newspaper or say it to the person’s face?  Why do people do illegal things and post them on Youtube or Facebook video when they would never send them to their local news station?  Why do people post all sorts of things online that they would be mortified to do in real life?  Why are they shocked when they are caught?

I truly don’t understand it.  They have to know better.  They have to have seen examples of people getting into trouble for posting things online.  I cannot figure out why people have a sense of anonymity online when in reality it is the exact opposite.

I think about 20% of the people who do these types of things are just stupid.  They are equivalent to the guy who walks into the grocery store and waits for an employee to walk by, then shoves a frozen turkey under his coat.  They just don’t get it.  There is another 5-10% of people who just want to be “YouTube famous” and will post just about anything to be popular.  There is no helping these people.

My hypothesis for the rest of the population is that people who are posting these types of things online are generally alone, in their office or their home, and are lulled into a false sense of security.  They think that they are alone at home, so how can anyone else see what they are doing?  I don’t think that they are crying out for help or trying to get caught.  I think there is something about the isolation that is caused by computers and the internet that gives people the idea that they being private and careful, when in fact, it is the exact opposite.  They view the Internet as their own personal world, without regard to the rest of the people who happen to inhabit their virtual world as well.

I wonder if this is the height of the problem and history will look back at 2003-2009 as the crazy years when people were naive about the Internet, posting whatever they wanted and doing whatever they wanted, without regard to the consequences.  It could also go the other way, where everyone becomes desensitized to the stupid things people do online, but I do not think so.

Help me understand.  What’s your hypothesis as to why people slap pictures on Facebook and videos on YouTube that can get them in trouble? Why do so many people have a sense of anonymity online?  Will it continue?

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