Stanford = engineering + venture capital
We all know Stanford was the birthplace of HP, Cisco, Google, Yahoo. Did you know that in a 2011 survey, it was determined that 39K+ companies can trace their roots to the school. If those companies formed a country, it would have the 10th largest economy in the world. Uh, yeah.
Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders
This is a speaker series they have run since 2002. Many alumni and friends of the school come and share their stories and advice. You will recognize many of the companies and speaker names. While it spans all industries, it is definitely has an engineering, innovation, and entrepreneurial bent. Lots of discussion on picking the right team, scaling the enterprise, and working with venture capitalists.
- Mark Zuckerberg. This talk is from 2005, only 1 year after he founded Facebook and right after moving to Palo Alto.
- Daniel Ek Founder of Spotify. Brilliant, completely disrupting the music industry. Real futurist, 2012.
- Marissa Mayer. When a VP at Google, not yet CEO of Yahoo. Mastermind behind Google’s clean home page, 2006.
- Tom Kelley. Founder of legendary innovation design firm, IDEO, 2008.
- David Baszucki, Founder of Roblux, platform for player-generated games, 2018.
- John Hennessey, President of Stanford University, 2016.
- Scott Cook, Founder of Intuit, 2015.
- Ben Horowitz, founder of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, 2014.
- Tina Seelig, Stanford professor and mastermind of this entire podcast series, 2014.
successful entrepreneurs
This advice is free. These hour-long talks are recorded on video, but they are just as good listened to by podcast here. Perfect for those airplane trips and airport waits when your opportunity cost is zero.
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything learned in school” – Albert Einstein