Universitetsidrotten i USA är gigantisk – i fredags möttes David (Harvard) och Goliat (Stanford) i en klassisk drabbning… det blev som väntat ”spel mot ett mål”

Stanford       -       Harvard
      111                                      -      56

Universitetsidrotten i USA är stor, många anser  t o m att den är större och viktigare än de professionella ligorna (dvs. NFL, MLB, NBA…).

Stanford spelar i den sportsligt erkända Pac-10 divisionen. I denna division återfinns även universitet såsom UCLA, USC, Arizona, Arizona State.

Harvard spelar däremot i en liga som kallas Ivy League (där återfinns endast elituniversitet som valt att inte fokusera på idrott). I denna lilla internliga kämpar akademiska storheter såsom Yale, Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Darthmouth, Cornell mot varandra. Spela boll är de däremot mindre bra på – främst eftersom de inte delar ut några ”fripass” och ”gratis utbildningar” till duktiga idrottsmän.

I fredagskväll var de så dags för det klassiska basketmötet mellan David (Harvard) och Goliat (Stanford). Det ena laget med glada amatörer och i det andra med fullblodsproffs som ägnar sin mesta tid åt träning, träning och åter träning.

 Det blev som väntat total kross – 111 mot 56 (Harvard snyggade till siffrorna mot slutet)

Matchen var en del i säsongsstarten (3 matcher på 3 dagar) – även kallad ”the Travelers Basketball Classic”

”The No. 23 Cardinal did that, and a lot more, Friday night, routing Harvard 111-56 in its first of three contests in this weekend’s Travelers Basketball Classic. Stanford’s point total was its highest since 1990, and the 55-point margin of victory was the third-highest in school history.”

”The Cardinal exploited its physical advantages inside, outrebounding Harvard 50-19 and shooting 60 percent from the field.“Obviously we are a lot bigger and stronger than Harvard is at this time,” Stanford coach Trent Johnson said. “But they got some good shots and kept competing.”

Fotnot; det finns även något som kallas IVY PLUS – där ingår samtliga IVY LEAGUE lärosäten men även MIT och Stanford.

Några länkar; 

Pac-10s officiella hemsida; http://www.pac-10.org/

Pac-10 på wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Ten_Conference

Ivy Leagues officiella hemsida; http://www.ivyleaguesports.com/

Om matchen mellan Stanford & Harvard; http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2007/11/9/updateStanfordDestroysHarvard11156

Ltu & avd. för Funktionella Produkter i samarbete med Stanford University

engineering310.stanford.edu

Ltu har sedan många år tillbaka ett nära samarbete med Stanford i och med den årliga Stanfordkursen ”Engineering 310:Design Entrepreneurship”. Samtliga projekt i kursen har en industripartner som beställare (exempel från i år är SAP, Panasonic, Audi, Kodak, General Motors, Siemens, Volkswagen), en grupp Stanfordstudenter samt en internationell akademisk samarbetspartner (i år med parter från Colombia, Mexiko, Finland, Tyskland, Sverige & Schweiz). Målet med kursen är att studenter på ett tidigt stadie (innan arbetslivet börjar) ska få erfarenhet från att jobba med stora och komplexa industriprojekt, innehållande flera parter (industriella och akademiska), som spänner över stora geografiska områden. Projekten är inte specifierade från början, utan studenterna får börja med att identifiera sitt problemområde och komma fram till en problemställning. Studenterna får sedan självständigt jobba fram en lösning till sitt problem. Till sitt förfogade har studenterna tillgång till flertalet mentorer (s k teaching teams) från de universitet som är knutna till respektive projekt.

I årets projekt samarbetar fyra ex-jobbare från Ltu (avd. funktionella produkter), tre från KTH, en från Lund samt en studentgrupp från Stanford för att utveckla en vattenutvinnare. Industriell samarbetspartner är Immerse Global Inc. (USA) med arbetstiteln Pure Water Solution for the World (private).

För mer info om kursen och årets projekt, besök hemsidan;
http://engineering310.stanford.edu/07-08/index.php

Teaching team; Professors Mark Cutkosky & Larry Leifer

Oracle open world – en jättemässa som kräver att delar av centrala SF stängs av!

 

Oracle anordnar ett jätteevent under nästa vecka. Eventet hålls från 11e till 15e november i centrala San Francisco. Som svensk var jag tidigare säker på att avspärrningarna måste bero på ett större vägarbete.

Oracle OpenWorld to shut Howard at Moscone Center for 9 days

For the second year in a row, Oracle’s huge OpenWorld event will shut a block of Howard Street for nine days.

Howard Street will close at 8 p.m. Thursday between Third and Fourth streets, and won’t reopen until 6 a.m. Nov. 17.

City crews will block off the intersection and make way for event workers to erect tents on Howard Street, transforming it into a temporary annex for Moscone Center.

Transportation officials warn motorists to expect significant traffic tie-ups in and around Moscone Center between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. each day of the closure.

Workers will install temporary striping and erect detour signs and electronic message boards in the area. San Francisco police and parking control officers will be stationed throughout the area.

Last year’s event caused only minor traffic troubles. Maggie Lynch, spokeswoman for the Municipal Transportation Agency, expects this year to go even more smoothly.

”It’s easier this time for the agencies involved,” she said, ”because we’ve done it before.”

More than 45,000 people are expected to attend the annual event, which will occupy all three halls of the Moscone Center complex. But that’s not enough space for OpenWorld, said Leonard Hoops, executive vice president for sales and marketing for the San Francisco Visitors and Convention Bureau.

”Without appending Howard Street,” he said, ”we wouldn’t be able to keep Oracle.”

The event is estimated to pump about $80 million into San Francisco, including hotel room rentals, event planning, and business at restaurants and tourist attractions.

 Url; http://www.oracle.com/openworld/2007/index.html

Googles arbetsmiljö, förmåner och deras anställda – sk “Googlers”

Vi var på ett lyckat besök på Google för ett par veckor sedan (vi var ju på ett misslyckat uppdrag för några veckor sedan - se tidigare inlägg) - denna gång inbjudna av en kille här på Stanford som även jobbar på Google.

Google är uppbyggt som ett campus – med olika byggnader – runt en huvudbyggnad. Huvudbyggnaden har bl a en beachvolleyplan, simbassäng, biltvätt, kemtvätt och otaliga restauranger och kaféer. All mat och dryck är gratis för alla googleanställda (och ingen extern är berättigad att vistas på ”campus”) – det innebär att nästan inget ställe hanterar kontanter och det saknas således kassaapparater. Google lever tydligen efter en devis att ”ingen ska någonsin befinna sig längre än 30 meter från mat”. En intern visdom är att du går upp 15 pound (ca 7 kg) under dina första 15 dagar som Googleanställd. Ett liv i överflöd. Dessutom anordnar Google gratis rockkonserter på campus, seminarier och kurser som inte har någonting att göra med data. Det finns t o m tvättmaskiner så att du kan ta med tvätten till jobbet… allt för att skapa denna värld som du aldrig behöver lämna.

Googles nya angreppssätt har tydligen förändrat standarden för arbetsmiljö och förmåner bland Silicon Valleys jättar – i kampen om att attrahera de skickligaste programmerarna, ekonomerna etc. Liknande förmåner som Google erbjuder blir tydligen allt vanligare på jätteföretag som Cisco, Microsoft, Ebay m fl. På IBM (som är ett östkustföretag, med allt vad detta innebär) är det t ex möjligt att arbeta 2-3 dagar hemifrån, tidigare en omöjlighet. Det var en liten inblick i Google lilla slutna värld.

MEN ÄR ALLT BARA GULD OCH GRÖNA SKOGAR PÅ GOOGLE? ELLER FINNS DET EN NEGATIV SIDA AV DENNA ”SLUTNA UTOPI”?

Här följer ett utdrag från dagens ”The Stanford Daily” (universitetets egna tidning – det finns ett par till) – kolla även gärna in webbupplagan av tidningen på; http://daily.stanford.edu/

 

Sketch: Google is an evil cult

November 7, 2007
By Navin Sivanandam

/// Google is an evil cult staffed by crazy people. Well, maybe not evil. And now that I think about it, the people aren’t really crazy. But it is a cult, and it may well be bent on world domination.

Enlarge

Cristina Bautista

 

When you’re at Stanford, it’s hard to escape the overbearing presence of Google in the Bay Area. We may be insular here, but for most grad students, Google still seems to fall within the bubble.

Right now I’m living with a self-styled “Googler” (just saying that word left a bitter taste in my mouth), so I’ve gotten to experience the G-uggernaut first hand. In terms of life penetration, it’s pretty damn impressive.

My roommate eats almost all her meals at HQ, and her social life involves mostly people from the office (and often takes place at the office); she talks the talk and walks the walk — she even wears the G-clothing.

Yes, if you thought Stanford students were bad when it comes to relentless branding, Google is something else.

Now, wearing a Stanford-stamped hoodie around campus when you’re eighteen is forgivable (you’re young, lazy and devoid of anything approaching style). Traipsing around San Francisco, broadcasting your corporate servitude, is not. After all, people with real jobs can afford to buy real clothes.

But it’s my roommate’s self-G-dentification that disturbs me the most. It’s one thing to be a member of a cult; it’s quite another to walk around in your robes, cyanide-laced Kool-Aid in hand, head held high.

Some people think that only as a student do you get a restricted view of the world, trapped in the tiny bubble of your campus. The thing is, though, just because you leave doesn’t mean you’ve broken free. You can carry that bubble with you; it just G-shrinks until you suffocate and die.

Usually, said suffocation process takes a while, but Google has it down to a tee. They run your life. They provide you with everything you need: food, shelter, music, beer (but only on Fridays), games, a social life — even romance. Whatever you want, there’s no need to leave work.

(To be fair, while they may have drunk the Kool-Aid, devotees of the high church of Google still have a little of that post-millennium faux-irony thing going on — you know, where every observation is tinted with a hint of self-depreciation, as in: “Yeah, I know my life is run by a corporate machine, but can’t talk now, got to go and have G-fun.”)

There was a brief moment when working for the G-Man was cool, when the free food and toys seemed like the ultimate perks for a job that just involved not “doing evil.” But now I see the evil masterminds at the Googledome for who they really are: drug pushers, trapping their employees in an unending cycle of addiction and high earnings. As opposed to, say, a cycle of tedious research and poverty.

Actually, with its free food, its highly insular social life and the cultish obsession of its worker bees, the thing Google most reminds me of is grad school. Which, on reflection, probably explains why I hate it so much.///

NOT; lite kul att google gör reklam mitt i en google-anti-artikel… jag tycker ni borde kolla in sidan där läsarna får skriva sina kommentarer till artikeln; http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2007/11/7/sketchGoogleIsAnEvilCult (ett axplock från förmiddagens inlägg, kl 11,49)

Kommentar 1: 

Google Sucks about 2 hours ago
What worries me more about Google is that they are fueling another bubble, the Web 2.0 bubble. The company hasn’t fundamentally changed in the last 6 months (they still make 99% of their revenues from advertising linked to search results), yet they are fueling a lot of loser initiatives (Open Social and Open Handset will be big flops because they are attempts to put pressure on the winners of social networking and wireless handsets respectively) that are pushing their market cap (and that of other players in the high tech industry) to levels pre-bubble.

Kommentar 2;

Report as: spam offensive T 40 minutes ago

I’ve never lived with a Googler, but I once tried to socialize with a gaggle of them living together in a house in Mountain View. I don’t even want to know how much money these guys are making — nevertheless, their living room was furnished exclusively with garish Google bean bag chairs. It was as if they didn’t realize that there were other outlets besides the G-world for their furnishing needs.
Maybe not such a big deal, but for me this is symbolic of the general, disturbing refusal of these ridiculously smart people to engage in the world around them. I completely agree that ”cult” is a dangerous corporate culture, especially for a company who purports to do no evil.

Chip Heath – made to stick

 

Chip Heath (Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University) har tillsammans med sin bror Dan skrivit boken ”Made to Stick -why some ideas survive and other dies”.

En intressant podcast (video) med titeln ”The Elements of a Sticky Idea” hittar ni här (5 minuter, notera att det finns ytterligare 5 podcasts i menyn under spelaren);
http://www.brightsightradio.com/podcastDetails.asp?id=236

Boken undersöker följande två frågor;

Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas?

Six Principles of Sticky Ideas

PRINCIPLE 1: SIMPLICITY
 How do we find the essential core of our ideas? A successful defense lawyer says, ”If you argue ten points, even if each is a good point, when they get back to the jury room they won’t remember any.” To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize. Saying something short is not the mission — sound bites are not the ideal. Proverbs are the ideal. We must create ideas that are both simple and profound. The Golden Rule is the ultimate model of simplicity: a one-sentence statement so profound that an individual could spend a lifetime learning to follow it.  

PRINCIPLE 2: UNEXPECTEDNESS

How do we get our audience to pay attention to our ideas, and how do we maintain their interest when we need time to get the ideas across? We need to violate people’s expectations. We need to be counterintuitive. A bag of popcorn is as unhealthy as a whole day’s worth of fatty foods! We can use surprise — an emotion whose function is to increase alertness and cause focus — to grab people’s attention. But surprise doesn’t last. For our idea to endure, we must generate interest and curiosity. How do you keep students engaged during the fortyeighth history class of the year? We can engage people’s curiosity over a long period of time by systematically ”opening gaps” in their knowledge — and then filling those gaps.

PRINCIPLE 3: CONCRETENESS

How do we make our ideas clear? We must explain our ideas in terms of human actions, in terms of sensory information. This is where so much business communication goes awry. Mission statements, synergies, strategies, visions — they are often ambiguous to the point of being meaningless. Naturally sticky ideas are full of concrete images — ice-filled bathtubs, apples with razors — because our brains are wired to remember concrete data. In proverbs, abstract truths are often encoded in concrete language: ”A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.” Speaking concretely is the only way to ensure that our idea will mean the same thing to everyone in our audience.

PRINCIPLE 4: CREDIBILITY

How do we make people believe our ideas? When the former surgeon general C. Everett Koop talks about a public-health issue, most people accept his ideas without skepticism. But in most day-to-day situations we don’t enjoy this authority. Sticky ideas have to carry their own credentials. We need ways to help people test our ideas for themselves — a ”try before you buy” philosophy for the world of ideas. When we’re trying to build a case for something, most of us instinctively grasp for hard numbers. But in many cases this is exactly the wrong approach. In the sole U.S. presidential debate in 1980 between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, Reagan could have cited innumerable statistics demonstrating the sluggishness of the economy. Instead, he asked a simple question that allowed voters to test for themselves: ”Before you vote, ask yourself if you are better off today than you were four years ago.”  

PRINCIPLE 5: EMOTIONS

How do we get people to care about our ideas? We make them feel something. In the case of movie popcorn, we make them feel disgusted by its unhealthiness. The statistic ”37 grams” doesn’t elicit any emotions. Research shows that people are more likely to make a charitable gift to a single needy individual than to an entire impoverished region. We are wired to feel things for people, not for abstractions. Sometimes the hard part is finding the right emotion to harness. For instance, it’s difficult to get teenagers to quit smoking by instilling in them a fear of the consequences, but it’s easier to get them to quit by tapping into their resentment of the duplicity of Big Tobacco.
PRINCIPLE 6: STORIES
How do we get people to act on our ideas? We tell stories. Firefighters naturally swap stories after every fire, and by doing so they multiply their experience; after years of hearing stories, they have a richer, more complete mental catalog of critical situations they might confront during a fire and the appropriate responses to those situations. Research shows that mentally rehearsing a situation helps us perform better when we encounter that situation in the physical environment. Similarly, hearing stories acts as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively.Bokens hemsida;
http://www.madetostick.com/

En intressant podcast (video) med titeln ”The Elements of a Sticky Idea” hittar ni här (5 minuter, notera att det finns ytterligare 5 podcasts i menyn under spelaren);
http://www.brightsightradio.com/podcastDetails.asp?id=236

Skriva Facebookapplikationer – tävlingar utlysta från alla håll

Facebook App Contest

Student Computing is sponsoring a contest this fall to encourage students to develop applications to promote student life (especially at Stanford) using Facebook’s Application platform. Hopefully, these applications will further highlight how Web 2.0 and social networking technologies like Facebook can empower students and others within the Stanford community to collaborate, share, and build communities.

Check out the Stanford Facebook App Contest Group on Facebook.

Ett antal riskkapitalister har även utlyst tävlingar i applikationsutvecklingar med Facebook som plattform. Accel (http://www.accel.com/index.php) är ett riskkaptalbolag som tagit täten i denna jakt på nya applikationer.

SUMMER INSTITUTE FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP – en sommarskola för icke-ekonomer

En sommarskola/snabbkurs (4 veckor) i företagsekonomi för icke-ekonomstudenter. Ett grepp för att hjälpa ”tekniker” förverkliga sina idéer.

Are you a graduate student and an aspiring entrepreneur?Then come to Stanford and learn what it takes to developan idea into a successful venture. In this four-week,intensive program you will gain an intimate knowledge of the processes and challenges that face any entrepreneur.

Discover what it takes to develop an idea into a successful venture through an intensive four-week business management program for graduate students in non-business fields.

* Learn from top business school faculty

* Live on the beautiful Stanford campus in the heart of Silicon Valley

* Gain insights into the world of business

* Build a global network of friends

En länk till en fin broschyr;
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/sie/SIE_brochure.pdf

Facebook påverkar båda utbildning och forskning på Stanford – en ny kurs och nytt forskningsspår

Ibland går det fort att skapa nya kurser, åtminstone i USA.
Det finns en ny kurs på Stanford som enbart fokuserar på programmering med Facebook som plattform;

Kurskod och namn;
CS377W: Creating Engaging Facebook Apps
Kurshemsida: http://credibilityserver.stanford.edu/captology/facebook/

BJ Fogg lärare i kursen om synen på utbildning vid Stanford University

”We all agree our new course is risky. It could turn out to be a disaster, not just for a few students but for over 100 students, some of whom came back to school from academic leave to enroll in the course.

So I gotta hand it to Stanford University. This is an institution that welcomes innovation, like this new course. I hope our students appreciate this fact. I sure do. ”

Kursen innehåller 3 delprojekt;

A. Creating web applicationsTeams of three students will create and launch novel web applications on Facebook. Both projects have the same overall purpose:
(1) to familiarize students with processes for interactive design,
(2) to learn about development and distribution of web applications, and
(3) to give students experience working in multidisciplinary teams.Web App #1: Solve a problem for a broad audience
The first app will focus on solving a problem for a broad audience. Each team determines what their app will do, aiming for large distribution and deep engagement, as shown by user metrics.  

Web App #2: Solve a problem in learning or teaching
The second app will focus on learning or teaching. Each team decides what their app will do, aiming to solve a focused problem extremely well.

B. Analyzing apps and sharing insights (“Apps You Should Know”)Working in teams of two, students will select a notable Facebook app, evaluate its strengths, and share insights with the class in a three-minute presentation and a one-page handout. The audience also benefits by learning about many web apps.  C. Present apps to audience and individualsDet pågår även forskning om Facebook och social networking communities på Stanford (utfört av bl a BJ Fogg);
”We’re also studying the psychology of Facebook — what makes it compelling, what persuades people to install new apps, and what motivates them to continue using the service. As part of this project I’m teaching a new course on Facebook in Fall 2007.”

Why Study Facebook?

Our current focus on Facebook extends research we did in 2006 on how Web 2.0 sites motivate and persuade people. Our investigations last year showed that every successful Web 2.0 company followed the same persuasion pattern; we outlined this pattern and called it the “Behavior Chain of Online Participation” (a journal article should be out in October). By looking at what works in the real world, we contributed new insights to captology, the study of computers as persuasive technology.

We don’t yet know what new insights we’ll gain by focusing on Facebook. But that’s what makes research fun: You don’t know for sure what you’ll discover.

Yet one thing seems clear: What we learn in this project will go beyond Facebook. To be sure, the psychology that drives Facebook relates directly to other online success stories, including those Internet blockbusters yet to be invented.

– BJ Fogg, Ph.D., & the Persuasive Technology Lab

Några intressanta länkar;
http://credibilityserver.stanford.edu/captology/facebook/
http://credibility.stanford.edu/captology/notebook/archives.new/2007/10/stanford_facebo.html

Top eleven lies of Entrepreneurs – hur entreprenörer försöker ”lura” byxorna av riskkapitalisterna!

Del II

Guy Kawasaki har även gjort en lista över de 11 vanligaste lögnerna som entreprenörer gör sig skyldiga till (Andrew Gould använde denna lista i kursen “Technology entrepreneurship ” – blogginlägg kan tydligen också vara undervisningmaterial);

1. “Our projections are conservative.” An entrepreneur’s projections are never conservative. If they were, they would be $0. I have never seen an entrepreneur achieve even her most conservative projections. Generally, an entrepreneur has no idea what sales will be, so she guesses: “Too little will make my deal uninteresting; too big, and I’ll look hallucinogenic.” The result is that everyone’s projections are $50 million in year four. As a rule of thumb, when I see a projection, I add one year to delivery time and multiply by .1.
2. “(Big name research firm) says our market will be $50 billion in 2010.” Every entrepreneur has a few slides about how the market potential for his segment is tens of billions. It doesn’t matter if the product is bar mitzah planning software or 802.11 chip sets. Venture capitalists don’t believe this type of forecast because it’s the fifth one of this magnitude that they’ve heard that day. Entrepreneurs would do themselves a favor by simply removing any reference to market size estimates from consulting firms.
3. “(Big name company) is going to sign our purchase order next week.” This is the “I heard I have to show traction at a conference” lie of entrepreneurs. The funny thing is that next week, the purchase order still isn’t signed. Nor the week after. The decision maker gets laid off, the CEO gets fired, there’s a natural disaster, whatever. The only way to play this card if AFTER the purchase order is signed because no investor whose money you’d want will fall for this one.
4. “Key employees are set to join us as soon as we get funded.” More often than not when a venture capitalist calls these key employees who are VPs are Microsoft, Oracle, and Sun, he gets the following response, “Who said that? I recall meeting him at a Churchill Club meeting, but I certainly didn’t say I would leave my cush $250,000/year job at Adobe to join his startup.” If it’s true that key employees are ready to rock and roll, have them call the venture capitalist after the meeting and testify to this effect.
5. “No one is doing what we’re doing.” This is a bummer of a lie because there are only two logical conclusions. First, no one else is doing this because there is no market for it. Second, the entrepreneur is so clueless that he can’t even use Google to figure out he has competition. Suffice it to say that the lack of a market and cluelessness is not conducive to securing an investment. As a rule of thumb, if you have a good idea, five companies are going the same thing. If you have a great idea, fifteen companies are doing the same thing.
6. “No one can do what we’re doing.” If there’s anything worse than the lack of a market and cluelessness, it’s arrogance. No one else can do this until the first company does it, and ten others spring up in the next ninety days. Let’s see, no one else ran a sub four-minute mile after Roger Bannister. (It took only a month before John Landy did). The world is a big place. There are lots of smart people in it. Entrepreneurs are kidding themselves if they think they have any kind of monopoly on knowledge. And, sure as I’m a Macintosh user, on the same day that an entrepreneur tells this lie, the venture capitalist will have met with another company that’s doing the same thing.
7. “Hurry because several other venture capital firms are interested.” The good news: There are maybe one hundred entrepreneurs in the world who can make this claim. The bad news: The fact that you are reading a blog about venture capital means you’re not one of them. As my mother used to say, “Never play Russian roulette with an Uzi.” For the absolute cream of the crop, there is competition for a deal, and an entrepreneur can scare other investors to make a decision. For the rest of us, don’t think one can create a sense of scarcity when it’s not true. Re-read the previous blog about the lies of venture capitalists, to learn how entrepreneurs are hearing “maybe” when venture capitalists are saying “no.”
8. “Oracle is too big/dumb/slow to be a threat.” Larry Ellison has his own jet. He can keep the San Jose Airport open for his late night landings. His boat is so big that it can barely get under the Golden Gate Bridge. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs are flying on Southwest out of Oakland and stealing the free peanuts. There’s a reason why Larry is where he is, and entrepreneurs are where they are, and it’s not that he’s big, dumb, and slow. Competing with Oracle, Microsoft, and other large companies is a very difficult task. Entrepreneurs who utter this lie look at best naive. You think it’s bravado, but venture capitalists think it’s stupidity.
9. “We have a proven management team.” Says who? Because the founder worked at Morgan Stanley for a summer? Or McKinsey for two years? Or he made sure that John Sculley’s Macintosh could power on? Truly “proven” in a venture capitalist’s eyes is founder of a company that returned billions to its investors. But if the entrepreneur were that proven, that he (a) probably wouldn’t have to ask for money; (b) wouldn’t be claiming that he’s proven. (Do you think Wayne Gretzky went around saying, “I am a good hockey player”?) A better strategy is for the entrepreneur to state that (a) she has relevant industry experience; (b) she is going to do whatever it takes to succeed; (c) she is going to surround herself with directors and advisors who are proven; and (d) she’ll step aside whenever it becomes necessary. This is good enough for a venture capitalist that believes in what the entrepreneur is doing.
10. “Patents make our product defensible.” The optimal number of times to use the P word in a presentation is one. Just once, say, “We have filed patents for what we are doing.” Done. The second time you say it, venture capitalists begin to suspect that you are depending too much on patents for defensibility. The third time you say it, you are holding a sign above your head that says, “I am clueless.” Sure, you should patent what you’re doing–if for no other reason than to say it once in your presentation. But at the end of the patents are mostly good for impressing your parents. You won’t have the time or money to sue anyone with a pocket deep enough to be worth suing.
11. “All we have to do is get 1% of the market.” (Here’s a bonus since I still have battery power.) This lie is the flip side of “the market will be $50 billion.” There are two problems with this lie. First, no venture capitalist is interested in a company that is looking to get 1% or so of a market. Frankly, we want our companies to face the wrath of the anti-trust division of the Department of Justice. Second, it’s also not that easy to get 1% of any market, so you look silly pretending that it is. Generally, it’s much better for entrepreneurs to show a realistic appreciation of the difficulty of building a successful company.

Kom ihåg att även besöka Besök Guy Kawasakis blogg på
http://www.guykawasaki.com/

Återigen: Guys bok ”the art of the start”

The Top Nine Lies of Venture Capitalists – vad riskkapitalister ”egentligen” säger!

Guy Kawasaki har gjort en lista över de 10 vanligaste lögnerna som riskkapitalister gör sig skyldiga till (Andrew Gould använde denna lista i kursen ”Technology entrepreneurship ” – blogginlägg kan tydligen också vara undervisningmaterial);

1. “I liked your company, but my partners didn’t.” In other words, “no.” What the sponsor is trying to get the entrepreneur to believe is that he’s the good guy, the smart guy, the guy who gets it; the “others” didn’t, so don’t blame him. This is a cop out; it’s not the other partners didn’t like the deal as much as the sponsor wasn’t a true believer. A true believer would get it done.
2. “If you get a lead, we will follow.” In other words, “no.” As the old Japanese say, “If your aunt had balls, she’d be your uncle.” Well, she doesn’t have balls, so it doesn’t matter. The venture capitalist is saying, “ We don’t really believe, but if you can get Sequoia to lead, we’ll jump on the pile.” In other words, once the entrepreneur doesn’t need the money, the venture capitalist would be happy to give him some more–this is like saying, “Once you’ve stopped Larry Csonka cold, we’ll help you tackle him.” What entrepreneurs want to hear is, “If you can’t get a lead, we will.” That’s a believer.
3. “Show us some traction, and we’ll invest.” In other words, “no.” This lie translates to “I don’t believe your story, but if you can prove it by achieving significant revenue, then you might convince me. However, I don’t want to tell you ‘no’ because I might be wrong and by golly you may sign up a Fortune 500 customer and then I’d look like a total orifice.”
4. “We love to co-invest with other venture capitalists.” Like the sun rising and Canadians playing hockey, you can depend on the greed of venture capitalists. Greed in this business translates to “If this is a good deal, I want it all.” What entrepreneurs want to hear is, “We want the whole round. We don’t want any other investors.” Then it’s the entrepreneur’s job to convince them why other investors can make the pie bigger as opposed to re-configuring the slices.
5. “We’re investing in your team.” This is an incomplete statement. While it’s true that they are investing in the team, entrepreneurs are hearing, “We won’t fire you–why would we fire you if we invested because of you?” That’s not what the venture capitalist is saying at all. What she is saying is, “We’re investing in your team as long as things are going well, but if they go bad we will fire your ass because no one is indispensable.”
6. “I have lots of bandwidth to dedicate to your company.” Maybe the venture capitalist is talking about the T3 line into his office, but he’s not talking about his personal calendar because he’s already on ten boards. Counting board meetings, an entrepreneur should assume that a venture capitalist will spend between five to ten hours a month on a company. That’s it. Deal with it. And make board meetings short!
7. “This is a vanilla term sheet.” There is no such thing as a vanilla term sheet. Do you think corporate finance attorneys are paid $400/hour to push out vanilla term sheets? If entrepreneurs insist on using a flavor of ice cream to describe term sheets, the only flavor that works is Rocky Road. This is why they need their own $400/hour attorney too–as opposed to Uncle Joe the divorce lawyer.
8. “We can open up doors for you at our client companies.” This is a double whammy of lie. First, a venture capitalist can’t always open up doors at client companies. Frankly, he might be hated by the client company. The worst thing in the world may be a referral from him. Second, even if the venture capitalist can open the door, entrepreneurs can’t seriously expect the company to commit to your product–that is, something that isn’t much more than a slick (10/20/30) PowerPoint presentation.
9. “We like early-stage investing.” Venture capitalists fantasize about putting $1 million into a $2 million pre-money company and end up owning 33% of the next Google. That’s early stage investing. Do you know why we all know about Google’s amazing return on investment? The same reason we all know about Michael Jordan: Googles and Michael Jordans hardly ever happen. If they were common, no one would write about them. If you scratch beneath the surface, venture capitalists want to invest in proven teams (eg., the founders of Cisco) with proven technology (eg., the basis of a Nobel Prize) in a proven market (eg., ecommerce). We are remarkably risk averse considering it’s not even our money.
10. I’m at a Starbucks in Hawaii writing this blog. I’ve been at it for ninety minutes. I don’t have my charger with me. My PowerBook is out of gas. You’re going to have to be happy with the top nine lies of venture capitalists until “Dear God” ships the PowerBook Vaio.

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Han har även skrivit en bok som sägs vara bra ”The art of the start”