BASES Entrepreneurship KickOff at Stanford

So a couple of weeks back, the student entrepreneurship club of stanford(BASES) hosted a panel discussion on the current trends in entreprenuership here in the valley. The discussion was moderated by Guy Kawasaki and the panel had as it members: Anand of Aerospace CorporationSeth Godin of Meebo Ann - big time VC hereSteve - big time VC hereErikAnd a couple of more peopleSo here is what I could jot down (in a very news-reporter sorta way), I hope you enjoy it and benefit from it. I can also give you the link to the podcast of this - but u need to write comments for this blog first!GUY KAWASAKIA stanford alum - law school and gsb rejectErik - active in spinning companies out of stanAnn - ... venture partnersSteve - Meteor NetworkSeth on current state of high entreprenuershippeople say its easy to get money this day and age...but htis is not totally true - and with meeboe - just go do it forget abt business plan comeptitionsdont spend moenths planning to execute - a lot of stuff is getting started right nowmeebo launched with a sum total with $6000Guy says: so what wrong with business competitionsif u made a plan for meebo there would be a sum total of 50000 people in the world who wold use itif people are super passionate abt it and u think ut would work - as long as it doesnt take millions of dollarsits seth's 8th attemp at a startuperik on the sameits quite healthy here in the valleyunderstand what ur competitors would be thinkingor a project that u would be associated on campsas an entreprenuer - what risks u are takings fantastic time to be in ur seatbe thougthful abt building ur marketsAnn - first round of capital - angel/venture is the most diffuclt round to raisewe look for a lot of commitmentits rare to see a business plan on 1 page paperthe bar is high for that first roundAnandhired a sales advisor - look in to the mobile enterprise not the tech behind it - but the fact that what does it do for the userhow badly ur customers wnat ur productcomes down to environement when customers are starting to trust the startups againget ur hands dirty with some basic sales, basic marketing techniques, Steveone thing that is different today is that there is a new thought - creating a new focuswe look at a few values - facilitating connection between users - connect to people's passionsSeth on Web 2.0 ->next generation of websites - more of connect peopleless on the site owner and more on the people coming to itTim Orielly - Web 2.0  it was 2001 - business was low - worked very well for tim - my business model is open source - u hv to be able to describe ur unique competitive modelwe cant invest in rear view mirrors rather than forward lookinSteveit doesnt mean a lotwhat ur marketing modelwhats the martket looking like444i - Armando Fox - good course at stanfordAnn - brand advertisers are gonna come - google will need to run a lot of experiments to see how they can get more yahoo doenst have the advertising dent that google has  Between MySpace or YouTube - its myspace - which is a no brainer coz the demographics cross section which myspace caters to is hugesome luck or some blinding insight - but when u r in the internet - when u r trying to predict the users - doing research is very diff than putting up a consumer internetincremental improvement on what u are already doing - watch videos after download - in youtube - watch in the browserwithout scrolling the bar - u have to know what is happening on this site from the main pagetarget audience - potential advertisersHow many power point slides would u see when u are looking at entrepreneurs doing their pitch - 0 slides 15 slides - if u go higher 20-25 slides u r iteligance and simplicitywhere u have 30 secswhere u have 3 mingonna have to pitch to potential employers that u r gonna hireu r gonna pitch to ...Ann - less than 20 slidesSteve - ~ 20