Live blogging - BASES Entrepreneurship KickOff at Stanford - 30th Oct, 2006

So a couple of weeks back, the student entrepreneurship club of Stanford(BASES) hosted a panel discussion on the current trends in entrepreneurship here in the valley. The discussion was moderated by Guy Kawasaki and the panel had as it members: Anand of Aerospace Corporation, Seth Godin of Meebo, Ann - big time VC here, Steve - big time VC here Erik And a couple of more people So 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 KAWASAKI A Stanford alum - law school and gsb reject Erik - active in spinning companies out of stan Ann - ... venture partners Steve - Meteor Network Seth on current state of high entrepreneurship people say its easy to get money this day and age...but this is not totally true - and with meeboe - just go do it forget abt business plan competitions dont spend months planning to execute - a lot of stuff is getting started right now meebo launched with a sum total with $6000Guy says: so what wrong with business competitions if u made a plan for meebo there would be a sum total of 50000 people in the world who wold use it if people are super passionate abt it and u think ut would work - as long as it doesnt take millions of dollars its seth's 8th attempt at a startup erik on the same its quite healthy here in the valley understand what ur competitors would be thinking or a project that u would be associated on campsas an entrepreneur - what risks u are takings fantastic time to be in ur seat be thoughtful abt building ur markets Ann - first round of capital - angel/venture is the most difficult round to raise we look for a lot of commitment its rare to see a business plan on 1 page paper the bar is high for that first round Anand hired a sales advisor - look in to the mobile enterprise not the tech behind it - but the fact that what does it do for the user how badly ur customers what ur product comes down to environment when customers are starting to trust the startups again get ur hands dirty with some basic sales, basic marketing techniques, Steve one 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 passions Seth on Web 2.0 ->next generation of websites - more of connect people less on the site owner and more on the people coming to it Tim O'rielly - Web 2.0� it was 2001 - business was low - worked very well for tim - my business model is open source - u have to be able to describe ur unique competitive model we cant invest in rear view mirrors rather than forward lookin Steve it doesn't mean a lot what ur marketing model whats the market looking like444i - Armando Fox - good course at Stanford Ann - brand advertisers are gonna come - google will need to run a lot of experiments to see how they can get more yahoo doesnt 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 huge some 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 internet incremental improvement on what u are already doing - watch videos after download - in youtube - watch in the browser without scrolling the bar - u have to know what is happening on this site from the main page target audience - potential advertisers How 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 it eligance and simplicity where u have 30 secs where u have 3 min gonna have to pitch to potential employers that u r gonna hire u r gonna pitch to ...Ann - less than 20 slides Steve - ~ 20