Things I wish I knew before I started
Notes from Silicon Valley comes to the UK
Megan Smith, Google.
- I wish I knew how to reach out to people early and often f0r advice.
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn, Greylock
- Treat your financing and board composition as a marriage – who would you most trust to share the wheel with you?
- Three things need to be explained away if you want to get investment: why you have an MBA, why you were a management consultant and why you were an investment banker.
- To be a successful entrepreneur you need to have a predisposition to action. By acting, you will learn from the action.
- Don’t become an entrepreneur to get rich.
Daniel Yates, OPOWER
- Making a decision to get rid of a team member is usually a very positive thing for a business.
- Do things that you REALLY care about, not things that will get you rich.
Jose Ferreira, Knewton
- The underlying mechanics of fund raising are the same as High school dating.
Julie Hanna, Kiva
- You need to look beyond the soundbite – ‘It is all about the people’ – is totally true, but is a multi-layered truth.
- Who do you want in the fox hole with you?
- The culture of a company is inextricably linked with the founders.
How do you unwind from work? How do you create some sort of balance in your life?
JH: To take your mind off work, do something else that you are obsessive about. I meditated a lot.
DY: To do great work, you cannot work 20 hours a day. You need to be creative. I meditate and take a ceramics class every Saturday.
MS: Larry Page learned to fly helicopters to unwind from Google as it was the only thing that could occupy his mind outside Google.