Startup Success 2006

This is a video of “Startup Success,” the Churchill Club’s annual look at what it takes to build a successful startup. This panel of five Silicon Valley entrepreneurs discussed the challenges and critical success factors necessary to reach the promised land. August 17, 2006.

Moderator: Guy Kawasaki, Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures

Speakers:

• Lauren Elliott, Founder, Personal News Network

• Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder and CEO, LinkedIn

• Joe Kraus, Co-Founder and CEO, JotSpot

• Daniel Mattes, Co-Founder and CTO, Jajah

• Alex Welch, Co-Founder and CEO, Photobucket

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Comments

[Michael]

In the middle of a housing market slump, the last thing any landlord or property owner needs is to spend more money to list their vacancies. Cribs4students' is a platform that connects landlords to the student market without charging a fee. With sites like Facebook on their side (http://apps.facebook.com/cribsforstudents), they surely have the student apartment information market on a choke hold.

What makes Cribs4Students.com different from other websites that offer similar services?

Cribs4Students is free, convenient, and easy to use. Rather than having your listings unattended, Cribs4students’ advertises your listings with all universities, university papers, student events, and social networks (like Facebook) so your listings are viewed by millions of students in several days.
How can one post an apartment, room, or sublet for free?

In the home page, http://www.cribs4students.com:

1) Select a state from the map
2) Select a university
3) Click 'Post Apartments/Sublets'
4) Insert the information for your property; click submit

http://cribs4students.com

About the company:

The website was launched in February 2007 and has received widespread attention in universities and colleges across the United States. The website is now global and supports international universities in major cities around the world.

[luisse hann]

Hi! My friend started this online classifieds for used motorcycles only. AT the moment, it's really doing pretty good. We are averaging 200,000 clicks/month eventhough he only started the web 6 months ago.

People can post their motorcycle for sale in the website for free. We don't charge them. I just wonder how can we make the site more successful and attract more traffic?

marksmotos.com was developed for bikers or motorcycles enthusiasts. Has anyone of you here have any experience in this kind of business?

[Liming Xu]

My business model is very much like photobucket and while I understood it was by word of mouth marketing, yet, I wish someone could elaborated a little more on the details in terms of the difficulties they faced using this model, what have they tried while waiting for it to spread and how long it took them to get to the critical mass.

Building a web business requires hardware, speed, ability to handle mass traffic. When they first started, they already had their own servers? Were they hosting it somewhere? Either way, how do they sustain these expenses while waiting with virtually not that much investment to begin with?

[felipe]

Awesome video .... Incredible the list of the panelists ... very insightful ... I can't imagine how people had to learn how to start a business before videos and blogs like this one ...

I guess they needed MBA's ;-)

thanks for saving me that money Guy!!!

[Nicola Mattina]

One of the thing I like most of being a geek living in the suburbs of innovation, is the fact that I can use the Internet to look interesting conferences, meeting and lessons.
This reminds me when a professor at the University asked me if I tought it was possibile to set up a service to record and broadcast academic or industry conferences (ie in the farmaceutical sector): in his opinion this would have been a tremendous opportunity for people around the world. It was 1998 when he asked me and broadband was a dream: now the days are come :-)

[mickslam]

I'll take a look tonight.

We're in the process of starting up and we're advancing rapidly - ok extremely rapidly to the point where we're going to sign big, big contracts very soon. Its a little strange to be saying this, but Guy, you were an inspiration. Really. No kidding. Not a joke or overstatement. I located a firm that could use my talents and abilities and just started helping. Now, I have a stake and its going just great.

We might be building a plant in northern CA. If thats the case, I'll send you some flowers or maybe those glasses you wanted a while back.

[Patrick]

Great work Guy!!

Greatest comment is from Reid Hoffman, who said that the most important thing for a consumer internet company is distribution: How do you get to a 1,000,000 customers? Zero distribution is zero value. Period.

[iAlph]

Very interessting

[Jason Sanzone]

Very good panel! Thanks for sharing Guy.

[Kempton]

Hi Guy,

I've now watched the full 90 minutes video and I can say I love it 100%. No guessing needed, just love it.

For those that find this sort of thing useful, I have "indexed" this 90 minutes video so people can "jump" to the various sections by hand scrolling to the corresponding timecodes. Hope this help some geeks (like me) out there. Here is my blog entry with the timecodes with some basic info,
"Five Valley entrepreneurs and Guy Kawasaki"

As oppose to my other shameless plugs, I honestly think this may help some people have a better viewing experience of this long video. (smile)

Cheers,
Kempton

P.S. I thought of this idea after the 23 minutes mark. So if someone can help me create an "index" for the first 23 minutes, that will be great. Simply comment on my blog entry and I will update it.

[Damian Holmes]

Can you please put the video on Youtube as Google Video is not avaliable in China.

Thanks

**********************
Damian,

I don't think that YouTube will permit such a long video. That's why I use GoogleVideo.

Thanks,

Guy

[theone]

simply awesome discussion. Would love to hear Joe's remaining comments on VCs.

thnx.

[Remo Uherek]

Great discussion (although the first half is more interesting than the second half). Liked the answers of Daniel Mattes (Jajah) the best.

Btw @Joe Kraus:
Here is a critical analysis regarding the CNN-poll: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~aeggers/notsooptimistic.pdf
Andrew Eggers says: "The problem with the figure is that it’s completely wrong. More precisely, the numbers are right, but the interpretation is way off." After reading this analysis I agree with Andrew, but nevertheless it was still a good laugh during the discussion and a good thing to remember :-).

[Kempton]

What a great panel discussion. I've just watched 20 minutes so far and it is just great. OK, it didn't get me at "Hello" because I was cautious in case the video suck.

But Guy, you deliver again. Sooner or later, I will just have to blindly trust whatever you post and then run to comment how great it is before I watch it. Or better, even before you post it. (smile)

Great stuff and keep it coming.

Cheers,
Kempton
P.S. Shameless Plug:
My favourite upcoming CBC show is Dragons' Den and it better be good or I will be very very disappointed.
http://insidethedragonsden.com/

[Mo.C]

Awesome. It would have been great to hear the rest of Joe's thought at the end though. If anyone knows how that ended, i'd love to know.

[sean percival]

Such a great panel with great insights.

Thanks for sharing

[Peter]

=>jeff : I recommend the PDF book from 37signals.com . It deals with lot of things and also speaks about how to get the word out with no money.

[Jeff]

I enjoyed the video a bunch, but it is only a start for my knowledge of starting up my website and service. THe problem is getting the information out there and letting people know about the service. My biggest question I would have asked and hopefully someone that browses these comments will be able to answer for me is, How does a guy with little money(wife make me pay the mortgage monthly) get the funds? I do have an executive summary, but I don't know the first thing about creating the business plan for the start up. The only money I know to ask for is a salary for myself and my web guy and maybe some promotional money. Should I even be looking for a VC or an Angel? These are my questions. Feel free to e-mail me or call. THe number is on my website at www.podsea.com.

[Dharmesh Shah]

For those that didn't have time to watch the whole video (which is still highly reccommended), I've captured some of my favorite parts here:

Notes On Startup Success 2006 with Guy Kawasaki

[Rishi Khaitan]

Great video. I can't believe I actually spent the last 90 minutes watching the entire thing! So many great points. One of my favorites was Reid's comment that if you're a Web company building a consumer product and you aren't embarrassed by your first release, you launched too late.

[Michael Bernstein]

Guy, can you summarize the hand-raising totals?

[Dutch Rapley]

Thanks for posting the presentation, I've greatly enjoyed viewing it. I agree with Shmuel, I'm also dying to know the ending of the last point that Joe Kraus made about (Reid's advice on) VC funding and the amount of companies willing to buy you out within the given price ranges.

All the speakers gave great, insightful advice. I particularly enjoyed Joe's comments on how opportunity begets opportunity and that it's cheaper than ever before to create a product.

Overall, I think Lauren and Daniel gave the best advice that you should initially picth your idea(s) to your wife (spouse, partner, etc.). In my opinion, if your wife doesn't approve, then you really should can it and start working on the next idea.

[Joe]

"Distribution, distribution, distribution" is the new "location, location, location". Reid Hoffman made his point clear that if an internet company has no distribution, they're dead.

But when the audience question was asked about how those distribution channels were formed in the beginning to get the early adopters, Reid's answer was probably the least insightful of the panel. I wish he would've elaborated more than cite the obvious - 35% invitation acceptance is great once critical mass forms. But how did you get the initial critical mass?

Viral marketing and WOM advertising is obviously needed for a Web 2.0 company, and is a great story to tell after its successful. The initial push to attract the early adopters and then to leverage that core base to cross the chasm to mainstream. That is the secret sauce.

But I guess it wouldn't be secret if successful entrepeneurs revealed them to us hopeful entrepeneurs.

[Shmuel]

I am dying to know what the last point was. Care to transcript it?

[Adi Raman]

Dear God,

I filled the survey as per your commandment just one question oh holy one how would a 20 something survey takers tell the fm guys the actual composition of your audience? Is the sample big enuf to make any sensible assumptions?

Long live the great one,

Aditya

[Sean Tierney]

Guy, it was an honor to meet you after the panel. It was worth the trip all the way from Phoenix! I posted a pic here-> http://www.scrollinondubs.com/?p=117

sean