inquisity

Stanford University has an awesome annual conference called Startup School, which has talks about how to start a successful company from famous entrepreneurs, lawyers, and venture capitalists. I’ve watched every single one, and my favorite by far is the talk by David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails:

A few great points from his speech and my two cents:

1. It’s ok to not have a goal of making billions.

We constantly hold up the creators of great companies (like Bill Gates) in the highest regard and laud them for making billions of dollars (and they deserve it). But they are a very small fraction of entrepreneurs and businesses, and statistically you have a much better chance at making a million than a billion. Making a million is a fantastic success, even though it’s not as sexy as a billion.

2. You don’t need to be the next Google, Facebook, or Craigslist.

Don’t obsess about being the “next big thing.” There are tons of successful, profitable companies out there that come about simply from solving problems. In fact, David Heinemeier Hansson became successful because he ran into a problem that many other people had, and created a solution for that problem. Sometimes we’re married to the idea about being the “next big thing” when really we just need to step back, take a look at the world around us, and develop a solution to a problem that a bunch of other people have too.

3. It’s possible to treat your customers well AND charge them a price.

Many developers passionate about democratizing content online, and that’s great. But if you want a successful company that is financially viable, you should probably charge a price. In the age of open-source, it’s important to remember that businesses do charge for their products and services. Seems like a no-brainer, but I think a lot of entrepreneurs think that they can just build a great product and maybe get some VC funding for it. The bottom line is there needs to be financial viability for the long run (something Facebook and Youtube are having problems with).

4. Having a limited amount of time every day to work on something really focuses your energy.

I’ve always got a bunch of projects going on at the same time, and invariably one doesn’t progress as fast as I want. By sitting down and blocking out specific times to work on specific projects, I’ve had more luck ensuring all my projects keep moving forward.