Some Lessons for StartupsTim O’ReillyO’Reilly Media@timoreilly

Stanford Technology Ventures ProgramMarch 6, 2013

“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.”

-Edwin Schlossberg

Lesson #1: Do Less

Lesson #2:

Get creative with hardware, not just software

Lesson #3:

Build “software above the level of a single device”

Lesson #4: Harness network effects in data

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Lesson #5: Rethink workflows and experiences

Lesson #6:

Rethink the possibilities in man-machine symbiosis

The Google Autonomous Vehicle

2005: Seven Miles in Seven Hours

“We don’t have better algorithms. We just have more data.” - Peter Norvig, Chief Scientist, Google

AI plus the recorded memory of augmented humans

To what extent can reputation systems

replace or augment regulation?

Lesson #7: Close the loop

“What I learned from Google is to only invest in things that close the loop.”

- Chris Sacca

Lesson #8: Create More Value Than You Capture

“There’s a wonderful section in Les Miserables about the good that Jean Valjean does as a businessman (operating under the pseudonym of Father Madeleine). Through his industry and vision, he makes an entire region prosperous, so that “there was no pocket so obscure that it had not a little money in it; no dwelling so lowly that there was not some little joy within it.”

And the key point: “Father Madeleine made his fortune; but a singular thing in a simple man of business, it did not seem as though that were his chief care. He appeared to be thinking much of others, and little of himself.”

I call it “the big lie” of modern business

Lesson #9: Work on stuff that matters

Open Source

Web 2.0

The Maker Movement

Open Data

Open Government

Lesson #10: Idealism is the best marketing

Why I love hackers