Work Play Love Stanford MBA Survival Guide

Many thanks to Tom Byers, Phil Lin and Emily Cox for a great quarter in MS&E 276. Great crash course in Entrepreneurial Management and Finance. Recommended resources include: http://venturehacks.com/ http://www.avc.com/ http://altos.typepad.com/ http://bhorowitz.com/ http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/ http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/ http://redeye.firstround.com/ http://onstartups.com/ http://steveblank.com/ http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html Plus clips from eCorner: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/userFavorites.html?uid=63 Enjoy responsibility, ...

Came across this idea in a class and had to write it down: When making an investment, think about “parity” across three dimensions: Values Do you share the same measure in integrity, work ethic and other values? Interests Are your interests, commitments and passions aligned? Timeframe Are you in for a timed exit, or are ...

This quarter I’m taking MS&E 276: Entrepreneurial Management with Tom Byers and Phil Lin. Tom recently brought in Marc Andreessen to speak the afternoon after class: Takeaways for me: Good companies should polarize people Out of 20 people you may get 16 that think you’re crazy, but maybe 4 that love what you’re doing. That’s ...

It’s time for Winter Quarter course evaluations at Stanford b-school. Wanted to share one of mine: Alan Jagolinzer, Global Financial Reporting (ACCT 331) An inspired course. Through his energy and heart Alan turned what could have been an mundane accounting course into an unforgettable, perspective shifting experience. Top notch speakers shared an invaluable inside view ...

While business school rocks, one of the my favorite courses this quarter is in computer science. In CS 294H, Sep Kamvar and Jeffrey Heer teach social software design principles (e.g. tips for online dating) to teams of 2-4 developers building apps over 10 weeks. This quarter, buddy Neema Moraveji and team built out LineHive—a site ...

Dan Greenburg from Sharethrough shares the Art of Video Storytelling at Stanford. My top takeaway: Persuasion happens with one of 6 levers—Pleasure, Pain, Hope, Fear, Belonging, Rejection. If it’s not one of these, it’s probably not working. Favorite example today (on hope): Template from Dan on creating compelling videos: Goal – What are you trying ...

@charleneli, co-author of Groundswell speaks on social media at Stanford GSB social media class. This was a treat, as I’ve followed Charlene Li’s work at Forrester. while at Microsoft.   My personal takeaways: Trend is to quantify value of social media investments (e.g. customer lifetime value) “We tend to overvalue the things we can measure, ...

Stanford business school lectures are cancelled today on account of midterms so I went to the law school to check out Capital Markets (LAW 590), taught by award-winning law school prof Joseph Grundfest, former commissioner for the SEC. Observations: Law school distinctly different dynamic from the business school Discussion around derivative contracts had no numbers ...

In addition to Jennifer Aaker’s Power of Social Technology class at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, I’m also taking a course on designing social software led by Sep Kamvar and Jeffrey Heer in the computer science department. Today we reviewed research in onboarding newcomers to a social network. Lots of talk about Facebook research ...

Tweeter @tristanwalker and VC @jeffclavier speak at Stanford today. @tristanwalker (right), 2nd year GSB student, discussed his work at foursquare—location based mobile social gaming app winning over Pepsi, Bravo, and loads of brand marketers and content providers. He spent last summer at Twitter writing up their business guide and picked up 315K Twitter followers since ...