Except for a minor financial crisis, 2009 was a great year. Now it’s time to celebrate.
In 2009, Startup2Startup hosted the following amazing speakers: Amy Jo Kim, Jeff Veen, Tony Hsieh, Steve Blank, Eric Ries, Randi Zuckerberg, Steve Grove, Chris Sacca, Mark Pincus, Geoff Ralston, Jason Calacanis, Guy Kawasaki, Jack Herrick, Gil Penchina, David Weekly, Jeff Hammerbacher & Roger Magoulas.
And now we bring you: The Real-TimeHolidayRoast of Robert Scoble… Robert is the undisputed Crown Prince of Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, Online Video, and most every other bleeding edge technology you haven’t quite heard of yet. Join us for some good-natured fun at Robert’s expense, along with several surprise roasters who will put him on the hot seat. We’ll also announce a few choice predictions and crystal-ball gazing for 2010. We hope you’ll enjoy our holiday celebration
Startup2Startup is a group of Silicon Valley geeks, entrepreneurs, and investors dedicated to educating and helping the next generation of internet startups. We meet monthly over dinner to discuss relevant topics in technology and entrepreneurship, connect with new people and companies, and share our knowledge and experience.
UPDATE::It was a great event! Here are the roasts from last night:
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are often criticized for seeking quick exits instead of building companies with long-term value. However, Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com for over nine years now, is immune to this criticism having built an online retail business that strives above all for customer loyalty and the sale of “happiness”.
In a wide-reaching talk at Startup2Startup in Palo Alto last night, Tony explained how Zappos doesn’t try to extract the most profit out of every transaction that’s made on its site. Instead, Zappos makes the experience of buying merchandise on Zappos as pleasurable as possible so that customers will refer the site to their friends. This word-of-mouth marketing strategy is bolstered by a well-funded call center (a so-called “customer loyalty center”) that uses the 10 minutes or so it has with each captive customer on the phone to make the best impression possible. In effect, Zappos takes a lot of the money it would have put into advertisements and channels this money into providing great customer support.
To ensure that Zappos provides the best customer service, the company is intent on developing an extraordinary corporate culture, one that recently earned it 23rd place on Fortune’s 100 best companies to work for list. Employees are hired and fired based on their appreciation of customer service, and all employees – regardless of their rank – are required to undergo the same training program, which puts them in the call center and on the shipping floor for two weeks. Zappos holds its employees to 10 core values (which include principles like “Be Humble”) by applying these core values to its performance reviews.
Zappos may be best known as an online shoe retailer, but Tony says that the company actually has plans to become a multi-purpose corporation, one that’s in the business of selling happiness in a variety of ways. Like role model Virgin, which is in the business of selling “hip and cool” products and services in several industries, Tony expects Zappos to move into other verticals. More clothing and electronics listings are coming in 2009, and Tony only half-joked that perhaps by the year 2019 Zappos would have an airline focused on helping passengers enjoy flying again.
UPDATED: Here is the full video (3 segments) from Tony’s talk:
Tony Hsieh: Delivering Happiness (Part 1 of 3)
Tony Hsieh: Delivering Happiness (Part 2 of 3)
Tony Hsieh: Delivering Happiness (Part 3 of 3)
Here is a short video interview with Tony before his talk:
More photos from the event can be found on Flickr.
Our speaker for March is Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com. Tony will speak about building amazing company culture and customer service, and why it’s important for startups.
Tony Hsieh got involved with Zappos as an advisor and investor in 1999, a few months after the company was founded. He ended up spending more time with the company because it was both fun and increasingly successful, and eventually joined Zappos full-time in 2000. Under his leadership Zappos has grown gross merchandise sales to over $1B in 2008 by focusing relentlessly on customer service.
Prior to joining Zappos, Tony co-founded Venture Frogs with Alfred Lin. Venture Frogs is an incubator and investment firm that invested in Internet startups, including Ask Jeeves, Tellme Networks, and Zappos. Prior to Venture Frogs, Tony co-founded LinkExchange, an advertising network that was successfully sold to Microsoft for $265M in 1998.
Tony graduated from Harvard University with a BA in Computer Science. He also met his co-founder Alfred Lin at Harvard, where Tony was running a pizza business and Alfred was his #1 customer.
Our speaker for January will be Amy Jo Kim, co-founder/CEO at ShuffleBrain, a startup building smartgames for social networks. Amy Jo will be speaking about why certain games and social networks have a “fun” and engaging user experience, and how to apply these concepts in building consumer internet startups & applications.
Amy Jo Kim is an internationally recognized expert on community architecture and game mechanics. She has been involved in the design of social architecture for numerous games and online communities, including Rock Band, Ultima Online, There.com, Family.com, eBay, Adobe, and Nokia.
Amy Jo is also the author of Community Building on the Web, a design handbook that has become requiredreading in game design studios and universities worldwide. She holds a PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience from the University of Washington, and a BS in Experimental Psychology from UC San Diego.
Jessica Livingston & Paul Graham, Y Combinator with Dave McClure @ Nov 2008 Startup2Startup
Y Combinator has occasionally been criticized as lacking commercial focus. Their mantra “make something people want” says nothing about a business model. But Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston clearly demonstrated at the November Startup2Startup dinner (photos by Nandor Fejer) that they’ve always been about building solid businesses. The only difference now is that they’re stressing monetization a bit earlier. In fact, four companies in their recent “cycle” have already reached positive cash flow – admittedly on bare bone costs (Paul defined this as “ramen profitability”).
The first step to building a solid business is getting the product right. As Graham explains “get product right and there is a lot of room to make mistakes.” In my experience with Xobni and Dropbox (both Y Combinator startups) this focus has greatly facilitated our marketing job. Both were instilled early with a culture of trying to understand users. It is not unusual for Y Combinator startups to show their website to Starbucks customers and ask “would you use this?” Graham encourages startups to apply this intelligence by making every word on the front page of their website count, either explaining what the application is or causing people to do what you want them to do. Even if they don’t necessarily call it marketing, Y Combinator is clearly very savvy about customer development.
Beyond laying a strong marketing foundation, Graham also described how Y Combinator companies all help and protect each other. Dave McClure, who moderated the discussion, joked that Y Combinator sounded a bit like a “startup union.” Graham concurred warning that you don’t want to piss off a Y Combinator company, and noted the growing Y Combinator alumni network numbers over 250 people and more than 100 startups.
Jessica Livingston, Y Combinator / Founders at Work
So how do aspiring entrepreneurs gain acceptance into the exclusive Y Combinator community? It starts with an application and then the most promising groups are invited for interviews. Surprisingly the final decision is made after only a 10 minute interview. Y Combinator prefers teams with either 2 or 3 founders, noting those startups appear to perform better on average than those with only a single founder, or 4 or more. Partner Jessica Livingston describes the ideal founders as relentless, determined – even a bit crazy, or at least less subject to peer pressure. You have to be willing to keep trying new things and refuse to die. Paul Graham adds that you need to be clear in your own head about what you are doing and be able to explain it to people.
Here’s a short video clip of Leonard Speiser interviewing Paul on Y Combinator product philosophy, and Jessica about her book Founders at Work:
And the reward for entry into Y Combinator? Beyond the cash ($5,000 plus $5,000 per founder), Y Combinator startups receive critical guidance and VC introductions often needed for “success” – which Graham defines as the “founders getting rich” or a “significant exit”. While his preference is for building great companies that keep rolling the dice, he admits that it sometimes makes sense for first-time entrepreneurs to opt for an earlier exit.
Following the inspiring interview of the YCombinator partners, the Startup2Startup participants broke into round table discussions. Topics progressed from funding strategies to non-founder salaries. While the focus is on helping rookie entrepreneurs, even the startup vets gain valuable new insights and relationships from Startup2Startup dinners.
