Stanford Entrepreneurship Videos

According to Larry Page, co-founder and CEO of Google, not many companies are innovators in both technology and business. In order to be successful in technical innovation, says Page, you must understand the business and marketing side of the equation.

Google's main problem is separating the wheat from the chaff through the mounds of creativity they have on hand, says co-founder Larry Page. There are simply more ideas than time and resources allow them to accomplish.

Everything at Google has turned out perfectly, making it hard to determine which decisions were good and which were bad. Co-founder Larry Page remarks that they could have started the company earlier, but were working on their PhD's. Also, it would have been difficult to achieve the same thing five years ago because the market was not as advanced -- and technology was more expensive and less established.

Google co-founder Larry Page provides several tips for entrepreneurs. Tip 1: Just don't settle. Especially with employees, it is very important to find great people you are compatible with. Tip 2: There is a benefit from being real experts. Experience pays off. Tip 3: Have a healthy disregard for the impossible. Stretch your goals. Tip 4: It is OK to solve a hard problem. Solving hard problems is where you will get the biggest leverage. Tip 5: Don't pay attention to the VC bandwagon. Don't start a company just because you can. Instead, have a really good idea that is good regardless of the funding situation.

Larry Page and co-founder Sergey Brin started Google while at Stanford working on their PhD's. When the company grew too big to be run from their dorm rooms, the founders made a pitch to a computer science professor who wrote them a $100,000 check on the spot. As of 2002, it is a company of almost 400 people, it handles over 1500 million searches a day, and it has been profitable for over a year.

Google co-founders Page and Brin have a unique relationship. The duo share an office, which is said to be one of the most exciting places in the company. The founder-led company dynamic is an important factor in Google's success.

Google's advertising model has been extremely successful, says CEO Eric Schmidt and co-founder Larry Page. Google has invested in technology to better target ads - and they've found that targeting ads well is in fact comparable to targeting search results.

Google tries to keep an entertaining and enriching corporate culture by taking company trips and implementing a dog-friendly policy.At the same time, the company tries to maintain an entrepreneurial culture by forming small teams that act like individual startups. The founders have discovered that the groups tend to become more traditional as they grow larger.

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, talks about how real partnerships are a win-win deal. When making a deal, it is important to let your partner win, too, and to form an actual partnership rather than strictly relying on financial gain.

Google increasingly has a global focus; as of 2002, traffic is now around 60% outside of the United States and growing. The search supports 74 languages, including many Asian languages, says CEO Eric Schmidt. There is tremendous growth in Japan, where the majority of portals and online services now use Google.

Google's mission, according to its founder Larry Page, is to organize the world's information, making it universally accessible and useful. They still believe that search can get a lot better and are working hard to make it so. Google has a global focus and is aiming to do things that matter to everyone around the world.

No matter what language people speak, there is much information that is not in their language. Right now, most of the information available online is in English, but that won't always be the case. Google has been interested in translation, especially as it applies to searching. As of this 2002 lecture, automated translation is not perfect, but co-founder Larry Page reports that they are working to make it better.

Looking back, it is easy to forget the tremendous risks co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin undertook to get to the place they are today. The co-founders once caused the whole Stanford network to go down for a significant amount of time while trying to develop Google. Page remarks that weird things happen when you are trying to touch every computer on the internet.

Khosla explains how to think big and act small. He reminds us that part of that process must be done on a belief system. Without a mission or belief system about how to change the world, one will not be successful.

Launching a start-up is not a rational act. And Vinod Khosla, a partner in Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers and former Sun Microsystems CEO, believes that success only comes from those who are foolish enough to think unreasonably. Entrepreneurs need to stretch themselves beyond convention and constraint to reach something extraordinary.