Stanford Entrepreneurship Videos

Olivia Fox Cabane, co-author of “The Net and the Butterfly: The Art and Practice of Breakthrough Thinking,” talks about how people are uncomfortable with uncertainty because the brain perceives it in the same way as physical pain. She shares several ways to practice building up a tolerance for uncertainty in our everyday lives, explaining how crucial that trait is for generating more innovative ideas.

Debbie Sterling, founder and CEO of GoldieBlox, shares her evolution from lonely inventor to inspiring entrepreneur with a vision to give young girls the confidence to become engineers through hands-on play. Sterling talks about overcoming gender stereotypes and her own fears, as well as the entrepreneurial challenges of embracing failure and succeeding despite scant resources.

GoldieBlox Founder and CEO Debbie Sterling recalls the moment she discovered what she wanted to do with her engineering degree. She says construction toys for little girls was something she wish she had as a kid and talks about how that would give them something more educational and empowering to play with than what was traditionally found in the girls toy aisle.

GoldieBlox Founder Debbie Sterling describes her evolution from solitary inventor to becoming an entrepreneur who inspired others to believe in her mission to launch a line of construction toys for girls. Starting with a rough prototype, Sterling talks about encountering push back early on from older industry veterans, but then finding passionate followers among young social entrepreneurs.

Debbie Sterling, founder and CEO of GoldieBlox, discusses the initial shock of seeing her small startup’s toys on retail shelves, as well as how crowdsourcing helped her overcome a lack of resources. She recalls turning to GoldieBlox supporters on Kickstarter to film a commercial and win a contest for an advertising slot during one of America's most-watched events, the Super Bowl.

GoldieBlox Founder and CEO Debbie Sterling recounts the difficulty of addressing defects resulting from the rapid ramp-up in production as demand exploded for the toy. She explains how she turned the setback into an opportunity to increase customer loyalty by publicly apologizing for the flaw and sending out a million new blocks along with personalized letters to every child.

Debbie Sterling, founder and CEO of GoldieBlox, describes how she learned to focus product design on customers, not on the retailer. The maker of construction toy kits for girls dramatically increased production and dropped retail prices to appease Walmart, only to have products end up on clearance because no one wanted them. “It doesn’t matter how much it costs,” Sterling says. “If it’s not a product that excites and gets every girl interested in wanting to build more and more, we failed.”

Entrepreneur Tracy Young and Doug Leone, global managing partner at Sequoia, discuss the nature of a harmonious relationship between a startup’s founders and the VC firm investing in them. Young is co-founder and CEO of PlanGrid, which allows construction managers to oversee projects via their device. She and Leone speak with Toby Corey, a lecturer in Stanford University’s School of Engineering.

PlanGrid’s Tracy Young and Doug Leone of the venture-capital firm Sequoia talk about prioritizing challenges at a startup and knowing when one has potential to succeed. Leone explains how a company must first achieve product-market fit, and how PlanGrid secured funding from Sequoia because the startup solved an actual problem the founders faced. Toby Corey, lecturer in Stanford’s Department of Management Science & Engineering, interviews.

In response to a question about attracting talent to work at a startup focused on construction, PlanGrid Co-Founder and CEO Tracy Young describes the most important points to convey to prospective hires: a clear explanation of the problem being addressed and how big it is, and what the company is doing to provide a solution and stay ahead of the market. Young speaks with Toby Corey, a lecturer on entrepreneurship at Stanford University.

Tracy Young, co-founder of the company behind the construction-management app PlanGrid, reflects on how and why she decided to leap into entrepreneurship. While she assumed the role of CEO at an early age, Young says she surrounded herself with supportive co-founders. She also emphasizes that a chief executive must continually grow and learn in order to be an effective leader as a startup evolves and scales.

Doug Leone, global managing partner at the venture-capital firm Sequoia, discusses the value that a good VC partner can bring to an entrepreneur, especially during challenging times. The right partner plays an active, supportive role in helping startup founders recruit the best executives, bringing in business-operations experts and generally putting the venture’s leaders in a position to succeed.

PlanGrid Co-Founder and CEO Tracy Young explains how her startup’s business practices and structure have matured since it first launched. She recalls how hiring and hierarchy within the company were initially dictated by naive idealism and stereotypes, and how more standard business practices were adopted over time. “Be creative about how you’re solving the problems for your users,” Young says. “Don’t be creative about the business stuff.”

Sequoia Capital’s Doug Leone identifies some of the signs that indicate when a startup might want to revisit its business strategy. Beyond listening to customers, Leone says entrepreneurs should consider pivoting if they find themselves making sub-optimal short-term decisions that they'll have to pay for in the long run. He speaks with Toby Corey, lecturer with the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.

Di-Ann Eisnor, director of growth for Waze, explores whether authenticity can be preserved when a well-meaning startup scales to a workforce of hundreds and a user community of about a billion. Eisnor describes how the crowdsourced navigation and real-time traffic application has moved on from virtual cupcakes to encouraging carpooling in its quest to eliminate traffic congestion around the world.