Business Association of Stanford Engineering Students

Feeling Entrepreneurial?

Stanford University's Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar is a weekly speaker series in which innovation leaders from the fields of business, finance, technology, education, and philanthropy, share their insights with aspiring entrepreneurs from all over the world.

Video of the Week

Guy Kawasaki, Founder and Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures provides advice about foundation, priorities, financing, key employees, getting the word out, leveraging resources, scope, business development, raison d'etre, and the big picture. For example, a few years ago, cleverness was the priority, he says. Today, expertise in technology is important and entrepreneurs should be thinking of making the world a better place, he adds.

Announcements

* * * Reminder ~ Cubberly Auditorium on October 15 * * *

William McDonough's presentation at ETL on October 15 will take place at Cubberly Auditorium instead of Skilling.

2008 Fall Speaker Lineup

October 1 Skilling Auditorium Mixer and Dinner afterwards	Steve Blank ~ Stanford Professor, Serial Entrepreneur Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur with over 28 years of experience in high technology companies. He has been a founder or participant in eight Silicon Valley startups since 1978. They include E.piphany, two semiconductor companies (Zilog and MIPS Computers), a workstation company, a supercomputer firm, a computer peripheral supplier, a military intelligence systems supplier (ESL) and a video game company.
October 8 Skilling Auditorium Mixer afterwards	Erik Straser ~ Partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures With a decade of experience in venture capital, Erik has been a catalyst for Cleantech in Silicon Valley and abroad. He leads MDV's Cleantech investment team and applies his expertise in areas of solar, biofuels, energy storage, industrial biotech and clean coal.
October 15 Cubberly Auditorium	William McDonough ~ Designer, Writer: Cradle to Cradle William McDonough is an internationally renowned designer and one of the primary proponents and shapers of what he and his partners call 'The Next Industrial Revolution.' Time magazine recognized him in 1999 as a 'Hero for the Planet', stating that "his utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that-in demonstrable and practical ways-is changing the design of the world."
October 22 Kresge Auditorium	Vinod Khosla ~ Founder of Khosla Ventures Vinod Khosla was a co-founder of Daisy Systems and founding Chief Executive Officer of Sun Microsystems where he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors. Vinod serves on the boards of Agami, Centrata, eASIC, Indian School of Business, Infinera, Kovio, Metricstream, QWEST Communications, Spatial Photonics, Xsigo and Zettacore.
October 29 Skilling Auditorium Mixer and Dinner afterwards	Judy Estrin ~ CEO of Packet Design Judy Estrin is CEO of JLABS, LLC, formerly known as Packet Design Management Company, LLC. She is the author of Closing the Innovation Gap, published in September, 2008. Prior to co-founding Packet Design, in May 2000, Estrin was the CTO for Cisco Systems. Beginning in 1981 Estrin co-founded three other successful technology companies: Bridge Communications, Network Computing Devices, and Precept Software.
November 5 Skilling Auditorium	Anna Patterson ~ Co-founder of the Cuil Search Engine Anna Patterson is the President and Co-founder of Cuil. Previous to this position, she was the architect of Google's large search index, TeraGoogle, that launched in early 2006. During her time with Google, Anna was the technical lead of one of the two Web ranking groups at Google, in charge of GoogleBase, and managed for the core piece of Google’s ad-matching technology. She joined Google in 2004 after designing, writing and selling Recall.
November 12 Kresge Auditorium	Tom Kelley ~ Writer: The Art of Innovation Tom is the General Manager of IDEO, the widely admired design and development firm that brought us the Apple mouse, the Palm V and hundreds of other cutting edge products and services. Fast Company listed IDEO as number five in its 2008 list of The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies.
November 19 Kresge Auditorium	Innovation Tournament ~ Showcase Your challenge is to use an assigned, everyday object to create as much "value" as possible. The mystery object will be revealed during the Stanford Entrepreneurship Week Kickoff event. Students from around the world are invited to participate.