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 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.

2008 Fall Speaker Lineup

Date	Speaker	After
Wed 10/01	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.	Dinner, Mixer
Wed 10/08	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.	Mixer
Wed 10/15	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."
Wed 10/22	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.
Wed 10/29	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.
Wed 11/05	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.
Wed 11/12	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.
Wed 11/19	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.