AlwaysOn Stanford Summit 2010 Roundup

I am so excited to write this blog as this is very very dear to me. I just finished attending the AlwaysOn 2010 Stanford Summit at Stanford, CA. It started on 27th evening and ended today 29th July. Two and half day of non-stop industry experts discussions and insights have filled my brain. This is the first time i am at Stanford Summit and i am very fortunate to be able to attend this one. I met with variety of industry experts from Green Fuels – Mobile Software – Monetization – SaaS – Cloud to Music Media.  On the other side i got introduced to so many insights like Angel Investors,  Seed Funding, Venture Capitalists, IPO, Exits, Secondary Markets and others.

As i cant reproduce everything i have in my brain, i am planning to dump some % of information from my brain. Following is a short overview of take home.

Hottest Industries in the coming years for Entrepreneurs:

• Mobile
• Enterprise
• Internet Consumer
• Online Education
• Video
• Data Analytics

Some notes from the Panel

• Angel investors risk their own money while VCs loose other people’s money
• It’s easier and cheaper to get into the markets. But its takes the same amount of years to get to an IPO. i.e. the industry standard 10.4 years.
• If you want to change the world and need a team of advisers then take the VC way. They give you more money and team.
• Matt Grod of the Qualcomm demoed a great technology advancement with the augmented reality experience. Qualcomm also invested heavily into the nano chip technology that goes into the major mobile phones.
• Mobile Ads and Virtual Gifts seems to be very much used in the teenager segment. I never thought this is profitable segment and Mi$ business.
• There is predominantly only two dominating players in the Mobiles OS feilds… iOS and Android. Others like WinMo, Symbian and RIM are close to nothing. Now the question is where is WebOS going ? How will it compete with the other dominant players ? What devices will it run on ?
• There are some who would say that the Cloud infrastructure is less secure than Windows 3 🙂
• It is the time for more Angel and Seed investors. There is definitely lot of money for the great ideas.
• Looks like,  during the interview process Paul Percell says, “If you turn out to be an asshole, then i will fire you”. The effect is if it is a medeocre, then he will not tur back to you. If he is a good guy, he will accept the challenge and join your team.
• I loved what Prof. Robert Sutton said about good boss, “The good Boss protects their people from harm, intrusions, distractions, idiots and idiocy of every stripe”.
• Without knowing if the employees are self motivated and accountable, the “flattening” of hierarchy in a company is disastrous.
• CEO’s leadership has huge effect on the other C-Level execs and BODs. While, the middle managers has huge leadership responsibility as 80% of the company employees interact with these middle managers. So, company vision, goals and must be constantly updated to middle managers and should sink to employees.
• Also, employees negative emotions, laziness, stupidity are remarkably destructive and contagious. In short, Bad is stronger than good.
• Innovators will prevail even if they come late in the game. e.g. Facebook beats Yahoo in Jan 2010 in # of unique visitors.
• Creation of more and more gadgets and making people slaves to gadgets will shut the creative brain. This is similar to what happened when Industrialization started.
• Jaron believes that the future will be with full of the VR devices and Internet should reward people who shares good content.

Following are some interesting slides that i captured. Hope it makes sense for you. Have fun!

Stanford_AlwaysOn_Summit_2010