Choose co-founders based on their core values. Pick investors who will be there in your darkest hour. Make hiring the best people your top priority, and treat them like owners — not employees. Sameer Dholakia, CEO of business email service SendGrid, discusses the most important strategies for a startup's success, including the concept of "servant leadership."

Sameer Dholakia (SendGrid) - Focus On People

Each week, experienced entrepreneurs and innovators come to Stanford University to candidly share lessons they’ve learned while developing, launching and scaling disruptive ideas. The Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Series is produced by Stanford eCorner during fall, winter and spring quarters.

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Sam Altman is the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, the AI research and deployment company behind ChatGPT and DALL-E. Altman was president of the early-stage startup accelerator Y Combinator from 2014 to 2019. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI as a nonprofit research lab with the mission to build general-purpose artificial intelligence that benefits all humanity. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Ravi Belani, Altman gives advice for aspiring AI entrepreneurs and shares his insights about the opportunities and risks of AI tools and artificial general intelligence.




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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.




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Sam Altman (OpenAI) - The Possibilities of AI

Qasar Younis is the co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition, which creates software solutions to help automakers, Tier 1 suppliers, and companies in the trucking, construction, and agriculture industries transition to next-generation vehicles. Before founding Applied Intuition, Younis was a partner and COO of Y Combinator. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Ravi Belani, Younis gives practical advice for aspiring entrepreneurs, especially students, and shares insights he’s gathered from his experience as an investor and founder.




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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.




CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stanfordtechnologyventuresprogram/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StanfordTechnologyVenturesProgram/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ecorner 




LEARN MORE

eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

STVP Website: https://stvp.stanford.edu/




Support our mission of providing students and educators around the world with free access to Stanford University’s network of entrepreneurial thought leaders: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/give.

Qasar Younis (Applied Intuition) - Radically Pragmatic Insights

Sharon Prince is the CEO and founder of Grace Farms Foundation, a new kind of boundary-defying public space in New Canaan, Connecticut, that has become widely known as a global humanitarian and cultural center. Grace Farms is the platform for the Foundation and its interdisciplinary humanitarian mission to pursue peace through nature, arts, justice, community, faith, and Design for Freedom, a global new movement to eliminate forced labor from the building materials supply chain. In this presentation, Prince explains the origin and possibilities of the Design for Freedom movement and shares how she designed Grace Farms to embody her vision and values.




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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.




CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stanfordtechnologyventuresprogram/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StanfordTechnologyVenturesProgram/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ecorner 




LEARN MORE

eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

STVP Website: https://stvp.stanford.edu/




Support our mission of providing students and educators around the world with free access to Stanford University’s network of entrepreneurial thought leaders: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/give.

Sharon Prince (Grace Farms Foundation) - Designing From Values

Sophia Edelstein and Nathan Kondamuri are co-founders and co-CEOs of Pair Eyewear. Since its inception, Pair Eyewear has put consumers at the center of the innovation process, ensuring that the brand is at the forefront of redefining the eyewear experience by offering continual customizability, freedom of choice, and affordability for glasses. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Emily Ma, Edelstein and Kondamuri share their journey from coming up with an idea as Stanford students, to finding their first employees, to building company culture through rapid growth.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.




CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stanfordtechnologyventuresprogram/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StanfordTechnologyVenturesProgram/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ecorner 




LEARN MORE

eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

STVP Website: https://stvp.stanford.edu/




Support our mission of providing students and educators around the world with free access to Stanford University’s network of entrepreneurial thought leaders: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/give.

Sophia Edelstein and Nathan Kondamuri (Pair Eyewear) - From Stanford Students to Co-CEOs

Clara Shih is CEO of Salesforce AI, the world’s most trusted enterprise AI for customer relationship management. A digital pioneer, Shih has been named one of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs, TIME’s Most Influential People in AI, and the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders. She is a member of the Starbucks board of directors and serves as executive chair of Hearsay Systems, a privately held digital software firm she founded in 2009. In this presentation, Shih shares unconventional advice for finding professional and personal success as an entrepreneur.




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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.




CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stanfordtechnologyventuresprogram/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StanfordTechnologyVenturesProgram/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ecorner 




LEARN MORE

eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

STVP Website: https://stvp.stanford.edu/




Support our mission of providing students and educators around the world with free access to Stanford University’s network of entrepreneurial thought leaders: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/give.

Sameer Dholakia (SendGrid) - Focus On People

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