Stanford

"For its supporters, the Review offered a breath of fresh air to Stanford’s stifling political correctness. For its detractors, the Review engaged in disingenuous devil’s advocacy, opting for provocation over substance. The Review became famous on campus for its political heterodoxy. Its inaugural editor-in-chief would later become infamous in Silicon Valley for his."

"To win recruits over, the team crafted an edgy sales pitch. Years later, Levchin described the approach to a Stanford computer science class: Engineers are very cynical people. They’re trained to be. And they can afford to be, given the large number of companies that are trying to recruit them in Silicon Valley right now. Since engineers think any new idea is dumb, they will tend to think that your new idea is dumb. They get paid a lot at Google doing some pretty cool stuff. Why stop indexing the world to go do your dumb thing? So the way to compete against the giants is not with money. Google will outbid you. They have [an] oil derrick that spits out $ 30 billion in search revenue every year. To win, you need to tell a story about cogs. At Google, you’re a cog. Whereas with me, you’re an instrumental piece of this great thing that we’ll build together. Articulate the vision. Don’t even try to pay well. Meet people’s cash flow needs. Pay them so they can cover their rent and go out every once in a while. It’s not about cash. It’s about breaking through the wall of cynicism. It’s about making 1% of this new thing way more exciting than a couple hundred grand and a cubicle at Google."

"“We are living in the heaven of PalmPilots,” observed Reid Hoffman, a Stanford friend of Thiel’s and early Confinity board member, “and we could walk into every single restaurant and go to each table and ask how many people have PalmPilots.” He guessed the answer was between zero and one per restaurant. “And that means your use case can only be used between zero and one times, per restaurant, per meal cycle! You’re hosed! It’s over on this idea.”"

"“If there were two paths where we had to choose one thing or the other, and one wasn’t obviously better than the other,” he explained in a 2003 public talk at Stanford, “then rather than spend a lot of time trying to figure out which one was slightly better, we would just pick one and do it. And sometimes we’d be wrong.... But oftentimes it’s better to just pick a path and do it rather than just vacillate endlessly on the choice.”"

"Frezza and Levchin’s efforts to apply this technique to patterns of fraudulent activity yielded another breakthrough: now, PayPal could match not just numbers to numbers but patterns to patterns. They augmented this with computer-generated rules that triggered an alert if one pattern resembled an earlier fradulent one. If such a fraud pattern registered frequently enough, the team could write a blanket rule in the system to prevent it from recurring again. “A simple layman’s explanation is that we started fighting patterns—more than [fighting] fraudsters,” observed engineer Santosh Janardhan. “Patterns are mathematics. Some of the folks who ended up working on this stuff were basically mathematics folks from Stanford that Max ended up hiring, and they ended up creating models that detected changes and anomalies in patterns, which was a very advanced way of looking at things at that time.”"

"In a 2002 talk at Stanford, a questioner asked Thiel what advice he had for PayPal. “The larger market is off eBay,” he said, “and they should develop a lot of product features and functionalities that enable point-to-point payments in a non-eBay context.”"

"For its supporters, the Review offered a breath of fresh air to Stanford’s stifling political correctness. For its detractors, the Review engaged in disingenuous devil’s advocacy, opting for provocation over substance. The Review became famous on campus for its political heterodoxy. Its inaugural editor-in-chief would later become infamous in Silicon Valley for his."

"“We are living in the heaven of PalmPilots,” observed Reid Hoffman, a Stanford friend of Thiel’s and early Confinity board member, “and we could walk into every single restaurant and go to each table and ask how many people have PalmPilots.” He guessed the answer was between zero and one per restaurant. “And that means your use case can only be used between zero and one times, per restaurant, per meal cycle! You’re hosed! It’s over on this idea.”"

"Frezza and Levchin’s efforts to apply this technique to patterns of fraudulent activity yielded another breakthrough: now, PayPal could match not just numbers to numbers but patterns to patterns. They augmented this with computer-generated rules that triggered an alert if one pattern resembled an earlier fradulent one. If such a fraud pattern registered frequently enough, the team could write a blanket rule in the system to prevent it from recurring again. “A simple layman’s explanation is that we started fighting patterns—more than [fighting] fraudsters,” observed engineer Santosh Janardhan. “Patterns are mathematics. Some of the folks who ended up working on this stuff were basically mathematics folks from Stanford that Max ended up hiring, and they ended up creating models that detected changes and anomalies in patterns, which was a very advanced way of looking at things at that time.”"

"“If there were two paths where we had to choose one thing or the other, and one wasn’t obviously better than the other,” he explained in a 2003 public talk at Stanford, “then rather than spend a lot of time trying to figure out which one was slightly better, we would just pick one and do it. And sometimes we’d be wrong.… But oftentimes it’s better to just pick a path and do it rather than just vacillate endlessly on the choice.”"

"In a 2002 talk at Stanford, a questioner asked Thiel what advice he had for PayPal. “The larger market is off eBay,” he said, “and they should develop a lot of product features and functionalities that enable point-to-point payments in a non-eBay context.”"

"Dobbin’s respect for Stanford became enormous, and he expressed it in various ways. In 2004, while liquidating many of his long-held properties in Newfoundland, Dobbin decided to retain one of his original apartment buildings on LaMarchant Road in St. John’s. Built in 1967 as the Bellevue Terrace Apartments, the building had undergone various changes over the years and was serving as a low-rent residence when Dobbin informed Stanford he wanted the complex converted to a hotel. Dobbin wasn’t interested in making a lot of money from the hotel business. “Basically,” explains Stanford, “he wanted a place to hang out.”"

"familiar with Stanford’s role, however, attributes a substantial portion of Dobbin’s success to Stanford’s unique talents. Newfoundlanders do not wear their heritage or their hearts on their sleeves, but their language and demeanour—Gaelic and open, devoid of any hint of intrigue—identify them with their deepest roots. Stanford expresses himself with warmth and humour, his words delivered in an accent as authentically Newfoundland as a school of cod."

"from me and went down the list of twenty-five names, drawing a line through twenty-three of them, skipping my name and one secretary.” Included on the list of highlighted names were the president, vice-president, financial analyst and sales and support staff. “He handed the paper back to me and told me he wanted to meet the people on his list the next day at nine o'clock,” Stanford continues. “As soon as they showed up for work in the morning, he gave them their notice on the spot. That’s why I didn’t meet Craig Dobbin for a year. He basically went into hiding.”"

"The more Stanford met Dobbin’s demands, the more Dobbin asked of him. The demands grew substantially in Dobbin’s later years when, in contrast with his previous attitude, Craig Dobbin became almost obsessed with tracking changes in his liquidity. During this period, Stanford’s duties included providing a daily review of Dobbin’s assets, showing changes in market valuations and cash on hand from the previous day. “The report had to be on his desk by nine in the morning,” Stanford remembers. “If it wasn’t there by ten after nine my telephone would ring and I would hear Craig’s voice bellow, ‘Where the hell is my daily report?’ But this was rare. It was usually there for him.”"

"Just as the literary giant Hemingway described Paris as “a moveable feast,” I describe my year at Harvard the same way. After that, I went through various stages—MIT, employment, entering Stanford for a Ph.D., and working at Texas Instruments—but no matter where I went or what I did, I carried this “feast” with me and continually enjoyed the knowledge, interests, and insights that this “feast” gave me. Even decades later, when I returned to Taiwan, although changes in time and place made it feel as if I were in another world, this “feast” still did not lose its freshness. It was as though I were still immersed in a rich, ever-changing, refined, and captivating atmosphere."

"A Counter-Positioning challenge is one of the toughest management challenges. When I started teaching at Stanford in 2008, Nokia was the leader in smartphones. By 2014 they had disappeared from this market. Their CEO Stephen Elop’s “Burning Platform” memo in 2011 captures well the immense frustration of a Counter-Positoned incumbent: While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind. The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to…"

"Our global MBA program draws qualified candidates from such top business schools as Harvard, Stanford, Chicago-Booth, MIT Sloan, Columbia, Wharton and Kellogg in the U.S., as well as London Business School and IESE in Europe and CEIBS in Hong Kong. In 2014, we selected 21 MBAs for the program from a pool of 642 applicants."

"Carlos Brito, in his “View from the Top” presentation at Stanford in 2011, “Great people are what forms great companies.” For a company to be great, the majority of its people have to be great: there is no magical ingredient to the equation."

"Thinking of Apple’s investment like a government program is instructive. Year in, year out, China didn’t have the talent or expertise to build the products that Jony Ive’s studio conceived, but the engineers Apple hired out of MIT, Caltech, and Stanford, or poached from Tesla, Dell, and Motorola, routinely got them up to speed. Apple could send a caliber of talent to China—what one Apple veteran calls “an influx of the smartest of the smart people”—that no government program ever could. And the culture was such that the Apple engineers would work up to eighteen hours a day. Moreover, whereas a government program could at best train a workforce to engineer products, it wouldn’t have the ability to actually purchase the goods. But Apple could and did."

"Thinking of Apple’s investment like a government program is instructive. Year in, year out, China didn’t have the talent or expertise to build the products that Jony Ive’s studio conceived, but the engineers Apple hired out of MIT, Caltech, and Stanford, or poached from Tesla, Dell, and Motorola, routinely got them up to speed. Apple could send a caliber of talent to China—what one Apple veteran calls “an influx of the smartest of the smart people”—that no government program ever could. And the culture was such that the Apple engineers would work up to eighteen hours a day. Moreover, whereas a government program could at best train a workforce to engineer products, it wouldn’t have the ability to actually purchase the goods. But Apple could and did."

"Thinking of Apple’s investment like a government program is instructive. Year in, year out, China didn’t have the talent or expertise to build the products that Jony Ive’s studio conceived, but the engineers Apple hired out of MIT, Caltech, and Stanford, or poached from Tesla, Dell, and Motorola, routinely got them up to speed. Apple could send a caliber of talent to China—what one Apple veteran calls “an influx of the smartest of the smart people”—that no government program ever could. And the culture was such that the Apple engineers would work up to eighteen hours a day. Moreover, whereas a government program could at best train a workforce to engineer products, it wouldn’t have the ability to actually purchase the goods. But Apple could and did."

"Meeting Steve and Woz It was about two or three years after the sushi restaurant’s business was on track, so I think it was around 1987-88. While I was busy making sushi at the counter, one of the regulars in front of me glanced at a table in the back and whispered. “Do you know? That’s Steve Jobs in the back.” At the time, Steve had been ousted from Apple, which he founded, and was experiencing difficult times. However, I knew nothing of these circumstances back then. Still, I clearly remember my first encounter with Steve because his appearance at that time left such a strong impression. Even back then in Silicon Valley, a casual look of sneakers and jeans was “the norm.” Older professors from Stanford sometimes wore ties, but that was an exception. However, Steve, who was just over 30 at the time, was dressed in a suit with a bow tie."

"In 2010, just before Reed entered university, Steve seemed truly happy. When I happened to ask Steve, who was sitting alone at the counter, “How are your kids doing lately?” he replied, “My son got into Stanford. I’m very proud of him,” with a big smile. It was the face of a father joyfully proud of his son’s advancement."

"The other person was Mr. Arriaga, a major donor to Stanford. His daughter, Laura, is married to the notable investor Marc Andreessen and also lectured at Stanford. Laura had been a regular customer since Toshiz Sushi-ya, and she had visited Katsuzuki several times with Laurene, Steve Jobs’ wife."

"Desperately searching for someone connected to Stanford, I found out that Mr. Bass was the head of Stanford’s real estate division. What luck! I sent an email, and he called immediately, listened to the situation, and seemed to know the hotel person in charge. He promised, “I’ll talk to them.”"

"Letting Off Steam Equally important was our practice of giving every full-time employee an interview every six months. At Stanford I’d been taught that employees never organize because of money: they organize because of un-listened-to grievances. We set up a program under which each employee (including some part-timers) was interviewed, not by the immediate superior, the store manager, but by the manager’s superior. The principal purpose of this program was to vent grievances and address them where possible. And I think this program was as important as pay in keeping employees with us."

"McCaw's empire building had begun, though no one at Stanford had any inkling of this side of his life. McCaw quietly ran his business by long-distance telephone, calling managers in Centralia and checking with Marion on estate litigation and creditor negotiations. His penchant for secrecy would ultimately become a tremendous business asset. "He put a helluva mask on," says Fred Morck. Jeff Ruhe was a close friend at Stanford but always knew that McCaw maintained a private zone. "He's a great listener," says Ruhe, who later became an executive with the ESPN sports network and is still a friend of McCaw's. "He doesn't give away much, but he takes in a lot.""

"Despite his frivolous reputation, McCaw itched to get on with his life, to get going in business. He hated the parasitic idea of living off the family-owned company. He wanted to expand Twin City, to start making acquisitions, to be creative—like his father. So even before his graduation from Stanford, McCaw contacted Bill Daniels, a communi- cations broker who had worked with Elroy, and said he wanted to buy another cable company—something small and affordable that he could seize upon, make his own, and begin growing."