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Inspiring Entrepreneurs: What Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has learned in his business career

The Next Web

In the first of a new series talking to tech industry leaders about what shaped them as entrepreneurs and the lessons they’ve learned in their careers, we speak to Netflix co-founder and CEO, Reed Hastings. So we simply went too fast and didn’t anticipate how devoted some people still were to that part of our business.

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Don’t Underestimate the Undergraduates

Steve Blank

Jim has founded six companies, including Preview Travel, one of the first online travel agencies, which went public in 1997 and subsequently merged to create Travelocity.com as an independent company. Today he is the co-founder and Chairman of Triporati, LaunchPad Central. Jim co-taught classes with me at U.C.

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The pioneers of Silicon Valley’s fast culture on how to grow quickly, not recklessly

Reid Hoffman

And from a financial perspective, any investor would be better off buying stock in Amazon than buying and share of a corner bookshop; if you invested $100 in Amazon’s 1997 initial public offering (IPO), those shares would have been worth about $120,000 in 2018. Publishers and authors (like O’Reilly and us) also benefit from Amazon’s success.

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Business Plans Are An Historical Artifact

Feld Thoughts

I went on to create a company, with my partner Dave Jilk, that bore very little resemblance to that business plan. When I reread the plan several years ago for amusement, it motivated me to go dig up plans for other successful companies that I was a co-founder of or early investor in, including NetGenesis and Harmonix.

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A Glimpse: My American Dream

thebarefootvc

At the Clinton Global Initiative last September, Pierre Omidyar, co-founder of eBay, announced a commitment from his philanthrocapitalist firm to invest millions of dollars in mobile applications and services, with a focus on developing markets globally. Now, the present. I have just started a new job with the Omidyar Network.

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This Week in VC with @VCMike Hirshland of Polaris Ventures

Both Sides of the Table

This probably wasn’t a fun period of time for a new VC but nonetheless probably made Mike stronger than having started in 1997. Finally, I do want to mention that Mike was the founder of DogPatch Labs , which has facilities in Cambridge, New York and San Francisco. I’ve already started the business modeling.

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Strategy Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Spotlight On IIT Kharagpur, India

ReadWriteStart

My 1997 recruitment visit met with tepid response, with the student body largely interested in multinational placements at the time. My feedback was that the company needs to enter the market in a business-to-consumer mode because the logistics infrastructure in India is not at a point where a c-to-c business can thrive.

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