Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders

Hawkins talks about his life, his education and work experience. He started his career at Intel for 3 years and then moved to a start-up that he did not start. While working at the latter he created his first product - first pen-based computer. He soon realised that all personal computing ought to be smaller and simpler. With this thought he started on the path to try and accelerate this shift - and that was the genesis of Palm computing.

Founder of the Palm Jeff Hawkins shares his story of graffiti, a handwriting recognition software, and the intuitive leap of using a keyboard to show that users can and will adopt to new technology. He elaborates on the role of market research, as well as how to listen to customers and follow your intuition and vision for the future.

According to Hawkins, no one remembers the 14 hours at work or the time missed with their kids. What people remember is if they changed the world, if they had a good time in the process, or if they promoted a positive culture. He talks about balance in regards to developing a great product and having a normal life. Hawkins believes that you can do it all and live a normal life!

Hawkins stresses that one must separate oneself from work. You are not your company, he says, you are not your product. Your company may fail, your product may fail, but not you, he adds. He stresses the importance of giving credit where it is due.

When starting a business one tends not to focus on employee issues. Hawkins stesses the importance of laying a strong foundation of human resources from the very beginning. He shares ideas that he feels make sound human resource policies. When you are thinking of compensation between people, he says, you should always imagine that everyone knows everything.

Entrepreneurship is a means to an end, it is not an end in itself. The passion is with the product, Hawkins notes, and succesful entrepreneurs must follow it through.

Hawkins discusses how the cell phone took over mobile devices in the realm of personal computing. He projects where Handspring will go in the future with this transition.

Hawkins never really wanted to start a company, he admits. He considers himself an accidental entrepreneur who was approached by two venture capitalists while planning on building a small product.

Hawkins discusses the balance between work and personal life. He mentions how different people will have differing balance cycles throughout various stages of their life. In this clip, Jeff shares a personal anecdote about balance in his own life.

Hawkins talks about basic corporate, structural, and employee issues that entrepreneurs often don't learn in class. For example, entrepreneurs should be well-versed in many areas, such as legal, financial, and human resources issues.

Jeff Hawkins, co-founder of Handspring, has never thought of himself as an entrepreneur.Being an entrepreneur is not a career choice, he says, but is something you do at certain points in your life because you have to. Hawkins believes entrepreneurship is a means to an end, as opposed to an end in itself.

Hawkins talks about the complicated negotiations with 3COM for the spin off of Palm. Discussions lasted five months and involved investment bankers and board members. Five different proposals were presented to the CEO, including spinning off Palm two years in the future. However, the final decision involved no doors banging, and no storming out of offices. All said and done, Jeff Hawkins did not want to start a company.

Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly. Learning all the rules made by bureaucrats is increasingly difficult, but a rebel must look at the rules in a constructive way in order to break out of the paradigm around him. Kamran describes his own path to becoming an entrepreneur after experiencing failure in the technical world and deciding to create a company that broke all the rules.

Everything at Google has turned out perfectly, making it hard to determine which decisions were good and which were bad. Co-founder Larry Page remarks that they could have started the company earlier, but were working on their PhD's. Also, it would have been difficult to achieve the same thing five years ago because the market was not as advanced -- and technology was more expensive and less established.

Google's mission, according to its founder Larry Page, is to organize the world's information, making it universally accessible and useful. They still believe that search can get a lot better and are working hard to make it so. Google has a global focus and is aiming to do things that matter to everyone around the world.

Larry Page, co-founder of Google, reveals that basic research and good ideas are the key components to creating a tremendous opportunity in the tech market. A lot of new knowledge is being created all the time and much of it can be used as the foundation for innovation.

Google competed with several other companies, including Overture, for the AOL deal. Though Overture offered more money because they are a public company, Google offered more ideas about additional services for AOL customers. The AOL CEO decided to make the decision that was best for the customers and went with Google, recalls co-founder Larry Page.

Google makes money through selling targeted advertising on its site, which is more effective than broad-based advertising. In addition, they receive revenue from providing search capabilities to other companies, says co-founder Larry Page. Surprisingly, the model used today is remarkably similar to the original business model presented to venture capitalists.

According to Larry Page, co-founder and CEO of Google, not many companies are innovators in both technology and business. In order to be successful in technical innovation, says Page, you must understand the business and marketing side of the equation.

Google's main problem is separating the wheat from the chaff through the mounds of creativity they have on hand, says co-founder Larry Page. There are simply more ideas than time and resources allow them to accomplish.

Google increasingly has a global focus; as of 2002, traffic is now around 60% outside of the United States and growing. The search supports 74 languages, including many Asian languages, says CEO Eric Schmidt. There is tremendous growth in Japan, where the majority of portals and online services now use Google.

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, talks about how real partnerships are a win-win deal. When making a deal, it is important to let your partner win, too, and to form an actual partnership rather than strictly relying on financial gain.

In the beginning, co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin tried to license Google to other companies because they wanted to finish their PhD's, but none were interested. Google was started out of desperation; they had no other option but to start the company themselves. Though the founders do worry about competition, the barrier to entry is continuously increasing as Google indexes more and more documents and becomes the foundation of so many other services.

The founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin believe that it is incredibly important for people to have access to information around the world -- and that this is something that Google can deliver. They have run into issues with foreign governments over censorship, but recently it has not been a major problem. CEO Eric Schmidt predicts that Google will become an unintended central focus around global copyright and ownership legal issues.