Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL)

Beverly Parenti and Chris Redlitz are the co-founders of The Last Mile, an organization that aims to break the cycle of incarceration by providing education and career training opportunities in prisons. Founded in 2010 at San Quentin State Prison, The Last Mile has become one of the most requested prison education programs in the United States. In this talk, joined by former TLM student and Healthy Hearts Institute founder Ray Harts, they discuss how to build and grow social ventures that make a difference.

Joe DeSimone is the founder and executive chairman of Carbon, a global company that is driving the evolution of 3D printing from a prototyping tool into a scalable manufacturing technology. As a professor at the University of North Carolina, DeSimone made scientific breakthroughs in areas including green chemistry, medical devices, and nanotechnology, also co-founding several companies based on his research. In 2016 President Obama awarded him the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the highest honor in the U.S. for achievement and leadership in advancing technological progress. In this talk, he explores how diverse teams, perspectives and specialties can drive innovations in both technologies and business models.

Julie Zhuo is the co-founder of Inspirit, an advisory firm that partners with fast-scaling tech companies to build and scale products that people love. Prior to founding Inspirit, she was the VP of design and research for the Facebook app, and helped scale the service from 8 million users to over 2 billion. She is also the author of The Making of a Manager, a field guide for new managers that was named one of Amazon's Best Business and Leadership Books of 2019. In this talk, she focuses on how to channel user feedback into impactful product decisions, and also shares some powerful lessons about how to become a successful manager.

Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram, first spoke at ETL in 2011, just seven months after Instagram launched. Here, he returns to ETL nine years later to draw some new insights about the startup's rocket-like growth. In an interview with Stanford professor of the practice and STVP faculty director Tina Seelig, Systrom reflects on the lessons he’s learned during the course of that journey, and also talks about his work on Rt.live, a new platform that aims to model the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alexi Robichaux is the co-founder and CEO of BetterUp, a mobile-based platform that brings personalized professional coaching to employees at all levels. In this talk, Robichaux speaks with Stanford lecturer Toby Corey about the motivations that drove him to found BetterUp, and reflects on key values, strategies and pivots that have helped sustain the venture’s mission-driven growth.

Ethan Brown is the founder, president and CEO of Beyond Meat. In this talk, Stanford lecturer Toby Corey interviews Brown about how his company has redefined “meat.” Brown shares some of the key lessons learned from Beyond Meat’s startup story and explores some of the pivotal moments of his journey from idea to IPO.

Andy Karsner is a senior strategist and “Space Cowboy” at X, the “moonshot factory” at Alphabet (Google’s parent company). He has spent two decades driving renewable energy innovation and other climate solutions, including serving as the Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy from 2005 to 2008. In this talk, Emily Ma, Food Systems Lead at X, interviews Karsner about the nation’s preeminent natural security challenges and explores where he finds the greatest hope for designing solutions.

Joseph Tsai is a co-founder and the executive vice chairman of Alibaba Group, a global Internet technology company based in China. He is also the owner of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and the WNBA’s New York Liberty, along with several other sports and sports media companies. In this conversation with Stanford professor Tom Byers, Tsai tells stories and shares strategies from a career that has built many important bridges between China and North America.

Amy Francetic is the founder and managing partner of Buoyant Ventures, a venture fund that invests in digital climate solutions. In this talk, delivered on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic, Francetic sheds light on the evolution of the clean tech market and shares why now, more than ever, is an opportune time to invest in clean energy and energy efficiency.

Heidi Roizen, now a partner at Threshold Ventures, spent time as the CEO and co-founder of T/Maker and the VP of Worldwide Developer Relations at Apple before pursuing a career in venture capital. Along the way, she’s experienced several significant disruptions, including the dot-com crash of the early 2000s and the subsequent Great Recession. In this talk, delivered amid the COVID-19 pandemic, she shares ten concepts that can guide leaders in times of crisis.

What does a venture capitalist actually do day-to-day, and how do they make decisions? Annie Kadavy is a managing director at Redpoint Ventures, and in this conversation with Stanford professor of the practice Tina Seelig, she shares what her job looks like, then presents five mini-case studies looking at how VCs scope investments and manage companies.

As a lecturer in Stanford’s Department of Management Science and Engineering, Ravi Belani regularly teaches MS&E 472, the Stanford course associated with the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series. He is also the managing director of Alchemist Accelerator, an accelerator program that focuses on enterprise businesses and has funded startups like LaunchDarkly, Rigetti Computing and Zipongo. Before Alchemist, he spent four years as an associate at the VC firm DFJ. There, he was instrumental in backing the company that later became Twitch, which was acquired by Amazon for $970 million in 2014. In this talk, he draws on his keen observations of the Silicon Valley ecosystem to identify the factors that align to create the most transformational venture-scale businesses.--------------------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 USTwitter: 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 MOREeCorner 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.

Mark Gainey is the co-founder and executive chairman of Strava, a platform where more than 50 million athletes around the world track their workouts and compare their stats. In this talk, he explains the “inch wide, mile deep” strategy that informed both Strava and his previous startup, Kana Communications. He explores how, by first focusing intently on the niche category of passionate road cyclists, Strava earned a credibility that ultimately allowed the company to scale into many other sports.

Mar Hershenson co-founded Pear VC in 2013, and under her watch the firm has made seed and pre-seed investments in category-defining companies like DropBox, Gusto, DoorDash and Branch Metrics. Along the way, she’s spent a significant amount of time mentoring student-entrepreneurs. In this talk, she focuses on some of the most common questions and concerns she hears from student entrepreneurs, offering insights she’s gained both as a serial startup founder and as a seed-stage VC investor.

Backed by corporate investors that included Cisco, Google, Microsoft and Salesforce, Omar Tawakol founded Voicea in 2017, and served as the company’s CEO until its acquisition by Cisco in September 2019. Voicea’s core offering was EVA, an  in-meeting AI assistant that transcribed meetings, generated highlights, and pushed relevant meeting content to productivity tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams. EVA is now being rolled into Cisco’s Webex Assistant, and Tawakol is currently the VP and GM of the Cisco Contact Center. In this talk, he explores the strategies he employed as he scaled Voicea and landed it at Cisco. He also draws on his experience building BlueKai, a data exchange and data management platform company he founded in 2007 and sold to Oracle in 2014, and draws contrasts between the two very different B2B business models.

As a Stanford Biodesign Innovation Fellow, Kate Rosenbluth was captivated by the unmet need to treat hand tremors. She discovered that the site of deep brain stimulation was accessible through the peripheral nerves in the wrist, and teamed up with Scott Delp, director of the Stanford Neuromuscular Biomechanics Lab, to found Cala Health, where she is now the chief scientific officer. The company’s wearable neuromodulation therapies merge neuroscience research with cutting-edge technology to deliver individualized peripheral nerve stimulation. Here, she presents a framework for “needs-based innovation,” and explores how she emphasized a needs-based approach in the context of Cala Health.

Kulveer Taggar is the co-founder and CEO of Zeus Living, a tech-driven property management company focused on disrupting the corporate housing market. The company raised a $55 million Series B round in December 2019, and has hosted more than 17,000 residents in its furnished units. In this talk, he explores how thinking on a scale of decades rather than just a few years has impacted his company’s culture and strategy.

Drawing on her experience launching and leading health companies like CardioDx and ParAllele, Melinda Thomas co-founded Octave Bioscience in 2014. Octave is developing a care management platform for neurodegenerative diseases, starting with multiple sclerosis, and aims to improve patient management decisions and create better outcomes while also lowering costs. In this talk, Thomas offers strategies for building deep, skills-driven entrepreneurial confidence.

In 2013, Sam Yam teamed up with his former Stanford roommate Jack Conte to create Patreon, a platform that connects content creators with members who provide recurring revenue. As co-founder and CTO, Yam built Patreon into a service that has funded more than one hundred thousand creatives, channelling more than one billion dollars to musicians, podcasters, and artists of all kinds. He describes the intense grind of scaling Patreon and looks at three central challenges that face most entrepreneurs, then focuses in on what makes the entrepreneurial path worth it.

Look back to one of our favorite talks from the ETL archives. Dave Evans, co-founder of the popular Life Design Lab at Stanford University, discusses the key concepts and exercises that guide students in their quest to figure out what they want to do in life. He underscores the importance of accepting who you are and connecting that to what you believe and do, while attacking dysfunctional notions like the one that dares you to be the “best version of yourself.” Can’t we have more than one?--------------------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 USTwitter: 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 MOREeCorner 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.

Concerned with the ways that AI and machine learning often display biases against already marginalized groups, Laura Gomez created Atipica, a platform that uses those same tools to remove rather than exacerbate bias in the hiring process. Gomez is also a founding member of Project Include, a non-profit that aims to accelerate diversity and inclusion in the tech industry, and a member of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, as well as Code.org’s Diversity Council. She describes the trends that have contributed to her company’s growth and encourages founders from diverse backgrounds to engage with tech, build confidence, and drive change.--------------------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 USTwitter: 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 MOREeCorner 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.

Look back to one of our favorite talks from the ETL archives. Entrepreneur Leila Janah describes how her social enterprise Samasource allows people in Africa and elsewhere to lift themselves out of poverty through dignified, fair-wage digital work like photo tagging for companies in Silicon Valley. She celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit in those who survive on next to nothing and explains how giving work is more effective than charity.

Backstage Capital founder and managing partner Arlan Hamilton built a venture capital fund from the ground up, while homeless. Her fund is dedicated to minimizing funding disparities in tech by investing in high-potential founders who are people of color, women, and/or LGBT. Hamilton herself identifies as all three. Started in 2015, Backstage has invested nearly $7 million into 120 startups led by underestimated founders. In this talk, Hamilton describes how and why she created her unique fund, and why she views underrepresented, underestimated founders as a category with massive potential.

In 2013, Aileen Lee coined the term “unicorn” to refer to the growing field of startups with $1 billion valuations. At the time, she was a year into her role as a founder and managing partner of Cowboy Ventures, and her team was preparing a now-influential internal report examining how (and how often) companies with these massive valuations tend to emerge. Her summary of the report, published by TechCrunch, uncovered many insightful datapoints, but also revealed that only 2 of the 39 unicorns they studied had female co-founders, a finding that catalyzed her advocacy for increased diversity in technology startups. She more recently became a founding member of All Raise, a nonprofit organization devoted to increasing the representation of women in the venture-backed tech ecosystem. She describes her circuitous path to a job in venture capital, surfaces some of the central strategies of seed-stage investing, and encourages people from diverse backgrounds to help transform the venture capital business.

While earning his MBA at the University of Oxford’s Said Business School and teaching himself to code, Srin Madipalli found himself compelled by the power of technology to transform the lives of people with disabilities. He soon co-founded Accomable, a web app that grew to list accessible accomodations in 60 countries around the world. In November of 2017, Accomable was acquired by Airbnb, and Madipalli joined Airbnb as its accessibility product and program manager. There, he has overseen the addition of new consumer-facing accessibility filters and features, while also exploring how Airbnb can make its hiring and management practices more inclusive for job candidates and employees living with disabilities. He describes how Accomable grew from a side-project into a fast-growing company that landed at Airbnb, and points out how focusing on accessibility can provide companies with a massive opportunity to engage with the disability community.

LaunchDarkly now helps over 1,000 customers — including major companies like Atlassian and BMW — release code, monitor and manage features, and make data-driven decisions about software functionality. But growth didn’t come overnight, explains CEO and co-founder Edith Harbaugh. She describes the multi-year slog of scaling up a B2B company, and demonstrates how she made the most of a number of less-than-ideal jobs, building a diverse toolkit of skills that ultimately contributed to her success as a founder and CEO. She urges entrepreneurs to draw encouragement from small wins, especially in the early stages, when customers are few and far between.

Barbara Liskov was already breaking new ground in 1968, when she became one of the first American women to earn a doctorate in the emerging discipline of computer science. After receiving that PhD at Stanford, she went on to design several influential programming languages, including CLU, an important precursor to Java. More recently, as an Institute Professor at MIT and head of the institute’s Programming Methodology Group, she has undertaken crucial research on distributed systems, information security and complex system failure issues. She is one of fewer than 100 individuals to receive an A.M. Turing Award from the Association of Computing Machinery. In a conversation with host Ann Miura-Ko, a lecturer in Stanford’s Department of Management Science and Engineering and founding partner of the venture capital firm Floodgate, Liskov explores how she discovered the nascent field of computer science, how she recognized and surmounted a number of fundamental computing challenges, and shares her concerns and hopes about how computing will continue to transform our lives.

Not long after landing at PagerDuty in 2016, Jennifer Tejada embarked on that harrowing rite of passage for CEOs of fortunate young startups: the pursuit of an IPO. Tejada raised a $90 million Series D round in late 2018, and saw PagerDuty go public on April 11, 2019. Her path to that point, she observes, was anything but linear. She tells the story of how a very “average” University of Michigan grad ended up becoming the CEO of a public SaaS company, and describes how gritty perseverance, some fortunate early leadership opportunities, and a passion for understanding and embracing different perspectives drove her career forward. She offers strategies that aspiring leaders can employ to challenge themselves and build tenacity while creating diverse, high-performing teams.

In 2012, inspired by the HR headaches they’d observed working for technology companies, Sarah Nahm and a few friends founded Lever, a talent recruitment platform aimed at transforming the hiring process with intuitive yet data-driven software. Two years later, in 2014, she was named CEO. Based on her experiences designing what became Lever and then leading the company, she puts forward a model of entrepreneurial leadership that is about more than just stubborn confidence, and thrives by embracing the unknown and learning how to observe and trust others.

From developing a brand identity to cultivating the right conditions for musical exploration, successful recording artists are masters of the creative process. Hosted by Stanford professor Bob Sutton, Sickamore, a hip-hop artist, photographer and the creative director at Interscope Records, joins Sam Seidel, director of K-12 strategy and research at Stanford's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, for an intimate conversation about what entrepreneurs can learn from the music industry, how to navigate ambiguity, and why it's important to strike the right balance between open-ended creativity and project completion.--------------------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 USTwitter: 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 MOREeCorner 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.

Honeycomb co-founder and CEO Christine Yen spent a decade as a software engineer before creating her own company. She describes how her deep domain knowledge and relationships with like-minded software developers propelled her startup’s launch, and shares how she built an energetic human architecture around a highly technical B2B product.

The podcast market was growing rapidly when Luminary Media was founded at the beginning of 2018, and it was even bigger by the time the company launched its podcasting service on April 23, 2019. Just a month after that launch, CEO Matthew Sacks and co-founder/head of talent Lauren Perkins step back to assess how they identified an opportunity in the podcasting space, built a team and launched a product with a library of exclusive content in a little over a year. They also address the negative headlines and Twitter backlash they received during launch week, and share strategies for responding to the kinds of mistakes that fast-moving startups often make.

At age 26, Chip Conley founded Joie de Vivre Hospitality and grew the company into the second largest boutique hotel brand in the United States. After he sold the business, he accepted a strategy role at Airbnb, and his interactions with a predominantly millennial workforce led him to found the Modern Elder Academy, a “midlife wisdom school” in Baja that encourages individuals with a lifetime of experience to carve a purposeful path through the modern workplace. Here, he shares the insights that have allowed him to flourish while shifting roles and accommodating to cultural change.  

In the 1990s, Toby Corey co-founded the world’s largest web development company. Since then, he’s started other companies; held senior management positions at SolarCity, Tesla and most recently PlanGrid; and lectured in Stanford's Department of Management Science & Engineering. Now, he finds himself as concerned by social and environmental problems as with building companies. In response to global crises of climate change and inequality, he advises an approach that he calls “zentrepreneurship,” and articulates principles aimed at helping entrepreneurs integrate creativity and ambition with social and environmental consciousness.--------------------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 USTwitter: 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 MOREeCorner 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.

When Capella Space’s first prototype satellite launched in December 2018, it was the culmination of over three years of nonstop effort. Capella Space founder and CEO Payam Banazadeh explains how he fused experienced gained at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Stanford’s Management Science and Engineering masters program to build the satellite imaging company. As an early-stage CEO, he provides insights into the many risks and strategic decisions that precede product roll-out.

Nicole Hu and her two co-founders created One Concern to help communities prepare for and mitigate natural disasters by harnessing the power of AI. She explains how they use machine intelligence as a predictive tool, and shares strategies for identifying a central problem, securing investment and growing a mission-driven team.

Ritu Narayan founded Zūm in 2014 to solve a problem that working parents (herself included) face every day: transporting and caring for children before and after school. She describes her journey from the Delhi Institute of Technology to Silicon Valley and unpacks three factors that catalyze sustained growth: passion, perseverance and people.

From high school computer science classes all the way up to VC partner meetings, women and people of color remain underrepresented in the technology ecosystem. Even so, diversity-focused social scientist and venture capitalist Freada Kapor Klein is hopeful about the future of technology and entrepreneurship. As a partner at Kapor Capital, she provides seed-stage funding to technology startups that make a positive social impact on low-income communities and communities of color. Drawing on her work both as an investor and a diversity researcher, she offers strategies that founders and funders alike can pursue to make the tech world more diverse and inclusive.

You can’t do it all, no matter what our crazed culture tells you—and there’s no shame in walking away from a commitment that isn’t working out, as long as you do it thoughtfully, respectfully, and with plenty of advance warning. On this episode of LEAP!, Tina Seelig, Professor of the Practice in Stanford’s Department of Management Science & Engineering, and guests Konstantine Buhler of Meritech Capital Partners and John Melas-Kyriazi of Spark Capital embrace the negative, exploring when, why, and how to say no. Life is full of great opportunities, but they’re not all for you.--------------------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 USTwitter: 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 MOREeCorner 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.

As Google’s first engineering director, Alberto Savoia led the team that launched Google’s revolutionary AdWords project. After founding two startups, he returned to Google in 2008 and he assumed the role of “Innovation Agitator,” developing trainings and workshops to catalyze smart, impactful creation within the company. Drawing on his book "The Right It," he begins with the premise that at least 80 percent of innovations fail, even if competently executed. He discusses how to reframe the central challenge of innovation as a question not of skill or technology, but of market demand: Will anyone actually care? Savoia shares strategies for winning the fight against failure, by using a rapid-prototyping technique he calls “pretotyping.”--------------------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 USTwitter: 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 MOREeCorner 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.

Navin Chaddha, managing director at the venture capital firm Mayfield, describes the firm’s core values and examines the drivers behind several of the firm’s most successful investments. Mayfield’s investment strategy, he explains, is to focus on the founder rather than the company. He describes how impactful founders identify their mission early and pivot when necessary, all while maintaining a firmly people-centered mindset.

Midway through a M.D./Ph.D program at UCLA, Alice Zhang made a discovery that she felt could reverberate far beyond the halls of academia. So she shifted directions, leaving her Ph.D program to found Verge Genomics, a biomedical firm that aims to unite genetic research and artificial intelligence in service of drug discovery. She describes how AI can revolutionize the drug discovery process, and reframes risk-taking as a simple series of optimistic next steps.

Cars can be much more than just boxes that get their owners around. John Viera, a former director and sustainability lead at Ford Motor Company, and Raj Kapoor, chief strategy officer at Lyft, join Stanford adjunct professor Pedram Mokrian to discuss opportunities for innovation in the field of transportation, particularly in the context of sustainability concerns and accelerating urbanization. Innovators, they suggest, need to think of transportation as a converging ecosystem, rather than as a collection of disparate technologies and business models. As shifting energy sources and big data come into play, car sharing companies and automotive manufacturers will find themselves both competing and collaborating in new ways.

Opportunities in the cryptocurrency sector extend well beyond simply investing in Bitcoin or Ethereum, says Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan. He compares the digital currency landscape to the early days of mobile—a space poised to create an entirely new set of innovations and business models. For entrepreneurs looking to make a play in everything from social networking and banking to collectibles markets and real estate, he suggests, crypto’s underlying blockchain technology is worth investigating.--------------------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 USTwitter: 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 MOREeCorner 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.

Roles expand and shift at a breakneck pace in a high-growth startup, says Meebo co-founder Elaine Wherry. Interns find themselves in charge of massive, mission-critical projects. Engineers are suddenly tasked with hiring and managing multiple teams. Wherry shares her insights on how to thrive in a rapidly expanding technology venture, drawing on the heady years between developing Meebo’s initial instant messaging platform in 2005 and landing the company at Google seven years later.

Global trade has existed for centuries, but hasn’t evolved with technology. Ryan Petersen, CEO and founder of Flexport, learned this the hard way as an entrepreneur managing the supply chain of his brother’s motorcycle sales business, and took it as an opportunity to update the industry. Petersen shares his insights on how entrepreneurs can solve some of the world’s biggest challenges and how the Internet can be a force for good.--------------------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 USTwitter: 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 MOREeCorner 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.

Dan Widmaier, co-founder and CEO at Bolt Threads, is on a mission to disrupt the garment industry through technology and science. He shares his perspective on sustainability, the future of the environment and how to focus on the task at hand instead of distractions.

Brad Bao, co-founder and executive chairman of Lime, shares his mission to create close-knit neighborhoods through mobility. Highlighting Lime’s achievements, he challenges the notion that companies cannot succeed if they are socially responsible.

Emily Melton, partner at the venture capital firm Threshold (formerly DFJ), shares her experience growing from a humanities student to tech investor. Melton shares advice for how to sustain startup momentum, navigate uncertainty and forge the honest, supportive relationships that lead to success.

Adam Pisoni, founder and CEO of Abl Schools, shares how he tackles complex challenges, like modernizing the education system. Pisoni describes how he listens first, addresses today’s known issues and builds pathways to new possibilities. He breaks down how to identify scalable solutions, validate ideas and prioritize needs.