Stanford Entrepreneurship Videos

Laurene Powell Jobs, in conversation with Stanford Engineering Professor Tom Byers, shares her path to entrepreneurship and her strong commitment to addressing massive challenges in education and immigration reform through College Track and Emerson Collective, organizations she founded to spark systemic change and improve lives at the individual level.

Laurene Powell Jobs, founder and chair of the Emerson Collective, an organization that supports social entrepreneurs fighting for education and immigration reform, describes wanting to introduce creativity and thought leadership to deeply dysfunctional systems to force change. In conversation with Stanford Engineering Professor Tom Byers, Powell Jobs emphasizes the importance of metrics and marketing.

Laurene Powell Jobs, founder and chair of the Emerson Collective, explains why immigration reform is crucial. "There's never been a time when our economic engine hasn't been fueled by new immigrants," Powell Jobs says to Stanford Professor Tom Byers, adding that her organization must content with those in the American citizenry and U.S. politics who choose to scapegoat.

Laurene Powell Jobs shares ideas for how the venture-capital community and established businesses might better reward social entrepreneurs. Powell Jobs, who turned from for-profit entrepreneurship to founding organizations that fight for education and immigration reform, describes the deep gratification that comes from doing such work.

ZenPayroll Co-Founder and CEO Joshua Reeves discusses the importance of creating space for periodic introspection to reflect on one's journey and core values. Reeves says practicing this allowed him to see that he wanted to start a business that either helps people make a living doing something they love or empowers them to do something they've always wanted to do.

ZenPayroll's Joshua Reeves explains how essential shared values and entrepreneurial experiences among his co-founders were for his current startup. "We were solving a problem by creating a business. We were not interested in creating a business to go solve a problem," Reeves says.

Joshua Reeves, co-founder and CEO of ZenPayroll, says entrepreneurs entering a new industry should see their outsider's perspective as a strength, "as long as you know what you don't know." Beyond the tax laws and compliance issues around payroll, Reeves says true meaning comes from appreciating the ritual of rewarding people for their work and employers recognizing the effort.

"Values are who you are," says Joshua Reeves, co-founder and CEO of ZenPayroll. "You don't have professional values, personal values. It's really what you stand for." He describes creating a startup that empowers everyone to feel like an owner, with an understanding that building important products will take time, and where a culture of transparency fosters trust and camaraderie.

ZenPayroll's Joshua Reeves shares his perspective on how a CEO's time is best spent on setting direction and strategy for a business, deciding how the company organizes in teams and communicates, and lastly, leading by example. Reeves also emphasizes the importance of becoming a strong interviewer.

As co-founder and CEO of ZenPayroll, Joshua Reeves says he leaves aside questions about skills and achievements when interviewing job applicants, focusing more on a candidate's values and motivations. Asking why people made transitions in their career, and what their hopes are going forward, can reveal if alignment exists between the values of the individual and the organization.

Joshua Reeves, co-founder and CEO of ZenPayroll, explains how building truly impactful products takes time, and how crucial it is to set aside time throughout one's journey for introspection. Reeves also discusses finding meaning by seeing the people in processes and modeling your future by identifying people you admire.

Joshua Reeves, co-founder and CEO of ZenPayroll, describes how his first startup was more of a reaction to growing interest in social media, rather than stemming from a personal passion to solve a problem he cared about. Without an authentic mission, Reeves says the decision was clear to forego additional startup funding and let the business be acquired.

Stripe's John Collison talks about how the focus and culture at a startup may need to evolve as it grows. He also discusses the concept of "path dependence," where a venture's direction isn't guided by working toward a grand vision, but by achieving intermediate goals and letting that journey determine trajectory.

John Collison, co-founder and president of the "developer-friendly" payment system Stripe, says the company realized that its product had potential for greater success after seeing the intense passion of early customers. He explains how that level of attachment became a better measure of success than more traditional, lagging metrics such as revenue or user numbers.

Stripe's John Collision describes how even Google and Facebook made mistakes in their early days, and how that should reassure those becoming entrepreneurs. In conversation with Stanford Professor of the Practice Tina Seelig, Collison also cautions that missteps in product direction and hiring should be avoided because they affect a startup at the root level.