5 Startup Tips From the Father of Gmail and FriendFeed

by Andrew Warner, Mixergy

I asked Paul Buchheit for advice on launching startups because he fathered two of this decade’s most successful online products: Gmail and FriendFeed. As part of his work on Gmail, he also developed the first prototype of AdSense, Google’s ad program. And he’s known as the engineer who suggested Google’s now famous motto: “Don’t be evil.”

Here’s some of what he had to say (also, see the video above):

1. Launch a scaled-back version
You can find a simple, scaled-down way of launching anything. “Tesla [the financially struggling electric car startup] spent a lot of money making these cars, but there are people making electric cars in their garages. So it’s always possible to do a scaled-back version of what you have in mind.”

2. Notice sluggish competitors
When he considered building Gmail, he looked at Yahoo! Mail, the leading Web-based email provider and noticed that “they were actively making their products worse. Which I think is a really good indicator of an opportunity. Yahoo! decreased their [email storage capacity] from 6 megabytes to 4 megabytes.”

The free email providers at the time “were trying to push you into their paid accounts. And in general, people had a low opinion of Web mail because they thought it couldn’t be good.”

3. You don’t need virality if your product is good
“I think the best kind of virality,” he said, “is a product that people like so much that they just want to tell people about it.”

“Think about Google search itself. Where’s the virality? There is none. But people just love the product, so they tell their friends, and somehow it just grew to where it is now, with some huge share of the market.”

4. Follow your passion
Instead of setting goals, he said, “I have a different approach. I look to see what things I enjoy doing and just try to figure out how to spend my time doing things that I enjoy.”

“I like writing code. I like building product. I like making things that people like.”

5. Sometimes you have to go off on your own
“Inside of a big company like Google,” he said, “you can do just about anything and a million people will show up just because the Google name is attached. That’s kind of like cheating. What you make doesn’t have to be good.”

“Consequently, of course, Google has to be careful that you’re not just releasing random things. That means that there tends to be a lot more process to prevent you from doing those random things. Because that would harm their brand over time.”

Today we posted his section about changing valuations to suit the financial environment in 2009 on our Under the Radar blog. He gives tips one what startups need to research, and what they need to say and ask. Check it out! Thx Mark.

The video will be up shortly!! Check back soon!

UPDATE: The video is now available here thanks to our friends at TechZulu! WATCH!

His presentation is an A-Z of starting up, breaking down the share structure, building a product and knowing your user, attracting investors, and more.

Below is his PPT from his presentation at Startonomics LA today. The recorded video will be up early next week. The video is now available thanks to our friends at TechZulu (view more session videos here).

Dan Gould - Free Legal Forms

But as Frank says, the most valuable assets of each of his companies stand on two legs and walk out of the office every day. His job at Rubicon and as an exec at any company, is to ensure they come back. How do you build a winning team? How do you keep the stars - and turn staff into stars?

As a startup, you’re tight on cash. Get the right buy in and support from your team, learn to work together, and your chances of success are greater. Check out Frank’s team building mantra below.

(Video will be available early next week) Update: Check out the videos on TechZulu here.

Frank Addante - Free Legal Forms

Jay Weintraub (LeadsCon) is an internet advertising market strategist and commentator. He is a respected columnist for DMConfidential.com, runs a popular industry blog, and is a frequent speaker for the online advertising community. Jay spent 2.5 years at Advertising.com and 5 years at Oversee.net in roles ranging from corporate strategy to new product development. Currently, he runs the first of its kind conference and expo for the lead generation industry, LeadsCon.com. Jay is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.

The following is his presentation at Startonomics LA. The video of his session will be available here early next week. Update: Video of Jay’s session is now available here and below. Check it out!

Some points Sean drills down on in his presentation:

Be a storyteller
Be interesting
Own your personal brand
Build social currency
reduce noise - be relevant
capitalize on trends
do what others do, be better

If you think you know Twitter (insert oohs and awws at your 1000 followers), or you think Facebook, MySpace or the front page of Digg will help you grow your business, Sean talks about social media and how to use it properly.

Update: The video of Sean’s Twitter-ific presentation is available here.

Sean Percival - Free Legal Forms

How did Ted triple his traffic? How does he convert organic search traffic into community members? Check out his prez below, and be sure to check out the video once we post it each next week. (We’re live streaming right now). Update: The video of Ted’s presentation is uploading to a Startonomics channel on TechZulu here.

Peter knows how to develop and nurture rockin’ partnerships. From networking to the art of “the pitch” he outlines how to attract a deal and mooove it forward and care for it once it’s locked in.

The following is his presentation at Startonomics LA.  The video of his presentation will be available next week. Update: we’re uploading the videos of all presentations on TechZulu here - check out Peter’s session below:

Peter Pham - Pitching and Packaging for Partnerships - Get more Business Documents

A serial entrepreneur and Internet visionary, Richard co-founded Demand Media in May 2006 to become the leading distributed social media company. Richard built, operated and sold numerous Internet media companies with a combined value of over $1.3 billion (including MySpace, iMall, etc).

What are the 5 questions:
1) What are you passionate about?
2) What type of people do you want to work with?
3) Who would you take money from (do they understand you business? do you “mesh”?)
4) What’s your Plan B?
5) What outcome do you want? It’s OKAY not to want a multi-billion dollar company. After all, if you don’t go big, you might LOSE our home… Do you want a lifestyle biz? A change-the-world biz?

Check out the slides and answer these questions for yourself. The video of Richard’s session is available on TechZulu HERE.

Richard Rosenblatt Startonomics LA Keynote - Get more Business Documents