Career choices - startup or large company?
It’s better to work for a company with a good brand name, because “if you don’t learn how to get things done, at least you learn how not to get things done.” Also, having a brand name on your resume builds a good track record when starting a company. It’s important to “raise VC funding from a position of strength,” and that is what a good track record provides. References from well-known companies, especially, have a lot of credibility.

On recruiting for startups
It’s difficult recruiting for startups. Gokul mentioned that the best people for startups are those who are willing to sacrifice cash for equity. To circumvent the problem, oursourcing is a good alternative. Though the cost of outsourcing is higher, it is offset by less time spent on managing and not having to deal with HR issues. It’s also the fastest way to get a product to market.

Speed is a vital issue. For Gokul, market research is not as important as identifying a problem and then quickly releasing a private beta to select users. Rapid iteration of the product based on feedback is a great way to get the product right.

The importance of public relations and brand-building.
Public relations are vital to the success of many great companies, including Apple and Google. In essence, it’s free advertising. Google’s various products are also launched with brand-building in mind.
On Google’s venture into offline advertising - is it a good move?
Effective advertising is based on targetting and measurement. While it is harder to target and measure in terms of traditional media, the use of digital TV is making it easier to target TV ads through set top boxes.

Radio and print is more difficult to measure and target due to the lack of interaction. However, using recording apparatus, it’s still possible to measure the reach of radio advertisements, which leads to better measurements.

Google wants to develop the tools that ad agencies use to measure ad effectiveness. As with Google Analytics which is used to make sense of traffic data to websites, similar tools can be made available to people to make sense of the data from their advertisements.

At the same time, there is still a huge opportunity for online advertising. A majority of search traffic from Google comes from outside the US.

Startup opportunity: For markets outside the US, ad networks can be built to represent international traffic on US sites. For example, an ad network in Asia can cut a deal with US-based websites to place ads for traffic coming for Asia.

What is the mindset to work at a startup?
For Gokul, it is much more important to prioritize and decide about what adds the most value. That requires a huge shift in mindset. For example, instead of having several meetings a week, Gokul cuts it down to a meeting every week instead. His advice, is to treat it like a marathon instead of a sprint - don’t burn out trying to do too much in too short a time.

Gokul also made the difference between getting things done, and doing things. At a startup with a limited budget, you have to do things yourself to get things done.

At the same time, there needs to be a process where you need to build trust with investors. Most importantly, make sure there is transparency so that if there is a change in direction for the company, the investors are fully prepared for the transition.

Social networks and advertising
Social networks have been a huge driver for time spent online, but advertising on social networks is a challenge because it is not intent-driven like search is. Creative e-commerce-focused applications will drive monetization.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 9:57 pm and is filed under Mentorship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.