1. Startup Lessons I Didn’t Learn from a
Book by Othman Laraki
Stanford 12/12/2009

2. Quick Background
• Born & raised in Casablanca
• Studied at Stanford and MIT
• Heavily involved with Entrepreneurship programs in both
universities
• Started first company (Epitrope Corp) in 1999
• Worked at Google from 2004 to 2008
• Ran a number of products including Toolbar, Gears, FastNet
and early Firefox extensions
• Co-Founded MixerLabs in 2008
• Recently launched GeoAPI.com - geo infrastructure to
enable developers to easily build location-based applications

3. What I’ll Talk About
• Fundamentals
• Tactics
• Product
Disclaimers:
- This presentation is simply a collection of thoughts with no pretense for completeness
- If you happen to be reading this (instead of seeing my talk), many might be missing context
- These are some things I learned - not necessarily things I claim to be able to (always) do :)

4. Fundamentals
Focus on High Order Bits
Fundamentals
• At the end of the day, only two
types of events matter the most:
1. Live to fight another day
2. Run out of business
• Understand what the most
important variables are (they’re
usually small in number) and
focus on them

5. Fundamentals
(Almost) No Constraints
Fundamentals
• There are only two real rules you
can’t escape:
1. Cash is King
2. The Legal System
• Most other constraints are self-
imposed based on what you
psychologically / socially /
emotionally committed to doing

6. Fundamentals
Team Fundamentals
• Single most important point of leverage in
my experience
• Tip: Don’t take “no” for an answer

7. Fundamentals
High-Tech VC Startup Model isn’t the
Only Option Fundamentals
• Silicon Valley is very focused
on VC-Style “Go Big or Go
Home” model
• As an entrepreneur, you are
fundamentally undiversified,
so think about your desired
risk/reward target

8. Fundamentals
Modulate the Swings Tactics
• Early successes and failures feel
huge
• You need to manage your and
your team’s emotions
• You’re also the “Chief Emotional
Officer”

9. Fundamentals
Secrecy is a (pretty) Ineffective Tactic
Tactics
• Fundamentally, you need to create
barriers for people copying/beating
you
• Secrecy is a tactic with linear
returns and costs (one day of
secrecy gains you one day of lead
time)
• You need to find advantages that
for each day of your time puts you
two days ahead of your competitor

10. Fundamentals
Discipline Tactics
• Time is your most valuable
currency - make the most of it
• Follow Up / Follow Through
• The future started five minutes
ago

11. Fundamentals
Have Alternatives Tactics
• One of the strongest forms of leverage is to have
alternatives
• Even if you know who you want to work with, the
simple existence of an option that isn’t “NOTHING”
fundamentally impacts your ability to negotiate

12. Fundamentals
Forget Aspirins and Vitamins, You Want
to be Selling Crack Product
• Google, Twitter, Facebook,
email, etc...
• We lived OK without them
• However, once we started
using them, we were hooked
Footnote: this mainly applies to consumer-oriented
startups with lots of users

13. Fundamentals
Be Your Own Critic Product
• We all rationalize and convince
ourselves
• If you don’t look at your work
critically, the world will do it for
you (but take much longer and
cost you much more)

14. Fundamentals
Keep it Simple Product
• Keep track of how many times you say “if” when you
explain how you’ll be successful
• Know what the core/foundation of your idea is and try
to validate that first - make it complicated later

15. Remember to Have Fun!