I already mentioned the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders program in the past, and how great a resource it is. I want to recommend the podcast of the most recent session, during which Jeff and Bobby Beaver - the two brothers who co-founded Zazzle with their father - explain in quite a bit of detail the different stages of creation of their company. Definitely a great listen, especially as Jeff and Bobby also talk about the more personal facets of being a startup entrepreneur: passion, vision and dedication. In case you have not heard of Zazzle, the company allows you to create customized t-shirts, posters and even stamps.
As we are in the midst of a discussion about re-inventing Venture Capital, and the removal of the “middle men” (the VCs), it is also interesting to hear from these two why they chose to raise money ($16M from Kleiner Perkins actually) even if their company was already profitable.
You can download the show here.
Tags: zazzle
Isn't this another version of CafePress.com????
Posted by: William Volk | January 29, 2006 at 07:20 PM
If you are interested, you can also watch the seminar online at http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/msande472/060125-msande472-100.asx.
ETL takes place every Wednesday afternoon from 4:30 - 5:30 PM and if you can't make it to Terman Auditorium, you can also watch it online.
Posted by: Josh Reeves | January 30, 2006 at 05:02 PM
Odd...I'm about 49minutes into the video and Jeff is recalling an email he received from a user saying 'for the first time I have a venue to share my art.'
What about CafePress? I know that Zazzle allows you to do posters and other things, but hasn't CafePress been around for years allowing people to upload their art and sell it on tshirts, mugs, hats, etc.?
-brian
Posted by: Brian Smith | February 01, 2006 at 05:11 PM