Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders

Clara Shih is CEO of Salesforce AI, the world’s most trusted enterprise AI for customer relationship management. A digital pioneer, Shih has been named one of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs, TIME’s Most Influential People in AI, and the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders. She is a member of the Starbucks board of directors and serves as executive chair of Hearsay Systems, a privately held digital software firm she founded in 2009. In this presentation, Shih shares unconventional advice for finding professional and personal success as an entrepreneur.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

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Shiza Shahid is the co-founder and co-CEO of Our Place, a mission-driven startup reimagining kitchenware for the modern, multiethnic, global kitchen. Prior to Our Place, Shahid also co-founded the Malala Fund with Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai. She led the organization as founding CEO, advocating for the rights of all girls to attend school. Shahid also launched NOW Ventures, an angel fund to invest in mission-driven startups. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Ravi Belani, Shahid shares how her life and career have shaped her view of entrepreneurship and offers advice for infusing mission and meaning into products and brands.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

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Daniela Amodei is president and co-founder of Anthropic, an AI safety and research company. Amodei manages the senior leadership team, leveraging her people and management experience to further the company’s goal of building reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Emily Ma, Amodei talks about how Anthropic’s team of co-founders have built values and ethical guardrails into their AI tools from day one, and how this can inform other AI companies.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

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Ernestine Fu is managing general partner of venture capital firm Brave Capital. Over the past decade, Fu has worked across the startup ecosystem, including negotiating merger and acquisition agreements, organizing SPVs for later-stage companies, angel investing in and advising companies that have since been acquired, and advising banks on venture debt. Alongside her role at Brave Capital, she is also a Venture Partner at Alsop Louie Partners. In this presentation and conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Ravi Belani, Fu inspires students and aspiring entrepreneurs by sharing things she wished she knew before coming to Stanford as a student.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

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ETL is off this week, but in its place, we’re pleased to share the first episode of a new podcast from Stanford eCorner and STVP called Move Fast and Fix the Planet. It’s about climate and sustainability entrepreneurship, and this episode features ETL host Emily Ma, head of special projects in sustainability, real estate, and workplace services at Google. Delve into Emily's journey as an intrapreneur focusing on sustainability within Google's internal operations, particularly in the realm of food systems. Learn about the unique opportunities and obstacles she’s encountered in building a more sustainable future. Gain insights into the entrepreneurial mindset, the intersection of technology and agriculture, and the importance of holistic approaches in addressing global challenges. Move Fast and Fix the Planet is hosted by Mike Lepech, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford’s School of Engineering.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by STVP, the Stanford Engineering Entrepreneurship Center. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

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eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

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Robert I. Sutton is an organizational psychologist and professor emeritus of Management Science and Engineering in the Stanford School of Engineering. Hayagreeva “Huggy” Rao is the Atholl McBean Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Science, the Sociological Research Association, and the Academy of Management. In this conversation with Stanford lecturers Ravi Belani and Emily Ma, Sutton and Rao discuss their new book, “The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder,” and offer advice and insights from their years of research and observation.

(EDS NOTE: THIS TALK INCLUDES EXPLICIT LANGUAGE.)

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

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eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

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Adrian Rodriguez is the co-founder and CEO of Dreamlinks, a startup developing AI-powered building blocks that make creating virtual 3D worlds as fun as playing with LEGO bricks. Prior to founding Dreamlinks, Rodriguez taught game design at StreetCode Academy, created a web design course for blind programmers, and worked as the CTO of AMPAworks, a company that uses computer vision to automate inventory tracking in hospitals. In this presentation, Rodriguez shares his journey as an entrepreneur who is visually impaired, his dreams for helping other blind and visually impaired people with technology, and his lessons for other aspiring innovators.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

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eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

STVP Website: https://stvp.stanford.edu/

Support our mission of providing students and educators around the world with free access to Stanford University’s network of entrepreneurial thought leaders: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/give.

Jessica Jackley is an entrepreneur and investor best known as the founder of Kiva, the first microfinance crowdfunding platform, with $2 billion in loans since 2005. She is currently a founder and general partner at Untapped Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm championing unexpected founders. In this presentation, Jackley shares her journey to becoming a mission-focused entrepreneur and offers insights to inspire others to ask, “What if things were different?”

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stanfordtechnologyventuresprogram/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StanfordTechnologyVenturesProgram/ 

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eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

STVP Website: https://stvp.stanford.edu/

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Sarah Lamaison is the co-founder and CEO of Dioxycle, which is pioneering sustainable chemistry by building breakthrough technologies that convert industrial carbon emissions into everyday chemicals with unprecedented energy and cost efficiency. In this presentation, Lamaison explains how her company fits into the future of carbon-capture technology, then shares advice for tech founders — especially in the climate tech industry —who want to build successful companies.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stanfordtechnologyventuresprogram/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StanfordTechnologyVenturesProgram/ 

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eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

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Michelle Lee is the founder and CEO of Medra, which combines recent advances in robotics and computer vision to build lab automation technology. She has previously worked at NVIDIA, SpaceX, and McKinsey. Prior to founding Medra, Lee was an assistant professor in computer science and electrical computer engineering at New York University. In this presentation and conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Ravi Belani, Lee explains why she decided to start her deep tech company and uses her experiences to give advice to aspiring founders.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stanfordtechnologyventuresprogram/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StanfordTechnologyVenturesProgram/ 

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eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

STVP Website: https://stvp.stanford.edu/

Support our mission of providing students and educators around the world with free access to Stanford University’s network of entrepreneurial thought leaders: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/give.

Andy Dunn is an entrepreneur, author, and investor. Dunn co-founded the menswear e-commerce brand Bonobos in 2007 and served as the company’s CEO for its first 10 years, pioneering the digitally native brand movement. In 2022, Dunn published a memoir lifting the veil on the mental health demons he’d been privately battling as he built Bonobos. “Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind” chronicles his journey at the intersection of entrepreneurship and bipolar disorder. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Ravi Belani, Dunn shares his experiences with bipolar disorder and encourages everyone to acknowledge mental health challenges, including in the world of entrepreneurs. 

This talk includes discussions of suicide and self-harm. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is a hotline for individuals in crisis or for those looking to help someone else. To speak with a trained listener, call 988. Visit 988lifeline.org for crisis chat services or for more information. The Crisis Text Line is a texting service for emotional crisis support. To text with a trained helper, text SAVE to 741741. It is free, available 24/7, and confidential.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

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eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

STVP Website: https://stvp.stanford.edu/

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Kathleen Eisenhardt is the Stanford W. Ascherman M.D. Professor in the Stanford School of Engineering. She is also a faculty member with STVP, the Stanford Engineering Entrepreneurship Center, and the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. Among the most widely cited entrepreneurship scholars in the world, Eisenhardt is the author of over 100 articles and several books, most recently (with Don Sull), “Simple Rules: How to Survive in a Complex World.” In this presentation, Eisenhardt shares strategies for founders of new companies in new and disrupted markets, providing case studies from her extensive research.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stanfordtechnologyventuresprogram/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StanfordTechnologyVenturesProgram/ 

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eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

STVP Website: https://stvp.stanford.edu/

Support our mission of providing students and educators around the world with free access to Stanford University’s network of entrepreneurial thought leaders: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/give.

Andrew Ng is the managing general partner at AI Fund, a startup studio building new AI companies from the ground up; the founder of DeepLearning.AI; and an adjunct professor of computer science at Stanford University. In this presentation and conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Ravi Belani, Ng talks about upcoming opportunities for entrepreneurs exploring AI technology and addresses questions of responsibility and risk.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stanfordtechnologyventuresprogram/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StanfordTechnologyVenturesProgram/ 

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eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

STVP Website: https://stvp.stanford.edu/

Support our mission of providing students and educators around the world with free access to Stanford University’s network of entrepreneurial thought leaders: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/give.

Garry Tan is president and CEO of Y Combinator, which funds hundreds of companies per year through a web-based application. Tan is also the co-founder, board partner and advisor of Initialized Capital, an early stage venture capital fund, and co-founded Posterous, a blog platform acquired by Twitter. In this presentation, Tan shares advice and insights for aspiring entrepreneurs and startup founders that challenges prevailing wisdom.

Cody Coleman is the co-founder and CEO of Coactive AI, an analytics platform for visual content. Coactive AI leverages artificial intelligence to make it easy for enterprise companies to search, filter, and analyze large amounts of image and video data by bringing structure to unstructured data.  In this presentation, Coleman shares how his life story has shaped the type of entrepreneur he aims to be. He gives advice for fellow founders who want to build positive company cultures and teams.

Josh Wolfe co-founded Lux Capital to support scientists and entrepreneurs who pursue counter-conventional solutions to the most vexing puzzles of our time in order to lead us into a brighter future. The more ambitious the project, the better—like, say, creating matter from light. Wolfe is a director at Shapeways, Strateos, Lux Research, Kallyope, CTRL-labs, Variant, and Varda, and helped lead Lux Capital’s investments in Anduril, Planet, Echodyne, Clarifai, Authorea, Resilience, and Hadrian. He is a founding investor and board member with Bill Gates in Kymeta, which makes cutting-edge antennas for high-speed global satellite and space communications. In this presentation, Wolfe shares the principles that guide his entrepreneurship and investments, giving examples from companies he has founded and funded.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stanfordtechnologyventuresprogram/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StanfordTechnologyVenturesProgram/ 

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eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

STVP Website: https://stvp.stanford.edu/

Support our mission of providing students and educators around the world with free access to Stanford University’s network of entrepreneurial thought leaders: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/give.

Rahul Roy-Chowdhury is Grammarly’s CEO as of May 1, 2023. He was previously the company’s Global Head of Product, overseeing everything that makes the company’s writing assistance software tick, managing the product, design, and data science teams. Before coming aboard at Grammarly, Roy-Chowdhury spent many years at Google leading the Privacy, Safety, and Security teams to unified solutions across Google’s product portfolio. In this presentation and conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Ravi Belani, Roy-Chowdhury Shares his company’s approach to building ethical AI tools and encourages aspiring entrepreneurs and tech leaders to get engaged in the conversation about responsible AI.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stanfordtechnologyventuresprogram/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StanfordTechnologyVenturesProgram/ 

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eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

STVP Website: https://stvp.stanford.edu/

Support our mission of providing students and educators around the world with free access to Stanford University’s network of entrepreneurial thought leaders: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/give.

Claire Hughes Johnson is a corporate officer and advisor for Stripe, a global technology company that builds economic infrastructure for the internet. From 2014 to 2021, Claire served as Stripe’s Chief Operating Officer, responsible for scaling the company’s worldwide operations to meet the needs of its rapidly growing user base. During her tenure as COO, Stripe grew from less than 200 employees to more than 6,000. She is also the author of Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building. In this presentation, Hughes Johnson shares her experiences as an operator and her advice for building effective systems and teams as a company scales.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stanfordtechnologyventuresprogram/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StanfordTechnologyVenturesProgram/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ecorner 

LEARN MORE

eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

STVP Website: https://stvp.stanford.edu/

Support our mission of providing students and educators around the world with free access to Stanford University’s network of entrepreneurial thought leaders: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/give.

Julia Collins is the founder and CEO of Planet FWD, which is empowering the next generation of sustainable consumer companies with its climate management platform. Planet FWD is focused on decarbonizing global supply chains with the belief that all organizations can achieve Net Zero. The platform is inspired by Planet FWD’s own snack brand, Moonshot, which launched in 2020 as the first climate-friendly snack brand. In this conversation with Mo-Yun Lei Fong, executive director of STVP, the Stanford Engineering Entrepreneurship Center, Collins explains the growing climate tech market — especially the areas of decarbonization and climate accounting — and shares advice for founders based on her experience as a serial entrepreneur.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stanfordtechnologyventuresprogram/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StanfordTechnologyVenturesProgram/ 

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eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

STVP Website: https://stvp.stanford.edu/

Support our mission of providing students and educators around the world with free access to Stanford University’s network of entrepreneurial thought leaders: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/give.

Ben Collier and James Kanoff are two co-founders of The Farmlink Project, a student-led movement that has provided over 100 million pounds of nutritious food to communities facing hunger in the United States. They started the project out of their college dorm rooms at Brown and Stanford University during the pandemic by renting a U-Haul truck to connect farmers with surplus to their local food bank. In this presentation, Collier and Kanoff share Farmlink’s story and how they have led the rapidly growing nonprofit through successes and struggles.

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Stanford eCorner content is produced by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. At STVP, we empower aspiring entrepreneurs to become global citizens who create and scale responsible innovations.

CONNECT WITH US

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ECorner 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stanfordtechnologyventuresprogram/ 

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LEARN MORE

eCorner Website: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/

STVP Website: https://stvp.stanford.edu/

Support our mission of providing students and educators around the world with free access to Stanford University’s network of entrepreneurial thought leaders: https://ecorner.stanford.edu/give.