How to Build a Product III - Stanford CS183F: Startup School

Jason Lemkin, of SaaStr, sits down with Solomon Hykes, CEO and co-founder of Docker, Tracy Young, CEO and co-founder of Plangrid, and Harry Zhang, co-founder of Lob, to discuss their experience building products in our third installment of How to Build a Product.

[ab-zokw]

by far Solomon's responses are most genuine and altruistic, destined to help and educate, this dude has dealt with problems none of the other companies have yet to experience,  maybe they never will.
Even if docker doesn't survive, this man will go on to build bigger things.

[ignoramus]

Jason Lemkin is a star interviewer. Great questions.

[zachaIIen]

Hearing these stories are valuable, but I come to these lectures expecting something more structured: theories, hypotheses, and data. You're basically throwing a few anecdotes at me and wanting me to build the frameworks/correlations behind these anecdotes, which is fine, but I don't need these videos to do that. The first couple of lectures were amazing because the speakers actually had to think about what they wanted to say before they came, which made the videos so much more information dense and valuable.

[xinxingjiang]

Can you reorder the sessions? The 20th is actually the first session.

[MrRsheeler]

I'd have to say, this is by far my least favorite video so far and I was so looking forward to it because the previous two product videos were my favorite in the class. I think the tone started off poorly when the host jokingly compared the VC money they've raised and it kind of went all down hill from there. Although there were definitely some points, it seemed like there were few applicable take aways and a lot of.. well.. bragging. Whether "we used to have 5 cofounders and now we have 300 employees", "we had 29 paid customers from the start", or "we have 120 meet ups who each meet bimonthly, " it wasn't extremely useful for me as a student. Also, they pretty much ignored Harry Zhang to the point where it was kind of awkward. 

Basically, (maybe) the inexperience of the host made the energy of the talk go down hill.

I still LOVE the previous videos and really look forward to the rest of the class.

[adinoyisadiq]

Great video series, but for this video in particular the host talked way too much.

We want to hear the guests talk about their startups without being interrupted every two seconds.

[Zeangjpn]

I agree with the comments that this is one of the weaker videos so far.

I think the weakness stems from the moderator trying too hard to control the discussion. There was never a moment where he asked a question and just backed off and let the panelists talk freely.

Having said that I am still glad I watched this video.

[yuanhuihuang]

Oh no Solomon did not get to comment on the magic question!

[romanjames]

The one running the interview would ask a question but then constantly intervene and drive the answer to what he wanted. It made it difficult to listen without noticing