Entrepreneurship is a means to an end, it is not an end in itself. The passion is with the product, Hawkins notes, and succesful entrepreneurs must follow it through.

Transcript



So my number four thing, this is my last one and then we'll do questions and answers. And I mentioned this earlier. Entrepreneur is a means to an end. It's not an ending itself and you shouldn't view it that way. There are people who just start complaining over and over, over again. I don't know how they do that. I wouldn't recommend it. That's only not the way I view it. My thing in life is always been following the product. Right, I want to build a product. I envision the product I say, "How do I go about it?" Can I do it where I am right now? Yes, then do it where I am right now. If I can't do it where I am right now, there's some place I can do it, no? Perhaps I start something and then if I have to start something too bad, I have to start something. But the passion is with the product and you follow it through. And starting a business is just a means to an end and it's a difficult means. And there's not one that I even think it's the preferable means to do it. If you can somehow do what you want to do in the context of an existing enterprise, it's a hell of a lot easier! Then you know, to hire people and then create everything and start it all from scratch. And then spend all this time structuring things. So, just make sure that it is a tool that you could use in your career. Now, if you're doing a lot of creative things, the things that haven't been done before then you are naturally be using the entrepreneurial tool over and over again because you may not have a place to do it. I couldn't do the Palm Pilot at GRiD because it was a wrong kind of company. They were selling the enterprise, I wanted the consumer products. I couldn't do what we're doing at Handspring, that's part of Three-Com, again the wrong sort of structure. And I created the RNI, the Redwood Neuroscience Institute because it turns out the kind of things I want to do in neuroscience are not being really done anywhere else. And it was very difficult to structure that in traditional neuroscience and neurobiology particularly. Then you say, all right now it's time to build something.

1. What is an Entrepreneur?
2. Genesis of Palm Computing
3. The Accidental Entrepreneur: Palm History
4. Story of Acquisition: Palm, US Robotics, 3Com
5. Spinoff: Handspring
6. Handspring: Envisioning the Future
7. Serial Entrepreneurship: Redwood Neuroscience Institute
8. Profiles of Entrepreneurs
9. Importance of Experience
10. Follow Your Passions
11. Individual vs. Company
12. Entrepreneurship is a Means to an End
13. Work/Life Balance
14. Defining Company Culture
15. Difficult Negotiations
16. Designing Successful Products
17. The Role of Market Research
18. Work/Life Balance
19. Hawkins: What I Wish I'd Learned in College
20. Establish Strong Human Resources Early On
21. Product Development: Importance of Customers and Testing
22. Portable Technologies

In this lecture, Jeff Hawkins talks on Entrepreneurship for Stanford University students on October 23, 2002. Hawkins shares his story about how his initial company was continually acquired by larger companies.