Next up is Dave Sifry’s session on leadership and entrepreneurship (yep, he’s the founder of Technorati). Here are my notes:

• There’s a distinction between leadership and management! The latter is a function of the former.
• You’ve got to be a little insane to start a technology venture! You have to have passion.
• Dave: “I’ll never fill a position just to fill a position.” Think of the A-level person hires a B who hires a C scenario.
• Product-Feature-Company: when you have an idea, is it a feature, a product, or a company? Can you write your business model on the back of napkin? Or at least, the back of an envelope – goal should be cocktail napkin.
• Dave says “don’t do it” to outside investment. There’s nothing quite like getting a cheque from a customer. Hold off on outside investment as long as you can!
• If you do go the outside investment route: get a good lawyer, give homework to your board, etc.

At this point Dave went around the room and entrepreneurs introduced themselves and their businesses and shared a leadership or startup hack. There are so many good ones I couldn’t possibly share them all here, you kind of have to be here. I am surprised at how many entrepreneurs are in the room!

Dave’s rules for entrepreneurs (from his first or second slide) meant to be discussion points:

• Find your passion
• Team, team, team
• Lead, don’t manage
• Develop Leaders (80% on yout top 20%)
• Prepare for the scalability traps
• Back of the napkin it!
• Remember, it is a business
• Vision is easy, execution is hard
• Fail fast
• Be of service