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Lessons from Stanford, Latest Happenings & More | Pilot Project #2

May 2, 2024

Hannah Nowak

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Lessons from Stanford, Latest Happenings & More | Pilot Project #2

What Does a Week at Stanford Teach You About Building Great Companies?

Shae McKenna and the other delegates attending Stanford’s Global Entrepreneurship Summit

I was selected as one of 35 delegates to attend Stanford's Global Entrepreneurship Summit.

Over the course of the summit, the other delegates and I were treated to guest speakers, workshops, and tours around Stanford’s beautiful campus. All culminating into a pitch competition judged by veteran Silicon Valley investors and operators, Cris Neckar, Danielle Strachman, and Jacob Cole.

It’s not often anyone gets to hear from such accomplihed individuals, so I’ve decided to compile my biggest takeaways and learnings to share with you.

Australia On Top

…I thought it was great to see Australia make its initial steps to have a global entrepreneurial presence. I now know I severely underestimated our progress.

For starters 11 of the 35 delegates were Australian, disproportionate to any other nationality. I got to meet Joe Tey who, although originally from Melbourne, has launched his own startup while attending Stanford. He also happened to be the president of the Stanford Entrepreneurship Society (the organisation responsible for the summit).

It’s clear to me now that there has never been so much enthusiasm and high quality talent focused in on entrepreneurship in Australia. With the rise of organisations like HEX, Build Club, and NextGen Ventures, I’m excited to see how myself and others will leverage this excitement to create the next wave of innovation in Australia.

How lucky are you?

A recurring theme from the guest speakers was the acknowledgment of luck and timing as influential, if not key factors in entrepreneurial success.

I generally can’t help but get frustrated by this line of thinking. Unfortunately, I agree to an extent but, I don’t find it to be very productive or helpful. After all, how do you get more ‘lucky’?

Paul Orlando, managing director of USC startup incubator, put it quite well when he likened our control of luck as sitting at the right table at a poker tournament…

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NextGen’s Latest Happenings

Melbourne student founders with some of the NextGen team

We hosted our inaugural student founder drinks event in Melbourne, bringing together some of the most ambitious student founders we've had the pleasure of speaking with. The aim was to connect them with equally ambitious peers, providing a platform to share learnings and stories from their entrepreneurial journeys.

Gabriel Tucker (Co-Founder of Wonki)

We welcomed a diverse group of founders representing various sectors such as Healthtech, Edtech, MarTech, and others. These founders are at different stages of their startup journey, ranging from Seed to Pre-seed and Pre-revenue. This diversity allowed for cross-learning experiences, where founders could glean insights from those six months ahead of them, and also pass on learnings to those 6 months behind who are following in their footsteps.

It was also a really great opportunity for student founders to share experiences of building while still being students, as well as navigating the transition from the university ecosystem to the larger startup ecosystem.