Excellent! Props to PG for standing up against SOPA. Media company wants to take the free internet away from us. We cannot afford to have SOPA passed!!
I like the fact that the author brought up these two points.
1. "Facebook is a mini-Internet. It’s an organized Internet. We’ve all moved our home pages to be our Facebook pages. Companies flash their Facebook page on their commercials now instead of their own websites. So imagine the value of the entire Internet."
2. "In 1999-2000, the public was given the chance to have a venture capitalist-style portfolio. It didn’t work."
1 has some truth to it but not entirely correct. Facebook has done a great job on social graph capturing but as far as mapping the internet, it has not done well nor did it intend to act like a repository of web in the first place. There will be services like that in the future, very soon. For 2, I think he has a point, but of course the general public's investing pattern is different from a VC's. It's the average Joe's preference. If you ask a 90 year old to drive a porsche, she'll come back and complain how bad the driving experience is and how close she was to have a heart attack from it.
1. hire 1-2 star developers
2. build your team culture around them
3. hire other talents around this culture
4. other solid developers will want to join
5. there you have a star team
Step 1 is probably the hardest. You'll need a lot of charisma to convince talents to join
My personal favorite is towards the end of the talk when Rand left great tips (the last 15 minutes or so before QnA) The top 10 ways to get in bound traffic are practical and insightful for any early stage startup. It kicks ass!