Word: stanfords
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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They skipped spring break--and most of their classes--to finish their plan. In May 1998 they secured VC funding. The next month, they quit Stanford. "It wasn't a hard decision," says Lefcourt, sitting in the company's office, which is luxurious by start-up standards. "The things I was trying to get out of business school I'm getting right here...
...plot is familiar: two ambitious Internet geeks graduate Stanford business school, devise a lucrative idea for an e-business, get funded by a prestigious venture-capital firm, set up shop in dingy offices, hire a lot of people, generate buzz, go public. The 15-month-old Internet start-up Della & James hasn't had its IPO yet, but so far it has nailed down the idea (an online bridal registry), the VC (Kleiner Perkins), the hiring (15 to 70 employees in six months) and the buzz (everybody in the Valley has heard of Della & James). But there are some twists...
...even call them a start-up anymore," grumbles a friend and fellow entrepreneur.) Herrin, 26, and Lefcourt, 30, come off as the girls who were too smart to talk to you in high school. Herrin had an outline for her wedding-registry business even before she entered Stanford in the fall of 1997. "I wanted to do something entrepreneurial," she says. "The M.B.A. wasn't the end goal." She soon met Lefcourt, who confided that she was exasperated with the nuisance of buying wedding gifts. "I said, 'Ohmigod, I have a business plan for that,'" Herrin says. "That...
...people think that's cool." If any employees do gripe, Hinman--who recycles old business cards by crossing out his former employer's name and scribbling MongoMusic.com on them--can remind them that for six weeks in 1995 he lived in a tent on the roof of a Stanford physics lab. And despite the sweatshop conditions, Hinman is a benign manager. "When 5 o'clock on Friday rolls around, I expect them to be out the door," he says, surveying his callow charges. "I know that at 5 p.m., you can find me in my backyard playing beer pong...
...place on earth is better equipped to set new businesses into motion than the Valley. And as the Internet has become more developed, the Valley's original generation of techies has given way to M.B.A.s looking to launch their business plans online. Many of them schooled at nearby Stanford University, as did Ratnesar and Stein, who plied their connections and met some of this year's Stanford Business School graduates in mid-launch process. They set up camp in San Francisco and made regular reconnaissance trips into the Valley, meeting major players as well as ancillary characters. Ratnesar and Stein...