The
Stanford Technology Ventures Program has a podcast series called the
Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Series. I realy enjoyed listening to "
Inside the Mind of a Reluctant Entrepreneur" (also
on iTunes) with
Jeff Hawkins as the speaker. Jeff Hawkins is perhaps best known for founding Palm Computing, creating the Palm Pilot, and then later founding Handspring. However, in this podcast he describes how he never really set out to start corporations and how he objected to the long hours typical of startup companies.
Jeff shares an interesting story about his long-time passion for studying the brain and figuring out how the brain works as a way to create a new way of computing. Along the way, he also developed an early passion for mobile computing before computer, display, and battery technology really made it possible.
Jeff finally realized his dream of studying how the brain works full time when he founded a non-profit, the Redwood Neuroscience Institute. He later merged that institute into the University of California at Berkley and then founded a fourth organization called
Numenta which is "creating a new type of computing technology modeled on the structure and operation of the neocortex."
Jeff authored a book about his work on how the brain works called
On Intelligence
.
in which he says that the first business plan ("plan A") envisioned by the vast majority of startup companies doesn't work out. He advocates that entrepreneurs accept that they try their plan "A" and be prepraed to quickly accept it didn't work out as planned and be ready to quickly move on to "plan B". He says he uses "plan B" only that it is something else (something smarter) based on what was learned from plan A. Plan B doesn't necessarily imply a less attractive alternative, just another alternative which is probably better. He gives several examples of companies which failed to be profitable on their plan A and had to adapt quickly. 
