We finally had our summer party last week. It had been scheduled for early July, but we were really busy and kept postponing it. Finally, we decided to do it last Friday, which was also Carlos’s last full day working with us. I think that I’ve mentioned on this blog that in addition to being an exceptional worker, Carlos is also an exceptional person. I’ve never seen him mad or agitated. He’s always mild-tempered and contributing actively to make the company better, even when I’m stressing him out.

We shared an office, and every day we laughed, talked and worked hard. He knows more about the Internet than most people twice his age. He lives and breathes it. It sustains him.

I wish I had his drive, focus and dedication.

And he’s only 17. So he had to return to finish his last year of high school.

He will be a star someday. He already is, but I expect even greater things from him.

I’m not as mature as he is, and I’m . . . well, let’s forget about how much older I am than him for

the moment.

When I finished working at 7PM last Friday, I literally ran out to find his gift. I wanted it to be

special, so that he could see how much he had touched each of us. I found a jacket that I liked for myself and I bought it for him, using the money that the whole team had contributed for his gift. I think that he liked it.

And then we got drunk at La Flauta drinking cava sangria before going out bar-hopping and

then clubbing. Though he apparently fell asleep at some points in the night, when the club closed at 6AM, Carlos was the first to ask us if we’d be going to an after-hours place.

To be 17 again. And to be 17 with such a clear vision of what you want to do and the talent to achieve.

Carlos is the Internet’s Rafa Nadal. Wait and see. I know that he’ll prove me right.

He’s still working for us, by the way, during his spare hours. On Monday, he called me to let me know the tasks that he’d been doing this week. And now, I’m online with him as he pushes me to finalise those tasks.

A really special kid.

Interspersed throughout this post are pics of our employees who attended the party. This last pic is of Didac and Albert, our investors.

I’ve been reflecting over the last few days about the pros and cons of trying to be an entrepreneur in Europe relative to the United States. I’ve talked about cultural and legal structures, but so far there’s one element that I’ve still not discussed directly: education. A large part of the responsibility for creating future entrepreneurs rests in the colleges and universities that form young adults.

Luckily for me, The Wall Street Journal has just published a front-page article on John Hennessy, Stanford’s president, entitled: “The Golden Touch of Stanford’s President: How John Hennessy’s Silicon Valley connections reap millions for the university — and himself”. The article is interesting in that it presents another clear case of interest alignment and demonstrates how the convergence of business and educational interests can generate an exciting entrepreneurial environment that fosters billion-dollar, market-leading, high-tech companies like Google and Yahoo.

Among the interesting facts about Hennessy in the Journal article:

• Over the past 5 years, Hennessy has received fees, stocks and stock-option profits from outside interests totalling $43 million. His yearly salary at Stanford is $616,000.
• Hennessy made $1 million in one month — November 2006. The money came from his outside interests, not from his job as Stanford President.
• Hennessy sits on Google’s board. So does the President of Princeton University.
• Google granted Hennessy 65,000 options to buy Google stock at $20 apiece before its IPO (Google today trades at about $470 per share–that is, about 23.5 times more.)
• Throughout his career at Stanford, Hennessy has sometimes left academia to create start-ups that were later sold for prices in excess of $100,000,000.
• Hennessy has invested in top-tier venture capital funds such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sequoia Capital (the VCs behind Google and YouTube) and Foundation Capital.
• Hennessy sits on Stanford’s endowment board, which chooses venture funds in which to invest Stanford’s $14 billion. Hennessy is a private investor in some of the venture funds in which Stanford invests.
• A personal recommendation from Hennessy can almost guarantee VC funding of student projects and Hennessy has helped put his graduate students in touch with lawyers/VCs that lead to multi-million-dollar financing rounds, often by funds in which Hennessy is an investor.

A few interesting facts about Stanford in the Journal article:

• Stanford’s endowment of $14 billion is the third largest in the US behind Harvard ($25 billion) and my alma mater, Yale ($18 billion).
• Stanford’s former provost, Frederick Terman, was responsible for introducing William Hewlett to David Packard in the 1930s. Terman joined Hewlett-Packard’s board and was a well-paid consultant for a high-tech investment fund.
• Silicon Valley companies donate a lot of money to Stanford:
  • Netscape co-founder Jim Clark (who, coincidentally, is the father-in-law of YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley) donated $90 million to Stanford in 1999. He was also an engineering professor at Stanford during the early 1980s.
  • Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang is Hennessy’s former student. Yang is now a Stanford trustee and helped lead Stanford to a successful $1 billion fund-raising campaign. Yang recently announced that he will donate $75 million to Stanford.
  • Approximately half (16/33) of Stanford’s trustees are venture capitalists, private-equity investors, money managers, or current/former high-tech executives/directors.
  • Over the last 6 years, Stanford has received $3.45 billion in gifts.
• Stanford often licenses technology to former students:
  • Google licenses its Internet search technology from Stanford, where founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin started the company and were Ph.D students. As payment for the license, Stanford received shares in Google’s IPO that it has since sold for $336 million. Stanford continues to receive a “modest” annual licensing fee from Google. The terms of the initial agreement have not been disclosed.

My two main conclusions:

• It must be exciting to learn in such an environment, with professors that have
  • technical expertise
  • real-world experience launching successful start-ups that get sold for more than $100.000.000, and
  • significant influence with powerful representatives of the tech and/or investor community.

• I am a die-hard Yalie, but after reading this article and seeing the doors that Stanford can open for a young entrepreneur, I’m starting to think that maybe Stanford wouldn’t have been such a bad choice.