Stanford University has been a major factor in the development of the entrepreneurial culture in Silicon Valley. Its education and support has helped create companies like Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems and Google.

It doesn't rest on its laurels either - each year it holds a Startup School in which successful entrepreneurs, angel investors and venture capital investors provide insights from their own experiences to the next generation startups.

You can read class notes from the Startup School 2007, or listen to these audio recordings of the presentations.

Here are some of my favourite excerpts:

Limited Life Experience + Overgeneralization = ADVICE
Paul Buchheit, Creator of GMail

When someone tells you, "That's impossible" it should be translated as "According to my very limited experience and narrow understanding of reality, that's very unlikely."
Paul Buchheit, Creator of GMail

Do LISTEN to the customers
Do stack rank the top problems that are core to your success, and get your top people operationally focused there
Do make frugality and profitability part of your culture
Do move quickly
Do have a strong CEO
Do FOCUS!
Do hire great people
Don't be distracted by the press
Don't take your company culture for granted
Don't be greedy in business negotiations
Don't ignore your gut feeling about an employee or candidate
Don't forget to have fun
Hadi Partovi & Ali Partovi, iLike.com, formerly of Microsoft & Oracle