28 Apr From the Marching 100 to Google: Summit Speaker David Krane on Storytelling, Silicon Valley, and What He Looks for in Founders
Registration is now open for the IU Ventures Founders and Funders Network Venture Summit, where IU alumnus David Krane, CEO of GV (Google Ventures) and one of Google’s earliest employees, will be a featured speaker during the IU “Icons” Fireside Chat. The chat will be moderated by Scott Dorsey, Managing Partner at High Alpha. The Summit brings together founders, funders, alumni, faculty, and students from across the IU community and is expected to sell out. Attendees can register now on the IU Ventures website.
Krane is a rare figure in the technology world — someone who joined Google as employee number 84, helped build it into a global institution, and now shapes the next generation of innovation as a venture capitalist. He is also proud of his IU roots and still remembers high stepping out of the Memorial Stadium tunnel.
We recently caught up with Krane to preview his Summit appearance and hear what he has learned about leadership, storytelling, and what separates the founders who break through from those who do not.
You were a student at IU before building your career in Silicon Valley. What do you remember most about your time in Bloomington?
There’s nothing like Big Ten tradition. Big Ten people. Big Ten intensity. Big Ten energy. As a freshman, I marched with the Marching 100 and my first game at Memorial Stadium left a lasting impression. The first time I was reminded that IU is like no other was when I was high stepping out of a tunnel onto the football field before the game. It was my ‘welcome to Bloomington’ moment.
What are you most looking forward to as you return to campus for the Summit?
I love the Midwest. I love Indiana. I love Hoosiers. My four years in Bloomington taught me that and my continued engagement after I graduated reinforces it.
The world is getting flatter, the world is getting closer, and it’s exciting to see Hoosiers come to Silicon Valley and be successful — and aspire to work on the problems that we work on every day here.
You joined Google as employee 84, long before it became the company we know today. What did those early days feel like?
When I met Larry Page and Sergey Brin, they told me they were working on a 300-year problem. The scale of that ambition gave me pause.
I had to contemplate: is this place crazy or is this place truly inspired like nobody else? At the time, Google had about 100 employees. One of the first things that struck me was the internal list of active projects. There was something called the top 100 project list. It was completely unfathomable to me that a company so small, working on such a bold mission, could have 100 projects going on concurrently.
I had never seen a startup that was capable of parallel processing and managing its bold ambition in the way that Google did in the early days.
At GV, you’ve evaluated thousands of early-stage companies. What do the most promising founders consistently do well?
The first quality I look for is the ability to tell a story. When a founder shows up and is subpar at the oral and verbal delivery of their life’s work and their purpose, it really stands out. The journalism experience in Bloomington, what I learned at the media school, underlines for me the importance of excellent narrative development and storytelling. Founders don’t get a pass from that. You must come into our pitch room and very persuasively, energetically, and somewhat intensely tell us why your life’s work is right for us to get involved with.
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The IU Ventures Founders and Funders Network Venture Summit is limited to 350 attendees and is expected to sell out. Registration is $100 and includes all Summit programming. A limited number of full scholarships are available for current IU students on a first-come, first-served basis.
About IU Ventures
IU Ventures invests in and supports IU-affiliated early-stage companies. Its investment programs include the IU Philanthropic Venture Fund, IU Angel Network, and the Innovate Indiana Fund. It further supports IU founders through its Executive in Residence Program and IU Founders and Funders Network. Each program takes unique approaches to accelerate and support the positive impacts that entrepreneurs affiliated with IU already achieve across the world. http://www.iuventures.com/