Alphabet's Eric Schmidt admits regret at saying 'mobile first'

What happened at Google for Entrepreneurs’ annual partner event…

I’ve been managing Virgin Unite’s relationship with Google for Entrepreneurs, delivering high profile Google Hangouts and a successful content series. This year we collaborated on content for President Obama’s Global Entrepreneurship Summit.

I love working with the Google team and this year I was lucky enough to be invited to their partner conference in San Francisco, joining 100 of their partners worldwide, from Tel Avi to Korea and Shanghai to Gaza. They included co-working spaces, tech hubs, entrepreneurial hubs, angel investors and organisations championing entrepreneurship.

It was fantastic to learn from each other how entrepreneurship works in each country and what the challenges and opportunities are. Some start-up communities were struggling for devs, others for affordable space. Some could only find investment for 1–5 million, others could only find first round funding. Many were looking to support disadvantaged groups.

The event include two days of inspirational talks from Google, partners and startups, such as Waze, as well as workshops. I’ve included two of my favourite event takeaways below, including Alphabet CEO Eric Schmidt regretting that he advocated 'mobile first' instead of 'mobile only' in 2010:

Alphabet CEO Eric Schmidt, “Culture is set by the founders and founding team. It is easier to found company than ever but harder to found one that will be around forever. You have very little time from idea generation to scale because of competition. The answer today is mobile only because of user interface. You have to make a bet and get it right. You have to bet on the volume platform. My answer today is mobile only, Android and iPhone (in that order), Cloud and machine learning. You won’t succeed without them.”

Bradley Horowitz, Google VP of photos and sharing: “Product managers are CEOs of their products and will do anything necessary to make it a great product, taking it as personally as if it is was their own company. Product management is an art and a skill, a craft. There is a rigour to this with user insights, metrics and analysis. It’s a skill that can be learned but it’s also an art where there are people who are naturally gifted. Being empathetic and user centric are important. As humans we want to be liked and make peace but that is not the job of the product manager. You have to stand up for what is right. It’s not hard to see the right decision but it’s finding the will to follow through and courage to push forward.”

We also had plenty of time to learn more about Google and had a tour of Mountain View. It’s pretty hard to explain just how large the campus is, no wonder they need all those Google bikes to get around. On one wall was the living history document of Google’s scale up timeline. Sometimes you forget how new they are in comparison to their giant success. I also had a potter around the Android garden, taking in the giant sculptures.

Although I’ve been to the US many times, it was my first time to San Fran and I loved it. Our last day was spent learning to paint the gorgeous scene of the Golden Gate bridge from Crissy Field. There is something liberating about letting go of failure as you paint in front of your peers and exposure your vulnerabilities. It was an unforgettable experience.