What makes Stanford special?
On Wednesday, after helping NOC do a pitch to a lecture with many Sophomores, Juliana (NOC staff) asked me for my opinion on the following topic: “What makes Stanford special?” In summary, my response was that while in the graduate and post-graduate levels, there seem to be more opportunities for cutting edge research, in the undergraduate level, things are not all that different from other (good) universities. However, its alumni base, locality and special programs (such as STVP) provides a slight advantage that compounds over time to make it special. 
A day ago, this was highlighted in a huge way on Techcrunch.
Before I go on, for those who don’t already know, let me explain what Techcrunch is. TechCrunch is a blog (mostly) about Web2.0 products & companies, started by Michael Arrington, who is one of Time’s Top 100 World’s Most Influential people in 2008. With over 1,808,000 web feed subscribers, mostly in the Web2.0 industry, the companies featured in Techcrunch often get a million users overnight just by being mentioned.
So yesterday, I saw a post titled “Stanford Students Release A Cool Batch Of iPhone Apps”, which was also had links to a prior post that I have seen before about the Facebook Apps released by Stanford students. Granted that the course is a year adrift from the posting about the Facebook Apps post, but seriously, the portfolio of the previous CS3216 course seems way way cooler, I mean, just look at it! There’s a collection of applications that might actually help you do something, instead of the super-poke-type applications.
However, here’s my point. The Stanford courses are featured on Techcrunch, which in turn is a guarantee for a instant jump in number of users. Talk about solving Cold Start strategies. (By the way I’ve heard Web2.0 entrepreneurs pitching to VCs with the marketing plan being “Get featured on Techcrunch”.) While head-starts do not necessarily make you more successful, but this, and other introductions and recommendations in the Valley, are the unfair advantages available exclusively to Stanford students. Leveraging on this to achieve greater successes, makes Stanford special.
Now that things are demystified, we can make NUS equally if not more special. Can’t we? 
Side-Note: Facebook might often be mistaken to be “out-of-fashion”, but given that the website is still growing at a stunning 10.8% to 222million uniques in December08, the opportunities are still endless!