How to speed up emacs start time?

[n179911]

In my .emacs, I have

(setq load-path (cons "~/bin/emacslib" load-path))
(require 'icicles)

And in my ~/bin/emacslib, I have

$ ls
icicles-chg.el   icicles-doc1.el  icicles-fn.el    icicles-mode.el  icicles.el
icicles-cmd1.el  icicles-doc2.el  icicles-mac.el   icicles-opt.el
icicles-cmd2.el  icicles-face.el  icicles-mcmd.el  icicles-var.el

Can you please tell me how can I speed up emacs startup time? Is there
anyway to compile the .el. files so that emacs can come up faster?

Thank you.