Lawrence Casiraya
INQUIRER.net
MU
MBAI, India -- As a motivational speaker, Guy Kawasaki is blessed with a funky name, a charming smi
le and sense of humor perfect for delivering slide presentations. Yet he calls
himself a "bozo."
(Photo shows Kawasaki's business card).
No wonder, business intelligence and analytics software firm SAS timed his pres
entation after lunchtime. Kawasaki wowed the Mumbai crowd with his presentation
entitled "The Art of Innovation," eliciting plenty of chuckles and applause.
In his speech, he gave advice on what he refers to as the Holy Grail for any en
trepreneur: coming up with a unique product that has great value. To illustrate
this point, he talked about how companies like Nike, Apple, Federal Express an
d Breitling are doing it.
So what exactly are these types of products? A flashlight that can run on diffe
rent types of batteries and an outdoor watch that comes with a built-in SOS sig
nal are among his examples.
But his most profound piece of advice for would-be entrepreneurs: Make meaning,
not money.
"Based from my observation, companies that really are successful change people'
s lives. Most companies that set up just to make money eventually fail," he tol
d me during a short interview after his talk.
Kawasaki who was born on Honolulu, Hawaii and considers himself half-American h
alf-Japanese, was appointed Apple Fellow during the 80s. He is credited as one
of the earlier "evangelists" responsible for the success of Apple's Macintosh c
omputer.
He is also a noted venture capitalist in Silicon Valley as managing director of
Garage Technology Ventures. Recently, he founded alltop.com, a website that ag
gregates news based on topics.
I asked if his "make meaning, not money" ethos applies more (or maybe less) to
entrepreneurs in places like the Philippines where there isn't as much access t
o venture capital. Kawasaki said it applies to everyone, while saying it's now
a "different world out there" for entrepreneurs in the technology industry, tha
nks to open source.
"Now, because of things like MySQL, Rails, PhP, you can do things so much cheap
er than before. It's a great time to be an entrepreneur, you can delay venture
capital funding for a longer period, get further and therefore you have higher
valuation," Kawasaki said.
"Before, the first step was sort of try to raise money and build your product.
Now you build your product and then try to raise money. It's a very different w
orld," he added.
And in the same vein, he had another advice for would-be CEOs: Make a mantra, n
ot lengthy mission statements. And to observe his personal "10-20-30" rule: 10
Powerpoint slides, 20 minutes tops (he takes a crack at Windows for booting up
longer thus, less presentation time) and size 30 font (which also applies to hi
s business card below).
Also, he took note of bozos (or slang for stupid) who are either out to make mo
ney (who, according to him, drive cars and wear clothes ending in "i" like Ferr
ari, Maserati and Armani) or who fail to see where technology is heading.
So why does he call himself a bozo then? He tells his story about how he was on
ce offered to become a CEO of a then start-up but was too lazy to drive all the
way to his new office and after looking at the company's website, dismissed it
as "just a collection of their these guys' favorite websites".
That company turned out to be Yahoo!
MU
MBAI, India -- As a motivational speaker, Guy Kawasaki is blessed with a funky name, a charming smi
le and sense of humor perfect for delivering slide presentations. Yet he calls
himself a "bozo."
(Photo shows Kawasaki's business card).
No wonder, business intelligence and analytics software firm SAS timed his pres
entation after lunchtime. Kawasaki wowed the Mumbai crowd with his presentation
entitled "The Art of Innovation," eliciting plenty of chuckles and applause.
In his speech, he gave advice on what he refers to as the Holy Grail for any en
trepreneur: coming up with a unique product that has great value. To illustrate
this point, he talked about how companies like Nike, Apple, Federal Express an
d Breitling are doing it.
So what exactly are these types of products? A flashlight that can run on diffe
rent types of batteries and an outdoor watch that comes with a built-in SOS sig
nal are among his examples.
But his most profound piece of advice for would-be entrepreneurs: Make meaning,
not money.
"Based from my observation, companies that really are successful change people'
s lives. Most companies that set up just to make money eventually fail," he tol
d me during a short interview after his talk.
Kawasaki who was born on Honolulu, Hawaii and considers himself half-American h
alf-Japanese, was appointed Apple Fellow during the 80s. He is credited as one
of the earlier "evangelists" responsible for the success of Apple's Macintosh c
omputer.
He is also a noted venture capitalist in Silicon Valley as managing director of
Garage Technology Ventures. Recently, he founded alltop.com, a website that ag
gregates news based on topics.
I asked if his "make meaning, not money" ethos applies more (or maybe less) to
entrepreneurs in places like the Philippines where there isn't as much access t
o venture capital. Kawasaki said it applies to everyone, while saying it's now
a "different world out there" for entrepreneurs in the technology industry, tha
nks to open source.
"Now, because of things like MySQL, Rails, PhP, you can do things so much cheap
er than before. It's a great time to be an entrepreneur, you can delay venture
capital funding for a longer period, get further and therefore you have higher
valuation," Kawasaki said.
"Before, the first step was sort of try to raise money and build your product.
Now you build your product and then try to raise money. It's a very different w
orld," he added.
And in the same vein, he had another advice for would-be CEOs: Make a mantra, n
ot lengthy mission statements. And to observe his personal "10-20-30" rule: 10
Powerpoint slides, 20 minutes tops (he takes a crack at Windows for booting up
longer thus, less presentation time) and size 30 font (which also applies to hi
s business card below).
Also, he took note of bozos (or slang for stupid) who are either out to make mo
ney (who, according to him, drive cars and wear clothes ending in "i" like Ferr
ari, Maserati and Armani) or who fail to see where technology is heading.
So why does he call himself a bozo then? He tells his story about how he was on
ce offered to become a CEO of a then start-up but was too lazy to drive all the
way to his new office and after looking at the company's website, dismissed it
as "just a collection of their these guys' favorite websites".
That company turned out to be Yahoo!
