Guy Kawasaki

1. Nobody cares how hard you work. Results — not effort — are the only things that matter. 2. It's infinitely easier to produce excellent results when you like the job you're in. You may never find "The perfect job" but the closer the match to your skills, the better. 3. You'll be amazed at how few people give a sh*t about your new startup. 4. Paychecks are addictive. Then often essential. If you want to start your own business, try not to become dependent. 5. Learn to recognize The Dips from the cul-de-sacs (http://guykawasaki.com/the_big_dip_ten/).

Marketing: noun, the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising. The keywords there are "action", and "promoting". The first 4 items you list are not marketing. They are preparing for the market. The only thing there that is actually marketing is "They increased awareness and trial of their product via word-of-mouth" and that only barely counts because most of it is OTHER people marketing it for you, without your consent, control, or even input. So, it's not Duolingo marketing themselves. It's Duolingo's users marketing it for them. That's usually referred to as Evangelism and Guy Kawasaki has made his career out of explaining and promoting that idea http://guykawasaki.com/

Seriously from all the articles I read I am an expert when knowing what not to do. So now I am looking for an article that says what to do. Anybody have some other good read to share? http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0976470705 http://steveblank.com/category/customer-development-manifesto/ http://steveblank.com/category/customer-development/ http://www.guykawasaki.com/the-art-of-the-start/

I think you'll find this article very relevant. http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/hindsights.html All the best.

And following the link trails we find: Paul Graham (Viaweb) On raising money: “The advice I would give is to avoid it. I would say spend as little as you can because every dollar of the investors’ money you get will be taken out of your ass…” http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/03/founders_at_wor.html#ixzz0EIDlAjVU… Is that "Y"?

As ScottWhigham mentioned, "The Art of the Start" is a great place to start. But if you don't want to wait until you're able to get your hands on the book, you can check out a presentation the author did on it: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/06/the_art_of_the_.html

the following 2 links should help you - good luck http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/223/The-Startup-Name-Game.as… http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/the_name_game.html

This article on Guy Kawasaki's blog talks about how word of mouth from normal everyday folks is worth more than trying to get high-profile people to talk about you. http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/12/word-of-mouth-v.html Thinking that way would also push you in the right long-term direction. "How can I make a product worthy of being talked about?" vs "How am I going to get this in front of celebrities"

Non-linkjacked: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/06/the_art_of_the_.html Has already appeared on News.YC in non-jacked form: http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=1645 Now would be a great time for a down arrow on submissions.

I have the privilege of getting see a lot of pitch decks, from seed to late round. Most of them are really, really bad. I'm a founder and have two decks: one is 9 slides, the other is 3. I think all seed and even Series A decks should follow a very similar format: problem, solution/product, team, traction, competition and the ask. I think two really good examples are Guy's Kawasaki's pitch deck[0] and Sequoia's[1]. If you're veering off these paths, you had better have a damn good reason (hint: you probably don't). I especially like Kawasaki's "What's the underlying magic?" slide, and I really like Sequoia's "Why now?" Those two slides are underrepresented. I just looked at three decks that were sent me this week: 26 slides, 23 slides, 17 slides. Unnecessary. Lastly, I'm in the minority with this belief, but I think more founders should run their decks past designers. I'm not saying you need an elaborate and fancy design, but good typography and composition make it look like you care. But, as always, content is king. [0] https://guykawasaki.com/the-only-10-slides-you-need-in-your-pitch/ [1] https://www.slideshare.net/PitchDeckCoach/sequoia-capital-pitchdecktem… edit: removed my opinion of the HN seed examples after further reflection.

Hey there. What I've done in the past is make a long list of words that could be applied to what your company does, how it does it, who it's designed for, etc. Grab a thesaurus and look up synonyms for words that are particularly applicable. Then, start combining different words and see what you come up with. Swap some vowels (a's for e's, o's for i's, etc.) and get creative. Eventually, you'll come up with a list of names that are at least partially relevant to what your company does and hopefully look and sound decent. You may want to search for words in other languages as well (Latin is a good one) for more variety. It takes a long time to come up with a great name that you and your team like, that is at the same time not trademarked and also has a domain available relatively cheap. No matter how arbitrary a name sounds, it almost always has direct meaning for the company. Google was originally called 'Googol', which is a very large number (10 to the hundredth power) and was meant to convey how much information Google indexed. Twitter is perfect because it implies that the service is about short bursts of information (tweets) much like a bird chirping (would the name Chirpr sound as good? Naw). You also have to think about how the name sounds when it's spoken, and if people can easily remember how to spell it when they go to type it in the address bar of their browser. Guy Kawasaki wrote a decent article about naming companies a few years ago which you can find…

I worked for a start-up that failed (as an employee, not a founder). We were able to get "angel" funding to keep going for a couple of years but not the big VC money that was needed for this domain (medical devices, so no "customers" other than euthanized animals). The founders were serial entrepreneurs with a good track record and a lot of clout. I would summarize the reasons for failure as the following: 1) Obsessive efforts on patents, sucking up valuable time of key people. 2) Not enough nitty-gritty technical folks. Literally half of the staff were "Vice presidents"-- if you can even imagine that. 3) I remember reading Guy Kawasaki's 10-20-30 rule (http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html) and laughing at what were putting on-- more like "200 slides - 8 hours - 10pt font". 4) We shoulda made a more convincing prototype. We could have done it if less time was spent on patents and bullshit. The founders had been successful in a much smaller domain. They made a lot of money and, I think, wanted to raise the stakes. It was a reach and it didn't work. However, I don't think anyone has/had hard feelings. We tried, learned a lot, and got to do some interesting stuff. I now work for a boring company to pay the bills and do moonlight freelance with a buddy. If we ever go down the start-up route, I doubt we would ever attempt getting VC funding. I prefer keeping things small, manageable and profitable-- even if the profit is small.

Business plans can be extremely useful, or not useful at all, depending on how you use them. The biggest questions they should answer are: "What are we doing, how will we make money from it, and how much money will we make?" (It should also answer the question of "What do we do if everything fails?"). I found Guy Kawasaki's ten-part outline ( http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/01/the_zen_of_busi.html#axzz0ykt2Y2c3 ) to be pretty reasonable. I followed it for both of the business plans I wrote (freelancing), which both achieved their purpose, and will follow it again for future business plans I write. Depending on who your potential angel(s) is/are, you may have to be more "optimistic" than you would for others, as far as your financial projections go. That said, the real purpose of the business plan is to give potential investors some solid numbers such that they can decide the odds of them getting their investment back, and also to force you to sit down and clarify your plans so that you don't get sidetracked with nonsense.

http://www.popurls.com http://www.guykawasaki.com

we: 1. picked a list of 50-60 words/prefixes/suffixes we liked 2. wrote a python script to generate permutations, and then 3. ran dig -f on the text file to see which weren't taken 4. scraped buydomains search results to see which ones were easily for sale. absolutely everything else was a waste of time, although we're also working with a naming agency and that might be promising (but expensive). amusingly, domains that were occupied by squatters or companies like buydomains were easier to deal with -- at least they're rational and the conversation, though annoying, is straightforward (arrive at a #.) domains that are occupied but unused (and don't have a 'for sale' sign hanging up) are generally hopeless. if you get a response, you'll generally get some whacko who either won't sell it, or who will only sell for millions of dollars or something. you'll probably not believe me, and will learn this the hard way (just as pg told us months ago :)) ok enough bad news -- some links that might help: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/the_name_game.html http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/223/The-Startup-Name-Game.as… http://foundread.com/2007/08/20/3-rules-for-naming-your-startup/ and last and best (a 100+ page guide) http://www.igorinternational.com/process/igor-naming-guide.pdf hope this helps -- it's a struggle :)

you are laughing as if you are very confident about your answer ... well I am not as sure as you are what exactly PG does ... but I doubt TC calls up PG or anyone else for that matter on daily basis to find out whats new... and maybe PG doesn't do it but a lot of other VC's do (check this interview video with Michael Arrington about how to get on TC http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/11/how_to_get_in_t.html ) ... if I am going to work with YC I would expect them to help me with these kind of stuff ... I mean that is the whole point of YC (don't start with saying they are not a PR team and they are not there to create news for you, I know that) .. but the way YC is structured (which I think is great) is to mostly give you advice and support ... And this kind of support could mean more than anything else to help you launch your business, create traction and gain users, specially with Disqus that is late in the game, and needs the support of bloggers, and has many competition, and there is only a need of one of these services on each blog, and it has been proven that its not so easy to get dominance in this field

Just read this post from Guy Kawasaki: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/05/just_in_time_fo.html It got me thinking about my mother and the sacrifices she made in bearing us and bringing us up. Looking back, I definitely can see how she influenced me and helped give me the confidence to seek adventure and take risks. For example, one time I decided to experiment with cooking and decided to make a dish concocted of orange-wedges, cheese, lemon juice, and some other random ingredients. My dad was concerned that I would waste the food (he was right) but my mother insisted that I be able to try it out for myself. It was the most disgusting food ever! I tried to eat as much of it as I could, but it was a good lesson that cheese and oranges aren't a great combination! As I look back, I can remember countless examples of her encouragement to pursue new ventures (even when it was obvious I would fail). I can't recall her ever expressing doubt that I would succeed. And I guess she was right if you look at failure as a success in learning. Anyway, thanks Mama! Happy Mother's Day!

It’s not clear to me whether you’re characterizing that as trenchant business advice or cynical bullshit. Meta has had several rounds of layoffs now so it surely can’t be the former. Also Guy Kawasaki probably isn’t the first to say this, but I’d guess he predates Zuckerberg: https://guykawasaki.com/the_art_of_the_/

https://guykawasaki.com/what-i-learned-from-steve-jobs/ "The Apple focus group was the right hemisphere of Steve’s brain talking to the left one." If you don't incorporate data into your product devisions, you're going to have a bad time. If you only incorporate data into your product decisions, you're going to have a bad time. If you balance left and right brain thinking, you might come up with a successful product.

When I see advices like this, I always remember Garr Reynolds [1] PresentationZen and, above all, Guy Kawasaki's rule of 10/20/30 [2] A pitch should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points. [1] https://www.presentationzen.com/ [2] https://guykawasaki.com/the-only-10-slides-you-need-in-your-pitch/

Strangely similar to Guy Kawasaki's https://alltop.com/ https://guykawasaki.com/alltop-version/

The title doesn't quite fit, it's more like hundreds of thousands, as explained in this recent podcast interview. Guy Kawasaki's Remarkable People https://guykawasaki.com/jeff-hawkins/

Nice! Bookmarking. 2 typos: Rule 10 ("it's" s/b "its") and 14 ("marke" s/b "mark"). Brings back memories of this: https://guykawasaki.com/the-only-10-slides-you-need-in-your-pitch/

I'm a consultant as well. You go through enough companies and you can see how much of a problem this actually is. As much as I did not particularly care for the management style of Steve Jobs, as far as I know, he was the one that first used the term. https://guykawasaki.com/what-i-learned-from-steve-jobs/ Edited to add: This just happened recently. Maybe you'll appreciate it. 15 years ago or so (before the term "technical debt" got widespread usage) management kept asking why we working on so many bugs. The solution was to label them as "enhancements". Just recently within the past year, I saw the exact same thing happen again.

Guy Kawasaki once had a post that states the reason why, but in a different angle - it's a post basically on why Silicon Valley is successful: >>https://guykawasaki.com/how_to_kick_sil/ High housing prices. If houses are cheap, it means that young people can buy housing sooner and have kids. When they have kids, they can’t take as much risk and don’t have as much energy to start companies. (I have four kids—I barely have the time and energy to blog, much less start a company.) Also, if houses are cheap, it’s easier to “make it big,” and you want it to be hard to make it big.<<

Limit presentations to 10 slides. This works for VC pitches. It should probably work for anything. Guy Kawasaki even has his 10 20 30 rule [1]. 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point font. I had a writing assignment once in college. The limit was 1000 words. And then there was a list of points we had to address. Enforced brevity was the challenge. On the other end of the spectrum, there's David Byrne I Heart Powerpoint [2] which I had the pleasure to see at Berkeley. He's mentioned in the article. [1] https://guykawasaki.com/the_102030_rule/ [2] http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt1.html.

This is a tarted up version of Guy's 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint: 10 slides -- because that's the max a viewer will hold in their head 20 minutes -- because that's the max people will pay attention 30 point font size, minimum -- because people can read it, and you won't cram too much on These guidelines are useful for all kinds of presentations because it imposes some structure and some constraint on material. Like all rules of thumb, smart people see the exceptions. Monday Note says you only need three slides, which I also like. Broadly: 1. Who we are. 2. What we want to do. 3. How we'll make it work, the money pump. Guy 10/20/30: http://guykawasaki.com/the_102030_rule/ Monday Note: http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/05/04/three-slides-then-shut-up-the-art…

They have written books on the subject: http://guykawasaki.com/you_have_to_lov/

Do your homework. Right after graduate school I went to work at a startup with $8 million in VC money, a nice office, and a good outward appearance. After a few months I found out that they didn't have customer traction, saw some people lose their jobs, and wasn't convinced that the product worked as advertised. I was just a small cog in a larger machine, but perhaps I could have asked tougher questions during the interview process. Here's some more to chew on, http://venturehacks.com/articles/job-offer http://genuinevc.com/archives/2005/10/18/seven-questions-employees-sho… http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/03/nine_questions_.html#axzz1yfgrAuod

Dropped by the blog to refresh my memory of the amusing, and fairly accurate, piece titled "The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint", http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html