Guy Kawasaki Quotations

What I lack in talent, I compensate with my willingness to grind it out. That's the secret of my life.

Great companies start because the founders want to change the world... not make a fast buck.

If you have to put someone on a pedestal, put teachers. They are society's heroes.

Patience is the art of concealing your impatience.

At the end of my life, is it better to say that I empowered people to make great stuff, or that I died with a net worth of $10 billion? Obviously I'm picking the former, although I would not mind both.

When I finally got a management position, I found out how hard it is to lead and manage people.

What you learn in school is the opposite of what happens in the real world. In school, you're always worried about minimums. You have to reach 20 pages or you have to have so many slides or whatever. Then you get out in the real world and you think, 'I have to have a minimum of 20 pages and 50 slides.

Ambitious failure, magnificent failure, is a very good thing,

Smart, well-meaning people get it wrong when they start believing that the world owes them something and that the rules are different for them.

Don't worry, be crappy. Revolutionary means you ship and then test... Lots of things made the first Mac in 1984 a piece of crap - but it was a revolutionary piece of crap.

The jewelry business is a very, very tough business - tougher than the computer business. You truly have to understand how to take care of your customers.

It's easy to say that entrepreneurs will create jobs and big companies will create unemployment, but this is simplistic. The real question is who will innovate.

Create something, sell it, make it better, sell it some more and then create something that obsoletes what you used to make.

A good idea is about ten percent and implementation and hard work, and luck is 90 percent.

Social media allows me to pick my times for social interaction.

I do have a peripatetic and active intellectual curiosity.

When you enchant people, your goal is not to make money from them or to get them to do what you want, but to fill them with great delight.

Simple and to the point is always the best way to get your point across.

If you're an entrepreneur and you think that the president makes a difference to your business, you should stay at your current job.

I don't want to make more friends. I have four kids, I have plenty of friends, and all the personal relationships I need.

I have developed a Zen-like approach to the operating systems that people use: 'When you're ready, the right operating system will appear in your life.

A crash is when your competitor's program dies. When your program dies, it is an 'idiosyncrasy'.

I think that no one, or very few, are born as good presenters. It's a skill that you learn.

If you look at my Twitter feed it is 99% links, but 1% is me responding and 1% of a big number is a big number.

If you make money, you might not make meaning.

Leverage your brand. You shouldn't let two guys in a garage eat your shorts.

Most venture capitalists won't read a business plan unless the entrepreneur is introduced to them by a contact.

Not many people agree with what I do.

I merely consider myself a father, and one role of a father is to provide financial resources for his family.

Yes, but he's back again, ... As a company grows larger and larger it will have to bring in different types of managers.

I think a lot of it was because companies were resistant to change vendors.

Statistically it's probably one out of a hundred, so that means there's ten out there. Maybe twenty.

It doesn't matter whether the Dow is 5000 or 50,000. If you're an entrepreneur, there is no bad time to start a company.

When I saw that the mouse was the controlling thing and there was graphics moving all over and it wasn't character based ... it was a religious experience. Definitely, the scales were removed from my eyes. ... I became a believer in 30 seconds.

Coming from the U.S., you tend to look at one homogeneous market with 350 million people. But in Europe, every country has its own customs and laws.

Companies in Europe should stop trying to do the U.S. version of a European idea.

You say: "The last time I contacted you, I..." Investor thinks: "I'm going to fire my secretary for putting this clown on my calendar again.

You say: "My goal is to build a world-class company." Investor thinks: "How about you ship and sell the first copy before we talk about world-class anything?

You say: "I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur." Investor thinks: "I've always wanted to be a professional golfer. So what if you always wanted to be an entrepreneur?

You say: "I'm bright and ambitious." Investor thinks: "That's a relief because I usually invest in stupid and lazy people.

You say: "I love to think of new ways to solve problems." Investor thinks: "Is this a high-school science fair?

You say: "I have lots of great ideas, but I have trouble figuring out which one to try. Let me tell you about a couple." Investor thinks: "I want to know which idea you're going to kill yourself trying to make successful, not which ideas have crossed your idle mind.

You say: "If you sign an NDA, I'll tell you my idea." Investor thinks: "You are clueless. How can you not know that venture capitalists don't sign NDAs?

You say: "I don't know much about your firm, but I thought I'd contact you anyway." Investor thinks: "You're a lazy idiot--why are you wasting my time?

You're looking for chinks in the armor. You're looking for pockets of dissatisfied customers that you can steal from them.

They make cool stuff. Sometimes the cool stuff works. And sometimes the cool stuff doesn't work.

This makes them much easier to compare. We use the computer to process the plans, but each one gets seen by human eyes.

It's just as valuable to curate content as it is to create it.

I'm a lousy predictor of the future.

The A-listers and the A+ listers, are reporting the news, they're not making it.

The more popular a person thinks he is in the blogosphere, the thinner his skin and the thicker his hypocrisy. This should be exactly the opposite: the higher you go the thicker the skin and thinner the hypocrisy.

When you’ve worked hard and done well and walked through that doorway of opportunity, you do not slam it shut behind you.

The real question is who will innovate.

Customers can tell you how to evolve a product, but they can't show you how to make a leap.

There is only one Steve Jobs, but if you want a shot at being the next Steve Jobs, learn to communicate using stories, demos, and pictures.

'Branding' has taken on too much of a role as a specialized craft performed by voodoo artists.

I travel all the time.

Second, you need to spread the large amount of information knowledge that you've gained-pooping like an elephant. This means sharing information and discoveries with your fellow employees and occasionally even with your competitors.

My theory is that when you're young, you should work eighty hours a week to create a product or service that changes the world.

Let's say a startup is hot. It ships something great, and it achieves success. Thus, it's able to attract the best, brightest, and most talented. These people have been told they're the best since childhood. Indeed, being hired by the hot company is "proof" that they are the A and A+ players; in fact, the company is so hot that it can out-recruit Google and Microsoft.

Unfortunately, they develop a fixed mindset that they're the most talented, and they think that continued success is a right. Problems arise because pure talent only works as long as the going is easy. Furthermore, they don't take risks because failure would harm their image of being the best, brightest, and most talented. When they do fail, they deny it or attribute it to anything but their shortcomings.

And this is the beginning of the end.

The self-edited author is as foolish as the self-medicated patient.

I've always wanted to be a professional golfer. So what if you always wanted to be an entrepreneur?

I want to know which idea you're going to kill yourself trying to make successful, not which ideas have crossed your idle mind.

A 50-year-old company can innovate as well as two guys/gals in a garage.

Companies in Europe should stop trying to do the U.S. version of a European idea.

High achievers tend to have major weaknesses. People without major weaknesses tend to be mediocre.

Steve Jobs has a saying that A players hire A players; B players hire C players; and C players hire D players. It doesn't take long to get to Z players. This trickle-down effect causes bozo explosions in companies.

Writing is therapeutic. It helps you cope with issues that seem gargantuan at the time. The process of expressing yourself about a problem, editing your thoughts, and writing some more can help you control issues that you face.

The goal is to provide inspiring information that moves people to action.

The companies that are successful, they start out to make meaning, not to make money.

Great leaders are paradoxical. They catalyze, rather control, the work of their teams. They have an overarching vision for the team but are not autocratic in the realization of this vision. Their eyes are open to whatever results occur-not just planned goals, because serendipity is a great innovator.

Entrepreneurship is not for everyone.

Twitter, Facebook, Google + are the trifecta of marketing for authors (and bloggers).

Instant success are seldom instant and if you talk to the people behind these successes, you'll find out that they came after months of fear, uncertainty and confusion along with a flagrant lack of adoption.

Organizations are successful because of good implementation,not good business plans.

A successful self-publisher must fill three roles: Author, Publisher, and Entrepreneur—or APE.

Coming from the U.S., you tend to look at one homogeneous market with 350 million people. But in Europe, every country has its own customs and laws.

You know, if you're Guy Kawasaki and you create a car that gets 500 miles a gallon with zero emissions, people on the Internet would say: 'I could have done that in half an hour, and it's been done before. What's the big deal? I expected something more from him.' Meanwhile, they didn't do it, right? They're still living at home with their mothers.

If you don't toot your own horn, don't complain that there's no music.

The key to evangelism is a great product. It is easy, almost unavoidable, to catalyze evangelism for a great product. It is hard, almost impossible, to catalyze evangelism for crap.

If you must use more than ten slides to explain your business, you probably don't have a business.

If you truly don't have competition, then zoom out until you can define some. Competition can be as simple as the reliance on the status quo, Microsoft (since at some point Microsoft will compete with everyone for everything), or researchers in universities. Pick something, because saying you have no competition at all is a nonstarter.

What I lack in talent, I compensate with my willingness to grind it out,

Here's what you should say [to an investor]: 'this is what my company does' It's that simple. What you're trying to do is get potential investors to fantasize about how your product or service will make a boatload of money. They can't fantasize if they don't know what you do.

Looking back on my own career, I've come to the conclusion that too much money is worse than too little.

Enchantment is the purest form of sales

Pursue joy, not happiness. This is probably the hardest lesson of all to learn. It probably seems to you that the goal in life is to be happy. Oh, you maybe have to sacrifice and study and work hard, but, by and large, happiness should be predictable.

Inoculate yourself from dangerous bozos.

There was no "decision" per se to re-position myself. I simply decided that I wanted to write a book that would help people influence others.

If you make meaning, you'll make money.

You need to earn the right to promote.

It's a very valuable skill to succeed in life whether you work for a startup or a Fortune 500 company.

Disorganizatio n is the enemy of good writing.

Think different in order to change the rules. By definition, if you don't change the rules you aren't a revolutionary, and if you don't think different, you won't change the rules.

An editor who is a mentor, advisor, and psychiatrist. Don't kid yourself-a good editor will make your book better.

My real mantra for my life is "empower others".

Skillful pitching... is a necessary, but not sufficient, part of raising capital. More important are the realities of your organization: Are you building something meaningful, long lasting, and valuable to society?

Great teams are usually small-under fifty in total head count. (There are few examples of a team made up of hundreds of people who created anything revolutionary.) Big teams aren't conducive to revolutionary products because such products require a high degree of single-mindedness, unity, and unreasonable passion.