The most common question about by Truemors post (besides “How could you be so dumb as to think this could be a real business?”), was about what I got for $4,824.13 in legal fees. The fees covered the following: Trademarking Truemors Drafting a Terms of Use Discussion of copyright, liability, infringement, IP, and insurance issues [...]
Threadless is a very interesting company because of how it has “community-sourced” its product design. If you had told me that a company could succeed by running weekly tshirt design contests and then selling the winning designs, I would have told you that you’re nuts. I met Jeffrey during my tour of the Threadless offices [...]
Because of Truemors, I’ve learned a lot about launching a company in these “Web 2.0” times. Here’s quick overview “by the numbers.” 0. I wrote 0 business plans for it. The plan is simple: Get a site launched in a few months, see if people like it, and sell ads and sponsorships (or not). 0. [...]
Susan RoAne wrote the book on schmoozing. Literally: How to Work a Room: Your Essential Guide to Savvy Socializing. The recently updated and revised book is a classic because we will all have to walk into “rooms” that contain meetings, conferences, trade shows, business mixers, fundraisers, and parties and be able to schmooze, make connections, [...]
In the early 1990s, Bruce Webster wrote and published The Art of ‘Ware (M&T Books, 1995), a reinterpretation of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Basically, Webster applied Sun Tzu’s work to creating and marketing IT products. Webster recently updated his original version. If you’re a Sun Tzu fan, you’ll enjoy what Webster has done. [...]
My buddy, Glenn Kelman, the CEO of Redfin, had a strong reaction to last week’s post about PR by Marge Zable Fisher. So much so that he penned an alternate solution to the challenge of a good client-agency relationship: Don’t hire an agency and do it yourself. Here’s what he wrote. Nobody knows if Charlemagne [...]
Check out Launch: Silicon Valley 2007. It’s a half-day conference featuring thirty tech startups who are launching new products and services. Think of it as a poor man’s Demo. June 5th Noon to 6:00 pm Microsoft campus (Mountain View, California) Registration I’ll be giving a speech called “How I Launched a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, [...]
Margie Zable Fisher runs theprsite.com. Every day someone tells her that he or she has been “burned” by a PR firm, and Margie’s goal is to help small business find the right PR firm. I asked her to provide the top ten reasons why PR doesn’t work: The client doesn’t understand the publicity process. PR [...]
I recently visited the worldwide headquarters of Threadless in Chicago and took a boatload of pictures. I’ve been to the offices of many startups, but few compare to Threadless’s offices in coolness. Walls covered with graffiti. src="http://files.guykawasaki.com/blog/img/Slide3_2.jpg" /> An “office” in an Airstream trailer for recording podcasts. Inside the office recording a podcast. Interior offices. [...]
The ability to print boarding passes for flights is a great convenience. Unfortunately, half the time you’re in a hotel room when you check-in online and can’t print the boarding pass. Some airlines (Northwest for one, but I always fly United) will fax the boarding pass to you—but this still requires that you get the [...]
Anastasia Goodstein covers Generation Y in her blog YPulse. She has worked for Current TV, AOL, and Oxygen TV. She recently published a book that will help you understand the online activities of young people called Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online. Question: How does being totally wired change being a [...]
I liked Penelope Trunk's interview so much that I asked her for more material. Here's her list of the nine biggest workplace myths: You’ll be happier if you have a job you like. The correlation between your happiness and your job is overrated. The most important factors, by far, are your optimism levels and your [...]
I’ll be speaking at the Salesforce Developer Conference on Monday. This is a free event. I learned something recently: Salesforce.com is really a software-as-service “platform” that has applicability beyond “salesforce automation.” Ergo, this conference is also for software entrepreneurs. Hope to see you there.
Penelope Trunk is the author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success. She is a career columnist at the Boston Globe and Yahoo Finance. Her syndicated column has run in more than 200 publications. Earlier, she was a software executive, and then she founded two companies. She has been through an IPO, an acquisition [...]
Richard Stearns is the president of World Vision. This organization is a "Christian relief and development organization dedicated to helping children and their communities worldwide reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty." Stearns holds a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. [...]
Pam Slim provides a great list of things to do prior to making a presentation. If you make speeches, presentations, or pitches, you need to read this. Here’s one more power tip: Show up with your own Countryman E6i microphone. (And tell your host that you need a Shure or Sennheiser body pack.) This has [...]
Check out a blog called Trendsspotting. It’s written by Taly Weiss, a social psychologist who runs a market research firm in Israel. She’s recently wrote about a bunch of interesting topics including: Self testing the degree of hardcore Web 2.0 usage. Crocs. (There are two pairs of Crocs in the Kawasaki family!) Influence of MySpace [...]
Where ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise—“On a Distant Prospect of Eton College” by Thomas Gray With all due respect to Thomas Gray, he missed the target when it comes to entrepreneurship: ignorance isn’t bliss, ignoring is. For example, last week I posted a “help wanted” entry soliciting “truemorists” for a site called [...]
Slideshare.net announced the winners of the World's Best Presentation Contest today: Winners (chose by judges) ShiftHappens by Jbrenman Meet Henry by Chereemoore Sustainable Food Lab by Chrislandry People’s Choice Winners PaniPuri--An Introduction by Thakkar ShiftHappens by Jbrenman Meet Henry by Chereeemoore The commonality you’ll see in these winners is big fonts, big graphics, and a [...]
Alcatraz Island reopened this week, and I was lucky enough to be invited by the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy for a tour. It is a very fascinating place that has long history: fort, prison, lighthouse, and museum. It was also occupied by Indians from 1969 to 1971 via this proclamation. If you’re visiting San [...]