Someone once told me that the probability of an entrepreneur getting venture capital is the same as getting struck by lightning while standing at the bottom of a swimming pool on a sunny day. This may be too optimistic. Let's say that you can't raise money for whatever reason: You're not a “proven” team with [...]
This is a good story. A few months ago I spoke at the Surfing Industry Manufacturers Association meeting in Cabo San Lucas. To my dismay, the speaker I followed was Tony Hawk. After our speeches, I got to hang out with Tony and set up an Airport network for us, so I asked him to [...]
It's been a few years since I wrote the Hindsights speech. During these years, a lot of water has gone under the bridge. I am married to the same woman. I have three kids with a fourth on the way. (My youngest is a girl we adopted from Guatemala, and any day now, we are [...]
By popular demand, I've made it easy for you to see the award winners by clicking here. I've also added one more award: Best Canadian family: Cameron BNow seeing the winners is easier than shooting fish in a barrel.
From February 6th to 8th, executives from seventy companies will do a six-minute demo of their products to an audience of venture capitalists, analysts, and journalists. This event is called, logically, Demo. It's a great event--especially if you understand the dance that's going on: entrepreneurs acting like they don't need capital, and VCs acting like [...]
Much to my delight, dozens of you have posted your picture to my loop of blog readers. In your honor, I am presenting the first and last “Guy's Blog's Loop's Photo Winners.” (You know I love top ten lists, but I couldn't reduce the number of categories.) I didn't plan to select “winners” when I [...]
One of my favorite restaurants is called Hobees. One of my favorite things about Hobees is its bulletin boards where there are pictures of customers in far off places wearing a Hobees tshirt. So I've decided to create the digital version of this so that we can all “meet” each other. Hence, I've created a [...]
In my day job, I not only hear a lot of PowerPoint pitches, but I also read a lot of business plans. The PowerPoint pitches explain my Ménière's disease, but the business plans explain my recent need for reading glasses. One of my goals for blogging is to reduce the external factors that are causing [...]
Yes, bombshelters. Twenty four pictures of bombshelters. Truly bizarre. May we never need them... By the way, if any of you have loops that you'd like to submit to my “loop du jour” posting, just let me know.
Check out these charts by Karl Hartig. My favorite is the consumer electronics one. It shows how long it took consumers to adopt electronic stuff. I used it in my book called Rules for Revolutionaries. I've been trying to find it ever since, and my buddy Bryan came through today. Written at: Palo Alto, California.
Despite my intention not to blog tonight, I cannot resist. Today I moderated a very good panel at a conference, and while this experience is fresh in my mind, I want to explain how to kick butt on a panel. At any given conference, there are about three keynote speakers and twenty five panelists, so [...]
Starting today, once per day, I'm going to select a loop that I think is really cool. Here's the first one. Images of an Ever Changing China. Thirty eight photos that illustrate how fast China is changing.
My, my...this topic sure generated a lot of comments. I'll respond to them here: Dress code in Hawaii. A great aloha shirt is the way to go. Have I got the solution for you. The world's best aloha shirts come from Anne Namba. I often wear them in my speeches because it's powerful to know [...]
When I started public speaking in about 1986, I was deathly afraid of public speaking—for one thing, working for the division run by Steve Jobs was hugely intimidating: How could you possibly compete with Steve? It’s taken me twenty years to get comfortable at it. I hope that many of you are are called upon [...]
A few things: Apology 1: I didn't realize that editing an entry causes RSS feeders to send the entry again. As you RSS subscribers know, I make a lot of changes to my entries, so you're getting multiple copies of the same entry as I tweak it. Unfortunately, it's unlikely I'll stop tweaking. I think [...]
By popular demand (okay, two people asked me to do it), here are the top ten ways to attract the interest of venture capitalists. There's no guarantee that if you do these ten things that you'll raise millions of dollars, but this wishlist will get you in the game. Before you even start addressing the [...]
In honor of the recent Macworld Expo and the upcoming Super Bowl (the two great branding exercises of every new year; one much more fruitful than the other), this blog entry is about the art of branding. My assumptions are that you don't have infinite resources and that you do have a great product (see [...]
Harker School Commencement I've been blogging for a whole ten days now, and all my topics have been business stuff: venture capital, entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, evangelism, etc. Now I want to throw you a total curve ball. About fourteen years ago my wife and I separated for a time. As part of my search for what [...]
I found a life-size photo of my next Macintosh laptop. :-) Not to mention an even greater understanding of what makes Steve such a great presenter. I made the big time: an interview on NHL.com! Written at: Atherton, California