Just a reminder: Hope to see you guys at the Garage/SVASE "Art of the Start" event on Wednesday, November 8th. It’s at the Microsoft Conference Center in Mountain View, California. We’re covering the topics of entrepreneurship, venture capital, product introduction, sales, and marketing. The highlight is a fireside chat with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch. The [...]
Coghead provides a web-based application that allows tech-savvy businesspeople (that is, non-programmers) to create and deliver their own web-based applications. Essentially, it’s bringing the “do-it-yourself” trend to software—hopefully disrupting tradition and changing the way software is created and used. It can help fill the large, unmet need for small, specialized applications because packaged software is [...]
I’m in Waterloo (Ontario, no French jokes, please) to give an Art of the Start speech for Communitech. I just found out that the event is open to the public and free. The speech is on Friday, October 6th at 11:00 am in Fed Hall on the University of Waterloo campus. Click here to register. [...]
Fanpop is a network of social portals where communities of fans can discover and share content and participate in discussions around their favorite topics of interest. Rather than visiting multiple websites and forums or hunting and pecking through search results, passionate users bring the best content together in one place. Fans can submit, organize, and [...]
Just returned from a few days in Mumbai. What a mind-expanding experience! I was there to speak for an IBM conference for middleware vendors and customers. The contrast in living conditions for the very rich and the very poor is eye-opening—and I didn’t see the absolute extremes of either. I’ve never seen such vivid colors [...]
SVASE (Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs) is hosting an event called “Launch: Silicon Valley” on November 8 at the Microsoft Campus in Mountain View, California. SVASE is looking for new companies that are ready for launch or have launched recently. If you want to nominate a company, please email a two-page executive summary to: [...]
I’m on the campus of UCSB this week at family camp, and it’s inspired me to blog about what students should learn in order to prepare for the real world after graduation. This is an opportune time to broach this subject because the school year is about to begin, and careers can still be affected. [...]
Guy Kawasaki 3300 Hillview Palo Alto, CA 94304 [email protected] 650-354-1854 August 16, 2006 Dear Libby, I read your interview in Guy Kawasaki’s blog (To show I’m digitially hip enough to have read a recent blog item.), and your responses sparked an interest (A little bit of sucking up to show her that I thought that [...]
Veotag, Inc. enables people to place navigation tags in video and audio files. For example, if a speaker uses the top-ten format, you can tag where each section begins. Listeners/viewers can then click on tags to navigate the digital content. Think of this as adding a table of contents to audio or video. Search engines [...]
This is a list of the top ten postings as measured by links. It can always be at the top of the blog as a navigation tool. Please vote below. 419 The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint 250 The Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs 155 The Top Ten Lies of Venture Capitalists 135 The Art of [...]
An honest speaker will tell you that she has “on” days and “off” days. The result of a truly “on” day is a standing ovation. I had a very “on” day at TiECon on May 13, 2006. This is the annual meeting of The Indus Entrepreneur organization. I’ve provided postings of audio and video of [...]
This is an MP3 recording from the venture capital panel at a Garage event called The Art of the Start. In this panel, five prominent venture capitalists from Silicon Valley firms discuss entrepreneurship, fund raising, and market sectors. The panel occurred in 2005 (that is, after the dotcom implosion), so the information is still highly [...]
If most venture capitalists weren’t liars, we’d tell you that if we had the opportunity to fund Google, we would have passed. Seriously, who would have thought the world needed another search engine in 1995? Fast forward to 2006. Does the world need another web conferencing product? Maybe. Check out Vyew. Vyew is a free [...]
A few weeks ago I provided a site where you can see my Art of Innovation speech. My buddy, Mike Johnston, just showed me that my Art of the Start speech is online here. The Art of Innovation is a speech for any stage of company that is trying to create and marketing innovative products [...]
I must say that the "reality check" on Goowy worked better than I anticipated. Here's another product to look at called Jajah. Jajah is a VOIP company. It enables you to make long distance calls for about $.02/minute. Some people's initial reaction will be, "I can already do this with Skype." I don't think so. [...]
I'm going to add a new kind of posting. Sometimes I need a "reality check" on products or services--that is, I'd like to know what other people think of something I've found. (After all, what someone fifty-one years old thinks is cool, might not be cool.) Here's the first one: http://www.goowy.com/ This is a free [...]
I know a fair amount about evangelism and a little bit about blogging, so I've combined the two in order to provide some insights into the evangelism of a blog. Granted, I've only been at blogging for 120 days or so, but marketing is marketing, right?1. Think “book” not “diary.” First, a bit of philosophy: [...]
Many people requested more examples of companies driving their competition crazy. I found six more for you. 1. When Security Pacific Bank merged with Bank of America many Security Pacific branches were closed. First Interstate Bank rented trucks and parked them in the lots of the branches that were closing. Then First Interstate employees in [...]
This is the flip side to The Art of Driving Your Competition Crazy. It's meant to help you avoid being driven crazy by your competition. This isn't a top ten--it's only a top five because the key to maintaining your sanity is to keep things simple. 1. Delight your customer. As the old saying goes, [...]
“The purpose of competition is not to beat someone down, but to bring out the best in every player.” Walter Wheeler One of the signs of boom--or at least a boomlet--is that companies start wanting to drive their competition crazy. This occurs when “survival” is no longer an issue and optimization or maximization can become [...]