Guy Kawasaki Quotes

Evangelism is selling a dream.

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.

Go APE: Author a great book, Publish it quickly, and Entrepreneur your way to success. Self-publishing isn’t easy, but it’s fun and sometimes even lucrative. Plus, your book could change the world.

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

Happiness is temporary and fleeting. ... Joy is the right goal.

If you make money, you might not make meaning.

"Patents make our product defensible." The optimal number of times to use the P word in a presentation is one. Just once, say, "We have filed patents for what we are doing." Done. The second time you say it, venture capitalists begin to suspect that you are depending too much on patents for defensibility. The third time you say it, you are holding a sign above your head that says, "I am clueless."

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

The two most important things about people on a revolutionary team are their ability and passion. Their educational level or work experience is meaningless--most of the engineers who did ground-breaking work of the Macintosh design didn't even graduate from college.

Just be nice, take genuine interest in the people you meet, and keep in touch with people you like. This will create a group of people who are invested in helping you because they know you and appreciate you.

When you're a good person, good things happen to you. You shouldn't be a good person with the expectation of therefore deserving good things, but in its purest form, I believe when you do good, good comes back to you.

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

For me, while writing I am an engineer, so if I decide to change the format, I want to add a section, to move a section, reorganize the section, anything I want to do, I just boot words, and I do what I want to do. So, I feel completely empowered when I'm a writer.

Accept diversity and don't take any crap.

Let yourself be enchanted in small ways.

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

Want to change the world? Upset the status quo? This takes more than run-of-the-mill relationships. You need to make people dream the same dream that you do.

Companies should always want to delight their customers.

Eat like a bird, poop like an elephant.

I travel all the time.

The desire to change the world is a tremendous advantage as you travel down the difficult path ahead because focusing on a lofty goal is more energizing and attracts more talent than simply making a buck.

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

Not many people agree with what I do.

"(Big name research firm) says our market will be $50 billion in 2010." Every entrepreneur has a few slides about how the market potential for his segment is tens of billions. It doesn't matter if the product is bar mitzah planning software or 802.11 chip sets. Venture capitalists don't believe this type of forecast because it's the fifth one of this magnitude that they've heard that day. Entrepreneurs would do themselves a favor by simply removing any reference to market size estimates from consulting firms.

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

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.

The best reason to start an organization is to make meaning; to create a product or service to make the world a better place.

You say: "I'm a blue sky thinker." Investor thinks: "You have no business model, and you don't know how to ship."

For startups, SM is now crucial: it has never been cheaper and easier to reach one's customers. Entrepreneurs should thank God for Twitter, Facebook.

The angels started singing, the clouds parted, it was a religious experience. I've never had the same reaction to a product, not in 25 years.

The root of great companies is make meaning vs. make money.

An MBA is a great degree for career paths like investment banking, finance, consulting, and large companies. An MBA is not necessarily the right path for starting a tech company. You should be building a prototype, not getting an MBA in that case.

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

The first good reason to write a book is to add value to people’s lives.

The essence of evangelism is to passionately show people how you can make history together.

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.

Writing a book isn’t an easy process nor is it always enjoyable, but it is one of life’s most satisfying achievements.

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.

While we're living, we need to get over ourselves and accept others if we want to enchant people.

Entitlement is the opposite of enchantment.

I don't "need" the rush to be happy. I'd be perfectly happy without the attention and action.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

People are free or cheap. Marketing: using Twitter or blogs. Cheap or free. Infrastructure: call up Amazon, call up Rackspace, terabytes of data in the clouds, thousand dollars, two thousand dollars.