Don't Waste Your Time With Guy Kawasaki

I totally agree that "Art of the Start" is a waste of time. It reads as if Guy just collected a couple years worth of notes and Powerpoint slides from his inane pep talks and grinded them up into book form. And yet, paradoxically, it is difficult to criticize Guy. The very fact that he has managed to achieve some measure of Internet renown from the warmed-over banalities in "Art of the Start" represents a certain type of business success that I can't help but begrudgingly admire. <p>In a strange way Guy reminds me of a fascinating series of articles about Noka Chocolate that I read some time back (<a href="http://www.dallasfood.org/modules.php?name=News&#38;file=article&#38;sid=78)." rel="nofollow">http://www.dallasfood.org/modules.php?name=News&#38;file=art...</a> While the author of the series clearly demonstrates that Noka chocolate is grossly overpriced and deceptively marketed, I ended up respecting Noka's chutzpah for convincing so many people to pay an exponentially higher price for repackaged Bonnat chocolate. <p>Such is Guy. He repackages the same slogans and epigrams that you can't throw a rock in the business section of any bookstore without hitting, and yet he is perceived as a creative business author. His entrepreneurial resume shows only the Web 0.01 Nutsack that is Truemors, and yet he has convinced a respectable cross-section of our industry that he knows something about building startups. You have to respect that. Guy Kawasaki: the Noka Chocolate of Startup Gurus.

I really liked Art of the Start. I read it cover to cover in a day, and then read a couple of his previous books.<p>However, when reading his earlier books I noticed that a lot of the ideas had been picked up by other bloggers, e.g. Seth Godin. Because of this, the book didn't seem nearly as insightful as it would have if I read it when it was published.<p>I suspect the same would be true today for AotS because of all the VC bloggers. While many VCs did have blogs two years ago, most of them weren't giving that kind of practical advice at the time. Paul Kedrosky and Fred Wilson had yet to publish many of their best columns, and Venture Hacks and Presentation Zen didn't even exist. Not to mention that PG had only published the first two or three of his essays on startups, the ones in Hackers and Painters (not counting the essays on lisp/coding).

This is silly. Guy Kawasaki is a good writer, and his books are good, inspiring books. They are not full of secrets, nor are they going to guarantee you success, but they do sum up a lot of things you need to know to be successful. Maybe you already know them, and if so, that's great! You've got a head start. Not everyone does.<p>I really enjoyed his Art Of The Start talk. I also found "Selling the Dream" among the best marketing books available, along-side Ogilvy on Advertising, "Focus"/"Marketing Warfare" (either one will do, as they are effectively the same theme by the same authors), and "What's the Big Idea?" by George Lois. As someone else mentioned, Seth Godin has successfully re-purposed quite a bit of "Selling the Dream" into "Permission Marketing" (and it wasn't original when Guy was pushing it over ten years ago). It doesn't mean "Permission Marketing" sucks, it just means some things are worth repeating.

Lots of Guy haters here... why? AoS is an excellent book. If you followed his "obvious" advice, you'd do well. Fact is, there really are no big secrets to being successful. All it takes a lot of effort, tenacity, ethics and perseverance. Guy's AoS captures these perfectly. Look at successful people... many of them have no formal education and no degrees from Ivy schools. WHat they do have are those qualities I mentioned above... and they excel at them. Because his book has a lot of common sense in it, that should tell you something: just do it! Persevere, release that app... get the feedback and iterate until it works and the feedback becomes positive. Never give up!

Some people seem to feel that GK is mocking them with his mantras. Ie you are spending lots of money on your startup, he spreads the word that you can do it with 12000$ etc. <p>I think that is just the typical text communication issue. My impression is that GK'S intention is not to mock other people, but to motivate them to do something great. Also, to chill out in a way, I guess. At least in "Rules for Revolutionaries" he is also mocking himself, when he lists famous blunders and also mentions him dismissing the offer to work for Yahoo in it's early days, for how could it possibly successful.<p>I like his books, and even if not everything is new (how could it be), some things need to be repeated over and over again to finally sink in. <p>Also, I just looked at trueomors again: it seems the quality of submissions has improved greatly compared to the early days.

I think Guy is being somewhat maligned here. I am not particularly fascinated by his work, the same as others who have posted, but I think we are missing something.<p> Read <i>The Mythical Man Month</i> by Fred Brooks, one of the truly innovative works on software development. And you know what? Its boring. Its saying the same obvious stuff over and over, who gives a damn? The thing is that what he wrote was brilliant, when he wrote it. Work derives much of its meaning from context.<p> The same point can be made about Rachel Carson and <i>Silent Spring</i>. Its pretty much torturous to read: we have already had these ideas drilled into us. But when they were first written they sparked a global environmental revolution.<p> Is Guy in the same league as Brooks or Carson? No, I don't think its quite fair to say he is, but I do think dismissing him off hand is unnecessarily judgement... which happens to be a big trick for blog articles these days, and seems to be a connecting thread in the articles you write. Perhaps I am now being the one who is unnecessarily judgmental.

The Bible is full of ridiculously common sense stuff. Some people still manage to use it as a tool to keep them doing those common sense things. That one doesn't strike my fancy, but I have some books that are similar for me.<p>It's so easy to understand a concept intellectually and yet fail to practice it on a day-to-day basis. Books can be a tool to refresh your thinking and get a (partially) objective point of view. A clear-thinking real person is almost always best, but books can be used in total privacy and on-demand.

I'm not a huge GK fan, but I don't agree with YC disliking him so much. I think that he writes for a different audience.<p>I'd compare his books with Entrepreneur Magazine (does he write a column for them?). Practical, yet oversimplified, advice for the average joe. <p>We are the Wired and Business 2.0 crowd. I bet that 90% of Kawasaki readers have never even heard of del.icio.us, let alone YC.

I get what you're saying re Guy's common sense rhetoric, however his business of selling books and hosting seminars appears really successful. What do you make of that?