JUST FOR STARTERS
Guy Kawasaki, born and raised in Kalihi, helped start up Macintosh computers. Now he’s a venture capitalist helping entrepreneurs start up software companies
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California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and obtaining his MBA in marketing. His first real job was with Nova Styling, a jewelry company in Los Angeles.
“I was hired to literally count diamonds,” he says with a laugh. “The jewelry business is a very tough business and working there was very good training. It was there I learned the most about selling.” He stayed with Nova for a few years until the technology bug hit him.
Of course, Kawasaki is most famous for his time spent at Apple Computer, selling and promoting the Apple Macintosh.
As the Apple software evangelist, he was given the challenge of convincing developers to create hardware and software products for the Macintosh, at the time when it had a zero installed base, zero backward compatibility and zero monthly sales.
Obviously the result was a success. His charisma and passion for the Macintosh shined through to these developers, and thanks to him, gave the Macintosh a solid launch.
During his four years there he also managed the software group that published the Apple-labeled software MacWrite, MacPaint, MacDraw, MacProject, etc.
After his initial time at Apple, Kawasaki was so excited about the product software opportunities that he started his own Macintosh database company called ACIUS and a product called 4th Dimension. He did this for two years and left to pursue writing, speaking and consulting opportunities.
In 1995, Kawasaki was asked to return to Apple for a second tour as an Apple fellow and chief evangelist. At the time, according to the pundits, Apple was supposed to die again. His job was to maintain and revive the Macintosh cult by doing whatever he had to do.
A couple years later, Guy left Apple a second time to start Garage with Craig Johnson of Venture Law Group and Rich Karlgaard of Forbes. Version 1.0 of Garage was to provide match-making services for angel investors and entrepreneurs.
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Today, Garage is focused on being a venture capital firm and making direct investments in early-stage software, services, clean technology and material sciences companies. Garage investments in Hawaii-based companies include Hoku Scientific and Clear Fuels technologies.
Kawasaki’s advice to any rising entrepreneur is to make a prototype. “Actually making the prototype is the most important thing,” he says. “Many entrepreneurs spend way too long trying to prove there’s a market, and get caught up in all the planning and projecting. They should just build something just for a start.”
As with any good entrepreneur, Kawasaki has his fingers in many projects, including his latest Truemors (truemors.com) and Alltop (alltop.com). Truemors’ purpose is to democratize and spread information with its collection of human interest stories, rumors and news.
The Alltop site is a collection of topics, a single page aggregation, or more simply, a table of contents for favorite topics. The websites Alltop lists are starting points for topics such as celebrity gossip, fashion, gaming, Macs, tech, sports, politics, automobiles or science. At each Alltop site, the latest five stories from 30 or more sites are displayed on a single page - the single-page aggregation.
“These sites are a labor of love for me,” Kawasaki says. “I think of these as NPR (National Public Radio) for your eyes as opposed to your ears. We’ll just give it some time and see how these do.”
For some non-Internet reading, Kawasaki’s collection of books titles include: Database 101, The Computer Curmudgeon, Hindsights, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, The Macintosh Way, Selling The Dream, Rules For Revolutionaries and the most recent The Art of the Start.
Kawasaki comes back home to the Islands several times a year to see his dad and brings his kids home to visit their grandfather. When he’s not writing or blogging, he’s playing hockey and answering hundreds of e-mails from his fans and friends.
Not bad for a local boy from Kalihi.
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